first discussions of Israelite and Judean history, apart from the biblical traditions, stem from the Hellenistic Age and were the products of both Jewish and non-Jewish authors. In the early Greco-Roman period, Jewish–Roman relations and Jewish apologetic concerns engendered several treatments of Jewish history and life. From the second to the fifth century CE, with the emergence and dominance of rabbinic Judaism and the growth and state recognition of Christianity, concern with and interpretation of earlier Israelite and Judean history passed into the hands of Christian historians and theologians whose assumptions and descriptions set a pattern that remained basically unchallenged throughout the Middle Ages. These three phases of the discussion are the concern of this section.
Much of the literature dealing with Israelite and Judean history from the Hellenistic Age either did not discuss the subject in any great detail or, more probably, has been irretrievably lost. Except for the biblical book of Daniel and the apocryphal books of 1 and 2 Maccabees, only the fragments of this Hellenistic literature preserved in the works of Josephus, in Eusebius’s Praeparatio Euangelica, and in a few other Greco-Roman writers survive.6 Nonetheless, it is highly probable that most Hellenistic universal historians included a section on the history of the Jews in their works.
Among pagan authors, discussions of the origin of the Jews and the figures of Abraham and Moses dominate. Both favorable and slanderous treatments appear. Hecataeus of Abdera (about 300 BCE), in his work on the culture, history, politics, and religion of ancient Egypt, discussed the origins of the Jews in terms of their expulsion from Egypt at divine urging and their subsequent colonization of Judea. Josephus (Contra Apionem 1.183–204) quotes from a work by Hecataeus which was wholly concerned with the Jews, although Josephus’s passage only contains miscellaneous material about Jewish matters during the early Hellenistic Age. Hecataeus’s treatment of the Jews and their history was generally favorable and, while praising Moses as a cult founder and lawgiver, he shows little, if any, direct knowledge of the Jews and their sacred writings. Hecataeus’s description of Moses and subsequent Jewish history that tended to telescope everything around Moses was highly influential upon practically all Hellenistic and even Greco-Jewish writers.7
Over against the material in Hecataeus (and Theophrastus, Megas-thenes, and Clearchus), which took a favorable attitude towards the Jews, one finds widespread use of a version of the exodus and the career of Moses that heaps calumny upon the Jews. Utilizing an old story form that told of a foreign invasion of Egypt,8 a reign of terror by outsiders, and a triumph over this dominance by a hero-king,9 these descriptions of Jewish history depicted the Hebrews as an impure people, Moses as a polluted Egyptian priest, and portrayed Jewish life and practices as hostile to everything non-Jewish.10 This hostile propaganda was basicaly centered in Alexandria and reflects the tension between Jews of the Egyptian diaspora and the native, especially priestly, Egyptian population. The roots of this anti-Jewish polemic were no doubt multiple,11 and the tension is already reflected in Aramaic papyri of the fifth century BCE from Egypt. Variations on this theme of Jewish origins are reflected in Egyptian literature for over six centuries12 and no doubt formed a vital part of the arsenal of anti-Jewish propaganda offering a supportive rationale for repressive measures.
Perhaps the most significant example of this anti-Jewish version of Moses and the origins of the Jews is that attributed to Manetho (third century BCE) by Josephus (Contra Apionem 1.73–91, 93–105, 228–52), who claims to be quoting from Manetho’s Aegyptiaca, although Josephus seems to retell Manetho’s treatment in two different versions.13 Manetho’s phil-Egyptian version or Josephus’s interpretation of it identified or associated the expulsion of the Hyksos with the biblical account of the Hebrew departure from Egypt, an interpretation sometimes found in modern histories of ancient Israel.
Among the materials preserved by Eusebius from the collective work of Alexander Polyhistor (Concerning the Jews) are fragments of a historical work by the so-called Pseudo-Eupolemus (Praeparatio Evangelica 9.17–39). This writer was apparently a Samaritan and one of the first to present biblical history under the form of Hellenistic historical writing.14 Some time near the beginning of the second century BCE, he combined biblical materials with traditions from non-Jewish writers such as Berossus and Hesiod in order to show Abraham as the source of the culture of the Phoenicians and Egyptians, and thus indirectly the source of Greek culture, since Herodotus, Plato, and Hecataeus had argued that the Greeks had acquired much wisdom from the Egyptians. Such a position carried the assertion that the biblical tradition represented the oldest wisdom of humanity. Abraham was the teacher of a multitude of nations (see Gen 17:5)! Pseudo-Eupolemus utilized various elements of Babylonian and Greek mythology, perhaps the pseudepigraphical Enoch tradition, and haggadic traditions about Abraham. His work depicts Abraham in universalistic categories and is clearly concerned with apologetic interests.
Shortly after Pseudo-Eupolemus, and perhaps partially dependent upon him, the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher Aristobulus (see 2 Macc 1:10) expounded Judaism as a philosophy and sought to show that the Mosaic law was a true philosophy and in no way contradictory to philosophical wisdom.15 His work was apparently addressed to the young King Ptolemy VI Philometor (181–145 BCE) but may have been intended for a larger, even predominantly Jewish audience. Such apologetic works—both historical and philosophical—must have been addressed, at least in a limited way, to non-Jewish pagans16 and not just to renegade Jews who had forsaken Judaism or were strongly tempted by the option of apostasy.17 The work of Pseudo-Eupolemus suggests that historical writing as an apologetic concern addressed to non-Jews developed in Palestine in Hellenistic circles before the Maccabean Revolt and probably not just in Samaria.18
The Maccabean struggles against the Seleucids triggered extensive Jewish historical writing. Eupolemus,19 probably shortly after the Maccabean Revolt (see 1 Macc 8:17; 2 Macc 4:11), wrote a work on Jewish history that discussed, among other matters, the date of the exodus and the figure of Moses (dated chronologically much earlier than in the MT), the Solomonic temple, and the Davidic–Solomonic state where the discussion reflects the influence of the expansion of the Hasmoneans and their international political relations. Eupolemus, as a Hellenized, priestly supporter of the Maccabees, demonstrates a strong patriotic and nationalistic interpretation of Jewish history and less of the universalistic spirit that characterized Pseudo-Eupolemus. According to Clement of Alexandria (Stromata 1.141), Eupolemus calculated the time between Adam and the fifth year of Demetrius I Soter (162–150 BCE) as 5,149 years. In his chronological concerns, Eupolemus expressed the widespread interest in world chronology that was characteristic of many Hellenistic writers.20 Jason of Cyrene, about whom nothing is certainly known, produced a five-volume history of the early Maccabean struggles (see 2 Macc 2:23), probably covering the years 176–160 BCE. His work has been summarized as 2 Maccabees21 by an unknown epitomizer who probably not only condensed the massive work but added some popular haggadic legends (2 Macc 1:11–18), supernaturalistic touches, and martyrological stories (2 Maccabees 6–7). Second Maccabees is more akin to Hellenistic than biblical historiography—in its direct address to the reader, its edifying quality, its conscious literary strivings, and its concern to entertain and enhance the reader’s enjoyment (see especially 2 Macc 1:1–6; 15:38–39).
First Maccabees, like 2 Maccabees, may be classified as contemporary history since its focus of concern is the Maccabean struggles down to 134 BCE, probably near the book’s date of composition. This work is more similar to the narrative style of Kings and Chronicles, that is to biblical historiography, than 2 Maccabees, although the work is in some regards more pro-Hasmonean than the latter.
One further work engendered by the Maccabean struggles should be noted, namely the book of Daniel. While apocalyptic rather than purely historical in form, the book of Daniel does, however, reflect a concern widespread in Hellenistic historiography—the concern with universal history which has already been noted in the work of the Samaritan Pseudo-Eupolemus. Daniel utilized the concept of four world monarchies in discussing universal history, a concept widely and earlier employed by Greek and Hellenistic writers as well as later Roman authors.22 In Daniel one can discern a tripartite division in the author’s treatment of world history: (1) the time before the capture of Jerusalem, known from the biblical historical works (more
