Elias Bickerman (July 7, 1897 O.S. in Russia – August 31, 1981 in Jerusalem), also spelled as Bickermann or Bikerman, was a leading scholar of Greco-Roman history and the Hellenistic world.

Biography

Bickerman was born in Kishinev, then part of the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

, to a secular Jewish family. He left Russia during the

Bolshevik revolution The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key moment ...

and the

Russian civil war {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Russian Civil War , partof = the Russian Revolution and the aftermath of World War I , image = , caption = Clockwise from top left: {{flatlist, *Soldiers ...

for Germany, where he received education from German classicists and Hellenists. Due to the rise of the Nazi Party to power and his Jewish heritage, he fled to France. He soon had to abandon that country as well after the Battle of France. Since 1942 he lived in the U.S. His research interests extended to Judaism and some aspects of Iranian history. For most of his career, he was Professor of Ancient History at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, New York.

Work

Bickerman's scholarship of the

Maccabean revolt The Maccabean Revolt ( he, מרד החשמונאים) was a Jewish rebellion led by the Maccabees against the Seleucid Empire and against Hellenistic influence on Jewish life. The main phase of the revolt lasted from 167–160 BCE and ende ...

was highly influential. Rather than the more traditionalist reading of an evil Seleucid king fighting a unified Jewish opposition, Bickerman emphasized that much of the conflict was in internal Jewish tensions in Judea of the era. He showed that the Hasmonean leadership were not as anti-Hellenist as often portrayed, at least after gaining a measure of autonomy. He also made strong cases for the authenticity of documents found in the book of

2 Maccabees 2 Maccabees, el, Μακκαβαίων Β´, translit=Makkabaíōn 2 also known as the Second Book of Maccabees, Second Maccabees, and abbreviated as 2 Macc., is a deuterocanonical book which recounts the persecution of Jews under King Antiochus I ...

, showing that they matched other Seleucid documents of the era, had correct titles, and were in general plausible. A partial list of books includes: *''The God of the Maccabees'' (Berlin, 1937; English translation, 1979) *''Institutions des Séleucides'' (Paris, 1938) *''From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees'' (New York, 1962) *''Studies in Jewish and Christian History'' (3 volumes, Leiden, 1976–1986) *''Religion and Politics in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods'' (Como, 1985) *''The Jews in the Greek Age'' (Cambridge, Mass., 1990)

Footnotes and references

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bickerman, Elias Joseph 1897 births 1981 deaths Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States 20th-century American historians Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy Columbia University faculty Emigrants from the Russian Empire to Germany