The Maccabean Revolution Drastic and violent changes thus intervened between the Hellenising
movement initiated by Jason, and the desecration of the Temple and forcible
persecution of Judaism which followed under his rival and successor, Mene-
laus, in –..In between came Antiochus’ invasion of Egypt in ,
stopped outside Alexandria by the famous Roman mission led by Popillius
Laenas. It may not be irrelevant in the context to note that truly remark-
able evidence, in the form of demotic dream texts from Egypt, supports the
testimony of Porphyry and Jerome on Daniel, and of a Greek papyrus, that
in this phase Antiochus was claiming the kingship of Egypt, was crowned at
Memphis, and acted as king in Upper Egypt.^33
For the author of Daniel (:) clearly saw some connection between the
rebuff of Antiochus by the ‘‘ships of Kittim’’ and the persecution which fol-
lowed. What Antiochus’ motives may have been will be discussed in the next
section, and what cult was established in the Temple in the last one. What
is relevant at this stage is to emphasise, firstly, that the Temple cult had con-
tinued apparently unaffected through the phase of Hellenism and the depre-
dations of Antiochus in /; and secondly, and more important, the extent
of the Jewish observances which the persecution attempted to eradicate. To
say this is not to deny the truth of Hengel’s demonstration (–) that
many Jews apostatised, went over to the Greek side, and aided the persecu-
tion; as Hengel shows, it was largely at them that the Maccabean movement
was aimed. None the less, the persecuting measures were directed against the
keeping of the Sabbath and festivals, the offering of the traditional sacrifices
in the Temple, circumcision, and possession of the Torah ( Macc. :–;
Macc. :–; Josephus,Ant. , –). The narratives also presuppose
observance of the dietary laws, at least in respect of pork.
WhetheranyJewsplayedanactiveroleininitiatingthisphase of the con-
flict (as opposed to the Hellenising movement under Jason) is a question to
which we shall have to return. What is clear on the one hand is that the per-
secution involved something much wider than the transformation or substi-
tution of a cult in the Temple; the Maccabean resistance arose in response to
attempts to change by force the private observances of the populace. It is pre-
cisely the evidence for these observances, and of the resistance to abandoning
them which, along with that previously mentioned, indicating the conti-
nuity of the Jewish community from the post-Exilic period, shows how mis-
leading it is to take some Hellenistic influences on the literary or philosophi-
cal products of Judaism and deduce from them that Judaism itself had become
‘‘Hellenistic.’’ Though it is possible to find parallels, in Syria and Egypt, for
. See J. D. Ray,The Archive of Hor(), esp. –.