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Course 6 · Lesson 6.1

Persian, Greek and Maccabean periods

10 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 6 outline

Module 1: Israel in the Ancient Near East

  1. Egypt, Mesopotamia and Canaan: the world of the Old Testament
  2. What archaeology and ancient texts can and cannot show
  3. Genesis 1 to 3 beside other ancient creation accounts
  4. Ancient cosmology and how Christians and Jews read Genesis

Module 2: Covenant: Abraham and Moses

  1. What a covenant is, and covenant forms in the ancient world
  2. The covenants with Noah and Abraham
  3. The exodus and the covenant at Sinai
  4. The Torah: law, worship and the tabernacle
  5. Covenant in Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox and Reformed thought

Module 3: Kingship in Israel

  1. From the judges to the first kings
  2. David, Jerusalem and the promise of a lasting house
  3. Solomon, the temple and the divided kingdom
  4. How Samuel and Kings tell the story: sources and purpose

Module 4: The Prophets, Exile and Restoration

  1. What a prophet was in Israel and in the ancient world
  2. Amos, Hosea, Isaiah and Micah: justice, loyalty and judgment
  3. Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the fall of Jerusalem
  4. The return, Ezra, Nehemiah and the rebuilt temple
  5. How the prophetic books were formed: the debate over Isaiah and others

Module 5: Wisdom and Apocalyptic Writing

  1. Proverbs and the way of the wise
  2. Job and Ecclesiastes: wisdom that questions
  3. What apocalyptic writing is: Daniel and its setting
  4. Reading apocalyptic images responsibly

Module 6: Second Temple Judaism and the Development of Jewish Thought

  1. Persian, Greek and Maccabean periods
  2. Temple, synagogue and the main groups in Jewish life
  3. Development in Jewish thought: angels, resurrection, wisdom and law
  4. Sources: the Dead Sea Scrolls, the deuterocanonical books and Josephus

Module 7: Messianic Expectation and the Shape of the Covenants

  1. Anointed ones in the Old Testament: king, priest, prophet
  2. Messianic texts in the prophets and psalms
  3. How Jews and Christians read the messianic texts
  4. The promise of a new covenant
  5. Mapping the development of covenant across the Old Testament

All courses

Program / Course 6: Old Testament Theology and History / Lesson 6.1

What you will learn

  • Give the order of the empires that ruled Judea from 539 BC to 63 BC.
  • Explain what Hellenization was and how Jews responded to it.
  • Narrate the persecution under Antiochus IV and the Maccabean revolt.
  • Describe the Hasmonean dynasty and its end with the arrival of Rome.

The big idea

Between the return from exile and the time of Jesus, Judea passed from Persian to Greek to Hasmonean to Roman control. Alexander’s conquests brought Greek language and culture, and many Jews adopted parts of it. Under Antiochus IV in the 160s BC, the attempt to force Greek religion on Jerusalem led to revolt, led by the family of the Maccabees. They won religious freedom and founded a Jewish state that lasted about eighty years before Rome took over.

Key terms

Hellenization
The spread of Greek language, customs and ideas after Alexander the Great, and the adoption of them by other peoples.
Ptolemies
The Greek dynasty founded by one of Alexander’s generals that ruled Egypt and controlled Judea in the third century BC.
Seleucids
The Greek dynasty founded by another of Alexander’s generals that ruled Syria and took control of Judea about 200 BC.
Maccabees
The family of Mattathias and his sons, especially Judas, who led the revolt against the Seleucids. The name may mean hammer.
Hasmoneans
The dynasty descended from the Maccabees, which ruled Judea as high priests and later kings from about 140 BC to 37 BC.
Hanukkah
The Jewish festival of lights, which commemorates the rededication of the temple in 164 BC.
Septuagint
The Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, begun in Alexandria in the third century BC.

Background

For about two centuries after the return, Judea was a small province of the Persian Empire. It had a high priest and a temple, and local life was lightly governed. Little is recorded about this period, which is sometimes called the silent centuries, though writings and developments continued.

The picture changed with Alexander the Great, who defeated the Persians and took the region about 332 BC. He died in 323 BC, and his generals divided the empire. Judea lay between the Ptolemies in Egypt and the Seleucids in Syria, who fought over it. Ptolemaic rule in the third century BC was relatively mild, and a large Jewish community grew in Alexandria, where the Torah was translated into Greek. About 200 BC, the Seleucid king Antiochus III defeated the Ptolemies and took Judea.

The main sources for the story that follows are the books of 1 and 2 Maccabees, written in Greek and accepted as Scripture by Catholic and Orthodox churches but not by Jews or most Protestants, and the later writer Josephus. They agree in broad outline and differ in details.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Greek culture comes to Jerusalem

Greek culture brought language, schools, athletics and city life, and also a way of thinking. Many Jews found these attractive. Greek names became common. In the 170s BC, a priest named Jason bought the high priesthood from Antiochus IV and set up a gymnasium in Jerusalem, where young men exercised in the Greek way. A more extreme figure, Menelaus, then bought the office from Jason. 1 Maccabees says that some Jews wished to be like the nations around them and tried to hide their circumcision.

The Jewish response was divided. Some embraced the new culture. Others, called the pious or Hasidim, resisted. The disagreements over how far to adapt shaped the later divisions among Jewish groups.

Step 2: The persecution

Antiochus IV, called Epiphanes, ruled from 175 BC. After a military setback in Egypt, he took harsh measures in Jerusalem. In 167 BC he banned circumcision, Sabbath observance and possession of the Torah, and placed an altar to Zeus in the temple. Those who refused to obey could be put to death. 1 Maccabees 1 describes this as the abomination of desolation, a phrase used in Daniel 11:31 and 12:11.

Scholars debate his motives. Some see a political reaction to unrest, others an effort by the Hellenizing priests to remake Jewish religion. The books of Maccabees tell of martyrs, such as the old scribe Eleazar and a mother and her seven sons in 2 Maccabees 6 and 7, who die rather than break the law and who express belief in resurrection.

Step 3: The revolt

In the village of Modein, an old priest named Mattathias refused to offer a pagan sacrifice and killed a Jew who came forward to do so, along with the king’s officer. He and his five sons fled to the hills. After his death, his son Judas, called Maccabeus, led a guerrilla war. Judas won several battles, and in December 164 BC he recaptured the temple, cleansed it and rededicated the altar. The festival of Hanukkah, meaning dedication, recalls this.

The war continued. Judas fell in 160 BC, and his brothers Jonathan and Simon led after him. Jonathan was appointed high priest by a Seleucid claimant in 152 BC. Simon was confirmed as high priest and leader in 140 BC, and the independence of Judea was recognized.

Step 4: The Hasmonean state and Rome

The Hasmonean rulers expanded their territory, forcing conversion on some neighbors such as the Idumeans. John Hyrcanus and his successors combined the offices of high priest and ruler, and about 104 BC Aristobulus I took the title of king. Many pious Jews objected, since the Hasmoneans were not descended from David or from the high priestly line of Zadok. Civil strife marked the later decades.

In 63 BC the Roman general Pompey entered Jerusalem when two Hasmonean brothers were fighting for power, and Judea became subject to Rome. Herod the Great, an Idumean, was named king in 37 BC and ruled until 4 BC. It is in this world of Roman power and Jewish division that the New Testament begins.

  1. How did Greek culture attract some Jews and trouble others?
  2. What did Antiochus IV forbid, and why does the persecution matter for Jewish history?
  3. Why did Mattathias and his sons resist, and what did they win?
  4. Why did pious Jews criticize the Hasmoneans despite their victories?
  5. How does the translation of the Torah into Greek show Jewish engagement with Greek culture?
  6. What sources exist for the Maccabean period, and what limits do they have?

Examples

The gymnasium

Greek exercise was done naked, which offended those who valued circumcision as the sign of the covenant. The presence of a gymnasium in Jerusalem is an example of how cultural change touched religious identity. Some young priests neglected the temple to take part in the games.

The mother and seven sons

2 Maccabees 7 tells of a mother who watched her seven sons killed one by one for refusing to eat pork. Each declares that God will raise them. The story was influential in later Jewish and Christian ideas of martyrdom and resurrection.

Hanukkah

Jewish homes light a candle each night for eight nights. A later rabbinic story says that a small jar of oil lasted eight days when the temple was rededicated. The books of Maccabees themselves explain the eight days as a late celebration of the feast of tabernacles.

Different perspectives

Jewish readers

Jewish tradition keeps Hanukkah but did not include the books of Maccabees in the Hebrew Bible. Rabbinic writings treat the Hasmoneans with mixed feelings, honoring the victory and criticizing the later dynasty. The festival has been read as a celebration of religious freedom.

Catholic and Orthodox readers

Both count 1 and 2 Maccabees as Scripture. They honor the martyrs of Maccabees as saints, and 2 Maccabees 12 is a text used in Catholic teaching on prayer for the dead.

Protestant readers

Protestants do not count Maccabees as canonical but many consider the books valuable historical sources. The Reformers read them as history, not Scripture, and they appeared in early Protestant Bibles in a separate section.

Scholarly views

Historians read 1 Maccabees as a Hasmonean-friendly account and 2 Maccabees as a more theological work abridged from a lost history by Jason of Cyrene. They debate the causes of the persecution and the size of the Hellenizing party.

Why it matters

The Maccabean crisis shaped Jewish identity, ideas of martyrdom and resurrection, and the setting of Daniel. It also frames the world of the New Testament, in which Jews lived under Rome with memories of both heroic revolt and a dynasty that disappointed many. Without it, the Pharisees, Sadducees and expectations of a messiah are harder to understand.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Nothing happened between Malachi and Matthew.

Correction: The centuries saw empires change, the Septuagint begin, the Maccabean revolt and the growth of new groups and writings.

Misunderstanding: Hanukkah is a biblical festival.

Correction: It is not commanded in the Hebrew Bible. It commemorates events of the second century BC, and John 10:22 mentions the feast of dedication.

Misunderstanding: All Jews supported the Maccabees.

Correction: Some Jews favored Hellenization, and pious Jews later criticized the Hasmoneans for taking the high priesthood and kingship.

Knowledge check

Give the order of rulers over Judea from the return to the Roman conquest.

Persia ruled from 539 BC. Alexander the Great took the region about 332 BC. After his death, the Ptolemies of Egypt controlled it in the third century, and the Seleucids of Syria took it about 200 BC. The Maccabees won independence and the Hasmonean dynasty ruled from about 140 BC until Pompey made Judea subject to Rome in 63 BC.

What did Antiochus IV do in 167 BC?

He forbade circumcision, Sabbath keeping and possession of the Torah, and placed an altar to Zeus in the temple at Jerusalem, called the abomination of desolation. Those who refused could be killed. Scholars debate whether he was responding to unrest or acting with Hellenizing Jews. His measures led to the revolt and to martyrdom stories.

Who were the Maccabees and what did they achieve?

They were the family of the priest Mattathias, whose son Judas led a guerrilla war against Seleucid rule. Judas recaptured the temple and rededicated it in 164 BC, which Hanukkah commemorates. His brothers Jonathan and Simon continued the fight, and by 140 BC Judea was recognized as independent under Simon as high priest and leader.

Why did some Jews criticize the Hasmoneans?

The Hasmoneans held the offices of high priest and later king although they were not descended from the line of Zadok or from David. They also used force to convert neighboring peoples and fought among themselves. Pious groups felt that the dynasty had abandoned the purposes for which the revolt began.

Think it through

  1. How should a faith community decide which parts of a surrounding culture to adopt?
  2. Why might stories of martyrs have been so powerful?
  3. What are the risks when religious leaders also hold political power?
  4. What sources do you trust most for this period, and why?

Independent assignment

A timeline from Cyrus to Pompey

In your own notebook, make a timeline from 539 BC to 63 BC. Include Cyrus, Alexander, the Ptolemies, the Seleucids, Antiochus IV, Mattathias, Judas, Simon, Aristobulus I and Pompey. Next to each, note one source. Then write 200 to 300 words on how Greek culture affected Jewish life and how Jews responded. Keep it for yourself.

Further study