From the Maccabees to the Mishnah

by Shaye J.D. Cohen

The history of Christianity’s beginnings is part of the history of Judaism in antiquity, and both are part of the history of Greco-Roman culture.

salient

the

Jews rebuilt the temple and dedicated it in 516 BCE. Jeremiah and Ezekiel were active at the beginning of the exilic period;

Second Isaiah and his school (the anonymous authors of Isa. 40–66), Haggai, and Zechariah (the author of Zec...

The Persian period lasted only two hundred years, from 539 BCE (the conquest of Babylonia by Cyrus the Great) to 334 or 333 BCE (the conq...

act...

Ezra (probably 458 BCE, although many scholars prefer a date about thirty years later)...

Nehemiah had a more variegated career,

before Ezra

Ezra and Nehemiah mark the end of “the Bible” and “biblical Israel” (see

Finally the dust settled (301 BCE), and Judea was part of the kingdom of Egypt (ruled by the Macedonian Ptolemies).

Macedonian kings of Syria (the Seleucids).

perhaps until the Arab conquests of the seve...

quiescent

There is no indication of any serious uprising by the Jews against the empires that ruled them. This changed dramatically in the 160s BCE. In 168–167 BCE, Antiochus Epiphanes, the Seleucid king of Syria, profaned the temple and persecuted Judaism.

164 BCE the Maccabees reconquered and purified the temple;

important transition period

Diaspora,

canonization of S...

transformation of prophecy into...

class of s...

The latest book in the Bible, Daniel,

By the

140s and 130s BCE, the Seleucids had little choice but to accept the independence of the Maccabean state.

seeking alliance with Rome against the

Seleucids

“An

enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

After the Romans conquered Jerusalem in 63 BCE, they realized that the Maccabees were a nationalist element that could not be combined easily with their own imperial vision, so the Maccabees were pushed aside and a new dynasty was created.

The founder of the dynasty was Herod the Great (37–4 BCE).

procurators or prefects.

motley

brutal (notably Pontius Pilate), others corrupt, ...

Vespasian marched from Syria into Galilee and began the slow and deliberate reconquest.

Nero’s suicide in June of 68 CE.

Vespasian had everything to gain and nothing to lose by taking his time. He played his cards correctly, with the result that in July of 69 CE,

The Second Temple period came to an end.

The other major rebellion is that of Bar Kokhba (132–135), sometimes called the “second revolt.”

The war of 115–117 resulted in the decimation of Egyptian Jewry, which had been the largest and most important Jewish community of the Roman Diaspora.

(now rebuilt under the name Aelia Capitolina) and the changing of the country’s name from Judea to Palaestina (Palestine).

age of sects (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, the Qumran community, the Jesus movement (Christians), Sicarii,

Zealots, and

the centuries after the destruction of the temple often receive the name the rabbinic period.

The earliest of these works, completed around the year 200 CE, was the Mishnah.

Judaism created by the rabbis of antiquity gradually became the dominant form of Judaism, and it remained the dominant form until the nineteenth century.

would become later, and the concept “the rabbinic period” slights the rabbis’ opponents (the losers) and falsely implies that after 70 CE all Jews accepted the rabbis as their leaders and followed the way of rabbinic Judaism.

second to sixth centuries is exclusively rabbinic.

begins much earlier than the second century

the historian, however, “the rabbis” and “the rabbinic period” become meaningful entities only after 70 CE.