attering of the Jewish people to other parts of the world, but always with a sense of belonging to Palestine and of maintaining certain traditions as a consequence. This is the problem that faced Jewish intellectuals:
How does one go about preventing the disappearance of a people which has lost its country, which has been fragmentized into thousands of segments, and which has been strewn over vast land masses amidst alien tongues and alien religions? What measures does one take to preserve the identity of such a people, and how does one enforce such measures when there is no political power, no police, no army to make these measures enforceable?
This is the struggle depicted in the Book of Daniel. This book concerns the struggle of one body of Jews to maintain their religious integrity against foreign influence and persecution. Set in the fourth and third centuries B.C., the book is of a time when a process of Hellenization had begun to transform parts of the Near East. The Jews of the Diaspora were profoundly affected by this process, and even the Jews of Palestine were influenced by it. Many Jews began to read Greek literature and philosophy, wear Greek clothes, interest themselves in democratic forms of government, and generally showed a predilection toward the culture of the Greek world. There were some Jews who resented this process and who tried to resist it, among them the Hasidim ("the pious") who struggled to retain their traditions and who preached loyalty to the Torah (the Law) above all. The Book of Daniel was probably written by the Hasidim. The struggle between this group and the Hellenizers came to a head in the reign of the Seleucid monarch Antiochus IV, also called Epiphanes. A power struggle over who should be the high priest in Jerusalem convinced Antiochus that peace would be achieved by the rigorous enforcement of Hellenism on the people and an equally rigorous attack on what in his eyes was an un...