Chapter 16

Rebels with a Cause: The Books of 1 and 2 Maccabees

In This Chapter

Spreading Hellenism with Alexander the Great and his successors

“Hammering” the Seleucids with the Maccabees

T here’s a huge difference between a cannon (a weapon that fires large metal balls) and a canon (a Greek word meaning “measuring rod,” used to describe those books belonging in the Bible). However, both cannons and canons have played an important part in sparking religious conflict.

One source of contention when discussing the books that belong in the Bible is the Apocrypha, a Greek word meaning “hidden.” You may be asking, “If the Apocrypha is so good at hiding, why all the controversy?” Well, the books making up the Apocrypha only hide from certain people’s Bibles and not others. Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians, for example, include most of these books in their Bibles, while Jews and Protestants don’t include any. (For more on the history of the Apocrypha, and why it was ultimately not considered part of Jewish and Protestant Bibles, see Chapter 1.) Today, the canonical status of the Apocrypha remains one of the main differences among these groups.

The books of the Apocrypha were written mostly by anonymous Jewish scribes and sages living in Egypt, Israel, and Babylonia after the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament) was completed, but before the New Testament was written. Because these books arose “between the testaments,” they’re sometimes called Intertestamental Literature. The Apocryphal books included in Catholic Bibles are called the Deuterocanonical (or secondarily canonical) books to distinguish them from the contents of the Jewish Hebrew Bible, but to affirm their status as part of the Old Testament.

Yet, whatever your religious heritage, the Apocrypha is well worth reading, and has a little something for everyone, including history, romance, music, philosophy, and prophecy. In this chapter and the next, you take a closer look at the Apocrypha and the historical circumstances from which it arose.

Filling the Gaps: Jewish History between the Testaments (586–4 B.C.E.)

When the curtain closes on the Hebrew Bible, Ezra and Nehemiah are instigating religious reforms in Jerusalem following the Jews’ return from Babylonian exile. When the curtain opens on the Aprocrypha, the Jews are under Greek rule. Understanding how this transition took place is essential for understanding the message and meaning of the Apocryphal books.

From exile to return: The Jews come home

The Babylonian Empire, after destroying Jerusalem and deporting the Judean aristocracy to Babylonia in 586 B.C.E. (see Chapter 10), fell to the up-and-coming Persian Empire in 539 B.C.E. In a move of diplomatic genius, the Persian king, Cyrus the Great, wrote what has come to be called The Edict of Cyrus, permitting all peoples formerly displaced by the Babylonians to return to their homeland. For this, Cyrus achieved great popularity in the ancient Near East, and is even called the Messiah in the Bible (Isaiah 45:1).

Even though the Jews were free to return to Jerusalem, most Jews remained in Babylon, which became a center of Jewish learning and culture over the next several hundred years. But many Jews did return to Judea, including Ezra and Nehemiah (see Chapter 12). What they found was an unorganized Persian province that needed rebuilding. Under the governor Zerubbabel, the Jerusalem Temple was finally restored. While this went on, Cyrus’s descendants expanded their empire to the west, and on one occasion, they set fire to the Greek capital of Athens. As may be expected, the Greeks didn’t forget this attack, and when the time was right, they sought their revenge.

The rise and fall of Alexander the Great

Alexander was born the son of the Macedonian King Philip II, and he grew up receiving the best that Greek culture had to offer. Yet, because Greeks don’t call Greece “Greece,” but rather “Hellas” (not after Hellen, their famous ancestress whose face “launched a thousand ships,” but an earlier Greek hero named Hellen), the culture that Alexander learned, embraced, and spread is known as Hellenism. And what a culture it was! In fact, Alexander’s teacher was Aristotle, who’s considered by many to be one of the greatest minds the world has ever known. Aristotle himself studied under Plato, who, in turn, studied under Socrates. Now that’s one impressive academic lineage (unless, of course, you take the position of Vencini in The Princess Bride, who, in demonstration of his own intellectual prowess, called these three philosophers morons!).

Alexander was a brilliant military tactician and leader. And talk about ambitious — before Alexander reached the age of 33, he’d conquered the known world, taking over and expanding the Persian Empire from Greece to the Indus River Valley in India (see Figure 16-1). Alexander’s empire brought Hellenism to the conquered territories, and for the first time, much of the world came to be dominated by one culture.

Figure 16-1: Map of the Greek Empire following Alexander the Great’s conquests.

Alexander’s not-so-great successors: The Ptolemies and Seleucids

Alexander didn’t live long, however. Probably due to a combination of factors, such as battle wounds, exhaustion, and a drinking problem akin to Dean Martin’s, Alexander met his untimely death in 323 B.C.E. Enigmatically, on his deathbed, he left his kingdom “to the strongest.” Because Alexander’s son was too young, Alexander’s generals divided the empire among themselves. Two of these generals, Ptolemy and Seleucus, and their successors are important for Jewish history and the biblical story.

Ptolemy inherited Egypt, and his dynasty lasted until 31 B.C.E., when Cleopatra VII (the famous Ptolemaic queen) committed suicide. Seleucus inherited Mesopotamia and the surrounding territories, and his dynasty lasted until 65 B.C.E., at which time the Roman general, Pompey, dismantled it. But before the demise of the Ptolemies and the Seleucids, they were antiquity’s version of the Hatfields and the McCoys, and, unfortunately for the Jews, Judea was both a battlefield and a pawn between these feuding empires.

The Ptolemies and Seleucids continued the policy of Hellenization begun by Alexander the Great to the extent that it interfered with local cultures, and in particular Jewish culture. This is most apparent during the reign of the Seleucid king, Antiochus IV or “Epiphanes,” meaning “the manifest” (manifest as a god — yes, he was modest, too). Antiochus IV completely renovated Jerusalem, turning it into a Hellenistic city. This included building, among other things, a gymnasium, where youths and even priests competed naked. This thoroughly divided the Jews — some (mostly the common people) detested Hellenization while some (mostly the upper class) coveted it, because their participation in Greek culture reaffirmed their positions of power. Some Jewish men, apparently self-conscious at the gymnasium and public baths about being circumcised, even went so far as to be “uncircumcised” by sewing lamb’s skin on their genitals. (Joey, in the hit sitcom Friends, tries a similar maneuver, though notably with Play-Doh.)

Understanding the Hasmoneans and the Books of Maccabees

The Apocryphal books of 1 and 2 Maccabees are the most informative for understanding the history of the Jews from the completion of the Hebrew Bible to shortly before the advent of Christianity. (We discuss the other books of the Apocrypha in Chapter 17.) Although 1 and 2 Maccabees cover roughly the same period, they do so from different perspectives, giving us a unique glimpse into the events and issues that shaped Judaism during this period.

First Maccabees and “The Hammerer”: Not a wrestling superstar

First Maccabees recounts the history of the Jews, beginning briefly with Alexander the Great’s death and the origin of the Seleucid Empire in 323 B.C.E., and then recounting the oppressions of the Seleucid king, Antiochus IV, which lead to a Jewish revolt (called the Maccabean Revolution) and the establishment of a Jewish dynasty (called the Hasmoneans). Although 1 Maccabees is written anonymously, most scholars agree that the author was a supporter of (and perhaps employed by) the Hasmoneans.

According to 1 Maccabees, Antiochus desecrated the Jerusalem Temple by offering a sacrifice to the Greek god Zeus on its altar. In addition, he forbade circumcision, outlawed traditional Jewish sacrifices, and disallowed the reading of the Law of Moses. Many Jews followed Antiochus’s decrees out of fear, but a few heroically refused. One such refusal sparked a rebellion that eventually led to the independence of the Jews.

As part of Antiochus’s religious “reforms,” he decreed that people not only in Jerusalem but all over Judea offer pagan sacrifices as a demonstration of their loyalty to him. At Modien, a town about 15 miles northwest of Jerusalem, the honor of proving oneself a “Friend of the King” fell to a certain Mattathias. Mattathias, however, refused:

Even if all the nations under the king’s power obey him, straying from the religions of their fathers and obey all of his commandments, yet I along with my sons and my brothers will live by our father’s covenant. God forbid that we should abandon the law and the ordinances. We will not obey the king’s words by straying from our religion either to the right or the left.

—1 Maccabees 2:19–22

With this said, Mattathias struck down a Hellenized Jew about to offer such a sacrifice, and he then killed the royal official implementing the king’s decree. Mattathias, along with his five sons and others desiring religious freedom, fled into the wilderness. The revolt sparked by Mattathias’s actions grew rapidly, with people from all over Judea joining his “rebel forces.” However, Mattathias, who was already an old man, died shortly after the revolution began, and so the leadership fell to his son, Judah, whose nickname was Maccabee, which is Aramaic for “hammerer.” And hammer he did.

Because Judah’s nickname was Maccabee, the revolt led by him is called the Maccabean Revolt. Yet, because Judah and Mattathias’s family name was the Hasmoneans, the revolt is also sometimes called the Hasmonean Revolt.

Judah (or Judas in Greek), as his nickname suggests, was a fierce fighter and a brilliant military strategist, using his knowledge of Judea’s landscape to his advantage in defeating the Greeks. After several spectacular military victories, Judah was eventually able to retake Jerusalem (165 or 164 B.C.E.). Judah then commanded that the Temple be cleansed of all its pagan paraphernalia and be ritually purified in order to reinstate the proper sacrifices to God. When the Temple grounds were ready, the Jews celebrated the Temple’s rededication on the 25th of Chislev — exactly three years after Antiochus had profaned the Temple. This celebration became known as Hanukkah (also spelled Chanuka or Chanukkah), from a Hebrew word meaning, appropriately enough, “dedication.” After this celebration, it was determined that Hanukkah, or “The Feast of Dedication,” should be celebrated every year, which it is, in the month of December. (For more information on Hanukkah and other Jewish holidays, see Chapter 27.)

Ultimately, Judas Maccabee died in battle. His brother, Jonathan, took over the leadership of the Hasmoneans for a short while, followed by yet another brother, Simon. Simon and two of his sons were murdered in 134 B.C.E., and his sole surviving son, John Hyrcanus, became the leader of the Jews. At this point in the Hasmoneans’ history, 1 Maccabees ends.

Second Maccabees: Looking through priest-colored glasses

Second Maccabees isn’t a continuation of the story of 1 Maccabees. Rather, 2 Maccabees is an independent work recounting much of the same history as 1 Maccabees.

Second Maccabees purports to be narrated by a High Priest named Jason who is living during the reign of Antiochus IV. Most strikingly (though not surprisingly given the author’s priestly perspective), 2 Maccabees puts more emphasis on the actions of those who remained faithful to God’s commands during so difficult a time. In one moving passage, a mother watches as her seven sons willingly endure torture and death rather than conform to Antiochus’s demands. After the mother encourages her seventh son to do as his six brothers had done, the son turns to Antiochus and boldly says:

What are you waiting for? I will not obey the king’s command, but I obey the command of the law that was given to our ancestors by Moses. But you who have brought all this evil against the Hebrews will not escape the hands of God. For we suffer because of our sins. And though the living LORD is angry with us for a little while to punish and correct us, yet He will again be reconciled with His servants. But you, unholy wretch, you most wicked of all men, do not be elated in vain or puffed up by uncertain hopes, when you lift your hand against the servants of God. You have not yet escaped the judgment of the almighty God, who sees all things.

—2 Maccabees 7:30–35

In addition to the story of the Hasmoneans in 1 and 2 Maccabees, two other books are known by the titles 3 and 4 Maccabees. Third Maccabees is a collection of three stories of Judaism’s conflict with Ptolemy Philopator, a king based in Egypt who defeats the Seleucids. These stories bear a striking resemblance to Esther in the Hebrew Bible. Fourth Maccabees is a philosophic discourse on why physical passions are inferior to religious reason, and it is quite unique when compared to anything in the Bible. Of these two, only 3 Maccabees is considered canonical, and only among Eastern churches.

The Hasmonean dynasty, though plagued by internal and external struggles, continued to rule Judea. Yet, a new power was on the rise in the west: Rome. Rome’s influence steadily increased until eventually Judea became a client state under Rome’s direction. Finally, the Hasmonean rule ended in 37 B.C.E., when Rome appointed Herod the Great to govern what would soon become the Roman province of Judea. Herod married a Hasmonean woman named Mariamme to secure his reign, though the marriage didn’t last long. In a fit of jealousy aided by apparent dementia, Herod killed Mariamme along with their children. With their deaths, the Hasmonean family line abruptly ended. Herod ruled Judea until 4 B.C.E., when he finally succumbed to a long battle with disease. It was during Herod’s reign that a new “King of the Jews” would be born: Jesus, later called “the Christ” (see Chapter 18).