Second Temple period
According to Jewish tradition, prophecy ceased during the early Second Temple period; this left the Jews without their version of divine guidance when they felt most in need of support and direction.
[7] Under Hellenistic rule, the growing influence of Hellenism in Judaism became a source of dissent for those Jews who clung to their monotheistic faith; this was a major catalyst for the Maccabean revolt.
In the latter years of the period, Jewish society was deeply polarized along ideological lines, and the sects of the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots, and early Christianity were formed.
[16] Professor Lester L. Grabbe asserted that the "alleged decree of Cyrus" regarding Judah, "cannot be considered authentic", but that there was a "general policy of allowing deportees to return and to re-establish cult sites".
[22] The careers of Ezra and Nehemiah in the 5th century BCE were thus a kind of religious colonisation in reverse, an attempt by one of the many Jewish factions in Babylon to create a self-segregated, ritually pure society inspired by the prophesies of Ezekiel and his followers.
[32] At the same time, Hellenism gradually spread to varied degrees on all sides in the region through a variety of contacts, but especially as a result of the development of commerce and the arrival of Greek settlers.
[36] This policy was drastically reversed by Antiochus IV, possibly due to a dispute over leadership of the Temple in Jerusalem and the office of High Priest or a revolt whose nature was lost to time.
The conflict was heavily religiously charged because, in order to distinguish themselves from their Jewish opponents, the Maccabees presented themselves as radical Jews and carried out large-scale forced circumcisions.
Unlike his predecessors, who were focused on the concentration of the Jewish population in one country, his military efforts were motivated by a desire to control key economic points such as ports and trade routes.
After Pompey's conquest of Judea in 63 BCE, Hyrcanus II assumed the role of ethnarch; however, his advisor Antipater was ruler in practice and managed the kingdom's affairs.
The era from roughly 4 BCE to 33 CE is also notable as being the time period when Jesus of Nazareth should have lived, primarily in Galilee, under the reign of Herod Antipas.
There he was joined by his son Titus, who arrived from Alexandria at the head of Legio XV Apollinaris, as well as by the armies of various local allies including that of king Agrippa II.
[78] While contemporary studies dispute this figure, all agree that the siege had a major toll on human life, with many people being killed and enslaved, and large parts of the city destroyed.
[79][80] This revolt saw Jewish communities in the Roman provinces of Egypt, Cyrenaica, and Cyprus rise in rebellion, characterized by attacks on local populations, temples, public structures, and roads.
According to Jewish tradition, prophecy ceased during the early Second Temple period; this left the Jews without their version of divine guidance at a time when they felt most in need of support and direction.
Some of the later books of the Hebrew Bible, including Ezra and Nehemiah, Esther, Daniel, Chronicles, and Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, are explicitly dated to the Second Temple period.
[110] This later form of Biblical Hebrew is particularly notables in the Book of Chronicles since it occasionally rewrites sections from Samuel and Kings and modifies parts to conform to post-exilic usage.
[113] The Jews of Alexandria celebrated the translation of the Scriptures into Greek with an annual festival on the island of Pharos, known for its famed lighthouse, featuring a grand beach picnic.
Van Maaren demonstrates why Jews of the late Second Temple period may be regarded as an ethnic group in modern terms by using the six characteristics that co-ethnics share as outlined by Hutchinson and Smith.
[121] According to Israel Levine, early Hellenistic Greek observers described the Jews as eastern philosophers living in a utopian ethno-national context, apart from the political unrest of the time.
During the late Second Temple period and up until the Bar Kokhba revolt, Judea proper, Galilee, Peraea, Sharon, and western Samaria constituted a band of nearly continuous Jewish settlement.
[86] During the late Second Temple period, the regions of Judea and Benjamin had a dense Jewish population that resided in various types of rural settlements, including towns, villages, agricultural homesteads and fortified estates.
[62] The Jewish population in Galilee continued to prosper after the Second Temple period and especially as a result of the Bar Kokhba revolt, when it replaced the depopulated Judea as the spiritual, demographic and cultural center of Jews in the Land of Israel.
Based on the database of the Jordanian Antiquities Department, Sagiv's research of Jewish Transjordan revealed 160 settlement sites in Peraea with Late Hellenistic and/or Early Roman potsherds.
[135][134] According to Seth Schwartz, the most responsible estimates put the pre-modern sustainable population of Palestine at about one million, a figure that was attained in the middle of the first century, with about half of them being Jews.
Workshops for kitchen pottery, standardized oil jars, and household or community ritual baths (mikvaot) show that Jews began to incorporate explicitly religious practices and attitudes into their homes and everyday lives as early as the first century BCE.
This tomb, described in 1 Maccabees and by Josephus, featured seven pyramids for his family members, surrounded by great columns adorned with suits of armor and carved ships, intended to be visible to all who sailed the sea.
Scholars believe these tombs were built by individuals seeking to elevate themselves and their families in the eyes of Jews in both the Land of Israel and the Diaspora by employing temple-like architectural designs.
[143] According to Jewish Law (Mishnah, Bava Batra tractate), due to the sanctity of Jerusalem and the impurity of the dead, burial was only allowed beyond the city's walls and fifty cubits away.
Magen also posits a connection between the construction of these tombs and the influx of Jewish artisans who fled Jerusalem during or shortly before its siege in 70 CE, when job opportunities in the city diminished, leaving many quarrymen unemployed.
