Greek Rule over the Land of Israel

After Alexander's death his empire broke apart among his generals. The Land of Israel lay on the seam between the two strongest fragments: the Ptolemies in Egypt and the Seleucids in Syria. For over a century it belonged to Egypt, then around 3560 passed to the Seleucids. Judea was small, but it sat on the road between two kingdoms, and was fought over constantly.

Internally, authority remained with the High Priest and the council of elders, so the old order seemed to continue. The real change was cultural. Greek language, the gymnasium, theatre, philosophy, the human body as the measure of beauty — none of it arrived by force; it arrived by attraction. A class of mityavnim, Hellenizers, emerged from prominent Jerusalem families who held that Jewishness should join the wider cultural world, and were willing to trade commandments for it. Priests were known to abandon Temple service to reach the games in time.

The sages of this period — Antigonos of Sokho, disciple of Shimon the Righteous, and then the zugot, the pairs of teachers — worked to keep the Oral Torah transmitted precisely. That tension is what led, a century and a half later, to the Hasmonean revolt.