In the second half of the fourth century B.C. the Persians were overthrown by the Greeks. The astonishing young Greek conqueror, Alexander the Great, set out to seize a great empire and to establish Greek culture all over it. As a boy, he had been a pupil of the famous Greek philosopher, Aristotle. Alexander believed, with a passionate conviction, that everything Greek was superior to anything else and he wanted to rule over a great empire, stretching from Greece to India, where all men thought as he did. He encouraged mixed marriages amongst his soldiers to try to enforce Greek ways among the conquered peoples and he himself married an Asiatic princess. Although he died at the age of 33, he succeeded to an astonishing extent in spreading the Greek culture and language in the eastern Mediterranean lands and Western Asia. In his lifetime, many new Greek colonies and cities were established, such as the city of Alexandria in Egypt. We refer to the spread of Greek culture and ideas as 'Hellenization', from the Greek word 'Hellen' meaning a Greek person.

When Alexander died, his empire was split up between his generals who were rivals. In the third century B.C. the Jews came under the control of the Greek rulers who established themselves in Egypt, the descendants of the general named Ptolemy. Palestine was the border area of the empire of the Ptolemies and to the north the empire of Seleucus, another general, was centered in Syria. During this period the Jewish community in Egypt appears to have increased considerably in number. It was also during this period that the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek began because there were many Jews in the communities outside Palestine who no longer understood the ancient Hebrew. Even in Palestine, the common language of the Jews had become Aramaic, related to Hebrew, but the religious scrolls continued to be read and copied in - ancient Hebrew.

In the second century B.C. the Jews came under the control of descendants of Seleucus. Rivalry had continued between Syria Egypt and in 198 B.C. the ruler of Syria, Antiochus III conquered P tine after fighting against the Egyptian ruler, Ptolemy V. It was not new Syrian ruler who brought great trouble to the Jews, but his Antiochus IV. To understand the crisis which developed, we need to look at the effect which Hellenization was having on the Jews.