Andrea M. Berlin Boston University Manifest Identity: From Ioudaios to Jew Household Judaism as Anti-Hellenization in the Late Hasmonean Era Around 100 BCE, early in the reign of the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus, two Levantine authors provide very similar descriptions of a contemporary cultural idea. The first is Meleager, a native of the city of Gadara. Writing in Greek, he asserts: My birthplace was of Syria, the Attic haunt of Gadara; My foster nurse was the island of Tyre, and Eukrates I own for sire ... I am Meleager. Yes, and what if Syrian? Stranger, marvel not: We inhabit a single homeland, the world. 1 Meleager describes the cosmopolitan ideal – the world is our common home where more unites than divides us. He doesn’t ignore the various identities by which people differentiated themselves; indeed he makes a point of listing his for three of his poem’s four lines: his city of birth; his Attic cultural affiliation; the city where he moved to study; his family line- age; and his “nationality”. But he asserts forthrightly that all are subordinate to a single larger identity, that of citizen of the world. We do not know the name of the second author. He originally wrote in Hebrew, but his words come down to us only in Greek translation. This second author composed the work we know as 1 Maccabees. In it, he de- scribes a decree formulated by the Seleucid king Antiochus IV, some sixty years earlier. He says that “the king wrote to all his kingdom for all to be- come one people (εἰς λαὸν ἕνα) and for each to abandon his own customs” (1 Macc. 1:41–42). 2 In contrast to Meleager’s proud assertion of cosmopoli- tanism, our second author presents the notion of a single people as an in- dictment – an alien notion with baleful consequences. ————— 1 AP 7.417.1–5 = Gow/Page, Greek Anthology, Meleager epigr. II.1–5 2 For a recent discussion of this decree in context see Mendels, “Memory”, 52. I realize that the author of 1 Maccabees represents this statement as original to the time of the decree, meaning around 165 BCE. That may or not true, but in the event it is not verifiable. What is undeniable is that he wrote it down around 100 BCE, and that he clearly believed that its formulation would be understandable and persuasive to his audience. For this reason I think it is legitimate to offer it as a pendant to the epigram of Meleager.