¹ Herodotus 7.233.

² For this and other examples of the branding or tattooing of captives in antiquity, see Jones, Christopher “Stigma: Tattoing and Branding in Graeco-Roman Antiquity,” JRomS 77 (1987) 39–55;Google ScholarSteiner, Deborah, The Tyrant's Writ: Myths and Images of Writing in Ancient Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994) 154–59Google Scholar.

³ For circumcision's role in antiquity as a sign of Jewishness, see Cohen, Shaye (“‘Those Who Say They Are Jews and Are Not’: How Do You Know a Jew in Antiquity When You See One?” in Cohen, Shaye and Frerichs, Ernst, eds., Diasporas in Antiquity [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993] 1–45),Google Scholar who stresses that circumcision did not always signify Jewishness, especially in regions like the Levant where other peoples were circumcised as well.

⁴ Stern, Mehahem, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism (3 vols.; Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974–1984) 1. no. 146.Google Scholar

⁵ Josephus Ant. 13.257–58. The author of a medieval Hebrew paraphrase of Josephus, Jossipon, understood that the Idumeans were not the only people forcibly circumcised by Hyrcanus: “and he set out and went to the Land of Edom and smote Marisa in Edom and subdued the pride of Edom … and bound them in bonds of circumcision and circumcised their foreskins … and thus the king did with all the peoples that he conquered [emphasis mine].” See Flusser, David, Josippon (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1978) 116. This source is extremely late, however, and there is no earlier evidence to this effectGoogle Scholar.

⁶ Josephus Ant. 13.318. In a list of Alexander's conquests, Josephus reports that Alexander destroyed the city of Pella because its inhabitants “would not bear to change their religious rites for those peculiar to the Jews” (Josephus Ant. 13.397). This report seems to imply that the other cities listed in this passage as conquered, but not destroyed, by Alexander were spared because their inhabitants had agreed to submit to Jewish rites, including presumably circumcision. Compare Kasher, Aryeh, “Josephus on King Jannaeus' War against the Hellenistic Cities,” Cathedra 41 (1986) 11–36, esp. 27-28 [Hebrew].Google Scholar For more on Alexander's conquests, see Stern, Menahem, “Judea and Her Neighbors in the Days of Alexander Janneus,” in Levine, Lee, ed., The Jerusalem Cathedra (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi Institute, 1981) 22–46Google Scholar.

⁷ Collins, John (“The Epic of Theodotus and the Hellenism of the Hasmoneans,” HTR 73 [1980][ 91–104)CrossRefGoogle Scholar argues that Genesis 34 may have been used by authors like Theodotus to justify the Hasmoneans' violent treatment of the Samaritans. Not everyone accepts Collins's reading; see Pummer, Reinhard, “Genesis 34 in the Jewish Writings of the Hellenistic and Roman Periods,” HTR 75 (1982) 177–88.Google Scholar Even if Collins is right, however, Genesis 34 forms a strange precedent for the mass conversion of local Gentiles. Jacob's sons do propose circumcision, but their offer is not meant sincerely, and they proceed to slay the Shechemites despite the fact they had been circumcised. Compare Cohen, Shaye, “Religion, Ethnicity and Hellenism in the Emergence of Jewish Identity in Maccabean Palestine,” in Bilde, Per et al., eds., Religion and Religious Practice in the Seleucid Kingdom (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1990) 204–23.Google Scholar For further discussion of Genesis 34 in early Jewish exegesis, see Mendels, Doron, The Land of Israel as a Political Concept in Hasmonean Literature (Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1987) 57–119;Google ScholarKugel, James, “The Story of Dinah in the Testament of Levi,” HTR 85 (1992) 1–34;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMor, Menahem, “Theodotus, the Epos of Shechem and the Samaritans: A New Interpretation,” in Openhaimer, Aaron, Gafni, Isaiah, and Schwarz, Daniel, eds., The Jews in the Hellenistic-Roman World. Studies in Memory Stern (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1996) 345–59 [Hebrew]Google Scholar.

⁸ Urbach, Ephraim E. (“Halakhot Regarding Slavery as a Source for the Social History of the Second Temple and Talmudic Periods,” Zion 25 [1960] 141–89, esp. 162)Google Scholar adduces this law as an explanation for the Hasmoneans' behavior, but none of the relevant sources actually cites or alludes to Gen 17:13 as a pretext for mass conversion, nor do they refer to the Idumeans and Itureans as slaves.

⁹ See Klein, Samuel, The Land of Judaea (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1939) 74–75 [Hebrew];Google ScholarRappaport, Uriel, “Hellenistic Cities and the Judaization of Palestine in the Hasmonean Age,” in Perlman, Samuel and Shimron, B., eds., Doron: Studies in Classical Culture Presented to Professor B. Z. Katz Ben Shalom (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1967) 219–30 [Hebrew];Google ScholarKasher, Aryeh, Jews, Idumeans and Ancient Arabs (Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1988) 45–85;Google Scholar Shaye Cohen, “Religion, Ethnicity and Hellenism”; Schwartz, Seth, “The Judaism of Samaria and Galilee in Josephusapos;s Version of the Letter of Demetrius I to Jonathan (Antiquities 13.48-57),” HTR 82 (1989) 377–91Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Josephus Ant. 14.10.

¹¹ Ibid., 17.254.

¹² Josephus Bell. 4.4-5, 1.8, 11.9. While the conversion of Idumea may be reflected archaeologically as well, the relevant evidence is equivocal. In a tomb from the first century CE found in the necropolis of the Idumean site of Marisa, excavators found evidence of a burial performed in a style common in Jerusalem and other sites of Jewish habitation, a find which they interpret as evidence of the city's change. See Oren, Eliezer and Rappaport, Uriel, “The Necropolis of Maresha-Beth Govrin,” IEJ 34 (1984) 114–53, esp. 125.Google Scholar Even if one accepts their interpretation, it is unclear whether this tomb was used by converted Idumeans or by Jewish refugees from Judea after the Great Revolt. Another datum cited as evidence for the assimilation of Marisa into Judaism, the name “Absalom” on a necropolis inscription, is no less ambiguous, for it is again unclear whether the name belonged to a converted Idumean or a Jewish immigrant.

¹³ One sign that Itureans were incorporated into Judean political life over the course of the first century BCE is Josephus's reference to an Iturean named Sohemus serving in the court of Herod (Ant. 15.185). Inscriptions may provide additional evidence, although their testimony is usually equivocal. See , Kasher, Jews, Idumeans and Ancient Arabs, 84–85;Google ScholarDar, Shimon, Settlements and Cult Sites on Mount Herman, Israel: Ituraean Culture in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods (London: BAR, 1993) 66–67Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Largely voluntarily but not completely so. According to Josephus, later Idumeans clearly resisted becoming Jews. See Ant. 15.253-55, where Costabor, a descendant of Idumean priests appointed governor of Idumea and Gaza by Herod, is said to have led a revolt in part because he did not think it right “for the Idumeans to adopt the customs of the Jews and be subject to them.” For their part, some Jews may also have questioned the legitimacy of the Idumeans' conversion, thus explaining, for example, why there was an attempt to exclude Agrippa I, a fourth generation descendant of the Idumean ancestors of Herod, from the Temple. See Baumgarten, Joseph, “Exclusions from the Temple: Proselytes and Agrippa I,” JJS 33 (1982) 215–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵ Josephus Ant. 13.319.

¹⁶ Strabo Geo. 16.2.34.

¹⁷ I Mace 1:15; 2:46-47. Compare , Rappaport, “Hellenistic Cities,” 229Google Scholar; , Kasher, Jews, Idumeans and Ancient Arabs, 56–57.Google Scholar For evidence that circumcision was a native custom of the Edomites, note Jer 9:24-25 and by implication Ezek 32:29; and compare Sasson, Jack, “Circumcision in the Ancient Near East,” JBL 85 (1966) 473–76.Google Scholar It is worth observing that by late antiquity, those seeking to convert to Judaism who already happened to be circumcised—as Samaritans were for example—were required to undergo a second rite known in rabbinic literature as peri'ah. See Duliere, L., “une seconde circomcision pratiquee entre juifs et samaritains,” L'Antiquité classique 36 (1967) 553–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar If the Idumeans and Ituraeans were in fact already circumcised, it is conceivable that the Hasmoneans subjected them to a ritual of this sort; however, there is no evidence for such a practice at this time.

¹⁸ See n. 2 above. This motif seems to surface in Hasmonean depictions of Antiochus IV, represented in several scenes as scalping, burning, and mutilating Jews who resist his rule (see 2 Mace 7; 8:12-13). According to 2 Mace 9:5-11, in fact, God chose to punish Antiochus with “sharp internal tortures” and scourges “like a brand” precisely because “he had tortured the bowels of others with many and strange afflictions.”

¹⁹ Compare , Steiner, Tyrant's Writ, 154–59.Google Scholar Kasher's claim that these sources reflect an effort to discredit the Hasmoneans as tyrants, while certainly plausible, is in fact based on little concrete evidence. Strabo may have been anti-Hasmonean (see , Stern, Greek and Latin Authors, 1. 306),Google Scholar but in his citation of Timagenes he seems downright flattering in his treatment of Aristobulus I, describing him as “a kindly person.” See Stern, Menahem, “Strabo's Remarks on the Jews,” in Dorman, Menahem et al., eds., Studies in the History of Israel and the Hebrew Language, Gedalya Alton Memorial Volume (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1979) 169–71 [Hebrew].Google Scholar The conclusion that Ptolemy was anti-Hasmonean is based largely on the debatable assumption that he is Ptolemy of Ascalon, an identification that not everyone accepts. (Compare , Stern, Greek and Latin Authors, 1. 355).Google Scholar Furthermore, while an inhabitant of Ascalon may have had good reason to resent the Hasmoneans, the relevant citation from Ptolemy is not explicitly critical of them. Indeed, it does not mention the Hasmoneans at all. Finally, there is Kasher's claim that Nicolaus of Damascus, no friend of the Hasmoneans, may have been Josephus's unnamed source for the forced circumcision reports, a plausible proposal to be sure but entirely conjectural as well.

²⁰ See Thoma, Clemens, “John Hyrcanus I as Seen by Josephus and Other Early Jewish Sources,” in Parente, Fausto and Sievers, Joseph, eds., Josephus and the History of the Greco-Roman Period: Essays in Memory of Morton Smith (Leiden: Brill, 1994) 127–40.Google Scholar

²¹ Cohen, Shaye, “Respect for Judaism by Gentiles in the Writings of Josephus,” HTR 80 (1987) 409–30.Google Scholar

²² Josephus Vit. 113; Bell. 2.454.

²³ For evidence of Roman antipathy to circumcision, see Smallwood, E. Mary, “The Legislation of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius against Circumcision,” Latomus 18 (1959) 334–47;Google ScholarRabello, Alfredo, “The Edicts on Circumcision as a Factor in the Bar Kochba Revolt,” in Oppenheimer, Aaron and Rappaport, Uriel, eds., The Bar Kokhba Revolt (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1984) 27–46 [Hebrew];Google ScholarSchafer, Peter, Judeophobia: Attitudes toward the Jews in the Ancient World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997) 93–105Google Scholar.

²⁴ It is not entirely clear from Cohen's analysis why Josephus would seek to allay Roman fears about conversion by reminding them of incidents when Jews sought forcibly to convert Gentiles. It would seem that a better strategy would have been to suppress or play down such incidents. This is in fact what Josephus does in his treatment of biblical episodes combining circumcision and anti-Gentile violence. In his retelling of Genesis 34, for example, Josephus omits the circumcision of the Shechemites (Ant. 1.337-40), and in his version of 2 Sam 18:25–7, David does not circumcise the Philistines, but merely beheads them (Ant. 6.200-2). The fact that Josephus sometimes suppressed forced circumcision of Gentiles and sometimes played it up (as he does when citing Strabo) suggests that his view of the practice was more complex, or more inconsistent, than Cohen allows.

²⁵ For the evidence placing the composition of 2 Baruch between 70 CE and the Bar Kochba Revolt, see Sayler, Gwendolyn B., Have the Promises Failed: a Literary Analysis of 2 Baruch (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985) 104–18.Google Scholar One wonders whether a revival of the practice of forced circumcision in the days of Bar Kochba played some role in prompting the Romans to prohibit circumcision. Compare Schäfer, Peter, The History of the Jews in Antiquity (Luxembourg: Harwood, 1995) 147Google Scholar.

²⁶ Also worth noting in this context is the Greek translation of Esther 8:17 in LXX: “many of the pagans were circumcised and became Jews out of fear of the Jews.” The words “were circumcised” (ΠεΡίΕτέμοτο) here do not appear in the Hebrew version of Esther and seem to have been added by the translator or some earlier scribe. This translation comes from Jerusalem (or so its colophon claims) and probably dates from sometime in the first few decades of the first century BCE, within a few decades of Hyrcanus and Aristobolus. It is thus not impossible that its translation of Esth 8:17 was influenced by recent incidents where local Gentiles were intimidated into circumcision by Hasmonean violence. For the dating of Greek Esther to the early first century BCE, see Bickerman, Elias J., “The Colophon of the Greek Book of Esther,” in idem, Studies in Jewish and Christian History (3 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1976) 1. 225–45.Google Scholar Whatever the translation's original Sitz im Leben, it mentions circumcision “out of fear” without condemning the practice.

²⁷ 1 Mace 1:15.

²⁸ 1 Mace 1:48, 60-61.

²⁹ Compare Wilk, Roman, “Forced Circumcison at the hands of Mattathias,” Sinai 115 (1995) 292–94 [Hebrew].Google Scholar While my reading of this verse is similar to that of Wilk, I reached this reading by a different route and have drawn different conclusions from it. For more on the role of circumcision in the Maccabean Revolt, see Sisti, Adalberto, “II valore della circoncisione al tempo dei Maccabei,” Liber Annuus Studii Biblici Franciscani 42 (1992) 33–48Google Scholar.

³⁰ Josephus Ant. 12.278.

³¹ Compare Wilk, “Forced Circumcision,” 283, who speculates that those whom Mattathias forced to be circumcised were not the Hellenizing Jews who willingly abandoned the practice but Jews intimidated from observing the rite by fear of the Seleucids.

³² Compare Wilk, “Forced Circumcison.”

³³ Sievers, Joseph, The Hasmoneans and Their Supporters (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990) 35Google Scholar

³⁴ 1 Mace 5:3-5.

³⁵ Some commentators emend “in Idumea” in this verse to “in Judea” but the parallel account in 2 Mace 10:14–17 suggests that “in Idumea” is in fact the original reading.

³⁶ Schwartz, Seth, “Israel and the Nations Roundabout: 1 Maccabees and the Hasmonean Expansion,” JJS 42 (1991) 16–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁷ 1 Mace 8; 12:1-4.

³⁸ 1 Mace 12:5-23; 14:16-23.

³⁹ 1 Mace 5:25; 9:35.

⁴⁰ l Mace 12:21.

⁴¹ Compare Goldsmith, J., 1 Maccabees (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1976) 34.Google Scholar

⁴² 2 Mace 4:34-35.

⁴³ 2 Mace 14:18-30.

⁴⁴ 2 Mace 9:17. Contrast 1 Mace 6:81-83, where Antiochus repents of his desecration of Jerusalem, but neither acknowledges God nor resolves to become Jewish.

⁴⁵ 2 Mace 12:30.

⁴⁶ Perhaps by depicting Gentiles in a more sympathetic light, the author of 2 Maccabees (or the five volume history it abridges) was reacting to pagan charges of Jewish misanthropy. Compare Doran, Robert, Temple Propaganda: The Purpose and Character of 2 Maccabees (Washington DC; Catholic Biblical Association, 1981) 60.Google Scholar Or perhaps the author sought to justify detente with the Seleucids. Compare the portrait of Antiochus VII in Ant. 13. 242-44 where Antiochus's piety makes it possible for Hyrcanus to establish a “friendship” with him.

⁴⁷ , Schwartz, “Israel and the Nations Roundabout,” 29–30.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ This assumes that the original decree continues through v. 49. Some scholars believe, however, that the decree ends at v. 45. See Sievers, Joseph, “The High Priesthood of Simon Maccabeus: an Analysis of 1 Mace 14.25-49,” Society of Biblical Literature 1981 Seminar Papers (1981) 309–18Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ 1 Mace 11:65-66; 13:50; and 14:36. 1 Maccabees does not explicitly identify those expelled as Gentiles, and many scholars believe that these could very well have included Jews along with the Seleucid garrisons. See Sievers, Joseph, “Jerusalem, the Akra, and Josephus,” in Parente and Sievers, Josephus and the History of the Greco-Roman Period, 195–209, esp. 198-202.Google Scholar Be this as it may, 1 Maccabees specifies that the inhabitants of Gezer and the Akra, whether Gentile or Jewish, were idolatrous (1 Mace 13:47-48, 50), and in passages like 1 Mace 14:36 it clearly treats their expulsion as a synecdoche for the expulsion of a Gentile presence from the land.

⁵⁰ CIJ 2. 1184. See Dever, William, ed., Gezer II. Report of the 1967-70 Seasons in Fields I and II (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College/Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology, 1974) 43Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Reich, Ronny, “Archaeological Evidence of the Jewish Population at Hasmonean Gezer,” IEJ 31 (1981) 48–52.Google Scholar

⁵² Reich, Ronny (“The Boundary of Gezer–On the Jewish settlement at Gezer in Hasmonean Times,” El 18 [1983] 167–79)Google Scholar may be overreaching, for example, when he argues that inscribed stones found in situ around Gezer were installed in the reign of Simon to segregate Jewish land subject to biblical agricultural law from Gentile land. This same evidence has been interpreted in other ways. See Rosenfeld, Ben-Zion, “The ‘Boundary of Gezer’ Inscription and the History of Gezer at the end of the Second Temple Period,” 1EJ 38 (1988) 235–45;Google Scholar and rejoinder, Reich's in “The Boundary of Gezer Inscriptions Again,” IEJ 40 (1990) 44–46Google Scholar.

⁵³ Berlin, Andrea, “The Hellenistic and Early Roman Common Ware Pottery from Tel Anafa” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1988) 20Google Scholar; idem, “Archaeological Sources for a History of Palestine between Large Forces: Palestine in the Hellenistic Period,” BA 60 (1997) 2-51, esp. 29-30. Berlin plans to develop this argument in a forthcoming study of Hellenistic and Herodian kilns found in Jerusalem. I thank her for discussing this issue with me. For further discussion of Hasmonean economic policy, see Schwartz, Joshua, “The Economy of Judea in the Hasmonean Period,” in Amit, David and Eshel, Hanan, eds., The Days of Hasmoneans (Jerusalem: Yad Yizhaq Ben-Zvi, 1995) 125–31 [Hebrew]Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ It is interesting to note in this context a tradition preserved in rabbinic literature of yet another Hasmonean effort to segregate Jews from non-Jews: a tradition in b. Sanh. 82a and Aboda Zar. 36b refers to a decree of the “Hasmonean court” that a Jewish man who engages in sexual relations with a non-Jewish woman is to be punished.

⁵⁵ Compare Dancy, John C., A Commentary on 1 Maccabees (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1954) 8Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Scholars sometimes mention the fact that Josephus fails to paraphrase the final three chapters of 1 Maccabees as evidence that these chapters were not part of the original composition. However, there are other possible explanations for his omission of this material; he may have turned to another, unknown source at this point, or as Dancy suggests (I Maccabees, 31), his copy of the book may have lacked its last roll.

⁵⁷ The only other indication within 1 Maccabees that it was written at a considerable period after the death of Simon is 1 Mace 13:30, which refers to the family tomb built by Simon in 143 BCE as still standing “to this day.” There is no reason to assume, however, that “this day” was sometime after Hyrcanus's reign and not a few decades earlier, at the beginning or in the middle of his reign. See Schwartz, “Israel and the Nations Roundabout,” 37 n. 68.

⁵⁸ Barag, Dan, “New Evidence on the Foreign Policy of John Hyrcanus I,” Israel Numismatic Journal 12 (1992-1993) 1–12.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Compare , Wilk, “Forced Circumcision.”Google Scholar

⁶⁰ 1 Mace 1:44.

⁶¹ Josephus Ant. 13.249; Bell. 1.61. At first the Hasmoneans drew their mercenaries from distant lands. Aristobolus employed Pisidian, Cilician, and other foreigners alongside 10,000 Jewish troops (Josephus Bell. 1.93), and Alexander Janneus is said to have deliberately avoided using Syrians as mercenaries (Bell. 1.88; Ant. 13.374). Eventually, however, foreigners are hired from closer to home; Aristobulus II draws mercenaries from Lebanon and Trachonitis for example (Bell. 1.117; Ant. 13.427).

⁶² Note, for example, that the number of mercenaries used by Alexander Janneus in battle varies in Josephus's two accounts of the event in Ant. 13.377 and Bell. 1.93.

⁶³ , Cohen, “Religion, Ethnicity and Hellenism,” 218–19.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Rappaport, “Hellenistic Cities and the Judaization of Palestine.” In a personal communication, Andrea Berlin has proposed another possible strategic motivation: the Hasmoneans may have sought to neutralize enemy recruitment of Gentile populations living along their borders by forcing others to perceive them as Jews and thus as likely allies of the Hasmoneans.

⁶⁵ Smith, Morton, “Rome and Maccabean Conversions: Notes on 1 Maccabees 8,” in Bammel, Ernst, Barrett, C. K., and Davies, W. D., eds., Donum Gentilicium: New Testament Studies in Honor of David Daube (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978) 1–7.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ In this connection, it is interesting to compare Tacitus's report in Annales 2.85.4 that Jews and Egyptians were ordered by the Roman Senate to leave Italy “unless they had renounced their impious ceremonial by a given date (ceteri cederent Italia, nisi certam antediem profanos ritus exuissent).”

⁶⁷ Kochva, B. Bar, “Manpower, Economics and Internal Strife in the Hasmonean State,” in Effenterre, Henri van, ed., Armées et fiscalité dans le monde antique (Paris: Editions du Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique, 1977) 167–94.Google ScholarCompare Appelbaum, Shimon, Judea in Hellenistic and Roman Times (Leiden: Brill, 1989) 19–20Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ Bunimovitz, Shlomo, “The Problem of Human Resources in Late Bronze Age Palestine and its Socioeconomic Implications,”UF 26 (1994) 1–19.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Josephus Ant. 13.284.

⁷⁰ Kochva, B. Bar, “Manpower, Economics, and Internal Strife”; Shimon Appelbaum, “Hasmonean Internal Colonization: Problems and Motives,” in Kasher, Aryeh and Rappaport, Uriel, eds., Man and Land in Eretz Israel in Antiquity (Jerusalem: Izhaq Ben Zvi, 1984) 75–79 [Hebrew];Google ScholarRappaport, Uriel, “The Land Issue as a Factor in Inter-Ethnic Relations in Eretz-Israel During the Second Temple Period,” Man and Land, 80–86 [Hebrew]Google Scholar.

⁷¹ See Byatt, Anthony (“Josephus and Population Numbers in First Century Palestine,” PEQ 105 [1973] 51–60),CrossRefGoogle Scholar who places Palestine's population at around 2,265,000; and Broshi, Mayen (“The Population of Western Palestine in the Roman-Byzantine Period,” BASOR 226 [1979] 1–10),Google Scholar who lowers the figure to around 1,000,000.

⁷² Josephus Ant. 13.288

⁷³ Josephus Ant. 13.372; Bell. 1.93.

⁷⁴ Another possible sign that the Hasmonean state was leaking human resources in this period is evidenced by the population decline in some Hasmonean power bases at the end of the second century BCE. Perhaps the best example is Gezer, where Simon had established a residence (1 Mace 13:48) and settled observant Jews (1 Mace 13:48), and where John Hyrcanus was based as commander of the Maccabean forces (1 Mace 13:53). Strangely, despite the importance of Gezer in early Hasmonean rule over Judea, it appears to have been largely abandoned by the end of the second century BCE. See William Dever, “Gezer,” in Stern, Ephraim, ed., The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land (4 vols.; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1993) 2. 506Google Scholar; and note Josephus's claim in Ant. 14.88 that the Romans had to repopulate a host of cities in Palestine that they had found “desolate.” The reason for this decline is unclear. According to Berlin (“Archaeological Sources,” 42–43), Gezer's decline may be part of a larger regional decline reflected in other sites on the periphery of the Hasmonean state like Ashdod, Tel Anafa, and Marisa. The matter deserves j,, more attention than I am able to give it here.

⁷⁵ Josephus Ant. 13.249; Bell. 1.61.

⁷⁶ Josephus Ant. 13.247.

⁷⁷ Josephus Ant. 11.212; 13.245.

⁷⁸ , Stern, Greek and Latin Authors, 1. 181–85 no. 63.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Ibid., 1. 185–87 no. 64. I differ here from Bar Kochva (“Manpower, Economics and Internal Strife,” 177) who expresses reservations concerning the reliability of Diodorus's report.

⁸⁰ Josephus Bell. 1.117; Ant. 13.427.

⁸¹ Josephus Ant. 14.14-21.

⁸² See Zeitlin, Solomon, The Book of Judith (Leiden: Brill, 1972) 26–71.Google Scholar Carey Moore (Judith [AB; Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1985] 67–70) places Judith's composition precisely in the days of Hyrcanus. Note that medieval Jews also associated Judith with the Maccabean period; in one telling of the story Judith becomes the daughter of Mattathias himself.Google ScholarSee Dubarle, Andre Marie, Judith: Formes et sens des diverses traditions (2 vols.; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1966) 2. 110, 114, 120, 170Google Scholar.

⁸³ Jdt 14:6-10.

⁸⁴ See Roitman, Adolfo, “Achior in the Book of Judith: His Role and Significance,” in Vanderkam, James, ed., “No One Spoke III of Her”: Essays on Judith (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992) 31–45.Google Scholar It is not clear why the author of Judith chose an Ammonite to typify local Gentiles, especially in light of Deut 23:2-9, which prohibits Ammonites from entering “the congregation of the Lord.” Note, however, that the rabbis found reason to suspend this prohibition not only for female Ammonites (which the biblical law does not specifically mention) but for male Ammonites as well. See b. Ber. 28a. Perhaps the choice of an Ammonite is related to the Hasmoneans' conversion of the western part of what was once Ammon, Perea. The region was annexed by the Hasmoneans under Jonathan (Ant. 13.50), and its inhabitants were still referred to as Ammonites in this period (1 Mace 5:6).

⁸⁵ In most early Jewish texts where Gentiles come to acknowledge God, including 2 Maccabees, the Gentile is almost always an arrogant king or a high-ranking official. Compare , Cohen, “Respect for Judaism by Gentiles,” 412–15.Google Scholar Judith is unusual in this regard. It features the kind of characters “converted” in other early Jewish narratives (including Nebuchadnezzar, who comes to acknowledge God in the book of Daniel), but its author chose to convert an outcast member of a local people. I would explain this choice by contextualizing Judith in a period when Jews actively sought the conversion of local Gentiles, the reigns of Hyrcanus and his successors.

⁸⁶ Strabo's comments on the subject may hint at the Idumean's motive for agreeing to convert to Judaism: disaffection with Nabatean rule. Unfortunately, the precise historical relationship between the Nabateans and the Idumeans remains unclear. Millar, Fergus (“Hagar, Ishmael, Josephus and the Origins of Islam,” JJS 44 [1991] 23–45)CrossRefGoogle Scholar points out that names similar to both Nabatea and Idumea are mentioned as sons of Ishmael in Gen 25:12-15 (LXX: ἰδονμσ ίετονρ), further suggesting some kind of affiliation between the two peoples, but there is little other evidence to go on.