In other words, the people at Qumran who deposited the Dead Sea
Scrolls in the nearby caves mocked this other group of Jews, the same
group that rebelled against Alexander Jannaeus, as those who seek the
easy way out in the observance of Jewish law. Who is this group,
then, the seekers of smooth things? This is a name that the group at
Qumran gave to the Pharisees.
e ended our last lecture with the Hasmonean king Aristobulus I,
who ruled from 104 to 103 B.C. Aristobulus I was a ruthless man
who imprisoned his brothers, killing one of them, and allowed his
mother to die of starvation in prison. When Aristobulus I died of an illness,
his widow, Salome Alexandra, Heed his brothers and married one of them,
Alexander Jarmaeus. This was a Levirate marriage, in accordance with
Jewish law. Unfortunately, Alexander Jannaeus would also be high priest
and could marry only a virgin; thus, the marriage violated the law.
This violation was not to be his last. Alexander Jannaeus was a ruthless
ruler who frequently disregarded the Jewish law and, therefore, aroused a
great deal of opposition. Once, during the feast of Tabernacles, Alexander
Jannaeus, acting as high priest, poured holy water on the ground instead of
on the altar; the people became upset and threw at him the citrons they held
as part of the ceremony. In response, Alexander Jarmaeus massacred 6,000
of the pilgrims.
Eventually, the Pharisees had had enough and organized a revolt; for help,
they turned to the nearest outside power, the Seleucid king, Demetrius III.
Demetrius then invaded, but the rebels suddenly had a change of heart,
abandoning Demetrius and returning to Alexander Jamiaeus. Unfortunately
for them, Alexander did not forgive them. According to one of the Dead
Sea Scrolls, he crucified 800 of them, slaughtering their wives and children
before their eyes as they suffered on their crosses, while he banqueted with
his concubines.
Alexander Jannaeus died in 76 B.C., succeeded by his widow, Salome
Alexandra. She ruled the Hasmonean kingdom rather well while her older
son, John Hyrcanus II, served as high priest. VVhen Salome Alexandra died
in 67 B.C., the office of king should have fallen to John Hyrcanus Il, but
a younger son, Aristobulus II, also wanted to be king. A civil war broke out
between the brothers, who both turned for help to an outside power, Rome.
Soon, the Romans would simply step in and take over the Hasmonean
kingdom.
At around the same time, just to the south, a people called the Nabateans
were prospering. An Arab people, they had established caravan routes
through the desert, and using those routes, they brought to the
Mediterranean coast expensive items from the east, such as myrrh and
frankincense. With time, this lucrative trade had made the Nabateans
wealthy, as is evident in the mins of their capital, Petra, presently in Jordan
southeast of the Dead Sea.
At this desert site appear a colonnaded street, large temples dedicated to
various Nabatean gods, and a Greek-style theater cut into one of the sides
of the cliffs, indicating Hellenistic influence. Most spectacular are the rock-cut
tombs, miles of them, in some cases with facades cut to create the illusion of
three-dimensional buildings.
Our exploration of the Hasmonean kingdom and the Nabatean kingdom to
its south now sets the stage for a look at some of the Jewish groups that came
into existence during the Hasmonean period.
Important Terms
Levirate marriage: Biblical law requiring a man to many his brother’s
widow if his brother was childless.
Nabataeans: An Arab people who created a kingdom in the area of modern
Jordan, the Negev, and the Sinai from the mid-2” century until A.D. 106.
Petra: Capital of the Nabataean kingdom, located to the southeast of the
Dead Sea in modern Jordan.
Pharisees: Jews of the Late Second Temple period who were moderately
prosperous and known for their strict observance of Jewish purity laws.
Questions to Consider
1. Considering the cruelty and atrocities carried out by Hasmonean kings,
such as Aristobulus I and Alexander J annaeus, and their blatant disregard
for the observance of biblical law, why should Jews commemorate the
Maccabean revolt by celebrating Hanukkah?
2. Knowing that Herod was half Idumaean (his father’s side) and half
Nabataean (his mother’s), what would you expect from him in terms of
cultural and religious orientation?
Lecture 12-Transcript
The Hasmonean Kingdom
In our last lecture, we talked about the Maccabean revolt and the
establishment of an independent Jewish kingdom ruled by the Maccabees
and their successors called the Hasmoneans. We talked about some of the
earliest Hasmonean rulers, ending with Aristobulus I who ruled from 104
to 103 B.C. I would like to pick up with Aristobulus I today and look at
him some more, and the rest of the Hasmonean kings up until the end of
the Hasmonean kingdom when it’s nixed by the Romans. Then I would like
to finish up the lecture by looking at one of the very important neighboring
peoples of the Hasmoneans, and that is the Nabateans.
If we go back to remind ourselves of what we were talking about with
Aristobulus I, remember that he was a ruthless man who became king by
imprisoning his brothers, killing one of them, and imprisoning his mother
who died of starvation while she was in prison. He was also a Hellenizer
preferring to use his Greek name Aristobulus instead of his Hebrew name;
and like his predecessor, he continued to increase the size of the Hasmonean
kingdom through territorial expansion. This is one of the very important
things about the policy of the Hasmonean kings, that they enlarge the size
of their kingdom through territorial conquests and forced the non-Jewish
peoples, who they conquered, to convert to Judaism or leave the country.
Among the peoples who were forcibly converted by the Hasmoneans were
the Idumaeans to the south and the Ituraeans, the inhabitants of Galilee and
the Golan to the north. So what happens after the time of Aristobulus I?
Aristobulus I died in 103 B.C. of an illness, and when he died, his widow,
whose name was Salome Alexandra, freed Aristobulus brothers from
captivity because they were still in captivity, and then she married one of
them. This actually sounds like a bit of a peculiar policy that the widow frees
the brothers and then marries one of them, but in fact it is in accordance with
Jewish law.
Biblical Jewish law says that when a brother dies without leaving any heirs,
the widow of that man should then marry one of the brothers. Let us actually
read the biblical passage which is from Deuteronomy,
When brothers reside together, and one of them dies and has no son,
the wife of the decreased shall not be married outside the family to
a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her, taking her in
marriage, and performing the duty of a husband’s brother to her,
and the firstborn whom she bears shall succeed to the name of the
deceased brother, so that his name may not be blotted out of Israel.
Again this is according to Deuteronomy. This kind of marriage where a widow
marries one of the brothers of her husband is called levirate marriage, and
so when Salome Alexandra, the widow of Aristobulus, married Aristobulus’
brother she was actually acting in accordance with this biblical law.
Of course the idea of the biblical law originally was that a family line should
not come to an end because a brother dies without leaving any heirs. In this
case, Salome Alexandra marries one of Aristobulus’ brothers, a brother whose
name was Alexander Jannaeus; and Alexander Jannaeus now becomes the
next Hasmonean king. It sounds as though this all was in accordance with
biblical law, but in fact by marrying Salome Alexandra, Alexander Jannaeus
actually was breaking biblical law because on the one hand Deuteronomy
mandates this sort of levirate marriage, this marriage between a brother of a
man who died and his widow, but on the other hand there is another law in
the Hebrew bible that prohibits this particular circumstance. This law is in
Leviticus and it says, “He, the high priest, shall marry only a woman who is
a virgin. A widow or a divorced woman or a woman who has been deflled, a
prostitute, these he shall not marry.”
So what is the problem here? On the one hand yes, Alexander Jannaeus was
supposed to marry his brother’s widow in accordance with Deuteronomy,
but because the Hasmonean kings also assumed the office of high priest,
there was a law that prohibited a high priest from marrying a widow. So
in this case, that law should have superseded the principle of levirate
marriage, and Alexander Jannaeus should not have married his brother’s
widow in this particular case. Again although there was a general principal
of levirate marriage, in the particular case of Alexander Jarmaeus, because
he was high priest, there was another law that prohibited him specifically
from marrying a widow, and therefore he should not have married Salome
Alexandra. Basically what this means is that Alexander Jannaeus, when
he becomes Hasmonean king, violates biblical Jewish law by marrying his
brother’s widow.
Alexander Jannaeus in general was a ruthless ruler. He ruled for quite a long
time from 103 B.C. until 76 B.C. He was a ruthless man as we will see,
and he also acted frequently with disregard for the observance of biblical
Jewish law; and Alexander Jannaeus’ actions therefore aroused a great deal
of opposition among the Jewish population. There were already wide sectors
of the Jewish population that believed that the Hasmonean king should not
be acting also as high priest, but Alexander Jannaeus’ blatant disregard for
the observance of biblical Jewish law aroused much more opposition and
especially among a particular group called the Pharisees, who we will be
talking about some more in this lecture and also in our next lecture.
One example of Alexander Jannaeus’ disregard for Jewish law occurred
during the holiday of Sukkot, which is the Feast of Tabenacles, a holiday
that occurs usually around our month of October. As part of the ceremony,
observing this festival, Jews hold a bundle of branches of different species
together with a large bumpy citrus fruit called a citron which is like a
big bumpy lemon, and as part of the ceremony observing this particular
festival, the Feast of Tabernacles, the bundle of branches and the citron are
waved together.
The holiday of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, was one of the pilgrimage
holidays to the Jerusalem temple, and so we have to imagine then that every
year on this holiday masses of Jews would go to Jerusalem and congregate
in the temple, and as part of the observance of this festival, would wave
these branches and the citrus fruits, the citrons, in their hands. One year
during the observance of this festival, Alexander Jannaeus, acting as high
priest, poured holy water on the ground instead of on the altar, and this got
all of the pilgrims upset, and what happens according to Josephus, “For at a
festival which was then celebrated, when he stood upon the altar [he being
Alexander Jannaeus] and was going to sacrifice, the nation rose up against
him and pelted him with citrons.” So when Alexander Jamraeus poured the
water on the ground instead of on the altar, everybody got upset and started
to throw their citrons at him. “At this he flew into a rage and killed about
6,000 of them.” Alexander Jannaeus got so upset that he then massacres
6,000 of the pilgrims. So Alexander Jamiaeus is somebody who did not act in
accordance with Jewish law and who acted ruthlessly and mercilessly against
his enemies, and we see this over and over again.
It is not surprising then that a number of years later, a Jewish revolt breaks
out against Alexander Jannaeus, so some sectors of the Jewish population
were so upset at him that they rise up and revolt, and who do they turn to
for help, they turn to the nearest outside power which is the Seleucid king,
and at that point the name of the Seleucid king was Demetrius III. So these
Jewish rebels turn to Demetrius III for help. Demetrius then invades, and
what happens when he invades Jerusalem? The rebels suddenly decide,
maybe we do not really want to go back to Seleucid rule; maybe we would
prefer a bad Jewish king over a good Greek one. So they stop the revolt, they
abandon Demetrius and the go back to Alexander Jamiaeus. The problem is
that Alexander Jannaeus was really mad at the rebels, and so he decides to
take revenge on them and to punish them for the revolt.
We have a reference to Alexander Jannaeus’ punishment of the Jews in a
Dead Sea Scroll that is called the Pesher Nahum. The Pesher Nahum is
commentary on the prophetic book Nahum, and here is what the relevant
passage says and we are going to sort of go through it carefully in order to
understand it. “Interpreted, this concerns Demetrius, king of Greece, who
sought on the counsel of those who seek smooth things to enter Jerusalem.”
We are going to be talking a little more about Dead Sea Scrolls in another
couple of lectures, but let me just preface by saying that in the literature from
Qumran in the Dead Sea Scrolls, when you have books that are commentaries,
what they will do is they will cite the original biblical passage and then they
will give the interpretation.
So what we are looking at here is an interpretation of a specific passage from
the book of Nahum where the interpretation starts, interpreted, this concerns
Demetrius, the King of Greece. The relevant passage in the book of Nahum
actually does not say anything about Demetrius king of Greece; the person
who wrote the interpretation, the Pesher on Nahum, however, interpreted this
particular passage as relating to Demetrius, King of Greece.
What we have here then is a passage from this biblical book that was
interpreted by the person who wrote the Pesher as relating to this episode
where Demetrius invades Jerusalem because some sectors of the population
sought his help in their rebellion against Alexander Jamiaeus, and specifically
this particular passage here is starting, interpreted, this concerns Demetrius,
King of Greece, who sought on the counsel of those who seek smooth
things to enter Jerusalem. In other words, the group of Jews, the rebels, who
invited Demetrius in are described here in the Pesher Nahum as those who
seek smooth things. That group of Jew is described here as those who seek
smooth things.
I emphasize this because we will come back to talk about what this means.
What is this group who seeks smooth things? So the passage continues,
“But god did not permit the city to be delivered into the hands of the kings
of Greece, from the time of Antiochus until the coming of the rulers of
the Kittim,” that is the Romans. So the way the author of this document
interpreted things, God intervened and did not allow Jerusalem to be
delivered into the hands of Demetrius. In fact, he did not allow Jerusalem to
be delivered again into the hands of a foreign power until the Romans come
along, and Romans in this document are titled Kittim, a biblical term that is
used here as sort of a cover term for Romans.
So in the Pesher Nahum then from Qumran, we have a reference to this
invasion of Jerusalem by Demetrius because he was invited by the Jewish
rebels who were rebelling against Alexander Jannaeus. After the revolt
ended then, Alexander Jarmaeus decided to take action against and punish
the rebels for having rebelled against him, and Josephus, the ancient Jewish
author, describes this event and describes Alexander Jannaeus’ punishment
as follows. “He [Alexander Jannaeus] brought them [the rebels] back to
Jerusalem; and there he did a thing that was as cruel as could be.” So this
is how he punishes the rebels. “While he feasted with his concubines in a
conspicuous place, he ordered 800 of the Jews to be crucified, and slaughtered
their children and Wives before the eyes of the still-living wretches.”
In other words, Alexander Jannaeus punishes the Jewish rebels by crucifying
them, and while they are writhing in agony on their crosses, he slaughters their
wives and children before their eyes and all of this while he is banqueting with
his concubines. So again, obviously Alexander Jannaeus was not a very nice
person; he was quite ruthless. Interestingly, this same episode, the crucifixion
of these rebels, is referred to in the Pesher Nahum, that same document from
Qumran that we talked about that is a commentary on the biblical book of
Nahum, and here is what the relevant passage in the Pesher Nahum says.
“Interpreted, this concerns the furious young lion,” and there is no doubt
furious young lion here is referring to Alexander Jannaeus, “[who executes
revenge] on those who seek smooth things and hangs men alive.”
So he took revenge on his group of rebels here in the Pesher described as
“those who seek smooth things,” and what does he do, he hangs them alive.
Hanging them alive means he cmcifies them, so this document refers to the
same episode of the crucifixion of Alexander Jannaeus’ opponents as we
read about in Josephus so it is very interesting. We have a document from
Qumran and we have a description in Josephus that pretty much described
this event in the same way. That still leaves us hanging with the seekers of
smooth things. What is this group, those who seek smooth things?
One of the interesting things about the Dead Sea Scrolls is that a lot of times
when they refer to real people or groups of people, they refer to them not
by their real names but by nicknames, and usually the nicknames are puns.
Those who seek smooth things is a pun, a name for a particular group. So the
people who lived at Qumran and deposited the scrolls in the nearby caves
referred to another Jewish group, specifically in this case the group that
rebelled against Alexander Jarmaeus, by the title “those who seek smooth
things.” In order to understand the pun we actually have to go into Hebrew
a bit. Seekers of smooth things in Hebrew is dorshay halakot; those who
seek smooth things, dorshay halakot. Dorshay is seekers. Smooth things,
halak, halakot.
This is a pun on another Hebrew term that is very close seekers of the law,
dorshay halakhot. So halakot is smooth, halakhot is the law. So in other
words, the seekers of smooth things is a pun for a group of people who seek
to observe the law and mockingly the people at Qunran are referring to this
group not as those who seek to observe the law but who seek smooth things.
Well, what does this mean? Those who seek smooth things means those who
seek the easy way out, who look for the easy observance of the law rather
than the correct observance of the law.
In other words, the people at Qumran who deposited the Dead Sea Scrolls
in the nearby caves mocked this other group of Jews, the same group that
rebelled against Alexander Jannaeus, as those who seek the easy way out in
the observance of Jewish law. They, the people at Qumran, saw themselves
as observing the law in the right way, which was a stricter observance of
law, while this group, the one that rebels against Alexander Jannaeus, they
mock as those who seek the easy way out, the seekers of smooth things.
Who is this group then, the seekers of smooth things? This is a name that
the group at Qumran gave to the Pharisees. Specifically the group that rebels
against Alexander Jarmaeus and that is then punished by Alexander Jannaeus
with crucifixion and that is described in this document, the Pesher Nahum, as
those who seek smooth things, that is the Pharisees, and remember that one
of the groups that was especially opposed to Alexander Jannaeus’ disregard
for the observance of Jewish law was the Pharisees.
Alexander Jannaeus dies in 76 B.C. and then he is succeeded to the throne by
his widow, Salome Alexandra, and she rules the Hasmonean kingdom until
67 B.C. when she dies, and this is actually very interesting too because here
we have an example of a Hasmonean queen ruling. By the way, of course,
Salome Alexandra as a woman automatically was disqualified from serving
as high priest in the Jerusalem temple. The high priest in the Jerusalem
temple could only be men, and so Salome Alexandra ruled the Hasmonean
kingdom as queen but her older son served as the high priest while she was
in oflice, and Josephus actually gives Salome Alexandra kind of a glowing
review with a little bit a qualification sort of saying, she was great even
though she was a woman and here is what he says.
She died, after reigning nine years, and she lived in all seventy-
three. She was a woman who showed no signs of the weakness of
her sex for she was sagacious to the greatest degree in the ambition
of governing and demonstrated by her deed at once that her mind
was tit for action.
So all together she was a good queen, she was a good ruler, despite being
a woman. Salome Alexandra then served as queen and her older son, John
Hyrcanus II, served as high priest. When Salome Alexandra died in 67 B.C.,
the office of king should have fallen to her older son, to John Hyrcanus II,
the problem is that Salome Alexandra had a younger son named Aristobulus
II who was very ambitious and who also wanted to be king. So what happens
after Salome Alexandra’s death is that a civil war breaks out over the struggle
to the throne between her two sons, and it is this civil war that eventually
leads to the downfall and collapse of the Hasmonean kingdom, because
eventually both of these sons during the course of the civil war are
going to turn to an outside power for help, that power being Rome, and what
is going to happen eventually is that the Romans then will simply step in and
take over the Hasmonean kingdom. The Hasmonean kingdom falls as a result
of the struggle over the throne between the two sons of Salome Alexandra.
By the time the Hasmonean kingdom reaches its height, which is roughly
around let us say, 100 B.C. or a little afterwards, what we have is then a
sizable kingdom that goes all the way up in the north through Galilee and
the area of the Golan Heights. It includes territories on the eastern side of the
Jordan River and the Dead Sea, through the area of the Judea and including
Idumaea. It is actually quite a sizable kingdom in the end and includes much
of the area that is today within the borders of the state of Israel and the
Palestinian territories, and even some area that today is in the country of
Jordan, excluding part of the Negev desert.
Who was living in this territory while the Hasmoneans had their kingdom?
What I would like to do now is turn to look at the peoples living here to the
south of the Hasmoneans kingdom, bordering on the Hasmonean kingdom,
and talk about them. The people who directly bordered on the Hasmonean
kingdom were a people called the Nabateans. The Nabateans were a Semitic
people, specifically actually they were an Arab people, their language, the
Nabatean language, is an early form of Arabic. Originally the Nabateans
were nomads in the desert and wandered desert routes through the near East
to the Mediterranean coasts.
Originally when we first started hearing about them which is roughly let us
say six century B.C., we hear about them establishing a series of caravan
routes with trading posts along the way through the desert, and what they
would do with these caravans is bring expensive items from the East, for
example myrrh, frankincense, things like that, perfumes. They would bring
these costly items by caravans through the deserts to the Mediterranean
coasts, and then from the Mediterranean coasts, these expensive luxury
items were shipped to the various Hellenistic kingdoms and other kingdoms
around the Mediterranean basin. This was a very lucrative trade, this trade in
these luxury items, and you have to imagine these caravans of various kinds
of pack animals going through the desert. These are precisely the kinds of
items that are very small, lightweight to carry, not breakable, but earn a lot of
money once you get them to their destination.
Over the course of the centuries, the Nabateans established a very lucrative
trade and began to amass quite a bit of money. Eventually some of the
trading posts along the caravan routes turned into permanent settlements,
and over the course of the centuries, these permanent settlements turned into
towns and cities. By the second and 1st centuries B.C., the Nabateans had
established a kingdom in the area through which their caravan routes passed.
The area of the Nabatean kingdom eventually came to include much of what
is today Jordan, much of what is today the Negev desert, and most of the
Sinai Peninsula. The main outlet for the Nabatean trade was the port of Gaza
on the Southern Palestine coast which you will recall was originally one the
Philistine cities.
By the 2“d and lS‘ centuries B.C. when the Nabateans established this kingdom,
they then also established a Monarchy that ruled over this kingdom, and they
established then a capital city for their kingdom at a place called Petra, which
is today in Jordan, to the southeast of the Dead Sea. Many of you might be
familiar with the city of Petra because of its landscape which is absolutely
spectacular. On the one hand, it is an extremely bleak desert landscape but
it is spectacular because it is mountainous, and not only is it mountainous,
but the mountains are made out of a red-colored sandstone. Into this sort of
bleak but very rugged red sandstone landscape, the Nabateans established
their capital city.
If you go to Petra today, you can still wander around it, and in fact it is one of
these world heritage sites today that is protected, and as you approach Petra,
one of the things that strikes you again is how utterly barren this landscape is.
One of the things that the Nabateans did was to establish a very sophisticated
water technology which enabled them to survive in desert conditions, and
not only survive and store water in these sorts of desert conditions, but even
cultivate land in these desert conditions.
When you go to Petra today and you wander around, and it is an enormous
site, you see different parts of the city. There are places where there are
houses and not surprisingly many of the houses are very affluent. Some of
them are beautifully decorated for example with wall paintings. Even though
we are in the middle of the desert, we see things like a colonnaded street,
large temples, which were dedicated to various Nabatean gods, including a
temple that has been coming to light over the last number of years with an
archaeological expedition from the United States, the Great Temple at Petra.
There is a theater which is cut into one of the sides of the cliffs, a Greek-
style theater, and very interesting to notice already that we see here Greek
or Hellenistic influence on the Nabateans. So even though they are a desert
people, originally a Nomadic people, by the time they settle down and build
their capital city at Petra, we see a great deal of Hellenistic influence on them,
just as we see Hellenistic influence on the other native peoples in this area.
By far the most spectacular thing about Petra and what it is best known for
are the rock-cut tombs, miles and miles and miles of tombs that are cut into
the cliffs. Many of these tombs consist of simple openings which led in to
one or more caves where bodies were originally buried, but in some cases,
the facades of the tombs have been cut in beautiful ways to depict buildings
so it makes it look as though you have a three-dimensional building in front
of you when, in fact, what you have is a facade where the face of the bedrock
has been cut.
The most famous of the rock-cut tombs at Petra by far is the tomb that we
are going to look at here. It is a tomb that is reached when you first go into
Petra. In order to go into Petra actually, you have to go through a very long,
narrow, windy canyon which is called the Siq. When you reach the end of
this canyon, you begin to see in front of you the beginnings of one of these
rock-cut tombs, and by far the most spectacular one of these rock-cut tombs,
and here it is, it is called The Khazneh, that is a modern Arabic name, which
means the treasury. Looking at this rock-cut tomb-which by the way might
be familiar to you from the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, in
that movie the Holy Grail is supposedly in this structure, which it is not of
course, but anyway, you might have noticed it in the movie-what we see in
this rock-cut tomb is an attempt to imitate a facade of a building to make it
look like a Greek-style temple.
Again, look at the Greek or Hellenistic influence here on the Nabateans. The
quality of this particular rock-cut tomb though indicates that it must be Royal,
not only the quality but also the location of it. The fact that everybody who
goes into Petra, the first thing that you see when you emerge from the Siq is
this in front of you, so the location and the quality of this tomb indicate that
it must be royal, it must be the tomb of one of the Nabatean kings. Which one
we are not sure, possibly Aretas IV, who was the Nabatean king at around the
time of Jesus, so late 1st century B.C. early 1st century A.D., possibly that is
the king who was originally buried in this tomb.
Unfortunately because the tombs are open and people have wandering
around in them now for centuries and centuries, all of the tombs are looted
out of their original contents so we cannot say for sure now who was buried
there but best guess is that it was somebody like Aretas IV.
Although we focus on Petra as the most famous example of a Nabatean city
and rightfully so, the Nabateans established other permanent settlements in
other parts of their kingdom. In fact, there were a series of Nabateans cities
located around the Negev desert. One of them is at Avdat, or the original
Nabatean name Oboda, which is in the middle of the Negev desert. There
what we have is the original Nabatean acropolis which originally had a
temple on top of it, surrounded by houses, and we have other settlements like
that located around the Negev desert. All of these permanent settlements,
even though they are in the middle of the desert, were agricultural settlements
because the Nabateans developed a sophisticated technology which enabled
them to grow agricultural produce even under these harsh desert conditions.
When we look at other aspects of Nabatean culture, we can see very clearly
some of the Greek or Hellenistic influence reflected for example in sculpture,
reliefs, and statues. The Nabateans in terms of material culture are perhaps
best known for their pottery, spectacular pottery which is literally egg-
shell thin, fired very, very hard and decorated with beautiful abstract floral
and geometric designs. It is impossible to mistake this for any other kind
of pottery.
The neighbors of the Hasmoneans to the south were these Nabateans, and
the Nabatean kingdom then continued to exist until the year 106 A.D. when
it was annexed by the Roman emperor Trajan. What we have looked at here
now is the Hasmonean kingdom, the Nabatean kingdom to its south, and this
now sets the stage for talking some more about some of the Jewish groups
that it came to exist during the course of the Hasmonean period.
