Hellenized Israel

What if Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Seleucid King infamous for his desecration of the Jewish Temple, had succeeded in Hellenizing the Jews and wiping out their rites and customs? I Assume the modern world would be totally unrecognizable, since this would mean no Jesus, which would drastically alter history.
 
What if Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Seleucid King infamous for his desecration of the Jewish Temple, had succeeded in Hellenizing the Jews and wiping out their rites and customs? I Assume the modern world would be totally unrecognizable, since this would mean no Jesus, which would drastically alter history.

There would still be Jewish communities outside the Seleucid Empire, still practicing their ancient rites and customs so Antiochus IV Epiphanes getting lust for spilling Jewish blood would not mark its end. The Roman emperor Hadrian tried it and he failed to root out Judaism through all sort of means, like prohibiting the use of the Hebrew scholars or the use of the Law or the execution of many Judaic scholars.

The worst I can see Antiochus doing is expelling the Jewish population from Judea, perhaps transform Jerusalem into another one of many Hellenistic outposts in the East. The Temple would probably be converted to some pagan shrine devoted to Zeus or some local pagan deity. If Antiochus' suppression of Jewish religion and culture is as brutal as the Roman response to the Third Jewish Revolt, then we would find the center of Jewish religious activity shift either to Babylon (though depending on how severe it is, the community there might also be devastated) or to Alexandria in Egypt.
 
In some ways, Christianity is essentially a response by Judaism to Hellenisation.

It was Christianity's very success that spurred the Jews to look inward- before Christianity Judaism was quite successful at proselytisation across the Mediterranean. However the success of Christianity in creating a monotheistic identity not tied in any way to ethnicity or place helped it outcompete Judaism.
 
What if Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Seleucid King infamous for his desecration of the Jewish Temple, had succeeded in Hellenizing the Jews and wiping out their rites and customs? I Assume the modern world would be totally unrecognizable, since this would mean no Jesus, which would drastically alter history.

It should be noted that Hellenization is not the same as extinguishing the the rites and customs of the Jews. At the time of the Maccabean revolt, the majority of the Jewish elite, including the high priests, were pro-Greek, and not necessarily opposed to the worship of foreign gods, or identifying YHWH as synonymous with Zeus, for instance. The integrity of the Hebrews' absolute monotheism fluctuated throughout ancient times, which is constantly seen in the Bible and attested to in the archeological record.
A successful campaign of Hellenization in the Levant would not lead to the elimination of the Jewish people as a distinct cultural identity, although it would most assuredly change it dramatically.
 
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Zirantun

Banned
A successful campaign of Hellenization in the Levant would not lead to the elimination of the Jewish people as a distinct cultural identity, although it would most assuredly change it dramatically.

It certainly could, though.

Eliminating an ethnicity in one fell swoop is difficult, but over time, it's very easy. The Jewish religion could very easily have been absorbed into some other religious movement, and the language, being closely related to other Semitic languages of the time, would go extinct, as it did in our own timeline.

In all honesty though, I believe that it is the persecution of the Jews that has made them persevere so diligently over the centuries to preserve an identity that others didn't want them to have. If they're not persecuted, it could be very easy for them to amalgamate into one of the other Semitic groups in the area. Even with the current POD, without the death of Jesus to blame on Jewish clergy, they probably wouldn't be prosecuted to nearly the same extent where they went, and could possibly be absorbed - the way Greeks in Spain, Sicily, and Southern Italy have mostly been absorbed...
 

katchen

Banned
A Buddhist challenge from a Kushan conquest would have been much harder for Children of Israel to cope with than Hellenization.
 
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