Article
Arbela
John MacGinnis and David Michelmore
Article
Book of Daniel
Anathea E. Portier-Young
Extant in three main ancient editions, the book of Daniel is a Jewish text composed c. 165
Article
Alexander Jannaeus
Katell Berthelot
Article
John Hyrcanus
Katell Berthelot
Article
3 Maccabees
Noah Hacham
The short book of 3 Maccabees, written in Egypt in the Hellenistic or Roman period and almost unknown in antiquity, records king Ptolemy Philopator’s (221–204
While the book’s historical credibility regarding these events is dubious, it should be seen as an important historical source for the life of Egyptian Jewry and the challenges that it faced during the Hellenistic-Roman period. The book has a discernible four-faceted agenda: (a) Jews are loyal both to their God and to the king, although they cannot be confident of the king’s goodwill toward them; (b) the God of Israel is the Jews’ protector and savior; (c) He also revealed Himself in the Diaspora, far away from the Jerusalemite Temple. The book is also (d) an anti-Dionysiac polemic.
Article
Ptolemaeus (4), of Mende, priest and author
Kenneth S. Sacks
Ptolemaeus of Mende, a priest, wrote on the Egyptian kings in three books. He wrote before Apion (first half of the 1st cent.