The temple in Jerusalem became the temple of Olympian Zeus, and the Jews were forced to celebrate festivals in honor of the Greek god Dionysos. RamesIII&IV,? All such stories about this contractual alliance between king and deity followed a six-part fixed narrative pattern: 1) the circumstances leading up to the foundation (or refoundation) of the temple, including an account of how it was destroyed, how its enemies were defeated, and how the deity was appeased; 2) the preparations for the construction; 3) the construction process itself; 4) the dedication rites and festivities; 5) the kings prayer for the deitys blessing; and 6) the blessings upon those faithful to the temple, and the establishment of norms. While we must be mindful of their politically-motivated distortions, 1 and 2 Maccabees do offer useful information about the political and economic causes of the revolt, if we read their narrative and cultural codes correctly. In other words, in 2 MaccabeesIoudaismosmeans the pious social order established by Judah Maccabee upon refounding the Temple, and by which the Hasmoneans rule. Conversely, its antithesis,Hellenismos, means the wicked social order established by Jason in founding the gymnasium (i.e., the Greek polis), by which he and Menelaus ruledin 2 Maccabees, Jasonsgymnasiumis cast as the anti-Temple.. In 1 and 2 Maccabees, Antiochus IV is portrayed as a wicked king who compelled the Judeans to do everything forbidden by divine Law, such as eating porkmuch as, in a Babylonian story, the servants of the Ezidu temple were allegedly forced to eat leek, which was equally forbidden for them. Antiochus allowed local traditions to flourish as long as they were seen as not posing a threat to the kingdom. "Farther East" means Bactria. The Maccabean Revolt - Ligonier Ministries Admittedly, however, the text is open to alternative, more radical reinterpretations, as that suggested in comment 2. Department of History Consequently, the fact that 2 Maccabees emphasizes Judahs piety is evidence not that its author was religiously minded, but that he was a supporter of the Hasmonean dynasty! I also recall that popular revolts in both Mesopotamia and Greece were quite often very openly about high taxes, debt, etc., and that Babylonian kings often issued (usually ineffective) debt cancellation decrees under the pretext of "establishing justice (i.e. Copyright 2023 Center for the National Interest All Rights Reserved. To properly understand the implication of this revised reading, we must add a third methodological premise: the accounts of 1 and 2 Maccabees are informed by culturally-conditioned narrative codes. To use modern terms, we may first identify three interrelated political issues: the fact that a dynastically legitimate High Priest was deposed, with Jason appointed in his stead by the Seleucid king, and Jasons manifest unworthiness as a rulerbecause he founded agymnasiumthat allegedly diverted the priests from the Temple service. However, following the battle of Panion (200 B.C.E. Religious Persecution or High Taxes? The Causes of the The biblical accounts in the 1 and 2 Books of Maccabee are Apocryphal, and focus on the religious aspects The situation is sometimes described as an idyllic one. WebIn the year 142 BCE, after more than 500 years of subjugation, the Jews were again masters of their own fate. Because of the accounts emphasis on piety, these denunciations have been discounted by modern commentators, but if we read through 2 Maccabees culturally-conditioned narrative codes, the argument presented is perfectly rationaland plausible. When Mattathias died, the revolt was led by his son Judas, or Judah By casting these events in this manner, the Judeans were able to incorporate them into their collective memory, resulting in the Hanukkah festival as we know it today. This administrative revamping had disastrous religious consequences: as subjects of a Greekpolis, the Judeans were compelled to give up their traditional customs and take part in Greek religious rites that were jointly introduced by the foreign settlers and the Hellenized Judeans of Antioch-in-Jerusalem. Wikipedia What about the religious persecutionor, as modern historians nowadays have it, the prohibition of Jewish customs? 1:50). You'll get a detailed solution from a subject matter expert that helps you learn core concepts. WebThe Jewish revolt against the Greeks sets a precedent in human history - it becomes the worlds first religious war. The success of the revolt is still celebrated today by Jews as the Feast of Hannukah. As those who adopted Greek ways are simply labeled as renegades, one cannot reconstruct what their views really were. The Maccabean Revolt The cultural codes that I describe were indeed elaborated in, and used by, learned circles of scribes, and we may surmise that the way lay people remembered events used distinct narrative codes - no society, and no social group within a society, can do without narrative codes altogether. We are fortunate to have these two different versions, particularly as they describe the events from the perspective of the insurgents. Here we go again. The obvious conclusion is that both these works recount the founding myth of the Hasmonean dynasty: Judahs purification of the Temple was equated with a temple foundation (Hanukkahin Hebrew means dedication), andin accordance with the traditional contractual transaction of temple in return for dynastypiety qualified him, and his brothers, to be king. 1 Maccabees blames Antiochus IV, the Seleucid ruler, for wanting to make all the Revolt of the Maccabees | The National Interest WebI Maccabees was originally written in Hebrew as an official court history for the Hasmonean Dynasty. Some Jews adopted these practices, but others, notably the Maccabees, did not. After all, I doubt the Hasmoneans were necessarily any more just (fiscally speaking) than the rulers who preceded them. Although Jason and Menelaus were Hellenized High Priests, we have no reason to believe that they ever harmed the Temple, as 2 Maccabees claimed, or that Menelaus took part in the religious persecution of fellow Jews, as some modern scholars contended. The issues of tax increases and royal appointments to the High Priesthood arise repeatedly throughout 2 Maccabeesalways in conjunction with one another, and always decried by equating royal appointments with unworthy candidates. To put it in more precise terms, our misconception is due to the modern Western way of classifying social reality, whereby politics and religionand indeed cultureare discrete semantic categories. In truth, there are good reasons to believe that the king was not mistaken: there was indeed a popular revolt taking placewhich means that what we have here is an account that is doubly deceptive, due to its political bias. Maccabean Revolt Timeline Maccabees Full-scale, open revolt against the Romans occurred with the First JewishRoman War in 66 CE. They were the ones who egged on Antiochus IV and instituted the religious reform in Jerusalem. The king agreed. Share. This deity chose a man for his outstanding piety and ordered him to build His (or Her) templeand in return, He (or She) pledged to give that man a dynasty. I don't think this thread is really the place for antisemitism. Mistakenly believing that the Judeans were revolting against his rule, Antiochus IV attacked Jerusalem on his return from Egypt. In 175 BCE he was deposed by his brother, Jason, who promised to pay the provincial tribute at a substantially higher rate if Antiochus IVwho had just ascended to the Seleucid throneappointed him High Priest. The methodological assumption of numerous scholars, to which I subscribe, is that stories reshape events and do not make them up altogether. It is how certain events were subsequently reshaped in the Judeans collective memory, to suit the very same cultural and narrative codes that shape 1 and 2 Maccabees throughout, and whose primary function was to attribute culturally acceptable meaning to events that lacked it. This patternwith appropriate cosmetic changes to adapt it to the replacement of Israelite kingship with a High Priest as ruleris what underpins the main narrative sections of both 1 and 2 Maccabees. WebThe Maccabean Revolt was a conflict, lasting from 167 to 160 BC, between a Judean rebel group known as the Maccabees and the Seleucid Empire. In this work, the author sees the germ of the problem much earlier, when the Jewish high-priest asks for and receives permission from Antiochus IV to build a gymnasion, part of the Greek educational system, in Jerusalem. WebScience Earth Sciences Earth Sciences questions and answers Question 5 The Maccabean revolt was directed against o the Persian empire. History Crash Course #29: Revolt of the Maccabees - Aish.com For most people in the modern West (and the Middle East, and probably elsewhere), standards of social and economic justice are still not completely separate from the notion of "What (the) God(s) want(s). WebMaccabean Revolt. The account of the suppression was reshaped using a narrative pattern that is well documented in Babylonian literate culture: righteous kings enforced divine law, and wicked kings violated it. WebPre-Rebellion In 198 BCE Seleucids took over Jerusalem and oppressed the Jews religiously (Antioch IV was the king of the Seleucid empire). What was the Maccabean Revolt? - CompellingTruth.org My hunch is that if we were to go back in time and ask a Judean peasant, the tax issues would figure far more prominently in their narrative of the revolt than the cultic issues (although the latter would certainly not be absent from the narrative or conceptually separate from the tax issues). Jason, the high-priest of Jerusalem, is said to have sent money for a sacrifice to Herakles, but those carrying the money thought it inappropriate. Maccabean Revolt - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia WebAccording to Rabbinic tradition, the victorious Maccabees could only find a small jug of oil that had remained uncontaminated by virtue of a seal, and although it only contained enough oil to sustain the Menorah for one day, it miraculously lasted for eight days, by which time further oil could be procured. As a dynastic history 1 Maccabees is considered a reliable source, but is elusive with regard to earlier events, and hence their causes. However, as traumatic as these events may have been, they could not be recounted in a straightforward way. The author of 2 Maccabees thought Jason was really not a Jew, but Jason no doubt thought he was. In the narrative of I Maccabees, after Antiochus issued his decrees forbidding Jewish religious practice, a rural Jewish priest from Modiin, Mattathias the Hasmonean, sparked the
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