The Maccabean Revolution thus sees the event as springing from the state of mind of the king, alluding
in passing, however, to his paying attention to ‘‘those who desert the holy
covenant.’’ He clearly alludes to the establishment of a gentile garrison in
Jerusalem, less clearly to a general prohibition of Jewish observances. Macc.
:– also sees the events as initiated by the king, who began by sending
‘‘to the cities of Juda’’ an official with an army, and establishing a garrison.
The elegy which concludes the first section (:–) implies that already
at this stage the effect was a flight of the Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem
and neglect of the Temple. Then there follows the statement (:) that the
king ‘‘wrote to all his kingdom that all should be one people and that each
(people) should abandon their own customs. All the peoples conformed to
the word of the king.’’ We have to admit that no other evidence survives for
any such general measure, or indeed any comparable measure affecting any-
one except Jews and Samaritans. The description of the persecution which
follows (:–) shows both a prohibition of Jewish observances and of the
Temple cult, as mentioned above, and a positive enforcement of pagan ob-
servances, both in Jerusalem and elsewhere. It was when the royal officials
came to Modein to compel the people to sacrifice that Mattathias began the
Maccabean movement ( Macc. :–).
Maccabees, always more circumstantial, describes three separate mis-
sions by royal officials to Judaea: a Phrygian named Philippus left asepi-
statēs(commander) in / (:), and one Andronicus asepistatēsover the
Samaritans (:); then the ‘‘mysarch’’ (an unintelligible term) Apollonius,
with a force which carried out a massacre (:–); and finally an Athe-
nian named Geron ‘‘to force the Jews to give up their ancestral beliefs and no
longer order their lives according to God’s commands. And also to desecrate
the Temple in Jerusalem and dedicate it to Zeus Olympius, and that on Mount
Gerizim, as the inhabitants had petitioned, to Zeus Xenius.’’^43 Maccabees
goes on to describe the positive and negative features of the persecution in
comparable terms, adding the vital detail that a decree was sent out to the
neighbouring Greek cities to enforce the same measures on the Jews there
(:–).
It is not necessary to consider in the same detail the secondary account
in Josephus (Ant. , –) except to note that it represents the Samari-
tan petition (text to n. above) as a reaction to their exposure to the same
persecution. They address the king as ‘‘Basileus AntiochusTheos Epiphanes’’;
they assert that they are Sidonians, not Jews; claim that their observance of
some Jewish customs is adventitious (which the king’s memorandum takes
. For this reading of the phrase, see Habicht,. Makkabäerbuch, on this verse.