Lecture 11 02/10/11

Here we learned about Hellenistic Jerusalem and the influence that the Greeks had. basically, after Alexander the Great died, his empire was split into four, each of which had a large chunk of his power. So they took over Jerusalem and brought with them the practice of Hellenism, which was a Greek system of worship and overall way of life. Being the devout Jews that they were, many in Jerusalem didn't like these customs, but it was fine until the Seleucids came along and started to enforce it too strictly. They were plain mean and forced jews to give up their own religious customs. This lead to the Jews being upset and the Maccabean Revolt! Judas maccabeaus led the revolt and used Guerrilla warfare to eventually take down the Seleucids and regain power over Jerusalem for the Jews.
This leads us into the period of Hasmonean Jerusalem, which was a very corrupt period for Jerusalem. Although Jewish kings were in power, many of them had been far too heavily influenced by the Hellenization. Therefore, their religious loyalties had been somewhat compromised and their culture had turned from following God alone to following God and acting like the Greeks. This created tons of problems in Jerusalem, and some of the priests became more dictator-like than religious leader-like.