Before the Roman Enemy, There Were the Greeks : Our Chanukah Story from JOSEPHUS

 Nadene Goldfoot      Another War: Jews fighting the Greeks                                

Antiochus IV Epiphanes was one of 13 Greek Kings of the House of Seleuces who ruled Syria in the Hellenistic period, reining from 175-163 BCE.   His father, Antiochus III,  transferred 2,000 Jewish families from Babylon to Lydia and Phrygia.  He captured Jerusalem in 198 BCE. Greek presence is attested from early on, and in fact, the name of Syria itself is from a Greek word for Assyria.The Greek presence in Syria began in the 7th century BCE and became more prominent during the Hellenistic period and when the Seleucid Empire was centered there. Today, there is a Greek community of about 4,500 in Syria, most of whom have Syrian nationality and who live mainly in Aleppo (the country's main trading and financial centre),  Aleppo had been populated by Jews since then up until a few years ago.  

                                                                                  

Antiochus IV was on his 2nd try to attack Egypt but was turned back by Rome, so he then went to Jerusalem and occupied it.  He plundered the Temple treasure and tried to Hellenize Judea by force in order to convert it into a reliable frontier province.  This brought about a great rising which Antiochus suppressed with great cruelty;  thousands of Jews were killed and many sold into slavery.  

Ptolemy I
At one time between 186-145 BCE, Antiochus quarreled with the 6th Ptolemy, the Greek king of Ptolemaic Egypt  about his right to the whole country of Syria.  At this time, a great sedition came over the men of power in Judea, and they had a contention about obtaining the government;   with each one vying for power. 

                                                

In 175 BCE, conflict broke out between High Priest Onias III (who opposed Hellenization and favoured the Ptolemies) and his son Jason (who favoured Hellenisation and the Seleucids). A period of political intrigue followed, with both Jason and Menelaus bribing the king to win the High Priesthood, and accusations of murder of competing contenders for the title. The result was a brief civil war. The Tobiads, a philo-Hellenistic party, succeeded in placing Jason into the powerful position of High Priest. He established an arena for public games close by the Temple. The high priest, Jason, converted Jerusalem into a Greek polis replete with gymnasium and ephebeion (2 Maccabees 4).

According to writer, General Josephus,  Onias, one of the high priests, won out against Jason  and kicked out the sons of Tobias from the Jerusalem.  Joseph was one of the sons of Tobias and nephew of Onias.  Onias I had refused to pay his taxes to Ptolemy III.  That made the governor of Jerusalem threaten to destroy Jerusalem.   Joseph heard about it and scolded his Uncle Onias for putting Jerusalem in such danger.  Onias let Joseph go to Alexandria, Egypt to pacify the king.  Joseph found out when he arrived that he needed a lot of money to gain high favor in the court.  He had to go to Samaria to his friends and get a loan. He did, and was later made the tax collector.  Onias then went to Antiochus IV and begged him to make use of them for his leaders.  Then they could make an expedition into Judea.  

The king, thinking this a great idea, complied and came upon the Jews with a great army, and took their city by force, and slew a multitude of men of those that favoured Ptolemy, and sent out his soldiers to plunder them without mercy.  He also spoiled the Temple, and put a stop to the constant practice of offering a daily sacrifice of expiation for 3 years and 6 months.  (Expiation "a religious act, by which satisfaction or atonement is made for the commission of some crime, the guilt done away,)                                     

But Onias, the high priest, fled to Ptolemy, and received a place from him in the Nemus of Heliopolis ( a major city , the capital of ancient Egypt), where he built a city resembling Jerusalem, and a Temple that was like Jerusalem's Temple.       

According to I and II Maccabees, the priestly family of Mattathias (Mattitiyahu in Hebrew), which came to be known as the Maccabees, called the people forth to holy war against the Seleucids.

                                             

  Mattathias' sons, Judas (Yehuda), Jonathan (Yonoson/Yonatan), and Simon (Shimon) began a military campaign, initially with disastrous results: one thousand Jewish men, women, and children were killed by Seleucid troops because they refused to fight, even in self-defence, on the Sabbath. Other Jews then reasoned that they must fight when attacked, even on the Sabbath. The institution of guerrilla warfare practices by Judah over several years led to victory against the Seleucids:                                 

It was now, in the fall of 165, that Judah's successes began to disturb the Greek central government. He appears to have controlled the road from Jaffa to Jerusalem, and thus to have cut off the royal party in Acra from direct communication with the sea and thus with the government. It is significant that this time the Syrian troops, under the leadership of the governor-general Lysias, took the southerly route, by way of Idumea.

Towards the end of 164, Judah the Maccabee felt strong enough to enter Jerusalem and the formal religious worship of Yahweh was re-established. The feast of Hanukkah was instituted to commemorate the recovery of the temple. This was the Hasmonean Period ruling Judea.  Josephus tells what happened.  

Antiochus, however, remembering his struggles in the fight, decided to compel the Jews to dissolve the laws of their country, and to keep their infants uncircumcized, and to sacrifice swine's  flesh upon the altar;  against which they all opposed.  Some even had to be put to death.  Bacchides, who guarded the fortresses, became even more barbaric than usual, and indulged in all sorts of wickedness and tormented the worthiest of the inhabitants, man by man, and threatened their city every day with open destruction till at length he provoked the poor sufferers by the extremity of his wicked doing, to avenge themselves.

                                              

Matthias, the son of Asamoneus, one of the priests who lived in a village called Modin, armed himself, together with his own family, which had 5 sons of his in it, and slew Bacchides with daggers, and thereupon, out of the fear of the many garrisons of the Greeks, he fled to the mountains, and so many of the people followed him, that he was encouraged to come down from the mountains, and to fight Antiochus's generals, when he beat them, and drove them out of Judea. So he joined the government and became the prince of his own people by their own free consent, and then died, leaving the government to Judas, his eldest son.                                             

 Josephus was born in about 38 CE, dying in 100 CE.  Romans attacked Galilee in 67, he directed the resistance and was besieged in Jotapata, but when the city was captured, he went over to the Romans and called himself Flavius, the family name of Emperor Vespasian.  He went with Vespasian and Titus during the siege of Jerusalem and tried to persuade the Jews to leave their resistance.  After the crushing of the revolt, he was given some confiscated estates in Judea, but lived in Rome instead. 

Titus Flavius Josephus, born Yosef ben Matityahu ha Cohen was a first-century Romano-Jewish historian, best known for The Jewish War, who was born in Jerusalem—then part of Roman Judea—to a father of priestly descent and a mother who claimed royal ancestry. Josephus, as he is known to us, a Jewish general whose life was spared by becoming their historical writer, considered a traitor by many Jews, said, "Our city of Jerusalem had arrived at a higher degree of felicity (happiness)  than any other city under the Roman government, and yet at last fell into the sorest calamities again.   Accordingly it appears to me the the misfortunes of all men, from the beginning of the world, if they be compared to these of the  Jews, are not so considerable as they were;  while the authors of them were not foreigners neither.  This makes it impossible for me to contain my lamentations.......However, I may justly blame  the learned men among the Greeks...they also write new histories about the Assyrians and Medes as if the ancient writers had not described their affairs as they ought to have done...everyone took upon them to write what happened in his own time."  So I find that Josephus had many details in his special book than in any other history I have read.

The Pyrrhic War (280–275 BCE) was largely fought between the Roman Republic and Pyrrhus, the king of Epirus, who had been asked by the people of the Greek city of Tarentum in southern Italy to help them in their war against the Romans.  After several years of campaigning there (278–275 BCE), Pyrrhus returned to Italy in 275 BCE, where the last battle of the war was fought, ending in Roman victory. Following this, Pyrrhus returned to Epirus, ending the war. Three years later, in 272 BC, the Romans captured Tarentum.

Roman Syria was an early Roman province annexed to the Roman Republic in 64 BCE by Pompey in the Third Mithridatic War following the defeat of King of Armenia Tigranes the Great.  Following the partition of the Herodian Kingdom of Judea into tetrarchies in 6 CE, it was gradually absorbed into Roman provinces, with Roman Syria annexing Iturea and Trachonitis.

The first is the revolt of 167-160 BC, when Judah Maccabee led an uprising against the Seleucid Greek rulers of Judaea, painted in Jewish memory as a virtuous struggle against persecuting overlords.

There was about a 100 pause between wars for the Jews between the Greeks and the Romans.  

Rome had occupied Judea in 63 BCE and again in 66 CE.  The province of Judea was the scene of unrest  in 6 CE during the Census of Quirinius, the crucifixion of Jesus circa 30–33 CE, and several wars, known as the Jewish–Roman wars, were fought during its existence.

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

Book:  Josephus, by Whiston

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy_VI_Philometor 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliopolis_(ancient_Egypt)

https://www.biblicalcyclopedia.com/E/expiation.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasmonean_dynasty