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»The Hellenistic period was a period of education.«¹⁵ Paideia became the door-opener for Greek culture and for participation in it in the full sense. Attendance at a gymnasium provided not only sporting and physical training but also musical, philological, and mythological education, which were given »canonical« expression in the Homerian epics.

The establishment of a gymnasium by the High priest Jason in Jerusalem—possibly immediately after Antiochus IV’s accession to power in 175 BCE—is the first attestation of a gymnasium in the land of Israel/Palestine (1 Macc 1:14f.; 2 Macc 4:9–14; Josephus, Ant. 12.251).

Precisely what Jason really had in mind when he gained approval for the establishment of a gymnasium, by means of substantial sums of money, is a matter of scholarly dispute. This will be discussed in the context of the Maccabean Revolt. In its content, it was a matter of renunciation from a Jewish paideia as found, for instance, in the book of Sirach. With ephebeia as a condition of membership of the polis of the Antiochenes of Jerusalem, a step was taken from educational competency to political.