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Elias Bickerman on the Hellenizing Reformers: A Case Study of an Unconvincing Case

This article focuses on Elias Bickerman's analysis of the extreme Hellenizing Jewish reformers, whom he considered to be the instigators of the events that culminated in the persecutions of Antiochus IV, which led in turn to the revolution of the Maccabees. Unlike many of Bickerman's other contributions to the study of the Jews in antiquity, this argument was not that successful, and relatively few other scholars have followed his lead. I suggest turning to Bickerman's biography to look for the commitments that were the sources of the inspiration of these ideas.  After a discussion of the problems of writing Bickerman's biography, as well as of biography in general, I propose two possible sets of life experiences that might have encouraged Bickerman to analyze the extreme Hellenizing reformers as he did: one a German context of unfavorable reaction to the excesses of German reform Judaism in earlier generations, and the other a Russian émigré context, in which Bickerman saw the ancient Jewish Hellenists in the image of contemporary Russian Jewish communists. I conclude by suggesting that some of the commitments that I see as inspiring Bickerman's conclusions concerning the ancient Jewish Hellenists were quite idiosyncratic by the standards of the time, and when the contemporary loyalties that serve as the seedbed for an analysis of the past are so far "off the charts," it is not surprising that the historical conclusions they inspire are not found that convincing.