Prologue
Excerpt By F F Bruce
When the Persian king Cyrus brought the Babylonian Empire to an end in 539 B.C., he authorized a body of Jewish displaced persons to return to their home in Judæa, from which they had been deported by Nebuchadnezzar two generations previously, and to rebuild their national shrine in Jerusalem. After some years the temple was rebuilt, and its services were carried out anew by the members of the old priestly families, at whose head stood Jeshua, a scion of the house of Zadok, which had occupied the chief priesthood in the former temple since its dedication by King Solomon about 960 B.C. down to its destruction by the Babylonians in 587. But, while the ancient chief-priestly family was restored to its sacred office, the royal house of David, which also returned from exile, was not restored to the kingship.
The new Jewish community was organized as a temple-state, consisting of Jerusalem and a few miles around. At the head of the state was the high priest, who controlled internal Jewish affairs; the wider interests of the Persian Empire were the responsibility of the civil governor of Judea,who was appointed by the crown. When, after two hundred years, the Persian Empire was in its turn brought to an end by Alexander the Great, no material change took place in the Jewish constitution. They had a Macedonian governor over them instead of one appointed by the Persian king; they had to pay taxes to a Macedonian court instead of to the Persian court; they were exposed to the powerful influence of Hellenistic culture. But the high priests of the house of Zadok remained as before at the head of the Jewish temple-state. So matters continued under the domination of the Ptolemy’s, who inherited Alexander’s empire in Egypt and retained Palestine under their control until 198 B.C. When in that year they lost Palestine to the rival dynasty of the Seleucids, who had succeeded to Alexander’s heritage in the greater part of Asia, the transition was smooth so far as Judaea was concerned. To be sure, the increasing tendency to follow western ways caused grave concern to the more conservatively minded Jews, but they had no complaint against the Gentile government, which guaranteed the temple constitution and granted the utmost liberty in the practice of the Jewish religion.
For a variety of reasons a change came about with the accession of Antiochus IV (Epiphanes)t o the Seleucid throne in 175 B.C. Early in his reign he interfered with the Zadokite succession to the high priesthood; later he tried to prohibit the Jewish religion altogether. This led to a national and religious rising, as a result of which Judaea ultimately secured complete political independence. The leaders of this rising, the priestly family of the Hasmoneans, became the ruling dynasty in the independent state, and assumed the high priesthood in addition to the chief civil and military power. From 142 to 63 B.C. the Jews preserved their hardly won independence under the Hasmoneans, but in the latter year they lost it to the Romans, who reorganized all the territory west of the Euphrates as part of their empire. But the Romans left a Hasmonean high priest in charge of the internal affairs of Judæa for over twenty years. In 40 B.C., however, the political situation in western Asia caused them to nominate one Herod as king of the Jews, and Herod ruled Palestine from 37 to 4 B.C. in the interests of Rome.
His son Archelaus, who succeeded him in Judæa, was deposed by the Roman Emperor in A.D. 6, and for the next sixty years Judæa was governed by procurators appointed by the Emperor, except for three years (A.D.41-44) when a grandson of Herod, Agrippa 1, reigned over Judæa as king. From the beginning of Herod’s reign the high priests, who were henceforth appointed by Herod and his descendants, or else by Roman governors, counted for less and less, although by virtue of their office they continued to preside over the Sanhedrin, the supreme court of the Jewish nation.
Misrule by Roman procurators, combined with an increasing intolerance of Gentile control on the part of Jewish nationalists, led to the Jewish revolt of A.D. 66 and the destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem by the Roman forces in A.D. 70. With the fall of the temple, the last vestiges of the temple constitution, together with the high-priestly office, came to an end. Judæa was placed under firmer military control than before. But in A.D. 132 a new revolt broke out, and the independence of Judæa was pro-claimed under a messianic claimant who is commonly known as Bar-Kokhba. After three years of guerrilla fighting this rising was crushed. Jerusalem was rebuilt by the Romans as a completely Gentile city, and a new chapter opened in the history of the Holy Land.
This sketch of Israel’s political fortunes under the Persians, Greeks and Romans may provide a framework within which we may get our bearings more easily when we consider the situation which produced the Dead Sea Scrolls.
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