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The Hasideans (, ''Hasidim ha-Rishonim'', Greek ''Ἁσιδαῖοι'' or Asidaioi, also transcribed as Hasidaeans and Assideans) were a
Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
group during the
Maccabean Revolt The Maccabean Revolt () was a Jewish rebellion led by the Maccabees against the Seleucid Empire and against Hellenistic influence on Jewish life. The main phase of the revolt lasted from 167 to 160 BCE and ended with the Seleucids in control of ...
that took place from around 167–142 BCE. The Hasideans are mentioned three times in the
books of the Maccabees The Books of the Maccabees or the Sefer HaMakabim (the ''Book of the Maccabees'') recount the history of the Maccabees, the leaders of the Jewish rebellion against the Seleucid dynasty. List of books The Books of the Maccabees refers to canonical ...
, the main contemporary sources from the period. According to the book
1 Maccabees 1 Maccabees, also known as the First Book of Maccabees, First Maccabees, and abbreviated as 1 Macc., is a deuterocanonical book which details the history of the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire as well as the founding and earliest hi ...
, during the early phases of the anti-Jewish decrees and persecution proclaimed by King
Antiochus IV Epiphanes Antiochus IV Epiphanes ( 215 BC–November/December 164 BC) was king of the Seleucid Empire from 175 BC until his death in 164 BC. Notable events during Antiochus' reign include his near-conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt, his persecution of the Jews of ...
, some Hasideans joined up with
Mattathias Mattathias ben Johanan (, ''Mattīṯyāhū haKōhēn ben Yōḥānān''; died 166–165 BCE) was a Kohen (Jewish priest) who helped spark the Maccabean Revolt against the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire. Mattathias's story is related in the deuter ...
the Hasmonean as he martialed forces and allies for his rebellion (~167–166 BCE). Later on, during the term of High Priest
Alcimus Alcimus (from ''Alkimos'', "valiant" or Hebrew אליקום ''Elyaqum'', "God will rise"), also called Jakeimos, Jacimus, or Joachim (), was High Priest of Israel for three years from 162–159 BCE. He was a moderate Hellenizer who favored the ru ...
, some Hasideans apparently trusted Alcimus's promises at first and attempted to negotiate a settlement with the government, but were betrayed and executed (~161 BCE). In the book
2 Maccabees 2 Maccabees, also known as the Second Book of Maccabees, Second Maccabees, and abbreviated as 2 Macc., is a deuterocanonical book which recounts the persecution of Jews under King Antiochus IV Epiphanes and the Maccabean Revolt against him. It ...
,
Judas Maccabeus Judas Maccabaeus or Maccabeus ( ), also known as Judah Maccabee (), was a Jewish priest (''kohen'') and a son of the priest Mattathias. He led the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire (167–160 BCE). The Jewish holiday of Hanukkah ("Ded ...
is described as the leader of the Hasideans and of them all as troublemakers disrupting the peace, but by Alcimus, a source the book considers untrustworthy and corrupt. The Hasideans have been the object of much scholarly speculation: were they a specific group with a coherent ideology, or merely a generic term for "the faithful"? If they were a group, what was their religious and political stance? What happened to them after the Maccabean Revolt concluded? Were they predecessors of the
Pharisees The Pharisees (; ) were a Jews, Jewish social movement and school of thought in the Levant during the time of Second Temple Judaism. Following the Siege of Jerusalem (AD 70), destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, Pharisaic beliefs became ...
, the
Essenes The Essenes (; Hebrew: , ''ʾĪssīyīm''; Greek: Ἐσσηνοί, Ἐσσαῖοι, or Ὀσσαῖοι, ''Essenoi, Essaioi, Ossaioi'') or Essenians were a mystic Jewish sect during the Second Temple period that flourished from the 2nd cent ...
, both, or neither? Scholars have come to different conclusions: from seeing them as religious "moderates" whose main goal was the preservation of traditionalist Judaism against Hellenism (but not necessarily for establishing a separate independent political state) to seeing them as simply as a very religious group who were betrayed.


The term ''hasid''

The Hebrew word ''hasid'' means "pious". It was thus a natural term of self-identification for various individuals and groups. The name "Hasidim" occurs at several points in the
Book of Psalms The Book of Psalms ( , ; ; ; ; , in Islam also called Zabur, ), also known as the Psalter, is the first book of the third section of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) called ('Writings'), and a book of the Old Testament. The book is an anthology of ...
in the sense of "the pious". Psalm 79 describes many ''hasidim'' being slaughtered near Jerusalem by Israel's enemies, while Psalm 149 depicts ''hasidim'' as warriors who "execute vengeance on the nations and punishment on the peoples". The date of composition of these psalms is uncertain; some scholars date them to the Maccabean period and consider the verses in question to refer to the ''hasidim'' at this time, while others disagree and assign an earlier date to these psalms.Henriques, James Connell. "The Identity of the Hasideans of 1 and 2 Maccabees: A Re-examination of the Topic with a Focus on the History of Scholarship." PhD diss., University of Georgia, 2009. Later
rabbinic Judaism Rabbinic Judaism (), also called Rabbinism, Rabbinicism, Rabbanite Judaism, or Talmudic Judaism, is rooted in the many forms of Judaism that coexisted and together formed Second Temple Judaism in the land of Israel, giving birth to classical rabb ...
in
Talmudic The Talmud (; ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the centerpiece of Jewi ...
sources use the term ''hasid'' as well, although generally to individual pious people rather than a particular group or sect. These sources generally long post-date the Maccabean period, though. While the term comes from Hebrew, the books of the Maccabees only survived in Greek form, hence "Asidaioi" and variants. It appears to have been used as a
loanword A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...
; the author of 2 Maccabees says the group was "called" ''Asidaioi'', which is generally the terminology for introducing a non-Greek word to merely pronounce.


Primary sources

1 Maccabees 1 Maccabees, also known as the First Book of Maccabees, First Maccabees, and abbreviated as 1 Macc., is a deuterocanonical book which details the history of the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire as well as the founding and earliest hi ...
relates that at the start of the conflict around 167–166 BCE, some of those "who had rejected the king's command" forbidding traditional Jewish practices such as
circumcision Circumcision is a procedure that removes the foreskin from the human penis. In the most common form of the operation, the foreskin is extended with forceps, then a circumcision device may be placed, after which the foreskin is excised. T ...
and
Jewish dietary laws (also or , ) is a set of dietary laws dealing with the foods that Jewish people are permitted to eat and how those foods must be prepared according to Jewish law. Food that may be consumed is deemed kosher ( in English, ), from the Ashkena ...
had escaped into the wilderness. The empire's soldiers had attacked them on the
Sabbath In Abrahamic religions, the Sabbath () or Shabbat (from Hebrew ) is a day set aside for rest and worship. According to the Book of Exodus, the Sabbath is a day of rest on the seventh day, Ten Commandments, commanded by God to be kept as a Holid ...
, they declined to defend themselves, and were killed.
Mattathias Mattathias ben Johanan (, ''Mattīṯyāhū haKōhēn ben Yōḥānān''; died 166–165 BCE) was a Kohen (Jewish priest) who helped spark the Maccabean Revolt against the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire. Mattathias's story is related in the deuter ...
the Hasmonean uses the incident to rally support for his brand of resistance which allowed for warfare on the Sabbath. The author of 1 Maccabees, a source very much favorable to the Hasmonean family, then says this caused a group of Hasideans to join under Mattathias's revolt and provide needing backing. A second passage in chapter 7 happens after the appointment of
Alcimus Alcimus (from ''Alkimos'', "valiant" or Hebrew אליקום ''Elyaqum'', "God will rise"), also called Jakeimos, Jacimus, or Joachim (), was High Priest of Israel for three years from 162–159 BCE. He was a moderate Hellenizer who favored the ru ...
as the new High Priest of Israel by the new Seleucid King
Demetrius I Soter Demetrius I Soter (, ''Dēmḗtrios ho Sōtḗr,'' "Demetrius the Saviour"; 185 – June 150 BC) reigned as king of the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire from November 162 to June 150 BC. Demetrius grew up in Rome as a hostage, but returned to Greek S ...
. This was in a later phase of the struggle, around 161 BCE, when the Seleucids had repealed the most onerous of the anti-Jewish decrees and were working to restore calm to the restive province. Alcimus appears to have moderated the worst of his predecessor's actions and reached out to restore loyalty to the government. However, the Maccabee rebels continued to press for full autonomy, and despised Alcimus as a collaborator and traitor. The author of 1 Maccabees portrays Alcimus as grudgingly effective at luring some to his side ("all who were troubling their people joined him lcimus), but considered his arguments to trust the Seleucid government deception and lies, and uses the incident above to prove their point. The author makes clear his stance that these Hasideans were being fooled; working with the government will only get you betrayed and killed, and the only justifiable stand is to work with the Hasmonean family for full autonomy and independence. This passage also implicitly associates the Hasideans with the scribes ( Soferim), saying that both were negotiating terms with Alcimus. The book
2 Maccabees 2 Maccabees, also known as the Second Book of Maccabees, Second Maccabees, and abbreviated as 2 Macc., is a deuterocanonical book which recounts the persecution of Jews under King Antiochus IV Epiphanes and the Maccabean Revolt against him. It ...
appears to use the term differently than how 1 Maccabees does. In it, Alcimus, in explaining the situation in Judea to King Demetrius, calls Judas Maccabeus the leader of the ''Asidaioi''. This contrasts with 1 Maccabees 7, where they are clearly not followers of Judas, but rather are naively welcoming to Alcimus. While it is possible that these books are describing a split among the Hasideans with some following Judas and others not, the favored explanation by scholars is that in 2 Maccabees, the term simply means "the faithful" in the sense of traditionalist Jews in general, and not a specific group. The reference also should be taken carefully, as the author has made it part of Alcimus's argument, but Alcimus is also a liar according to the book. At the least, the author certainly intends the reader to think that Alcimus is lying about Judas being the source of the troubles in Judea, so him being a wicked informer and smearing the "real" Hasideans by claiming the troublemaker Judas is their leader is also a possibility.


Nature and character

Loosely speaking, there are three main branches to take with these references to the Hasideans as to who they were.


Unorganized faithful

The simplest option is to deny that the Hasideans were a coherent group at all. In this case, 1 Maccabees was merely expressing that some of the "faithful" of Israel joined with Mattathias, and other "faithful" were content to negotiate with Alcimus (if unwisely according to the author of 1 Maccabees). They would not be greatly distinguished from any other traditionalist Jews. Daniel R. Schwartz notes that 1 Maccabees 2:42 has significant textual variants between the oldest manuscripts. The
Codex Alexandrinus The Codex Alexandrinus (London, British Library, Royal MS 1. D. V-VIII) is a manuscript of the Greek Bible,The Greek Bible in this context refers to the Bible used by Greek-speaking Christians who lived in Egypt and elsewhere during the early ...
, the
Vulgate The Vulgate () is a late-4th-century Bible translations into Latin, Latin translation of the Bible. It is largely the work of Saint Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Gospels used by the Diocese of ...
Latin translation, and Syriac translations read "Hasideans" (, ); however, the
Codex Sinaiticus The Codex Sinaiticus (; Shelfmark: London, British Library, Add MS 43725), also called the Sinai Bible, is a fourth-century Christian manuscript of a Greek Bible, containing the majority of the Greek Old Testament, including the deuterocanonica ...
, the Venetus, and Old Latin translations only read "Judeans" (, ) instead. Schwartz prefers the "Judeans" reading which would eliminate mention of the Hasideans there entirely, and suggests that a translator from Hebrew to Greek may have simply erred when choosing to transliterate the Hebrew ''hasidim'' as if it were a proper name, or some other scribal meddling.


A group of zealous warriors

Another option is to consider them a group who indeed took the proper name ''hasidim'' or a variant thereof, but a group largely in sync with Judas Maccabeus and the Hasmoneans, if possibly extra-pious. In this version, the Hasideans were a distinct group that allied with Judas early and remained so during the revolt. The incident described in 1 Maccabees 7 was not a major split or philosophical difference, but a tactical one. The Maccabees had been crushingly defeated at the Battle of Beth Zechariah in 162 BCE, had declined to interfere with Bacchides' campaign in 161 BCE, and were likely still rebuilding. The Hasideans had been true allies of Judas, but some of them had hoped to negotiate for concessions and relief thinking Alcimus a moderate, and the government used the opportunity to execute those who showed up. Still, in this scenario, the government was correct in perceiving the Hasideans as opponents. Judas declined to negotiate personally, deciding it was not good to negotiate from a position of weakness, and he would need to win again on the battlefield before a longer-term peace could be secured. In this view, the incident proved him correct: negotiations undertaken before the rebels held more ground would only result in their defeat.


Jewish moderates

The third option is to see the Hasideans as a group but with a distinctly different ideology than the Hasmoneans; the passage in 1 Maccabees 7 was recording a genuine difference in goals. In this view, the Hasideans were deeply religious but comparative "moderates" as their chief concern was the repeal of Antiochus IV's decrees forbidding Jewish practices. They had joined with Judas earlier due to the anti-Jewish persecution and their anger at the corruption of High Priest
Menelaus In Greek mythology, Menelaus (; ) was a Greek king of Mycenaean (pre- Dorian) Sparta. According to the ''Iliad'', the Trojan war began as a result of Menelaus's wife, Helen, fleeing to Troy with the Trojan prince Paris. Menelaus was a central ...
. After these decrees were repealed in 163–162 BCE, however, fighting a full-scale rebellion against the Seleucid government was no longer seen as needed. The hated High Priest Menelaus was executed around 162 BCE. This explains how Alcimus was able to lure some Hasideans to his side: by offering a return to the status quo ante and peace, when Judaism was accepted but the authority of the Seleucid government was unchallenged. While the above two views largely take 1 Maccabees at its word (if differing on what those words imply), this view can take into account more skeptical stances that distrust 1 Maccabees as a partisan, pro-Hasmonean source. To continue the revolt, the Hasmoneans had to convince the moderates that the Seleucids were evil and to be hated; they were a looming threat that could not be ignored. A story such as the one seen in Chapter 7, where the perfidious Alcimus executes even supposed moderates and breaks his oaths, would fit perfectly into the Hasmonean ideology that the only sure path for Judea was to unite under the Hasmonean banner. As such, the details cannot be trusted to be historical in this view, with the Hasmoneans potentially exaggerating or misrepresenting a real incident to become a symbol of Seleucid untrustworthiness.


Problems of historiography

An alternative approach is to be modest on what can be known. Some historians believe that there is simply nothing to say about the Hasideans until more information than the three passages we have is discovered. John J. Collins was disdainful of the hypothesizing done by other scholars; he wrote in 1977 that the Hasideans "had grown in recent scholarship from an extremely poorly attested entity to the great Jewish alternative to the Maccabees at the time of the revolt. There has been no corresponding growth in the evidence." For the Collins quote, Grabbe is citing ''The Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel'' by Collins.


Later influence

The origin and tenets of the Hasideans remain obscure. So too is their later influence, if any. The historian
Josephus Flavius Josephus (; , ; ), born Yosef ben Mattityahu (), was a Roman–Jewish historian and military leader. Best known for writing '' The Jewish War'', he was born in Jerusalem—then part of the Roman province of Judea—to a father of pr ...
describes three groups active in Hasmonean politics by 100 BCE: the mainstream and Hasmonean-skeptical
Pharisees The Pharisees (; ) were a Jews, Jewish social movement and school of thought in the Levant during the time of Second Temple Judaism. Following the Siege of Jerusalem (AD 70), destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, Pharisaic beliefs became ...
, the Hasmonean-supporting and influential among the upper classes
Sadducees The Sadducees (; ) were a sect of Jews active in Judea during the Second Temple period, from the second century BCE to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. The Sadducees are described in contemporary literary sources in contrast to ...
, and the outright anti-Hasmonean
Essenes The Essenes (; Hebrew: , ''ʾĪssīyīm''; Greek: Ἐσσηνοί, Ἐσσαῖοι, or Ὀσσαῖοι, ''Essenoi, Essaioi, Ossaioi'') or Essenians were a mystic Jewish sect during the Second Temple period that flourished from the 2nd cent ...
.
Heinrich Grätz Heinrich Graetz (; 31 October 1817 – 7 September 1891) was a German exegete and one of the first historians to write a comprehensive history of the Jewish people from a Jewish perspective. Born Tzvi Hirsch Graetz to a butcher family in Xions (no ...
supposes that after the Maccabean victories, the Hasideans retired into obscurity, being dissatisfied with Judas Maccabeus, and eventually became the order of the Essenes. The theory is supported by linguistic similarity between the Greek term for the Essenes, ''Essēnoi'' or ''Essaioi'' (Ἐσσηνοά, Ἐσσαῖοι), and the East Aramaic / Syriac Ḥăsayin / Ḥăsayyâ, the Aramaic equivalent of the Hebrew "Ḥasidim", although this claimed similarity is contested by other scholars. Others, such as
Emil Schürer Emil Schürer (2 May 184420 April 1910) was a German Protestant theologian known mainly for his study of the history of the Jews around the time of Jesus' ministry. Biography Schürer was born in Augsburg. After studying at the universities of ...
and John Kampen, think that the
Pharisees The Pharisees (; ) were a Jews, Jewish social movement and school of thought in the Levant during the time of Second Temple Judaism. Following the Siege of Jerusalem (AD 70), destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, Pharisaic beliefs became ...
developed from the Ḥasidieans.


Hasideans and the Book of Daniel

The
Book of Daniel The Book of Daniel is a 2nd-century BC biblical apocalypse with a 6th-century BC setting. It is ostensibly a narrative detailing the experiences and Prophecy, prophetic visions of Daniel, a Jewish Babylonian captivity, exile in Babylon ...
is generally agreed to have been written at some point during the persecutions of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, around 167–165 BCE. Compared to the more secular stance of 1 Maccabees that advocated direct military action under the leadership of the Hasmonean family, Daniel appears to have a more spiritual and apocalyptic approach to the crisis, suggesting that God would directly intervene to punish the Seleucids. It appears to suggest more of a passive resistance and praises martyrdom; thus, the most important thing for the faithful was to remain 'pure' in their Judaism to maintain God's favor. For example, the book features stories of Daniel and his friends refusing a mandate to eat King Nebuchadnezzar's rich food and eating a diet of vegetables instead, and emerging all the healthier from it: presumably an encouragement to keep Jewish dietary law in the Maccabean era despite pressure from the government. One common point of speculation is that the author of Daniel was a member of the Hasideans, or at least a good example of how the Hasideans thought. Scholars favoring this include Martin Hengel, Victor Tcherikover, and James A. Montgomery. Others are skeptical of the claimed connection; if the passage in 1 Maccabees 2 about the Hasideans being "mighty warriors" is accurate, that would not appear to align with Daniel's ideology.


References


External links

* Maccabean Revolt