Early Judaism- A Comprehensive Overview

royal patron by legitimate means, consolidated his position (so the hostile

narrative claims) by doling out Temple vessels as gifts to Seleucid officials

and neighboring cities, and by engineering the murder of Onias when the

ex–high priest threatened to expose his sacrilege (2 Macc. 4:32-34). Nefari-

ousness, not Hellenism, appears to have motivated Menelaus’s behavior.

During the winter of 170/169, Antiochus invaded Egypt, preemptively

halting Ptolemaic designs to recapture his Levantine possessions. By the

following summer, the king controlled most of Lower Egypt and had in-

stalled a pliant youth on the throne. But this détente swiftly deteriorated,

prompting a second Seleucid invasion in 168. Though victorious in battle,

Antiochus was compelled to call off the campaign under threat of Roman

intervention.

In the course of his contest with Egypt, Antiochus paid two visits to Je-

rusalem that seriously tried the allegiance of his Jewish subjects. The first

involved a fleecing of the Temple’s adornments, probably with a view to re-

plenishing the king’s war chest in the wake of his Egyptian expedition. The

second visitation came in response to a violent upheaval among the Jews

themselves. While the king was occupied with Egypt, the ex–high priest,

Jason, marched against Jerusalem at the head of an army, intent on depos-

ing Menelaus and his supporters (an objective he failed to achieve).

Antiochus, unable or unwilling to discriminate aggressors from defenders,

brought down bloody slaughter upon Jerusalem. Not long after this deba-

cle, the king dispatched a sizeable force to garrison Jerusalem indefinitely,

an event (according to our hostile sources) accompanied by gratuitous vi-

olence and brutality. Menelaus remained in power, guarded by the

Seleucid garrison (the “Akra”), which also came to serve as a place of ref-

uge for Jewish loyalists of Antiochus’s regime.

Some scholars are skeptical of the Maccabean narrative, contending

that the king’s repressive measures are unintelligible, unless the Jerusalem-

ites as a whole had in fact attempted to cast off Seleucid rule. The absence

of direct testimony for such a revolt necessarily renders any speculation

moot. Yet even if the revolt hypothesis were substantiated, it would not ac-

count for Antiochus’s actions following his installation of the Akra: the

suppression of Judaism itself. A litany of horrors describing this unparal-

leled persecution are paraded in both Maccabean accounts: the Temple

and its worship were profaned in every conceivable way, its altar rededi-

cated to Olympian Zeus; other altars were erected throughout Judea and

cultic celebrations prescribed in honor of Dionysus and the king’s birth-

day; Torah scrolls were burned, and anyone found in possession of one or

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chris seeman and adam kolman marshak

EERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
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