This multidisciplinary study takes a fresh look at
Judean history and biblical literature in the late fourth and third centuries BCE. In a major reappraisal of this era
, the contributions to this volume depict it as one in which critical changes took place.Until recently, the period from Alexander’s conquest in 332 BCE to the early years of Seleucid domination following Antiochus III’s conquest in 198 BCE was reputed to be poorly documented in material evidence and textual production, buttressing the view that the era from late Persian to Hasmonean times was one of seamless continuity. Biblical scholars believed that no literary activity belonged to the Hellenistic age, and archaeologists were unable to refine their understanding because of a lack of secure chronological markers. However, recent studies are revealing this period as one of major social changes and intense literary activity. Historians have shed new light on the nature of the Hellenistic empires and the relationship between the central power and local entities in ancient imperial settings, and the redating of several biblical texts to the third century BCE challenges the traditional periodization of Judean history.
Bringing together Hellenistic history, the archaeology of Judea, and biblical studies, this volume appraises the early Hellenistic period anew as a time of great transition and change and situates Judea within its broader regional and transregional imperial contexts.
Sylvie Honigman is Associate Professor of Ancient History at Tel Aviv University. She is the author of The Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria: Study in the Narrative of the “Letter of Aristeas.”
Christophe Nihan is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible and History of Ancient Israel at the University of Lausanne. He is the coeditor of Purity and the Forming of Religious Traditions in the Ancient Mediterranean World and Ancient Judaism.
Oded Lipschits is Professor of Jewish History and the Director of the Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv University. Among his many publications is the recent Ramat Raḥel IV: The Renewed Excavations by the Tel Aviv–Heidelberg Expedition (2005–2010): Stratigraphy and Architecture, also published by Eisenbrauns.
Abbreviations
Contributors
Preface
Introduction
Sylvie Honigman
I. The Chronological Frame, Politics and Identity
1. The Ptolemaic Period: A Dark Age in Jewish History?
Lester L Grabbe
2. Numismatic Evidence and the Chronology of the Fifth Syrian War
Catharine C. Lorber
3. The Representation of the Victorious King: Comments on a Dedication of a Statue
of Ptolemy IV in Jaffa (SEG 20.467 = CIIP 3.2172)
Stefan Pfeiffer
4. Aramaic, Paleo-Hebrew and “Jewish” Scripts in the Ptolemaic Period
David S. Vanderhooft
II. The History of Rural Settlement in Judea
5. Judah in the Early Hellenistic Period: An Archaeological Perspective
Nitsan Shalom, Oded Lipschits, Noa Shatil and Yuval Gadot
6. Khirbet Qeiyafa in the Late Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods
Yosef Garfinkel
7. Coin Circulation in Judea during the Persian–Hellenistic Transition: A View from the Elah Valley
Yoav Farhi
8. Political Trends as Reflected in the Material Culture: A New Look at the Transition between the Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods
Igor Kreimerman and Débora Sandhaus
III. The Workings of Empires in Local and Comparative Perspectives
9. The Harbor of Akko-Ptolemaïs: Dates and Functions
Gil Gambash
10. The Achaemenid–Ptolemaic Transition: The View from Southern Phoenicia
Andrea M. Berlin and Sharon C. Herbert
11. Sanctuaries, Priest-Dynasts and the Seleukid Empire
Boris Chrubasik
12. Gods in the Gray Zone: A Political History of Egyptian Temples from Artaxerxes III
to the End of the Argeadai (342–ca. 305 BCE)
Damien Agut-Labordère
13. Sacred and Secular Activities in the Egyptian Temple Precincts (temenē) in the 3rd Century BCE
Gilles Gorre
14. Searching for the Social Location of Literate Judean Elites in Early Hellenistic Times: A Non-Linear History of the Temple and Royal Administrations in Judea
Sylvie Honigman
IV. The Pentateuch: Early Greek Translations and Receptions
15. The Idealization of Ptolemaic Kingship in the Legend of the Origins of the Septuagint
Timothy H. Lim
16. The Production of Greek Books in Alexandrian Judaism
Benjamin G. Wright
17. The Septuagint: Translating and Adapting the Torah to the 3rd Century BCE
Martin Rösel
18. Greek Historians on Jews and Judaism in the 3rd Century BCE
Reinhard G. Kratz
V. Biblical Texts in the 3rd Century BCE
19. How to Identify a Ptolemaic Period Text in the Hebrew Bible
Konrad Schmid
20. No Prophetic Texts from the Hellenistic Period? Methodological, Philological
and Historical Observations on the Writing of Prophecy in Early Hellenistic Judea
Hervé Gonzalez
21. The Social Setting and Purpose of Early Judean Apocalyptic Literature: Between Resistance Literature and Literate Hermeneutics
Sylvie Honigman
22. “To be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated” (Esther 7:4):
Historicity and Fictionality of Anti-Jewish Pogrom Stories before the Maccabean Crisis
Manfred Oeming
Index of Ancient Sources
Index of Geographical Names Index of Subjects
Index of Modern Authors
