Hellenistic Literary Responses to the Destruction of Jerusalem: A Comparison with Violations of Divinely Protected Sacred Spaces in Classical and Hellenistic Antiquity

This paper explores the variegated literary responses to the destruction of Jerusalem in Hellenistic sources. Amid various examples in the Hellenistic period, the literary responses to the destruction of Jerusalem has been selected as it provides a well-defined and manageable primary source base for analysis. Our initial discussion provides the appropriate framework for the comparison of other ancient sources which respond to other violations (or destructions of) sacred space in Classical and Hellenistic antiquity. Given the massive corpus of relevant Greek literature, an exhaustive investigation obviously exceeds the limits of this paper, and thus we are necessarily required to be selective in our sources chosen for analysis. Preference is given to those sources which most clearly illustrate the phenomenon discussed.