Nice speech, but it didn't address a thing a stated about Antipas placing his people in power in Sepphoris after he rebuilt it to honor the Romans that were the enemies of real Jews.
That's because there's no evidence he did. On the one hand, we have scholarly depictions of Herod Antipas as lazy and having little effect: "Antipas was far less active of a ruler than his father and Agrippa I. His building projects were comparatively modest and it appears that his monetary policies had little impact on the region's economy."
From Root's
From Antipas to Agrippa II: Galilee in the first-century CE.
The entirety of
Herod Antipas in Galilee: The Literary and Archaeological Sources on the Reign of Herod Antipas and Its Socio-economic Impact on Galilee is devoted to showing that at best Root and those like him are correct, and at worst they are wrong because Herod was a benefit for the Jewish population and helped.
On the other hand we have scholars who believe Herod Antipas to be almost a Jewish hero: "In the first century C.E., Herod Philip, son of Herod the Great, had little difficulty placing images on his coins in Gaulanitis.
But Herod Antipas of Galilee, whose territory was more extensively Jewish, had no images on his coins. This expression of Jewish identity stood in sharp contrast to general practice throughout the Roman Empire.
Did this stress Jewish identity? Without question. Understood within the general cultural framework of Roman power,
it was a form of resistance against the pressures of Roman power." from Richardson's
Building Jewish in the Roman East (
Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism).
What we do not find is evidence of a Herod Antipas who went out to Sepphoris, built a city to please himself and/or the Romans, and offended all the Jewish population. Or an Antipas who put his own people in Sepphoris or in Galilee at all.
Antipas played the Jewish card fully! to extort as much money from these people as possible.
What money? By building up Sepphoris as much as he did, he
spent money. And the Romans didn't care about Galilee's taxation anywhere near as much as they did the relative lack of conflict there. You can't have it both ways. Either this is a Hellenistic dream with lots of money, in which case the poor couldn't care less about taxes as Rome would only have eyes for places like Sepphoris where there was money, or there wasn't money, in which case the Romans cared about containing potential disturbances.
These people extorting money from the average peasant were his people
And your evidence for this is...?
and placed in the lap of luxury in Sepphoris.
A city now almost universally believed to be practically without hellenistic influence. It is (as Reed says) the scholarly consensus that Herod Antipas barely introduced any hellenistic influence at all and that the city of Sepphoris and Galilee as a whole was Jewish, not "hellenistic Jewish" (a term introduced over a century ago and has been thoroughly criticized since).
Antipas was Hellenistic, and he used Hellenistic Jews to do his bidding against the common hard working Jew.
Let's get this out of the way. First, your wiki link:
It starts "Hellenistic Judaism was a movement which existed in the Jewish diaspora that sought to establish a Hebraic-Jewish religious tradition within the European culture and language of Hellenism after the eastern conquests of Alexander the Great."
The "diaspora" would mean places outside of Galilee (indeed, outside all Israel). It means places like Alexandria and Rome. Thus, it is utterly irrelevent.
Even better, entire studies like Collins' monograph
Between Athens and Jerusalem- Jewish Identity in Hellenistic Diaspora have delved into the nature of Hellenistic Judaism (i.e., Jewish people living in places like Rome, outside of their homeland). And even here, we find that there is no "simple normative definition which determined Jewish identity". And this is the actual "Hellenistic Judaism" (Jewish people living in non-Jewish regions), not
one of the most entirely, completely Jewish regions in the Roman empire, as devoid of Hellenistic influence as was just about possible. So if you insist on refering to "Hellenistic Judaism", then at least learn the background of the term and the notion and how it progressed (into either disuse or mostly meaningless) from the 19th century to today's scholarship.
Now that is a question that requires a book to describe fully.
Yes, and several have been written on the question of identity in the first century (and in the biblical world in general). The 2007 volume
Jewish Identity in the Greco-Roman World/Jüdische Identität in der griechisch-römischen Welt specifically addresses this question in the context of Judaism in the Roman empire. When talking about Galilee in terms of Hellenization and Antipas, you should probably read "Der Kaiserkult in Judäa unter herodischer und römischer Herrschaft: Zu Herausbildung und Herausforderung neuer Konzepte jüdischer Herrschaftslegitimation" for some contrast, but the entire volume would be useful for answering questions about hellenism and judaism.
Religion is a big part of it.
Religion is a much more modern notion. Atheism in that time could mean belief in only one god.
Ding, ding, we have a winner.
Then you missed the point. It means that your distinction is meaningless. That your dichotomy between "judaism" and "hellenistic judaism" is a fiction." That your poor Gentile peasant contrasted with your hellenized citizien of sepphoris is imaginary. There is no evidence for it, and it is born out of 19th century understandings that have long been swept away.
I cant tell if your being funny, but this is rather amusing that you could state this with a straight face.
It's rather amusing that you can say anything at all about this when you quote the introduction to Chancey's monograph and call it an "article", cite Reed when his publications over a decade now have made it clear he thoroughly disagrees with you, cite Strange who thinks that your economic model is the opposite of reality, and most of all rely on wikipedia for your information and then can't actually get that right either.
If you find it amusing, then try actual researching questions first before judging how ridiculous a statement appears.
Romans leveled Sepphoris in their recent memory, butchering many Jews and selling others Jews off to slavery in that exact part of Galilee.
And who built it up, yet didn't mint coins with his image, didn't imprint his face everywhere, didn't build roman worship centers, or any of the things which would indicate he is the villain you talk about?
Why do many scholars claim the movement of Christianity absorbed Hellenistic Judaism?
What do you know about what "many scholars" say?
This one of the poorest statement's I've ever seen you make, and you know I look up to you.
I look up to intellectual honesty and academic integrity. I don't care if someone doesn't know what they are talking about, because there are an infinite number of things we all don't know about. What I care about is when people talk about things they don't know and do so as if they did. When you ask honest questions and you listen to answers and you try to learn, that is something I respect, whether it is you personally or anybody. When anyone makes statements about things they don't know about, and then instead of acknowledging that they don't really know as much they thought, they continue to hammer away at an argument which is not only problematic at its core, but utilizes an entire framework (concepts, ideas, terminology, semantics, etc.,) that is dated and at best inadequate, that is something which upsets me. I spend a great deal of time, effort, and moeny trying to understand the things that I wish to know about. It doesn't bother me if I don't know something, and it doesn't offend me if someone shows that they don't know what they are talking about. But it bothers me when there are those who will insist that they know more than they do and against all evidence to the contrary.
The opening verse of
Acts 6 points to the problematic cultural divisions between Hellenized Jews and Aramaic-speaking Israelites in Jerusalem, a disunion that reverberated within the emerging Christian community itself: “it speaks of "Hellenists" and "Hebrews. "
Which means first and foremost only a Jewish individual who spoke Greek, and secondly somebody from outside of native Jewish regions. A diaspora member. Which isn't someone from Sepphoris. And that's without getting into the numerous problems trying to understand Hellenism during or near the time of the Temple's destruction and reading it back into the reign of Herod Antipas.
