Chapter 32. Athens and Jerusalem: Hellenism, Antiochus IV and the Maccabean State

Alexander’s conquest of the Levant in 332 BCE drew the small temple-state of Judea into the Greek world. Over the next three centuries the Persian pattern of a priestly community under a tolerant empire broke down. In its place came a sharp contest between Jews who adopted Greek language, education and dress and Jews who saw that adoption as apostasy. The contest led to the only known ancient attempt to abolish a religion by decree, a successful guerrilla war, a new Jewish dynasty that combined crown and high priesthood, and finally the arrival of Rome. At the same time, Greek-speaking Jews in Alexandria produced the Septuagint and Philo’s philosophical Judaism, which became the intellectual bridge to Christianity. This chapter follows both lines, the political and the philosophical.

Between Ptolemies and Seleucids: The Hellenizing High Priests

Jonathan G. Campbell summarises the framework: “After his death in 323 BCE, two opposing kingdoms emerged out of his vast empire … the Ptolemaic kingdom in Egypt, and the Seleucid kingdom.” Judea “continued under Egyptian control for most of the third century BCE, but the Seleucids wrested it from the Ptolemies in 200 BCE” [Campbell, Deciphering the Dead Sea Scrolls, #62203, ch.3, “Understanding the Second Temple Period”]. Greek poleis were set up along the coast (Gaza, Ascalon, Joppa, Dor, Ptolemais) and inland (Philadelphia, Scythopolis, Samaria), and their citizens were “encouraged to adopt Greek language and social customs – and to make room for Greek deities in their religious systems.” Campbell notes that language and commerce were “unproblematic,” but “religious and philosophical issues were more controversial and, from around 200 BCE, serious divisions … emerged among Jews.” He cites Ben Sira’s complaint that some had “forsaken the law of the Most High God” and Jubilees’ insistence on Sabbath and circumcision as evidence that these were being neglected [Campbell, #62203, ch.3].

The crisis began with the purchase of the high priesthood. In 175 BCE Antiochus IV, “short of funds in the imperial treasury,” accepted a bribe from Jesus, brother of the high priest, “who preferred the Greek name Jason.” Jason “set about turning Jerusalem into a polis, establishing institutions for inculcating Jewish youth with Greek intellectual and sporting ideals” [Campbell, #62203, ch.3]. Campbell quotes 1 Maccabees 1:11-15: “certain renegades came out from Israel and misled many, saying, ‘Let us go and make a covenant with the Gentiles around us’ … So they built a gymnasium in Jerusalem, according to Gentile custom, and removed the marks of circumcision, and abandoned the holy covenant.” In 172 BCE “another Greek enthusiast called Menelaus” bought the office again. The changes included “nude participation in athletics – thereby flouting the biblical taboo against nakedness and causing some Jewish embarrassment over circumcision, viewed by Greeks as a crude practice” [Campbell, #62203, ch.3].

Antiochus Epiphanes and the Abolition of Judaism (167 BCE)

Campbell writes: “Not only did Antiochus IV Epiphanes raid the Jerusalem Temple’s funds, but in 167 BCE he set about eradicating Judaism altogether. Such religious persecution was unheard of in the ancient world and scholars disagree as to its causes.” His own “best guess is that Antiochus IV was quashing rival supporters of Jason and Menelaus, rather than opposing Judaism itself; he may also have felt the need to reassert his authority after a recent military withdrawal from Egypt forced on him by the Romans.” Jewish customs were banned “on pain of death,” and the Temple “was rededicated to the Greek god Olympian Zeus,” the act that “probably lies behind the reference to the ‘abomination that makes desolate’ in Daniel 11:31” [Campbell, #62203, ch.3]. Campbell also notes that a Qumran text, 4QHistorical Text A, shares phrasing about Antiochus’s actions “before his persecution of Judaea’s Jews in 167 BCE” and may have been a source for Daniel [Campbell, #62203, ch.2].

The Romanian Originea Bibliei frames the decree in imperial terms. Antiochus “tries to homogenise the numerous ethnic and religious groups of the empire into a single loyal Hellenistic kingdom,” and it quotes 1 Maccabees 1:44: “And king Antiochus wrote to his whole kingdom that all should be one people, and each should abandon his own law” [Skulski, Originea Bibliei Vol.1 – Torah, #47119, §1.3.5]. Zecharia Sitchin, in the Romanian edition of The End of Days, tells the episode as part of his wider thesis that the Jerusalem Temple was a former “Mission Control Center.” He writes that Antiochus “came to Jerusalem. It was not a courtesy visit. Violating the sanctity of the Temple, he entered the Holy of Holies. At his command the sacred ritual objects of the Temple were confiscated, a Greek governor was appointed over the city and a fortress for a permanent garrison of foreign soldiers was built next to the Temple.” After returning to his Syrian capital, Antiochus “issued a proclamation” [Sitchin, Sfârşitul Zilelor, #49306]. The fortress is the Akra, which a Seleucid garrison held until Simon expelled it.

Circumcision, the bodily mark of the covenant, was at the centre of the struggle. The Romanian Tăierea împrejur – Complotul tăcerii is a translated digest of Sami A. Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh’s study of male and female circumcision, catalogued in the library under Ion Coja, and it is polemical against the practice. It reads 1 Maccabees as evidence that the conflict was also internal. Under “Antiochus Epiphanes, the Greek king of Syria (d. 164 BCE),” it says, “the Judeans wishing to merge with other nations restored their foreskins, refusing to circumcise their boys any longer (1M 1:15). This, however, provoked the anger of the Judean priests.” It then quotes 1 Maccabees 2:44-46: Mattathias and the Hasideans “gathered an army and struck down the sinners in their anger … and tore down their altars … and circumcised by force all the uncircumcised boys they found within the borders of Israel” [Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh, Tăierea împrejur, #369786, Part II ch.1]. The same text then follows the issue into later times. It cites Celsus’ description of operations to restore the foreskin and Paul’s advice in 1 Cor 7:18. It also claims that “around the year 140 the rabbis invented a more severe form” of the cut so that restoring the foreskin became “almost impossible” [#369786, Part II ch.1]. 1 Maccabees 1:60-61, which the book does not quote here, records the royal enforcement: mothers who had circumcised their sons were put to death with their infants hung around their necks [Wikipedia: Maccabean Revolt].

Revolt, Hanukkah and the Hasmonean Priest-Kings

Campbell describes the resistance. Some Jews “simply acquiesced (1 Maccabees 2:23), while others hoped for divine intervention (Daniel 7–12). Yet others embarked on a course of violent resistance,” led by “a priest from Modein called Mattathias and his five sons.” Aided by “the obscure Hasideans,” the Maccabees wore down the Seleucid armies by guerrilla war, and “in 164 BCE, Judah Maccabee succeeded in his main aim of restoring proper Jewish worship to the Jerusalem Temple” [Campbell, #62203, ch.3]. That rededication is commemorated in Hanukkah [Wikipedia: Maccabean Revolt]. Once Antiochus V rescinded the decrees, “the impetus behind the Maccabean campaign faded” [Campbell, #62203].

The war of faith then became dynastic politics. Jonathan sided with the Seleucid claimant Demetrius I “in return for the High Priesthood.” His appointment in 152 BCE “must have earned him many enemies, for neither Jonathan nor his brothers belonged to the priestly family descended from Zadok.” Simon, after Jonathan’s execution in 143 BCE, “all but declared the small province of Judaea an independent state in 142 BCE, expelling … the garrison of Seleucid troops” [Campbell, #62203, ch.3]. The esoteric timeline allreligionsareone gives the same year with more emphasis on dependence: “142 Simon Maccabee, priest and ruler of Israel, and the Hasmonean kingdom in alliance with the Roman Senate gives support to Demetrius 2, the Seleucid king. Although the Maccabees win autonomy, the region remains a province of the Seleucid Empire and Simon is required to provide troops to Antiochus” [Anon., allreligionsareone, #53197, timeline entry 142 BCE].

Campbell lists the Hasmonean rulers who “combined the role of High Priest with that of secular ruler”: John Hyrcanus I (134-104), Aristobulus I (104-103) and Alexander Jannaeus (103-76). They conquered Samaria, Idumaea, Peraea, Galilee and the coast, and in the process “some of the non-Jewish population was expelled or converted.” The Idumaeans were “converted under Hyrcanus I,” and the people of Galilee were “forcibly circumcised by Aristobulus I” [Campbell, #62203, ch.3]. The rebels against Hellenism also became Hellenistic rulers: “Many practical aspects of public and private life under the Hasmonean dynasty were influenced by Hellenism.” Their coins carry “the traditional Hebrew name of the High Priest on one side, while the reverse bears his Greek secular title,” and their palace at Jericho “combine[s] the best of Hellenistic artistry with the provision of ritual baths” [Campbell, #62203, ch.3]. Domestic opposition was harsh. Pilgrims pelted Jannaeus “with ceremonial fruit,” and after a Pharisee-backed appeal to Demetrius III (c. 88 BCE) “Jannaeus had eight hundred of his Pharisaic opponents crucified,” an event recalled in the Qumran Nahum commentary [Campbell, #62203, ch.3]. The dynasty ended when the rival brothers Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II “petitioned Rome for help,” which allowed Pompey “to take control of Jerusalem in 63 BCE, thereby rendering the Jewish state a political puppet of Rome” [Campbell, #62203, ch.3; Wikipedia: Hasmonean dynasty].

The Books of Maccabees as Dynastic Propaganda

Both main sources treat 1 Maccabees as a political document. Campbell calls its author a man “writing propaganda for the Maccabees’ successors in around 100 BCE.” He notes that the praise of Simon, “All the people sat under their own vines and fig trees” (1 Macc 14:12), “deliberately echoes the glorious days of King Solomon” [Campbell, #62203, ch.3]. Originea Bibliei dates the book to about 134-104 BCE and says it was written in Hebrew though it survives only in Greek. It states that “1 Maccabees reflects the intense religious feelings of the new rulers. The book could have had the purpose of legitimising the Hasmonean dynasty in the face of two internal objections,” which go back to the view taught by Ben Sira in the generation before the revolt. The first passage it quotes from Ben Sira is “in the land of the people Aaron shall have no inheritance nor dominion among the people, for God is the portion of his inheritance.” That is a direct objection to priests who rule as princes [Skulski, #47119, §1.3.5]. The same source notes that 1 Maccabees stresses “the international recognition granted to the Hasmonean declaration of independence by citing no fewer than nine royal documents.” It concludes that the author “probably supported the Hasmonean court and considered that his book continued the biblical tradition of Chronicles” [Skulski, #47119, §1.3.5].

Alexandria: The Septuagint and Philo

The other Jewish answer to Hellenism was to translate and interpret rather than fight. The Septuagint, the Greek Torah begun in third-century BCE Alexandria, gave the large Greek-speaking diaspora its scripture. Kieren Barry, writing on Greek letter-mysticism, notes “a large Jewish community at Alexandria in Egypt” and states: “Traces of Pythagorean influence exist in the oldest Jewish-Hellenistic work, the Septuagint.” He extends the argument to later Jewish esotericism. The Sefer Yezirah “was written in a Platonic-Pythagorean spirit,” and “the ten sefiroth are nothing other than abstract forms of the Pythagorean decad” [Barry, The Greek Qabalah, #64708]. J. Moore points to the textual consequences: “The three major ancient versions of the Bible—the Septuagint, the Masoretic text, and the Vulgate—differ in detail.” For example, “Isaiah 7:14 in the Septuagint reads ‘The virgin will conceive and bear a son,’ whereas in the Masoretic text virgin is replaced by young woman.” He adds that Jerome’s Vulgate (c. 400 CE) drew on Hebrew texts “no longer available” and on the Septuagint [Moore, From Genesis to Genetics, #27071]. Campbell adds that the Qumran finds show the biblical text was “in a state of flux” until after 70 CE. Then “the synagogue opted for a particular edition … MT,” while “the Christian community likewise chose specific Greek translations … LXX” [Campbell, #62203, ch.2].

Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BCE-50 CE) brought the two worlds together most fully [Wikipedia: Philo]. David Fideler places him within a “symbolic commonplace in the Hellenistic period in pagan, Jewish, and early Christian thought”: “In this emanationist cosmology, Philo refers to God as the Intelligible or Spiritual Sun, and the Logos, his offspring, as ‘the Son of God’.” For Philo God is “the ‘Sun behind the sun’,” and Fideler suggests “similar views were held concerning the solar divinity Mithras” [Fideler, Jesus Christ, Sun of God, #69295, chs.2-3]. That link points back to Part 3 (ch. 25). John D. Greenwood includes Philo in the history of thought as one who “claimed that knowledge is revealed by God and cannot be attained through sense experience or reason,” and places him in the Pythagorean-Platonic current that led into Neoplatonism [Greenwood, A Conceptual History of Psychology, #25954, ch.4]. James W. Thompson shows how close Philo is to Paul. Paul’s “first” and “second” man (1 Cor 15:45-50) and his “heavenly person” and “earthly person” “employ identical terminology with that of Philo.” Thompson endorses a scholar’s verdict on the two: “Both men fished in the same pool” [Thompson, Apostle of Persuasion, #67385].

Two Conceptions of Time: Heisman’s Reading

Mitchell Heisman’s Suicide Note gives a philosophical frame for the clash. In Part II he argues that the Exodus created a “counter-cycle.” “While the Jewish yearly calendar is as cyclical as any other, holidays such as Passover celebrate the counter-cycle of the Exodus paradigm.” In that paradigm, “a directional conception of history would culminate in the ultimate, messianic triumph of good over evil. Instead of the eternal recurrence of repression … the ultimate pattern of human history would begin from the trough of Egyptian slavery and peak with the coming of the messianic” age [Heisman, Suicide Note, #38252, Part II, part 88]. He describes the Exodus as turning the Egyptian social pyramid “upside down” [#38252, Part II, part 24]. Elsewhere he describes the Greek gods as “the presumptions of human superiority inherent in the notion of aristocracy taken to superlative, imaginative extremes” [#38252, part 881]. Heisman does not apply this scheme to the Maccabean crisis itself in the passages cited here. Read through it, the gymnasium and the Maccabean revolt would set an aristocratic, cyclical Hellenic order against a Jewish messianic history moving toward an end, and the apocalyptic book of Daniel, written during the persecution, would be that directional view’s sharpest expression; this application is the present study’s, not Heisman’s.

Key points

• Judea passed from Ptolemaic to Seleucid control in 200 BCE; high priests Jason (175) and Menelaus (172) bought office and built a gymnasium in Jerusalem (Campbell, 1 Macc 1:11-15).
• In 167 BCE Antiochus IV raided the Temple and “set about eradicating Judaism,” rededicating the Temple to Olympian Zeus; Campbell attributes the move to factional politics and humiliation by Rome.
• 1 Macc 1:44 gives the decree’s aim, “that all should be one people.” Sitchin describes Antiochus entering the Holy of Holies and building the Akra garrison.
• Circumcision was fought over on both sides: Hellenizers restored foreskins, Mattathias circumcised boys by force (Aldeeb Abu-Sahlieh/Coja edition), and the Hasmoneans later circumcised Idumaeans and Galileans by force.
• Simon won near-independence in 142 BCE in alliance with the Roman Senate. The Hasmoneans merged high priesthood and kingship, ruled in a Hellenistic style, crucified 800 Pharisees under Jannaeus, and invited Pompey in (63 BCE).
• Campbell and Originea Bibliei both read 1 Maccabees as pro-Hasmonean propaganda meant to answer internal objections, among them Ben Sira’s teaching that Aaron’s house should hold no dominion; the dynasty was also not Zadokite.
• In Alexandria the Septuagint (with Pythagorean traces, per Barry) and Philo’s Logos and “Intelligible Sun” (Fideler) gave the philosophical vocabulary later shared by Paul (Thompson).
• Heisman contrasts the Exodus “directional,” messianic view of history with the eternal recurrence of aristocratic order.