Hellénisme

It was in Alexandria, the city founded by Alexander in 331 before the Common Era and which became under the Ptolemies the intellectual metropolis of the Mediterranean world, that Greek-speaking Judaism found its most brilliant home. A numerous Jewish community established itself there from the third century onward, occupying two of the five quarters of the city and possessing its own institutions. Greek became there, in one or two generations, the daily, liturgical, and scholarly language of the Jews: they no longer read Hebrew, but prayed and studied in Greek.

This linguistic shift commanded everything else. There was need for an accessible Scripture, thinkers capable of translating the Law into the categories of the surrounding world, a Jewish manner of inhabiting the polis without dissolving into it. Alexandria thus became the laboratory of a Judaism that was no less Jewish for being Greek: a Judaism that claimed the antiquity of Moses against the novelty of the philosophers, and that readily asserted that Greek wisdom had drawn from the Hebrew source. This chapter sets the stage: a prosperous diaspora, cultivated, confident in itself, yet whose security would remain always fragile, suspended on the goodwill of kings and then emperors — as would be shown by the riots and pogrom of 38 of the Common Era, in which Philo himself would be a participant.

The foundational work of Hellenistic Judaism was the Greek translation of the Torah, the Septuagint, accomplished in Alexandria from the third century before the Common Era onward. The tradition, transmitted by the Letter of Aristeas, recounts that King Ptolemy II Philadelphus had seventy-two sages brought from Jerusalem to translate the Law of Moses for the great library: hence the name "Septuagint" (Septuaginta, seventy). This account, largely legendary, magnifies a real historical fact — the need, for a community that no longer understood Hebrew, to possess its Scriptures in its own language.

The stakes went beyond mere convenience. In moving to the Greek language, the Bible entered the conceptual universe of Hellenism: certain Hebrew terms took on new philosophical resonances, and the text became accessible to non-Jewish readers. The Septuagint thus made the Torah a work of the world, while equipping Jewish thinkers with an instrument to dialogue with the surrounding culture. Erich Gruen underscored how Hellenistic Jewish culture was able to make of these adaptations not an abandonment, but an active reinvention of its own tradition [Gruen, 1998]. The Septuagint would later become the Scripture of the first Greek-speaking Christians — a sign that this Jewish translation already overflowed, from its very origin, the Jewish world alone.

If Alexandria represents happy Hellenism, Judea in the 2nd century before the common era knew its violent face. Having come under Seleucid rule, Jerusalem was the theater of a decisive crisis under the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (reign 175–164 before the common era). Part of the priestly aristocracy, eager to make Jerusalem a Greek city, petitioned the king for the establishment of a gymnasium and the adoption of Hellenistic customs. Hellenization ceased to be cultural to become political and religious.

The conflict escalated to the profanation of the Temple, the prohibition of worship, circumcision and the Sabbath, and the installation of a pagan altar — measures that tradition retained as the "abomination of desolation". The reaction came from the priestly family of the Hasmoneans: the priest Mattathias, then his son Judas Maccabeus, raised the revolt. The reconquest and purification of the Temple, around 164 before the common era, are commemorated by the festival of Hanukkah. This episode founded a durable narrative — that of Jewish resistance to forced assimilation. But the history is more subtle than a simple opposition: the victorious Hasmoneans themselves adopted many Hellenistic practices, minting coins in Greek and taking Greek names. Hellenism was not merely the enemy; it was the world itself in which one had to live.

No figure better embodies the synthesis of Judaism and Hellenism than Philo of Alexandria. A notable of the great Jewish community, versed in Plato, the Stoics and the Pythagoreans, he devoted his work to demonstrating that the Torah of Moses contained, beneath the veil of its narrative, the highest wisdom. Through the method of allegorical interpretation, he read the patriarchs as figures of virtues, Egypt as the body and its passions, the Exodus as the ascension of the soul toward God.

Philo did not seek to dissolve Judaism into philosophy, but to prove that one and the other spoke the same truth — the revealed Law being first and superior. His doctrine of the Logos, divine word and intermediary, would profoundly mark Western thought and, later, Christian theology. A man of action as much as of thought, he led around the year 40 of the common era the embassy of the Jews of Alexandria before the emperor Caligula, after the pogrom of 38, to defend the rights of his community. In him converge the two faces of Jewish Hellenism: intellectual boldness and the political vulnerability of the diaspora.

In the 1st century of the common era, another Jewish scholar chose Greek to speak of Israel to the world: Flavius Josephus. A priest and military commander in Judea during the revolt against Rome (66–70), he switched to the Roman side after his capture and became the historian of his people in Rome. In the Jewish War and then the Jewish Antiquities, he recounted in Greek, for a Greco-Roman audience, the history of the Jews from Creation until the catastrophe of the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem.

His work belongs fully to Jewish Hellenism: it borrows the codes of Greek historiography, cites classical authors, and seeks to render intelligible and respectable a defeated nation. In Against Apion, Josephus defends the antiquity and dignity of Judaism against the antisemitic calumnies of his time, turning the weapons of Greek culture to the service of Israel. An ambiguous figure—traitor to some, savior of Memory to others—he was the great intermediary: without him, an entire portion of ancient Jewish history would remain unknown to us. His Greek preserved what war had destroyed.

The encounter with Hellenism was not a closed accident: it left lasting imprints on Judaism. Certain categories of Greek thought — the idea of virtue, the immortality of the soul, personified wisdom — penetrated Jewish literature and nourished works such as the Wisdom of Solomon or the Fourth Book of Maccabees. Vocabulary, literary forms, and modes of argumentation were thereby enriched, without the fidelity to the Law being abandoned.

Erich Gruen precisely renewed the reading of this period by arguing that the Jews of the Hellenistic era were less victims of a dominant culture than actors who reforged their own heritage using Greek materials, with humor, inventiveness, and self-confidence [Gruen, 1998]. After the destruction of the Temple and the affirmation of Rabbinic Judaism, the Greek world of the Jews — that of Alexandria and Philo — gradually faded from internal Jewish memory, partly because Christianity appropriated it. But Hellenism remains one of the great revelalers of what Judaism is: a tradition capable of confronting a foreign world without ceasing to be itself, and sometimes even strengthening itself through it.

Alexander the Great (356–323 before the common era) — King of Macedon, he overthrew the Persian Empire and spread Greek language and culture from Egypt to Asia. The city of Alexandria, which he founded in 331, became the center of Hellenistic Judaism. Jewish tradition itself, in Josephus and in the Talmud, surrounded his figure with benevolent legends, making him a sovereign respectful of the God of Israel, a sign of Jewish ambivalence toward the Greek world.

Ptolemy II Philadelphus (308–246 before the common era) — Lagid king of Egypt, patron of letters and founder of the great library of Alexandria. The Letter of Aristeas attributes to him the initiative of the Greek translation of the Torah, the Septuagint, entrusted to seventy-two sages from Jerusalem. Historically, his reign does indeed correspond to the beginning of this undertaking, which provided Greek-speaking Jews with their Scriptures and opened the Bible to the Mediterranean world.

Antiochus IV Epiphanes (c. 215–164 before the common era) — Seleucid king from 175 until his death, he attempted to impose religious Hellenization in Judea. The desecration of the Temple of Jerusalem, the prohibition of Jewish worship, and the installation of a pagan altar triggered the revolt of the Maccabees. He embodies in Jewish memory the persecutor par excellence, the figure of oppressive Hellenism, whose downfall was read as divine punishment.

Judas Maccabeus (died c. 160 before the common era) — Son of Mattathias and leader of the Hasmonean revolt against the Seleucids. He reconquered Jerusalem and purified the Temple around 164 before the common era, an event commemorated by the festival of Hanukkah. His epithet (« Maccabee », probably « the hammer ») gave its name to the books that recount the struggle. He symbolizes Jewish resistance to assimilation, while paradoxically inscribing himself in a world already largely Hellenized.

Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 before the common era – c. 45 of the common era) — Jewish philosopher of Alexandria, he accomplished the deepest synthesis between the Torah and Greek thought. Through allegorical exegesis and his doctrine of the Logos, he demonstrated the wisdom of Moses through Platonic categories. He led the Jewish embassy to Caligula after the pogrom of 38. His work, ignored by Rabbinic Judaism, left a lasting mark on Christian theology and Western philosophy.

Flavius Josephus (c. 37 – c. 100 of the common era) — Jewish priest and general who, after his capture by Rome, became the historian of his people in Greek. Author of the Jewish War, the Jewish Antiquities, and Against Apion, he transmitted to posterity an essential part of ancient Jewish history. A controversial figure, both turncoat and guardian of memory, he embodies the Jewish use of Greek as a weapon of defense and preservation.

Hellenism was for ancient Judaism a long trial from without — but a trial that, far from breaking it, contributed to defining it. From the Septuagint of Alexandria to the Maccabean Revolt, from the philosophy of Philo to the history of Josephus, Jews responded to Greek culture by every possible means: translation, synthesis, resistance, rewriting. Some saw in it a mortal threat, others a language to be conquered; most lived between these two poles, fashioning a Judaism at once faithful and open.

This experience posed a question that would never cease to accompany Israel in its diasporas: how to belong to a world without belonging to it entirely? In this, Hellenism is not merely a closed episode of Antiquity, but a model — that of a tradition which, confronted with the power of a foreign civilization, knew, in the felicitous phrase of Erich Gruen, to reinvent its own heritage rather than lose itself in it [Gruen, 1998].