The shock of empire

In 332 BCE, Alexander the Great swept through the Near East, bringing the Hellenistic world into direct contact with ancient Israel. When his successors, the Ptolemies in Egypt and the Seleucids in Syria, divided his empire, Judea found itself a small province caught between Greek-speaking powers. Yet the encounter with Hellenism proved transformative.

Greek cities, with their gymnasia, theaters, and philosophical schools, embodied a new vision of the world: cosmopolitan, rational, and human-centered. For a people whose faith was rooted in covenant with a single God, the Hellenistic challenge was profound. It questioned what it meant to be chosen in a world that proclaimed universal reason.

The Wisdom tradition

Long before Alexander, Israel had developed a Wisdom literature. collections of proverbs and reflections that sought moral order in human experience rather than in history. Books such as Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes belong to this tradition.1 In the Hellenistic age, wisdom theology absorbed the vocabulary of Greek thought: sophia (wisdom) became a bridge between divine and human understanding.

Texts like Sirach (early 2nd century BCE) and the later Wisdom of Solomon (1st century BCE) explicitly portray Wisdom as a cosmic principle, emanating from God and pervading creation.2 This development paralleled Stoic and Platonic notions of the logos, the rational order of the universe, and shows a striking convergence between Greek metaphysics and Jewish monotheism.

In this synthesis, Yahweh was no longer just Israel’s protector but the architect of all reality, whose wisdom “reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other” (Wisdom of Solomon 8:1). Theology had become cosmology.

Translation and universality

The Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures produced in Alexandria in the 3rd–2nd centuries BCE, epitomizes this cultural crossing. Translation itself was a theological act: it declared that the word of God could speak in a universal language.3 The Jewish diaspora in Egypt, Asia Minor, and Greece could now engage with Greek philosophy while retaining ancestral faith.

The Septuagint also subtly reshaped interpretation. Greek terms such as Kyrios (“Lord”) and Theos (“God”) universalized Yahweh’s identity. What had been the name of a particular deity became the God of all nations. This linguistic shift would later prove crucial for the emergence of Christianity.

Apocalyptic imagination

Alongside philosophical synthesis grew a countercurrent: apocalypticism. The trauma of foreign domination and cultural tension inspired visions of divine intervention and ultimate justice. Texts like Daniel (c. 165 BCE) and the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch) reframed history as cosmic drama: earthly empires rose and fell under heaven’s decree.4

In this worldview, monotheism became eschatological. The one God would soon assert rule over all nations, vindicating the righteous and overthrowing oppressors. Such expectation fused ethical monotheism with a new sense of historical purpose.

The contest of identities

Hellenistic influence provoked deep divisions within Judaism. Some embraced Greek culture, adopting language, dress, and philosophy, while others resisted it as betrayal. The Maccabean revolt (167–160 BCE) arose from that tension.5 Antiochus IV’s attempt to suppress Jewish law and install pagan worship in the Temple sparked armed rebellion, led by the priestly family of the Hasmoneans.

The revolt’s success produced a brief period of independence, but its spiritual legacy was more significant: fidelity to the law became martyrdom’s cause. The books of Maccabees present the martyrs as witnesses to monotheism against tyranny. Their courage transformed Torah observance from national custom into universal moral testimony.

Excursus: The Hasmonean Conversions

The zeal for Torah that had inspired the Maccabean revolt did not end with religious freedom. Under their descendants, the Hasmonean rulers (140–37 BCE), that same zeal became a tool of statecraft and expansion. As the kingdom expanded into surrounding territories, several populations were compelled to adopt Jewish law.

Idumea (Edom).
According to Josephus (Antiquities 13.257–258), John Hyrcanus I conquered Idumea around 125 BCE and “permitted the Idumeans to remain if they would be circumcised and live according to Jewish laws; otherwise they must leave their country.” Most accepted, and within a century the Idumeans were fully integrated, Herod the Great himself was of Idumean descent. This represents the first large-scale, politically enforced Judaization in history.

Iturea and Galilee.
Hyrcanus’s son Aristobulus I extended the same policy northward. Josephus reports (Ant. 13.318–319) that he “added to them a portion of Iturea and compelled the inhabitants, if they would continue in that country, to be circumcised and live according to the Jewish laws.” The result was a largely Jewish Galilee by the first century CE, an important backdrop for the later Gospel narratives.

Meaning and motive.
These “conversions” were not missionary in spirit. They served political consolidation: observance of Torah marked allegiance to the Hasmonean state. The revolutionaries who had fought for freedom of worship now imposed their faith as the price of citizenship. It was a striking reversal of the Maccabean ideal.

Legacy.
After Rome’s annexation the practice ceased, and later rabbinic law explicitly forbade forced proselytism, requiring voluntary acceptance of the commandments. Yet the episode left enduring consequences:

• It blurred ethnic and religious boundaries, Galilee and Idumea became culturally Jewish.

• It showed how religious identity could become political ideology, a theme that would echo through later Jewish and Christian history.

Hellenistic Judaism and philosophical faith

In Alexandria, Jewish thinkers like Philo (c. 20 BCE–50 CE) sought to harmonize Scripture with Greek philosophy. Philo identified the divine logos as both God’s creative word and the rational structure of the cosmos, the medium through which humans apprehend the divine.6 For him, Moses was the true philosopher and Torah the summit of reason. Philo’s synthesis of revelation and reason would profoundly influence later Christian theology.

The universal God

By the end of the second century BCE, Jewish monotheism had taken a universal form. Diaspora communities flourished throughout the Mediterranean, attracting Gentile “God-fearers” who admired Jewish ethics and worship. Synagogues became centers of instruction open to outsiders. The idea that one God ruled all peoples, accessible through law and wisdom, had become a world religion in embryo.

Judaism had survived empire by transforming itself again:

• From temple cult to scriptural faith under Persia;

• From national god to creator of all under Hellenism;

• From covenantal law to universal reason and moral truth.

The stage was now set for new movements, Christianity among them, that would carry Israel’s monotheism into global history.

• 1. Michael V. Fox, Proverbs 1–9: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 19–27.
• 2. David Winston, The Wisdom of Solomon: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1979), 45–52.
• 3. Timothy Michael Law, When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible (Oxford: OUP, 2013), 14–25.
• 4. John J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 83–95.
• 5. Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), 99–121.
• 6. Philo of Alexandria, On the Creation of the World, trans. C. D. Yonge (London: H. G. Bohn, 1854), §§18–25.