For some time now, it has been well-accepted that when studying biblical texts and the history of Jews and Christians in antiquity one should have a solid understanding of the context, or what often used to be referred to as the background, to these texts and history. One needed, therefore, a basic familiarity with the languages, history, literatures, and cultures of the contemporary societies, be they Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, or Roman. David A. deSilva has taken this to heart, and produced an excellent primer on the history of Judea as part of the “larger story of the activities and interests of the Seleucid, Ptolemaic, Roman and Parthian empires” (1). The result is a well informed and clearly written synthetic narrative that can well serve the needs of an interested reader along with students in undergraduate and basic graduate courses in ancient Jewish history or New Testament. It could also function very well as a text in courses on Classical history that take seriously the presence and importance of minority groups, such as Jews, living in those societies. The book appears within the Essentials of Biblical Studies series published by Oxford University Press. Other works in this series examine the biblical texts themselves (both Hebrew Bible and New Testament) or major themes presented in them.
The book traces the events that took place in Judea during the Greek and early Roman periods, and offers a “plausible reconstruction of the events, conditions, interests, and agendas that played themselves out on the stage of Judea and its surrounding territories” (2). By Judea, deSilva means not only the specific province known from ancient sources as Judea, but the region more broadly, including Idumea, Samaritis, and the Galilee. He acknowledges the problems with the term, but finds alternatives to be equally if not more problematic. By this time, the term “Israel” no longer served as a geographic designation, and “Palestine” only came into general use in the period after the conclusion of the book (although almost immediately after rejecting the term, he refers to Alexander’s conquests along the “Palestinian coastlands”) (5). So, Judea it is.
The narrative is a well-crafted synthesis of the major literary sources, especially Josephus, along with the relevant material culture (e.g., coins, papyri, architecture), all informed by some of the best scholarship in this field. It proceeds chronologically, beginning with the conquests of Alexander and the Great in the latter part of the fourth century BCE, and concluding with the Bar Kokhba revolt and its immediate aftermath in the second century CE. Each of the six chapters begins with a set of observations that summarizes the major developments of that particular period, and then a brief review of the major primary sources (both textual and material) that inform an understanding of that period. The rehearsal and analysis of major events, their causes, and effects, shows good familiarity with both the primary sources and an excellent corpus of scholarship, some of it going back to the giants of previous generations, such as Victor Tcherikover and Gedaliah Alon, whose major works were published in the 1950s (for Alon he cites a reprint of his classic work published 1994, though the original Hebrew text was published in 1955 and appeared in its first English edition in 1980), and a cadre of more recent scholars including Adele Berlin, Shaye Cohen, Martin Goodman, Lester Grabbe, Erich Gruen, Jodi Magness, Peter Schäfer, and Steve Mason. There are a few noticeable absences from both the discussion and the bibliography, including Katell Berthelot, (Hasmonean political ideology; challenges presented by Hellenistic and Roman power), Mireille Hadas-Lebel (Hasmonean/Roman relations; Jewish responses to Roman power), and Miriam Pucci Ben Zeev (Hasmonean/Roman relations), all of which cover events and texts beyond Judea, but whose analysis is certainly relevant to what transpired there.
Every author has to make decisions on what material to include and what to exclude. DeSilva has chosen to focus primarily on the political and military history of Judea and the impact of the powerful imperial systems on local rule in Judea and the economic and political development in the territory. In that regard, deSilva follows the twists and turns that characterized the administration of Judea by Hellenistic rulers, the emergence of a brief Jewish state ruled over by the Hasmoneans, the imposition of various types of Roman rule, including the Herodian client state, provincial administration directed by a series of less than competent Roman officials, and finally the establishment of a Roman colony in Jerusalem. He notes the ways in which Jewish leaders cooperated and sometimes leveraged for their own benefit their relations with foreign powers, and also the factors that led Jews to develop various strategies of opposition to foreign domination, ranging from rhetorical condemnation to the three major outbreaks of armed revolt.
One area left largely untouched in the book is the influence of dominant culture on Judea and its inhabitants. On this topic the book is somewhat hit and miss. It seriously addresses the cultural effects of Hellenism and Hellenization but there is very little about the influence of Roman cultural forms on architecture and public institutions, for example. Nor does deSilva dwell extensively on the ways in which Greek and Roman thought contributed to the development of Jewish religious beliefs and practices, such as apocalyptic thinking or views of life after death. While many of these topics receive brief mention, the heart of the book remains fixed on political and military history. Finally, there is little attention paid to the attitudes toward Jews found in contemporary Greek and Roman writers. Granted, much of this literature was written outside Judea and is not specific to Jews living there; however, these attitudes often informed the political positions of Greek and Roman leaders, and therefore perhaps warrant more attention than the book affords.
While the book’s focus remains throughout on political history, there are a few detours into related areas. He offers lengthy excursus on partisan and sectarian groups, more precisely the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes (70–78), and shorter treatments on synagogues, with a nice discussion of the Theodotos inscription (117–121), and Jesus (128–131). Given that the book is part of a series on biblical studies and that the intended audience is in part students of the New Testament, it makes sense to include an excursus on Jesus. The choice, however, bestows greater importance on Jesus than he probably enjoyed amongst his contemporaries. As deSilva notes, Jesus was one of many prophetic and apocalyptic figures active in Judea in the first century CE. For Josephus (as best as his original text can be reconstructed), Jesus merits only brief mention, while some of his contemporaries, Theudas or the unnamed Egyptian, receive more extended treatment. By this metric, Jesus was comparatively marginal in his day.
DeSilva provides the reader with a clear and accurate narrative of the region and its history. As would invariably be true of any work that attempts to condense large and complicated information into a manageable portion, there are several claims that seem questionable or could benefit from further explanation. We read, for instance, that Alexander the Great founded many Greek cities including Ptolemais (7).; that honor goes not to Alexander, but to his successor Ptolemy I (or possibly later). When discussing the Pharisaic practices of purity, he notes “the prescription of purification in the Pentateuch typically called for a ritual bath and the passage of time”; the Pharisees, in contrast, dispensed with the latter requirement and focused exclusively on immersion (72). DeSilva’s description, however, elides a significant contrast between the biblical texts and Pharisaic practices, and creates an impression that the Pharisees were partially preserving a long-standing, biblical tradition. While the biblical texts often refer to washing in water, there is no mention of the use of a “ritual bath.” In fact, as deSilva notes elsewhere in the book, miqvaot (ritual baths) emerge only in the late Hasmonean period. DeSilva further indicates that it is a “common claim that women were seated in a separate section of the synagogue” (120). Common amongst whom? That claim might have been common a few decades ago, but I think one would be hard pressed to find it accepted by scholars today. Finally, we read that Jesus attracted “a large following” (130). Did he? As noted above, it appears that other revolutionary and eschatological teachers attracted many more followers. I guess it depends on your definition of large.
Ideally, a book of this sort would be the foundation and not the culmination of a person’s study of this subject. In order to achieve that goal, an author should guide readers on how to gain further information and understanding of the persons and events who appear in its pages. On the one hand, deSilva achieves this goal admirably by providing ample citations of primary texts, particularly Josephus and other ancient authors, and a robust bibliography of important scholarly literature. On the other hand, the book, while incorporating information gleaned from material artifacts in the narrative, does not assist the reader in locating or examining in greater detail those same sources. There is no mention, for instance, of the standard collections of inscriptions (Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palestinae), papyri (particularly the publications of the Bar Kokhba and Babatha archives), or coins (such as Ya’akov Meshorer, A Treasury of Jewish Coins). All of these publications were written primarily for a scholarly audience but are accessible to the general reader and student, and could profitably be used by them to study the history of Judea from the sources themselves.
All in all, deSilva has produced a most welcome volume that would serve its intended audiences of general readers and students of biblical and ancient history very well.