Read more
List of contents
Preface and Acknowledgements
Part I: Mapping the Hellenistic Political Inter-state Ethical Code
Introduction
Chapter 1: Dialogue, War and the Public Declaration of Liberty (200-196 BCE)
Chapter 2: Two Zones of Influence – One Ethical System
Chapter 3: Hearings granted to Enemies through Dialogue
Chapter 4: The Use and Abuse of an Inter-state Ethical System – Rome’s slide into Dominance
Part II: Ethical Climate, Patterns of Behaviour and the Emerging Jewish State
Introduction
Chapter 5: The Hasmonean State as a Test Case for Patterns of Relationship between Empire and Subject State – The Book of 1 Maccabees
Chapter 6: The Subject State Corresponds and Reacts to the Hellenistic Inter-state Ethical System – The Book of 2 Maccabees
Bibliography
About the author
Doron Mendels is Max and Sophie Mydans Professor in the Humanities at the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. His recent publications include: Identity, Religion and Historiography and The Media Revolution of Early Christianity.
Summary
Against the background of a reconstructed inter-state ethical code, the rise of the Hasmoneans,Judea's ruling dynasty, is given a new perspective. Doron Mendels explores how concepts such as liberty, justice, fairness, loyalty, reciprocity, adherence to ancestral laws, compassion, accountability and love of fatherland became meaningful in the relations between nations in the Hellenistic Mediterranean sphere, as well as between ruling empires and their subject states. The emerging Jewish state echoed this ethical system.
Foreword
Demonstrates how inter-state political ethics gave rise to the emergence of the Jewish state during the years 200-168 BCE and provides an overview of how these values functioned.
Additional text
Doron Mendels presents us with a new dimension of the Hellenistic world in which ethical inter-state systems played a significant role while influencing each other, the Jewish state being part of this process.
