Paper on IV Maccabees: A Different Way

I think that my base question for my IV Maccabees paper is this: "In the second century B.C.E., under Jason the high priest, what about Jerusalem changed when it abandoned its ancestral constitution and became a Greek polis?" In my post, Paper: IV Maccabees, I expressed my problems with seeing the change as structural, since Jerusalem under Jason still had a high priest and a senate, things that Josephus defines as part of the Jewish politeia (according to the Torah).

Josephus sees the issue as a matter of replacing one set of laws with another: "but the greater number of the people assisted Jason; and by that means Menelaus and the sons of Tobias were distressed, and retired to Antiochus, and informed him that they were desirous to leave the laws of their country, and the Jewish way of living according to them, and to follow the king's laws, and the Greek way of living" (AJ 12:240, whatever translation BibleWorks uses).

Today, I read some of Elias J. Bickerman's The Jews in the Greek Age (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1988). It has a lot of interesting stuff, but Bickerman doesn't really document his claims, at least not in this book. But Bickerman points out examples in which Greek law and Jewish law differed:

1. "although the fine...was a common sanction in Greece, it is unknown in Jewish law, in which damages are collected in favor of the injured party but an offender is not mulcted. On the other hand, monies collected as penalties were assigned by Antiochus III to the priests, a practice that agrees with the biblical rule that restitution made for a trespass committed against the Lord belongs to the priest" (193).

This one makes no sense to me. First of all, how could Jewish law collect damages without mulcting the offender? Second, according to Bickerman, the fine was instituted when Antiochus III actually recognized Israel's ancestral constitution, so it was not what challenged her politeia.

2. "The Torah prohibits taking money from an Israelite but expressly allows it without limitation on money lent to Gentiles, while Ptolemaic law allowed interest but up to a maximum rate" (193).

First, I think that Jewish law can easily be accomodated to Greek law: just add a ceiling on interest rates. Second, the conflict is with Ptolemaic law, and, as far as I know, the Jews didn't accuse the Ptolemies of violating their ancestral constitution. I could be wrong on this, since Antiochus III did offer to recognize Israel's ancestral constitution as he fought the Ptolemies for control of Palestine, and that may have been an attempt to get the Jews on his side. Why would this be attractive to them, if the Ptolemies already recognized their politeia? At the same time, the righteous Onias III was pro-Ptolemy, and he upheld the Torah (II Maccabees 3:1).

3. "Scripture enjoins the Hebrews to use honest weights and measures but fixes no penalty for transgression. According to rabbinic principles of interpretation, this implies that a fraudulent seller must make restitution to a wronged buyer. In the law of the Greeks, on the other hand, possession and use of false weights and measures was a public crime harshly punished by the magistrates. Under the Seleucids, and surely under the Ptolemies, there was a Jewish market commissioner (agoranomos) in Jerusalem who fined or flogged the trader caught with false weights and measures in his possession" (193).

Both say that false weights and measures are wrong. Would the Jews think their politeia is under attack because they differ with the Greeks on the exact punishment for the crime? It appears that they played ball on this, since they had a Jewish market commissioner under the Ptolemies, before Jason changed his country's constitution.

4. Bickerman sees some difference between Jewish and Greek law on debt slavery. Jewish law allowed it, while Ptolemy II reserved to "the government alone the right to sell fiscal debtors into slavery" (194). But the Septuagint accomodates the Jewish law to the Greek standard, according to Bickerman, plus Ben Sira prefers that debt payment be "guaranteed by the property and not the person of the borrower or his surety" (194).

These are just examples. I don't think they help me much because the Jews did not believe they were violating their ancestral constitution when they conformed to certain Greek customs. I wonder what Jason did that was so special--that led the author of IV Maccabees to assert that he changed Israel's system of government.

To address this, I'll need to do three things:

1. Take a look at Antiochus III's decree that recognized the Jewish politeia, as it is recorded in Josephus and possibly other sources.

2. Look again at the context of the passages in which the politeia is said to be changed.

3. Look at how various scholars believe the politeia was changed under Jason. Hopefully, I'll be able to start this process tomorrow or the next day, if the library has the books I requested.