I wish I had been there on that
fantastic July day in 169 B.C.in the Alexandrian suburb of Eleusis,
when for a few brief moments the past and future were divided by a
line in the sand. On one side stood the royal egomaniac Antiochus IV,
whose army was just four miles from capturing the Pharaoh of Egypt.
Standing in his way was one old man, the Roman ambassador, Gaius
Popillius, carrying a decree from “the Senate and the People of
Rome”. It ordered the upstart Syrian Greek to turn his Slecuid army
around, and go home. Antiochus was infuriated, and tried to buy time.
He had to consult his advisers, he said. But Gaius would have none of
that. Grabbing a stick he drew a circle around the King and insisted,
if Antiochus stepped over the line without agreeing to turn back, it
would mean war with Rome. It was the original line drawn in the sand,
and for one of the few times in history, it actually worked.
Antiochus went home. It came to be called the “Day of Eleusis”,
and because of that day, we celebrate a holiday – just not the one
you're thinking about, probably.
Antiochus IV was King of the Slecuid
Empire, centered in Syria and stretching from India on the east and
now the border with Egypt on the west. He was called Epiphanes, “God Manifest” on
his monuments, and Epimanes behind his back - “The Mad One”.
And as he retreated eastward across the Sinai, he got madder and
madder. You see, some jackass in Judea had spread a rumor that
Antiochus had been killed in battle. Maybe the Romans had spread the
story to weaken Antiochus in his rear, and maybe Antiochus had spread
it himself, to flush out any trouble makers among the conquered
peoples in his empire. But whoever spread it, the hottest hot head in
Judea was a Jewish religious fanatic named Mattathias ben Johanan, the
Hasmonean. Mattathias believed the rumor, and with about a thousand followers
came charging out of the hills to capture the temple in Jerusalem and
drive the high priest Menelaus into the wilderness
Now, few people in Jerusalem missed
Menelaus. He had become high priest because his brother Onias had
been high priest before him. But when Onias had sent Menelaus to
deliver the yearly taxes to Antiochus IV, Menelaus had included a little
extra from himself, a bribe, and suddenly Onias was no longer high
priest, Menelaus was. So you can see why Antiochus tended not to think of the high priests of Judisiam as particularly holy, and neither did
the people of Jerusalem. Menelaus slipped a little more in public opinion when his brother Onias died in a tragic sword accident – bad
luck. So the Jews of Jerusalem were not really sorry to see Menelaus
gone.
But Antiochus IV(above) was sorry. Menelaus might
be a sniveling bottom feeder, but he was the King's sniveling bottom
feeder. And then there was that whole “got to show them whose the boss”
dynamic going on. And Antiochus IV had an army that had been expecting a rich sacking of Alexandria, which the Romans had put the kibosh
to. So in the dog days of August 169 B.C., everything was pointing
toward a very bad day for Jerusalem. And it came.
It seems – oops - somebody had left
the city gates open. So the Slecuid army marched right in, as
Mattathias ben Johanana slipped out the back door. First the Slecuid soldiers stripped the Jewish temple of everything of value - everything not already sold to pay tribute to Antiochus IV, or stolen
earlier by the Babylonians or the Egyptians when they sacked Jerusalem. Really there couldn't
have been that much left to steal. But whatever it was, Antiochus IV took it. And then,
according to the holy text, Second Macabbees, “And he commanded his
soldiers to cut down relentlessly every one they met and to slay
those who went into the houses.”.
The primary non-religious source
for what happened was the Jewish radical turned Roman informer,
Josephus. He says that over three days Antiochus IV murdered 44,000
people in Jerusalem, which would have been about 10% of the
population, and another 44,000 women and children were sold into
slavery. Antiochus IV then built a citadel right next to the Jewish temple, which he stocked with a
permanent garrison. Then he had the Jewish temple re-dedicated.
On the altar where Menelaus had sacrificed goats to honor Yahweh, the
Greek priests now sacrificed pigs to honor Zeus. Antiochus IV also
issued a decree forbidding circumcision - (who was the lucky guy who
got to check on that? ). It seemed the Jews had finally ticked off
one King too many.
But, a year later human nature, or
maybe it was Yahweh, intervened. In 168 BC, the rising empire of
Parthia captured the Afghanistan city of Heart (Hair-it). This was an important because the region around Herat was the bread basket of central Asia, and part of the trade route with India. We're talking a major loss of
taxes, here. So Antiochus IV had to turn eastward to deal with the
upstart Parthians. But he did not forget the troublesome Jews. He ordered his governor of Syria, a nobleman named Lysias “to
conquer Judea, enslave its inhabitants, utterly destroy Jerusalem and
abolish the whole nation."
In 167 B.C. Lysias dispatched four
divisions to accomplish this task. As they marched on Jerusalem,
Mattathias, who had reappeared, now organized the faithful. However, because he was a
religious fanatic, Mattathias insisted that all soldiers strictly adhere to Jewish law - that's what they were fighting for, wasn't it?
Unfortunately the Slecuid army did not recognize the Jewish Sabbath,
and on a Saturday they attacked a Jewish village. Following the law,
the villagers refused to do any work on the sabbath, even refusing to
lift a weapon to defend themselves, and all 1,000 were slaughtered.
After this Mattathias was replaced as leader of the revolt by his
son, Judah. And under him, the Jews decided to fight, twenty-four,
seven.
It turns out the new Jewish leader,
Judah ben Mattathias was pretty good at it. In 166 B.C. Judah fell on
the Slecuid supply base at Emmaus, killing its 3,000 man garrison,
capturing a huge cache of weapons and food, and forcing half the
Seleucid army to retreat. A year later he beat the other half of the
Slecuid army at Beth-zur, forcing them, again, to retreat. It was
battles like this that earned him the nickname of Judah the Hammer,
or in Hebrew, Judah Maccabees. Shortly after this victory, word again
arrived that Antioschus IV was dead. Except this time he really was.
He'd been in Babylon, struggling to prepare a counter attack against
the Parthians, when he suddenly dropped dead. He might have been
sick, but I think it more likely, he'd been poisoned. In any case,
his young son, Antiochus V, now inherited the empire.
Lysias immediately had himself declared
Antioschus V's guardian, which put the Governor in charge of the entire
empire. Lysias ordered an end to efforts to retake Heart, and in 165 B.C.
he marched for a third time on Jerusalem. Third times the charm,
right? This time Lysias came by the southern road, catching the
Hammer off guard. This time Lysias actually laid siege to Jerusalem.
This time it looked as if the clock had run out for the Jews. This
time there was nobody to save them. And then out of nowhere appeared
a guy named Phillip, (the royal governor of Babylon, actually), who
had been with Antioschus IV when he died. And Phillip claimed that
Antioschus IV on his deathbed had asked him, Phillip, to raise the king's son, now known as Antioschus V. That would make Phillip the regent, not
Lysias. Lysias did not believe a word of it. Would you? But Lysias still
had to deal with Philip’s army. And one morning Judah looked out
from walls of Jerusalem, and saw...nobody. The entire Slecuid army
had mysteriously disappeared. It was a miracle. As long as you did not notice the whole Slecuid infighting going on.
Judah Maccabees ordered a a new altar
built for the temple, and declared 8 days of “sacrifice and songs”
for its re-dedication. The pigs were out, Yahweh was back in. There
was only one problem. Tradition said that the temple menorah lamps
had to burn on the new altar every night, all night, during the
celebration. But there was only enough oil for one night. What to do?
Now if it was me, I would have ordered
the nine lamps on the menorah to be publicly lit at sundown each
night, as usual. And then, after the faithful had gone home, the
priests would quietly extinguish the lamps. This way, instead of
burning through all the oil in one eight hour winter's night, the
lamps would burn for an hour each night, for eight nights. Besides, it was and is
tradition for the flames to burn for only half an hour
after sunset, except for special occasions, like the re-dedication of the temple. And I think that maybe that was what the Hammer did.
But then, I am a non-believer. And priest are in the business of
believing, even in miracles. And the truth is, miracles don't happen
without a little help from somebody. Who that help comes from depends
on who and what you believe in. Anyway....
It was the first Hanukkah, the first
festival of the lights. Two thousand years later it is not a very
important Jewish holiday, and about the only one in which women play
a leading role. Each of the eight nights a woman first lights the “shamash”,
the central candle or lamp, used to
illuminate the entire ritual. On each successive night , the shamash then is
used to light one candle more each nigh until all are burning. In each Jewish home they are
displayed in a window or an exterior door, “to illuminate the house
outside” the home. And as they do so, the women recite the
Hanukkah prayer.
“We light these lights for the
miracles and the wonders, for the redemption and the battles that you
made for our forefathers, in those days at this season, through your
holy priests. During all eight days of Hanukkah these lights are
sacred, and we are not permitted to make ordinary use of them except
for to look at them in order to express thanks and praise to Your
great Name for Your miracles, Your wonders and Your salivations.”
Lysias defeated and killed Philip in 163 B.C.. But
in 162 B.C. he was defeated by Demetrius I, who was Antiochus IV's
older brother and Antiochus V's uncle. Demetrius had replaced Antiochus IV as the official
hostage in Rome, and when their father died, Antiochus IV had grabbed
the crown. So this was payback. Demetrius executed both Lysias, and
the boy king Antiochus V. Demetrius then tried to reconquer the Jews, but the Fighting Maccabees held him off for ten years, until
Demetrius was killed by a new usurper in 150 B.C. It was the end of Slecuid empire.
The next empire to come marching down
the coast road of Judea would be the Romans. And they and the Jews would
have their own problems, strongly reminiscent of the ones the Jews
and S'ecuid's had shared. They say, some people never learn. But
I think, most people never learn, certainly not in the middle east.
- 30 -
Herod (above) was a second son and he certainly didn’t seem destined to be great. But then, neither did he seem destined to be crazy, either. But he was both. At 25 he had a wife (Doris) and a child (Antipater) and an easy job. He was in charge of Galilee, a poverty stricken back water province of the Roman Empire. But then his father was murdered (poisoned), and his older brother committed suicide (he bashed his own brains out). That promoted Herod to the job of King. And then in 40 BC a rebellion overthrew Herod. Any less of a lunatic would have taken the hint and retired, but Herod refused to accept the harsh reality. With a little help from Rome (the Senate officially elected him “King of the Jews” - without asking the Jews, of course), in 37 BC Herod returned to Palestine, murdered the usurper and took back his throne. By this time he had divorced his dear Doris. So, to reinforce his ties to the religious fanatics (always a good idea in the Middle East) Herod now married the teenage daughter of a priest. Her name was Mariamne.
Trying to keep peace within his new family, in 36 BC, Herod appointed his new brother-in-law High Priest. But two years later the new brother-in-law had a little too much to drink at a party and said something offensive about.Herod, to Herod. So, Hero
As was to be expected, by 12 B.C., Herod had become convinced that his sons by Miriamne I, Alexander and Aristobulus, were out to murder him. Again. if they had any brains. they were. Anyway, the Emperor Augustus talked Herod out of killing his sons immediately. But when Herod got hold of a conspiracy theory he was like a paranoid dog in taxidermy school - he was convinced everybody was after his bones. It took him five years but Herod finally compiled enough evidence to convince Augustus that the he, Herod, King of the Jews, was never going to let the matter drop. So with the Emperor’s reluctantly acceptance, both of Miriamne I’s sons were tried and executed in 7 B.C. That left Antipas, his son by Doris (remember her?) as the next in line to the throne. And in keeping with the tradition of dedicated paranoids running Israel and Palestine, in 4 B.C. Herod had him executed, too.
It was a typical Herodian Family Feud. You see the lady at the center of this scandal, Herodias, had already produced a daughter with husband number one. The daughter was named Salome, and 
