Dr. Jodi Magness
Appearances
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
Exactly so. That's right. There had been a devastating battle that Antiochus III lost against the Romans in the year 190 BC, the Battle of Magnesia, Magnesia on the Meander in Asia Minor. As a result of that battle, the Romans imposed really harsh terms of surrender on Antiochus III.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
He actually ended up paying, if we put it into modern terms, what was the largest war indemnity in history until our time. basically bankrupted the Seleucid kingdom. And as one of the terms of surrender, his younger son, Antiochus IV, was sent as a hostage to Rome. So by the time we get at the beginning of the 160s BC, Antiochus III is dead. There actually had been another king in the meantime.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
We'll skip over that. And now Antiochus IV, Epiphanes, is the ruler of the Seleucid kingdom. One of the things that the Romans did in that peace treaty, it's called the Peace of Apamea in 188 BC. One of the things that the Romans did was to try and make it impossible for the Seleucid kingdom ever to become a threat to Rome again, right?
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
So they wanted to make sure that the Seleucid kingdom was sort of permanently weakened. Well, so we get into the beginning of the 160s BC and what does Antiochus IV do? He invades Egypt, right? And this Egypt campaign is going pretty well, actually. And the Romans are kind of monitoring what's going on. And at some point, it looks like Antiochus IV is going to be able to take Egypt.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And at that point, the Romans apparently send some ships over and they threaten him and they say, listen, you withdraw or you're going to suffer the consequences. And so he ends up having to withdraw. Now, while Antiochus IV was in Egypt, rumors began to spread around Judea that he had died. He had been killed. That then led to a kind of a local uprising.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
This is when Jason, by the way, reappears briefly on the scene. Anyway, there's kind of a local uprising. All of this then puts Antiochus IV into a really, really bad mood. So he's forced to withdraw from what had been a really successful campaign in Egypt because of Roman pressure.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And he's withdrawing and he hears that basically Judea is up in revolt and it's a mess and he has to send troops to kind of put down all of that instability. And so all of this is kind of background to what happens the following year. So the following year, 167 BC, Antiochus IV issues an edict. And this edict now really does completely change everything that had been going on before.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And that is that he basically mandates that everyone in his kingdom is now to adopt Greek culture. And he doesn't put it this way, Greek religion, what we would call Greek religion. In other words, everybody's basically to become like Greeks. And that meant that now the worship of the God of Israel was outlawed because everybody's supposed to worship the Greek gods.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
The Jerusalem temple was rededicated to the worship of Olympian Zeus. And by the way, very interesting, the ancient Greeks and then the Romans later equated the chief deity of the Jews, who was the God of Israel, with their own chief deity. So in their minds, Jewish God was sort of equivalent to Olympian Zeus because these are chief deities who are celestial deities.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
I mean, the difference is that the Jews didn't worship other gods, didn't have a pantheon of other gods that they worshiped alongside their chief deity. But in the minds of the Greeks and the Romans, they're kind of equivalent. And so, for example, centuries later, it's not a coincidence that the Roman emperor Hadrian builds a temple dedicated, well, supposedly,
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
There's debate about whether he actually did this, but builds a temple or shrine dedicated to Capitoline Jupiter on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and makes that god, Jupiter, Capitoline Jupiter, the new patron deity of the city of Jerusalem. So in their minds, this was kind of an equivalent thing. So now the Jerusalem temple is rededicated to the worship of Olympian Zeus.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
Everybody, all Jews now are to adopt Greek customs and it is now illegal. It is now outlawed to follow biblical Jewish law. You're no longer allowed to refrain from work on the Sabbath. You're no longer allowed to, let's say, circumcise your boys. You're no longer allowed to prepare special food and abstain from eating pork and all of that sort of stuff. It all becomes outlawed on pain of death.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
So this is obviously very different from what had happened under Jason and also, you know, dramatically different from the from sort of the position that the Jews had enjoyed now for centuries. Right. As sort of being this kind of semi-autonomous and having complete religious freedom.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
Well, yeah, except, okay, so a couple of things. So remember with Jason, the initiative here came from within the Jewish community. It wasn't imposed on the Jews, right? The Jews requested it. You know, that's a big difference here. So it's not that what Jason did was kind of what we saw with Jason was some sort of punishment or imposition from an outside power on the Jews.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
In this case, though, this is imposed on the Jews. And there's, you know, there is a lot of discussion about why Antiochus IV did this. It depends on who you follow.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
So if you look at the author of the book of Daniel, in Daniel there's a reference to this that makes it sound like this was kind of the king being upset after the end of the Egyptian campaign and kind of punishing the Jews in that way.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
The Roman historian Tacitus, who's notoriously anti-Jewish or very negative towards Jews at least, presents it as if Antiochus IV wanted to sort of obliterate Judaism, which is what this would have done in effect had it actually happened. And that's kind of the way that he presents it. That's not the way I understand it.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
So the way that I understand this is that, so if we go back to Alexander the Great and his successor. So when Alexander conquered all of these lands to create his empire, one of the places that he conquered was Egypt. In fact, he went through Judea in 332 BC on his way to Egypt.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And while he was in Egypt, one of the things that he did was to establish a new city on the coast, which he named after himself, Alexandria. His successors then followed Alexander's example and established Greek cities throughout their kingdoms, which they named after themselves. And this was a deliberate policy.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
For one thing, it helped them establish their legitimacy, their ties to Alexander by emulating what he had done. Because, you know, basically Alexander's successors were all usurpers. None of them were related to Alexander by blood. So they had to establish their connection to Alexander, and one of the ways that they did it was by emulating what he had done.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
So they established throughout their kingdoms cities which they named after themselves. So you get Antiochias, you get Ptolemaeus, you get Seleucus, whatever, throughout their kingdoms. And the... The sort of advantage of doing this was that these Greek cities, which literally are called Apollos, which is the word for city in Greek, these Greek cities had a lot of advantages for the inhabitants.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
So if you were living in a city that was now newly established or a city that had already existed but was rebuilt and given the status of a Greek city... You had the advantage of now living in a city where you had great new schools to send your kids to for an education, theaters where you could go and watch performances, new temples to worship the gods.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
There were other benefits, like, for example, you had tax exemptions or tax breaks and things like that. So it was great benefit, actually. But it also helped these successors of Alexander promote the spread of Greek culture. Because the kingdoms that these successors of Alexander ruled over were very diverse. They had different populations, ancient Near Eastern populations.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
They spoke different languages. They had different customs. They worshiped different gods. And one of the ways that Alexander's successors were able to sort of unify these diverse populations was by spreading Greek culture. And the establishment of these Greek cities was a way to sort of promote the spread of Greek culture. And now what you had were the youth learning groups the Greek language.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And of course, even if you weren't young and you went to a theater play. And so this was a kind of a way that these successors of Alexander used Greek culture as a means of unifying their kingdoms. And I actually think that that's what Antiochus IV was trying to do here.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
I think, you know, we saw Judea, you know, it's got all these different people with these different or what he probably thought were sort of weird customs or whatever. And, you know, we thought, well, let's bring them into the fold.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
Let's mandate that everybody is going to now adopt Greek culture and get rid of sort of these problems, which, you know, are fostered by these kind of internal civil wars and opposition and so on. So I think that he was using I'll say this term, it's debated. But anyway, he's using Hellenization, meaning sort of the trying to promote the spread of Greek culture, not to punish the Jews, per se.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
or to try to eliminate Judaism as a religion, but rather to deal with what he saw as a problematic part of his kingdom and bring all of these people into the fold, so to speak. So I think that that's what's going on. Now, of course, it didn't have the desired impact, right?
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
Exactly. And so here again, we get that very different picture that apparently there were some Jews, certainly among the elite, but maybe even among the masses who either thought this was fine with them or, you know, were so busy just trying to subsist that they didn't really care one way or the other.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And so there, you know, in some parts of the Jewish population, there was no opposition to this at all. And the revolt actually starts after the edict is issued by Antiochus IV, when with an incident in a small town, not in Jerusalem, the revolt didn't start in Jerusalem. And by the way, the first Jewish revolt against the Romans did not start in Jerusalem either. It started in Caesarea.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
But in this case, this revolt starts in a, I mean, really it was a village that's about halfway between today Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It's called Modi'in. And there was a local village priest. His name was Mattathias, and he had five sons. And what happens is that the king's officials are sent out around the kingdom to make sure that everybody is complying with the new mandate.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And as part of that, there was a sacrifice being offered to a Greek god, apparently with pork. And a Jew was about to offer this sacrifice. And there's an officer, a royal officer there overseeing this sacrifice. And this priest, this local village priest, Mattathias, who was already an elderly man at that point, but he kills the Jew. This is interesting, right?
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
So he kills the Jew for complying, and he also kills the officer. The Jew and the officer are killed, and that then sparks the outbreak of the revolt, because at that point, of course, you've killed an officer of the king. You've not only disobeyed the edict, but you've also killed one of the king's officers. And so the revolt officially starts with this.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And Mattathias dies within a year of the outbreak of the revolt. As I said, he was elderly. But the revolt in its first years was led by the third son, whose name was Judah, who becomes known as Judah Maccabee. Maccabee, it's a nickname. It means Judah the Hammer.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
Yeah. So it comes from Judah's nickname, right? Maccabee. And it kind of gives this name to the whole revolt. The family, by the way, sometimes we refer to them as the Maccabees, but they're actually the Hasmonean family. And they and their descendants will be known as the Hasmoneans. But Maccabee comes from that nickname. That's given to Judah. Right, Judah the Hammer.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And so he, you know, our sources describe this. And again, a lot of our information comes from 1 and 2 Maccabees, which are these two books that are included in the Catholic Bible. And then we also have some information from Josephus, the ancient Jewish historian. So... What happens is that Judah gathers some supporters and they flee, right? They flee into the wilderness.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
They hide out and they sort of, as they go around, they recruit more and more followers. And without going into a great deal of detail, of course, the Seleucid king sends, you know, troops to, I mean, Antiochus IV isn't going to put up with a revolt. So he sends troops to put down the revolt. And there are a series of battles that are fought.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And it's one of the very, you know, really surprising things of history that the, let's call them the Maccabees at this point, were successful. They basically have a guerrilla band is what it is, right? But somehow they were able to register some significant victories against the Seleucid forces. And there's been a lot of scholarship written about how this happened.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
It is, actually. And, you know, it's funny. Most people, I think, don't realize that they're familiar with this already because most people are familiar with the holiday of Hanukkah, but are not necessarily aware of its connections to this revolt.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And the other thing that I'll mention, though, is that at this very early stage of the revolt, it wasn't just an external revolt against the Seleucids, but it was also an internal civil war because our sources tell us that Judah and his followers also rooted out men or people who they refer to as lawless.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And lawless means Jews who were not observing biblical Jewish law, meaning Jews who were going along with the royal mandate, right, accepting it. So basically, it's kind of a two-pronged approach. On the one hand, rooting out anybody who is complying with this requirement to worship Greek gods and adopt Greek culture. And on the other hand, fighting against the Seleucid forces.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
Yeah, so one of the interesting things, and I didn't mention this previously, but when Antiochus IV, after the Egyptian campaign, and he finds all this unrest in Jerusalem and Judea, one of the things that he does is to build a fortress in Jerusalem called the Acre, which apparently overlooked the temple, or at least overlooked the temple, but also apparently maybe guarded some of the access to the temple precinct.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
Well, no, it was not on the Temple Mount. And the location of the opera is one of the most hotly debated points among archaeologists. And that's a whole other story we can go into. But anyway, it was not on the Temple Mount, whether it was adjacent to the Temple Mount or somewhere else in Jerusalem. You know, a lot of disagreement about that.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
But he garrisoned the term Acre, which in Greek means high point, suggests that it somehow overlooked the temple, right? It was on some sort of a high point. And he garrisoned this fortress, the Acre Fortress, with Gentile soldiers, that is non-Jewish soldiers, with the idea being, again, that they would be able to control the Temple Mount.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
Now, after 167 BC, when the revolt starts, of course, the Acre is still there, but the Acre will continue to be in Jerusalem and have a garrison of soldiers in it for another couple of decades until finally, a couple of decades later, one of Judah's brothers, this is long after Judah dies, one of Judah's brothers manages to take the Acre and raises it to the ground.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
But so that's the situation in Jerusalem, let's say, after 167. It basically, you know, in addition, by the way, to very interesting, to the temple in Jerusalem being rededicated to the worship of Olympians. You know, there was another temple dedicated to the God of Israel in a territory next door, which is Samaria, which is the territory of the Samarians or Samaritans.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And that temple was rededicated to the same God, Zeus, Zeus Hellenios. also after the king issued his edict. So again, no more worship of the God of Israel in the territory of the Seleucid kingdom. So this kind of revolt, sort of internal civil war slash revolt goes on for several years until we get to the year 164 BC. And during those several years, again, the Maccabees registered some
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
you know, surprising victories against the Seleucids. It wasn't always, they weren't always, but they had some very significant victories. And then what happens in 164 BC is that Antiochus IV dies. And when he died, he was succeeded to the throne by his son, Antiochus V, who was five years old at the time.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
Right. And so the kingdom now is put under the rule of a regent, basically. And Antiochus V issues an edict.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
Yes, he was very ahead of his years. He issues an edict. And this edict then basically reversed his father's edict in allowing the Jews again to worship the God of Israel. The temple in Jerusalem was returned to them. They are, you know, Judaism is no longer outlawed. Jews are now free to worship the God of Israel, you know, without fear of persecution.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And the temple then is returned to the Jews and Judah and his brothers then cleanse the temple to rededicate it to the God of Israel. So in the meantime... All sorts of practices had been done in the temple that, you know, were again antithetical to Judaism.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
You know, the offering of pigs for sacrifice and I mean, all sorts of stuff like that, which had basically polluted it in the eyes of Jews observing biblical law. So, you know, they cleansed the temple in order to rededicate it to the worship of the God of Israel. Now, one of the pieces of furniture, cultic furniture in the Jerusalem temple was a seven branched lampstand.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
Right. So in the early second century BC, Judea, which is sort of the area around Jerusalem, was under the rule of one of Alexander the Great's Greek successors. So here I just have to go back a little bit to Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great had conquered the area of Judea with other parts of the Near East in, let's say, well, Judea in 332 BC.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
called the menorah and there was special oil that was used for the menorah because of course these are basically oil lamps right so the oil that was used for the menorah the lamp stand in the temple was a special oil that had to be prepared it had to be ritually pure oil and in the intervening three years you know during the revolt there had been no preparation allowed of anything like that there was no oil you know no special oil to light the menorah so the story this is a story now we're going into stories
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
But the story goes that they're cleansing the temple to rededicate it. They need to light the lampstand and there's no oil. And they find a little jar of special oil that was somehow tucked away that had enough oil in it to last for one day and one day only or one night or whatever. And they light the lampstand and somehow miraculously the oil burns instead of for one day, it burns for eight days.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And in the meantime, they're able to go and prepare new special oil to keep the lampstand lit. And that then becomes sort of the origin story, if you wish, of Hanukkah, the holiday of Hanukkah, which basically celebrates the outcome of the revolt, right? But this symbol of the lampstand becomes associated with the holiday of Hanukkah.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And so Hanukkah then becomes a holiday that is celebrated for eight days, right? Eight days and eight nights. And where, you know, the lampstand, now the lampstand, by the way, in the Jerusalem temple had seven branches, right? It had seven branches. It had a central branch in the middle and then three branches on either side of that.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
Well, for the holiday of Hanukkah, that lampstand for use in the holiday of Hanukkah, the lampstand was kind of adapted and an extra branch on either side was added to it. So now you have one central. So for each, yes. Right, and then four arms on either side of it with those four arms, meaning eight, symbolizing the eight days and nights of Hanukkah.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And so for the celebration of the holiday of Hanukkah, it became traditional to light this lampstand and every night an additional lamp was lit and still is lit until all of them are lit finally on the last night of Hanukkah. So that's how we get that, what's called a Hanukkah menorah. That is sort of the symbol of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah today.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And so the holiday of Hanukkah actually celebrates the outcome of the revolt here, at least in 164, with the rededication of the temple to the God of Israel and symbolizing really the continued survival of the Jewish religion, of Judaism until today. So here I just want to point out to your listeners that Hanukkah, therefore, has nothing to do with Christmas.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
It has nothing to do necessarily with gift giving. There's no connection between Hanukkah and Christmas, except that they occur at roughly the same time of year. I teach my students about this a lot. I do my little what I call my Hanukkah rant and rave, which is that if you ask most people, at least in the U.S.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
today and probably in many other parts of the world, if they know of any Jewish holiday at all, can you name a Jewish holiday? many of them will only be familiar with Hanukkah.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
Right, exactly. And the reason is because of its proximity to Christmas. Now, so because of that, Hanukkah has become presented as a major Jewish holiday. But actually, it's not a major Jewish holiday. In fact, it's a minor Jewish holiday. Because the major Jewish holidays are biblically mandated. In other words, the major Jewish holidays have a scriptural basis in the five books of Moses.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
These are holidays that the God of Israel commanded his people to observe. So the major Jewish holidays, well, you have the great pilgrimage holidays to the Jerusalem temple, right? So you have Sukkot, which is the Feast of Tabernacles and Passover and Shavuot, which is the Feast of Weeks. And then you have the new year and then you have Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And after he died, his empire was split up among various generals. And two of his generals got the lion's share of his empire. One was a guy named Ptolemy who got Egypt. And the other was a guy named Seleucus who got the area to the north of Judea, the area of Syria, Asia Minor, sort of through the area of what is today Iraq or Mesopotamia.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And those are the major holidays. So this holiday, Hanukkah, has no scriptural basis. It is a holiday that was invented probably by the Hasmoneans, the successors of the Maccabees, to legitimize their dynasty. It's a holiday that probably was not, well, I could say certainly was not recognized by
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
For a while, among at least some sectors of the Jewish population, the Qumran sect associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls would not have recognized this as a legitimate holiday. So the only reason it becomes important or it's important today is because of its temporal proximity to Christmas. I like to compare it to Thanksgiving here in the U.S.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
It's a holiday that's kind of like a national holiday in a way, but not a religious holiday.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
Absolutely. And so everybody thinks Hanukkah, you know, and the cleansing of the temple is the end of the story. But what happens after that is that Judah and his brothers continue the revolt, even after the rededication of the temple, because the Seleucid kingdom was growing very weak. And they took advantage of that.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And there's another series of battles and Judah loses his life and another couple of his brothers eventually die. But what happens eventually is that under a couple of Judah's other brothers, Jonathan and Simon, Eventually, the Jews are able to gain independence, complete independence from Seleucid rule. This finally happens under Simon, the youngest of the five brothers.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
So by 140 BC, there's an independent Jewish kingdom in Judea ruled by Judah's youngest brother. And then after Simon's death, the successors of these brothers, the Hasmoneans, rule this kingdom, which over the course of time expands through territorial expansion. They take over adjoining territories also that had been under Seleucid rule. Very interesting.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
They forcibly convert the populations of these territories that they conquer, which were not Jewish territories. They forcibly convert them to Judaism and eventually establish a pretty significant independent kingdom that encompasses substantial areas outside of Judea.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And Judea, of course, lay right in the middle between those kind of two power blocks, those two kingdoms, which were ruled by the successors of Ptolemy and Seleucus, who are called the Ptolemies and the Seleucids. And it became sort of a bone of contention between them. And for most of the 3rd century BC, Judea was under the rule of the Ptolemies down in Egypt.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
But in the beginning of the 2nd century BC, it comes under the rule of the Seleucids, specifically a Seleucid king named Antiochus III. So at this point, Judea is under the rule of Antiochus III.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And the situation of the Jews is interesting because these successors of Alexander ruled their kingdoms in different ways, by which I mean that there were different kinds of administrative units within their kingdoms. And a little bit different from most of the rest of these kingdoms, Judea was a bit of a semi-autonomous area.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
This had been the case for centuries going back to the Persians, even before the conquest of Alexander. Jews were given the freedom and in fact required to live according to biblical Jewish law. That is that biblical Jewish law was the law of the land. If you were a Jew, meaning a Judean, a person Jewish,
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
from Judea or of Judean descent, you were required to follow those laws as the law of the land. So in a sense, Judea was this kind of semi-autonomous territory where the Jews enjoyed what we might consider today to be a great deal of religious freedom. And the administration of the territory was under the governance of a council called the Gerousia.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
That's right, a Greek word that comes from the word meaning elderly, because it was a council of elders, older people. I always like to point out to my students that in these societies, older people were venerated, were respected for their knowledge and their experience. And so that's basically the situation as we enter the second century BC.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
The Jews now had been living literally for hundreds of years already with a great deal of relative autonomy and certainly religious freedom.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
Yes, that's absolutely right. And so this is one of the really interesting things. And we see this actually in other periods as well. For example, we see this during the reign of Herod the Great.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
Yes, exactly. Where especially there is external influence or cultural influence on the local elites who have the money, the means, to be able to adopt these kind of outside customs, which are sort of the fashion, the modern fashion, even while continuing to observe biblical Jewish law. And we see that certainly among the Jerusalem elite after the conquest of Alexander.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
We see an increasing amount of sort of what we might call Greek influence around on the local elite. And this comes to a head in 175 BC. So now we're entering, let's say, the second quarter of the second century BC. The high priest in Jerusalem, whose name was Jason, basically paid off the Seleucid king to get permission to turn Jerusalem into a Greek polis, into a Greek city. Wow.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
Right, to rename the city Antioch, to give some of the inhabitants of Jerusalem citizenship in this Greek polis. And as a result, Greek institutions were now introduced into Jerusalem. I would qualify and say that the worship of the God of Israel was still allowed. There was no persecution for observing biblical Jewish law or worshiping the God of Israel.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
The temple in Jerusalem continued to function well. as it had previously, as a place for the center of the worship of the God of Israel. But we now have the introduction of these sort of Greek-style institutions into Jerusalem, something we had not seen before. And that includes things like theaters and- Gymnasiums. And yes, very important, a gymnasium and an amphibian.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And what's important about that is that the gymnasia and aphibia or gymnasiums and aphibians, if we put it in English, were basically schools for youth, male youth, by the way, not women, but only only males. But they were they were Greek institutions where the youth and here we're talking particularly about, again, the elites were.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
would receive a good Greek education and they would learn the Greek language and they would learn Greek classics and become acculturated to Greek culture. And this is the first time that we see something like this. Now, the problem is that a lot of these aspects of Greek culture are antithetical to biblical Jewish law and Jewish practice.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And so, for example, the word gymnasium comes from the Greek word gymnos, which means nudity or naked, because one of the centerpieces of a good Greek education was that the male youth were also educated in athletics, right? They also participated in athletic competitions, you know, whether it's races or foot races or wrestling matches or discus throwing.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And those competitions were held in the nude. Those male Greek athletes competed in the nude. And that was also the case, by the way, at the ancient Olympic Games. And, you know, biblical Jewish law considers nudity, human nudity, to be an affront to the eyes of God. And so this is completely antithetical, right, to now.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
So we have the introduction and we have some ancient sources that talk about what's going on in Jerusalem. And one of them is a work called Second Maccabees, which you would find in a Catholic Bible, but not in a Hebrew or Protestant Bible. And the author of Second Maccabees says,
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
obviously was completely opposed to these new innovations and is scandalized, describing how, for example, the priests serving in the temple would rush to finish the sacrifices before they would run off to watch the athletic competitions. And how the finest of the young Jewish men took to wearing the Greek hat and things like that. So this marks a real turning point.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
But what's interesting is that even though, let's say, the author of 2 Maccabees obviously was scandalized by this, there's no indication in our sources of any sort of real Jewish opposition. to any of this. So there's no indication that, you know, some of the families of Jerusalem rose up against Jason and, you know, anything like that. So this is really an entirely internal thing.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And it does, again, highlight the fact that, especially among the elite, or at least many of the elite, there was no problem reconciling the adoption of, let's say, in this case, Greek culture with the continuing worship of the God of Israel.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
But okay, so I'll try to explain. So I should point out that, you know, I just mentioned Jason, whose Hebrew name was Yeshua, which is actually Jesus. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's actually a variant of the name Joshua, Yeshua, Joshua, Yehoshua. And so it's actually a very common name among Jewish men at the time.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And interestingly to notice, by the way, that this high priest adopted also a Greek name, Jason, and he's known by his Greek name. But there's a little bit of background to Jason because Jason actually was not the official high priest in Jerusalem.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
The official high priest in Jerusalem was his older brother, a guy named Onias, specifically Onias III, who, for various reasons that I won't go into, had to leave Jerusalem and go up to Antioch in Syria, which was the capital of the Seleucid kingdom, in order to meet with the Seleucid king. While he's gone, he leaves his brother, Jason, in charge.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
So Jason was kind of like the interim high priest in Jerusalem, and it's when he becomes the interim high priest, he then actually bribes the Seleucid king to keep him in place as the high priest, because it was up to the Seleucid king to confirm that. the appointments of high priests. And Jason then obtains the position, sort of permanently, of high priest.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And his brother, his older brother, Onias III, never returns to Judea. He actually ends up being assassinated in Antioch. There's a whole other thread of a story connected with that. And then what happens is that three years after Jason secures the high priesthood for himself, so now we're in 172 B.C.,
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
He sends another priest who's an official in the temple, but not related to Jason, a guy named Menelaus to Antioch to make a payment to the king. Now, probably this was an annual payment. So probably the high priest had to sort of pay an annual fee to, you know, to be able to serve in their office.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And this Menelaus was not, not only was he not related to Jason, he was not a member of that family. So here I now have to see, I'm sorry, it gets a little complicated, but here I have to backtrack again. So Jason and his older brother were members of a family that were called the Zadokites.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
The Zadokites were descended, or at least claimed to be descended, from the very first high priest who Solomon had appointed to officiate as high priest in the very first temple that he built centuries earlier in Jerusalem.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
Since then, since Solomon's time, the high priests in the temple in Jerusalem had claimed ancestry from the original Zadok, and they were called the Zadokite line of high priests, and they became kind of the official high priestly family. So Menelaus was from a priestly family, but he was not a Zadokite. He goes to Antioch with the payment.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And what he does is he meets with the king up there and he outbids Jason. He says, you know what? If you make me high priest, I'll give you even more money.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
Right. And what does the king care? The king's like, sure, you know, I'll take more money. And so Menelaus is able to secure the high priesthood for himself now. And he goes back to Jerusalem. Now there's a whole episode that occurs after this that I won't go into. But there ends up being kind of a little civil war between Jason and Menelaus.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And eventually Jason ends up having to leave the country, actually ends up going to Sparta. And there's a really interesting connection between some of the elite and, you know, priestly Jews of this period and Sparta, which is kind of fascinating, actually. Anyway, he ends up eventually going to Sparta. Menelaus becomes the high priest.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
This transition, so to speak, leads to a kind of a lot of unrest. There was, you know, there was some dissatisfaction among some. And I should mention that the factions supporting Jason and Menelaus, it wasn't just religious. It was also political because they were also political factions, pro-Ptolemy, pro-Selucid, whatever, right? Anyway.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
The bigger background here is that by the time we get into, let's say, the 160s BC, the country is now under the rule of a son of Antiochus III, whose name is Antiochus IV, specifically Antiochus IV Epiphanes, Epiphanes is an epithet of the god Olympian Zeus, the chief deity of the Greeks, and it means the manifest god.
The Ancients
Hanukkah & the Maccabees
And it's because Antiochus IV sort of venerated that particular god as his special patron deity. So he adopts the epithet of that god. Now Antiochus IV had been raised in Rome. There's a whole backstory to this too. His father had at some point sent him as a hostage to Rome.