In
333 (Battle of Issus) the 23 year old Macedonian king Alexander
defeats the Persian forces at Issus and claims Asia as his "spear won" territory.
Over the next few years he makes good on this claim. By the end of his
short life (he died in 323), the boundaries of his empire reached as
far as the Black Sea in the north, Bactria (now part of Afghanistan) in
the east, Egypt to the south and everything in between. (For more on Alexander
and his successors, the Diadochs, see Livius.org.)
Not leaving behind a capable heir (Alexander died young, after all), the realm is riven by decades of wars of succession. Eventually the empire is divided among Alexander's former generals, the diadochoi. The Antigonids rule Macedonia and Greece, the Seleucids dominate the multiethnic eastern realm formerly dominated by the Persians, and the Ptolemies rule Egypt and the southern Levant, including the province of Yehud. (MAP)
Yehud, in Greek: Ioudaia, and its central city, Y'rushelem/Hierousalem, is dominated by the priestly family of Onias whose authority is rivalled by the tax farming family of Tobias, known from the works of Josephus. Internal rivalries of this sort are exacerbated by the conflict between Seleucids and Ptolemies over control of the Phoinician port cities (Sidon, Tyre, etc.) and ultimately over Egypt and her reliable sources of wealth, the locally grown wheat and taxes and goods extracted through control of much of the maritime trade between Europe, Africa, and Asia. At the battle of Panion (Banyas), the young Ptolemaic king is decisively defeated and Jerusalem is taken by force as well (198BCE). The Seleucids are welcomed by the pro-Syrian party among the Jerusalem aristocracy who expect to gain advantages from their support of Egypt's competitor, though they defy the attempt, on the part of the new suzerain, to confiscate the private treasury of the pro-Ptolemaic Tobiads kept safe in the YHWH temple of Jerusalem, avoiding a major crisis of trust in the inviolability of this institution.
One generation later, however, the temple and the civil and political character of the city are severely challenged by an interference in the internal affairs of Jerusalem on the part of Antiochus IV. Whether this crisis was precipitated by Jewish Hellenizers who wished to turn Jerusalem into a Greek or Macedonian polis (called "Antioch in Ioudaia") or whether the reform was imposed from the outside is still debated. The events trigger a major civil war that grows into a sustained guerilla fight against the Syrians sent to quell the unrest, but in the event, the status-quo-ante is restored and the major leaders of the rebellion are accepted by the successor to Antiochus IV as the new rulers of Jerusalem and their right to live according to their paternal laws confirmed. This is the beginning of the rise of a new family of high priests and kings in Ioudaia, the Hasmonean dynasty.
Image: Coin depicting Alexander of Macedonia (d. 323).