2 Esdras 14:45-46, which was written in the second century CE, declares: "Make public the twenty-four books that you wrote first, and let the worthy and the unworthy read them; but keep the seventy that were written last, in order to give them to the wise among your people." This is the first known reference to the canonized Hebrew Bible, and the seventy non-canonical texts may have been mystical; the Talmud suggests other mystical traditions which may have their roots in Second Temple Judaism.
The Near East was cosmopolitan, especially during the Hellenistic period. Several languages were used, and the matter of the "lingua franca" is still subject of some debate. The Jews almost certainly spoke Aramaic among themselves. Greek was often used throughout the entire eastern portion of the Mediterranean. Judaism was rapidly changing, reacting and adapting to a larger political, cultural, and intellectual world, and in turn drawing the interests of non-Jews.
Historian Shaye Cohen observed:
Many Jews lived in the Diaspora, and the Judean provinces of Judea, Samaria, and the Galilee were populated by many Gentiles (who often showed an interest in Judaism). Jews had to live with the values of Hellenism and Hellenistic philosophy, which were often directly at odds with their own values and traditions. Broadly, Hellenistic culture saw itself as a civilizor, bringing civilized values and ways to peoples they thought of as insular or either backwards or degenerate.
For example, Greek-style bath houses were built in sight of the Temple in Jerusalem, for instance, and even in that city the "gymnasium" became a center of social, athletic, and intellectual life. Many Jews, including some of the more aristocratic priests, embraced these institutions, although Jews who did so were often looked down upon due to their circumcision, which Jews saw as the mark of their covenant with God, but which Hellenistic culture viewed as an aesthetic defacement of the body. Consequently, some Jews began to abandon the practice of circumcision (and thus their covenant with God), while others bridled at Greek domination.
At the same time that Jews were confronting the cultural differences at their door, they had to confront a paradox in their own tradition: their Torah laws applied only to them, and to proselytes, but their God, they believed, was the one and only God of all. This situation led to new interpretations of the Torah, some of which were influenced by Hellenic thought and in response to Gentile interest in Judaism. It was in this period that many concepts from early Greek philosophy entered or influenced Judaism, as well as debates and sects within the religion and culture of the time.
In 331 BCE Alexander the Great took over the Persian Empire. Upon his death in 323 BCE his empire crumbled, and the province of Yehud became part of the kingdom of Egypt, ruled by the Ptolemaic dynasty. Ptolemaic rule was mild: Alexandria became the largest Jewish city in the world, and Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt (281-246 BCE) promoted Jewish culture, sponsoring the Septuagint translation of the Torah. This period also saw the beginning of the Pharisees and other Jewish Second Temple parties such as the Sadducees and Essenes. But in the early 2nd century BCE Yehud fell to the Seleucid Syrian ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes (174-163 BCE), who, in contrast to the tolerance shown by the Ptolemids, attempted complete Hellenization of the Jews. His desecration of the Temple sparked a national rebellion, which ended in the expulsion of the Syrians and the re-consecration of the Temple under the Maccabees
The kingdom established by the Maccabees was a conscious attempt to revive the Judah described in the bible: a Jewish monarchy ruled from Jerusalem and stretching over all the territories once ruled by David and Solomon. In order to carry out this project the Hasmonean kings conquered (and forcibly converted to Judaism) the one-time Moabites, Edomites and Ammonites, as well as the lost kingdom of Israel.
Generally, the Jews accepted foreign rule when they were only required to pay tribute, and otherwise allowed to govern themselves internally. Nevertheless, Jews were divided between those favoring hellenization and those opposing it, and were divided over allegiance to the Ptolemies or Seleucids. When the High Priest Simon II died in 175 BCE, conflict broke out between supporters of his son Onias III (who opposed hellenization, and favored the Ptolemies) and his son Jason (who favored hellenization, and favored the Seleucids). A period of political intrigue followed, with priests such as Menelaus bribing the king to win the High Priesthood, and accusations of murder of competing contenders for the title. The result was a brief civil war.
Huge numbers of Jews flocked to Jason's side, and in 167 BCE the Seleucid king Antiochus IV invaded Judea, entered the Temple, and stripped it of money and ceremonial objects. Jason fled to Egypt, and Antiochus imposed a program of forced hellenization, requiring Jews to abandon their own laws and customs under threat of slaughter. At this point Mattathias and his five sons, John, Eleazar, Simon, Jonathan, and Judah Maccabee, priests of the Hasmon family living in the rural village of Modein (pronounced "Mo-Ah-Dein"), assumed leadership of a bloody and ultimately successful revolt against the Seleucids.
Judah liberated Jerusalem in 165 BCE and restored the Temple. Fighting continued, and Judah and his brother Jonathan were killed. In 141 BCE an assembly of priests and others affirmed Simon as high priest and leader, in effect establishing the Hasmonean dynasty. When Simon was killed in 135 BCE, his son (and Judah's nephew) John Hyrcanus took his place as high priest and king.
After defeating the Seleucid forces, John Hyrcanus established a new monarchy in the form of the priestly Hasmonean dynasty in 152 BCE — thus making priests as political as well as religious authorities. Although the Hasmoneans were popularly seen as heroes and leaders for resisting the Seleucids, some regarded their reign as lacking the religious legitimacy conferred by descent from the Davidic dynasty of the First Temple Era.
The rift between the priests and the sages grew during the Hellenistic period, when the Jews faced new political and cultural struggles. Around this time the Sadducee party emerged as the party of the priests and allied elites (the name "Sadducee" comes from Zadok, the high priest of the first Temple).
The Essenes were another early mystical-religious movement, who are believed to have rejected either the Seleucid appointed high priests, or the Hasmonean high priests, as wrong. But they soon rejected the Second Temple, arguing that the Essene community was itself the new Temple, and that obedience to the law represented a new form of sacrifice.
Although their lack of concern for the Second Temple alienated the Essenes from the great mass of Jews, their notion that the sacred could exist outside of the Temple was shared by another group, the Pharisees ("separatists"), based within the community of scribes and sages. The meaning of the name is unclear, though.
During the Hasmonean period, the Sadducees and Pharisees functioned primarily as political parties (the Essenes not being as politically oriented). The political differences between the Sadducees and Pharisees became evident when Pharisees demanded that the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannai choose between being king and being High Priest in the traditional manner. This demand led to a brief civil war that ended with a bloody repression of the Pharisees, although at his deathbed the king called for a reconciliation between the two parties. Alexander was succeeded by his widow, whose brother was a leading Pharisee. Upon her death her elder son, Hyrcanus II, sought Pharisee support, and her younger son, Aristobulus, sought the support of the Sadducees.