Alexander the Great, remember, wanted to set up a one world, a universal empire. He taught a sort of syncretism of religion, he taught a common language, Greek, he set up these Greek cities all around; that process is what is called Hellenization, so the Hellenization of the world in that time, the Hellenistic Period. The reason Hellenism is so important, is because what happened to Alexander's empire after he died. After much confusion and fighting among his major generals, after Alexander’s death, Alexander’s kingdom ended up being divided up into four major empires. One of Alexander’s generals Ptolemy II got the Kingdom of Egypt, and set up his own sort of Greco-Egyptian kingdom there. This Greek veneer when on, then came Antiochus IV reign from 175 to 165 BC; while Judah, though, was under Antiochus control a lot of Israelites tried to figure out, how do you deal with this whole process of Hellenization? In other words, if you want your own kids to get ahead in the world, in this time, and you’re going to have an elite family yourself in a town, in a city, it makes sense for your kids to get a Greek education. You want your sons, for example, to be able to speak, and read, and write Greek. In fact, there was conflict in Jerusalem at this time over how much Hellenization you should go alone with. Apparently, a majority of the priests and the lay nobility supported the Hellenizing group, that is the Israelites leaders who wanted to bring more Hellenization into Jerusalem itself. This high priest at this time named Jason, in 175 BC, he built a gymnasium in Jerusalem. Why did he build a gymnasium in Jerusalem? Well, if you’re going to have Greek education, you have to have a gymnasium. This Jason also founded a Greek polis, that is an Greek city structure, and Jason apparently paid Antiochus for the privilege of having Jerusalem recognized as a Greek city. This would have consolidated the power of those Israelite leaders who wanted to press Greek culture more, rather than those Israelite leaders who wanted to hold back on Greek culture. If you control the gymnasium, and you control the means of education, you actually control the citizenry, because you can’t become a citizen of a Greek polis, a Greek city, unless you yourself have Greek education, so sons would-sons of people would go to the gymnasium. Notice what this would do also, it would disenfranchise those leading families, who didn’t want to have their sons Hellenized. By holding the control of the eduction, you disenfranchise conservative Israelites, who are resisting this Greek influence.


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