Nadene Goldfoot
Antiochus IV Epiphanes, also called THE MAD EPIMANES, born in about 215 BCE, he was a Greek Hellenistic king of the Seleucid Empire from 175 BCE until his death in 164 BCE. He was a son of King Antiochus III the Great. His original name was Mithradates (alternative form Mithridates); he assumed the name Antiochus after he ascended the throne. There were 13 Greek kings of the House of Seleucus who ruled Syria in the Hellenistic period.
His father, Antiochus III, reigned from 223 to 187 BCE. He's the one who transferred 2,000 Jewish FAMILIES from Babylon to Lydia(Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern western Turkish provinces of Uşak, Manisa and inland İzmir. The language of its population, known as Lydian, was a member of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. Its capital was Sardis. and Phryagia (In classical antiquity, Phrygia was a kingdom in the west central part of Anatolia, in what is now Asian Turkey, centred on the Sangarios River. After its conquest, it became a region of the great empires of the time.). After his capture of Jerusalem in 198 BCE, he treated the Jews with, according to writers, understanding.
Antiochus' often eccentric behaviour and capricious actions during his interactions with common people such as appearing in the public bath houses and applying for municipal offices led some of his contemporaries to call him Epimanes ("The Mad One"), a word play on his title Epiphanes.
The Seleucids, (founded by Seleucus I Nicator, following the division of the Macedonian Empire that existed previously, which had been founded by Alexander the Great), like the Ptolemies (a Macedonian Greek royal dynasty which ruled the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Ancient Egypt during the Hellenistic period. Their rule lasted for 275 years, from 305 to 30 BCE) before them, held a suzerainty over Judea: they respected Jewish culture and protected Jewish institutions.
This policy was drastically reversed by Antiochus IV, resulting in harsh persecutions and a revolt against his rule, the Maccabean Revolt. Scholars of Second Temple Judaism therefore sometimes refer to Antiochus' reign as the 'Antiochene crises' for the Jews.
An aside about the high priest, Jason, a Cohen. (75 BCE-2 BCE) was the son of the high priest, Simon II or the Just. He was a leader of the hellenizing party. He replaced his brother, Onias III in the high priesthood by bribing Antiochus IV. After sweeping innovations, he was ousted by the EXTREME HELLENIZER, Menelaus. After hearing rumors about Antiochus's defeat in Egypt in 170 BCE, he attacked Jerusalem, but was defeated by popular resistance, and fled to Ammon. Ammon was an ancient Semitic-speaking nation occupying the east of the Jordan River, between the torrent valleys of Arnon and Jabbok, in present-day Jordan, now their capital-Amman.
King Antiochus returned from Egypt in 168 BC, enraged by his defeat; he attacked Jerusalem and restored Menelaus, then executed many Jews.
Antiochus decided to side with the Hellenized Jews in order to consolidate his empire and to strengthen his hold over the region. He outlawed Jewish religious rites and traditions kept by observant Jews and ordered the worship of Zeus as the supreme god (2 Maccabees 6:1–12).
This was anathema to the Jews and they refused, so Antiochus sent an army to enforce his decree. The city of Jerusalem was destroyed because of the resistance, many were slaughtered, and Antiochus established a military Greek citadel called the Acra.
The date of Antiochus's persecution of the Jews in Jerusalem is variously given as 168 or 167 BCE. In their commentary on the Book of Daniel, Newsom and Breed argue for 167, although they state that good arguments can be made for either chronology.
Traditionally, as expressed in the First and Second Books of the Maccabees,
which are not in my Tanakh, 4 books, none of which is in the Hebrew Bible but all of which appear in some manuscripts of the Septuagint. The first two books only are part of canonical scripture in the Septuagint and the Vulgate (hence are canonical to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy) and are included in the Protestant Apocrypha.
The First Book of the Maccabees
The Maccabean Revolt was painted as a national resistance to a foreign political and cultural oppression. In modern times, however, scholars have argued that the king was instead intervening in a civil war between the traditionalist Jews in the country and the Hellenized Jews in Jerusalem. According to Joseph P. Schultz:
Modern scholarship on the other hand considers the Maccabean revolt less as an uprising against foreign oppression than as a civil war between the orthodox and reformist parties in the Jewish camp
King Mithridates I of Parthia took advantage of Antiochus' western problems and attacked from the east, seizing the city of Herat in 167 BCE and disrupting the direct trade route to India, effectively splitting the Greek world in two.
Antiochus recognized the potential danger in the east but was unwilling to give up control of Judea. He sent a commander named Lysias to deal with the Maccabees, while the King himself led the main Seleucid army against the Parthians. Antiochus had initial success in his eastern campaign, including the reoccupation of Armenia, but he died suddenly of disease in 164 BCE.
According to the scroll of Antiochus, when Antiochus heard that his army had been defeated in Judea, he boarded a ship and fled to the coastal cities. Wherever he came the people rebelled and called him "The Fugitive," so he drowned himself in the sea.
According to the Second Book of Maccabees, he was horrifically injured in the following manner, which eventually led to his death:
5 But the all-seeing Lord, the God of Israel, struck him with an incurable and invisible blow. As soon as he stopped speaking he was seized with a pain in his bowels, for which there was no relief, and with sharp internal tortures—
6 and that very justly, for he had tortured the bowels of others with many and strange inflictions.
7 Yet he did not in any way stop his insolence, but was even more filled with arrogance, breathing fire in his rage against the Jews, and giving orders to drive even faster. And so it came about that he fell out of his chariot as it was rushing along, and the fall was so hard as to torture every limb of his body.
8 Thus he who only a little while before had thought in his superhuman arrogance that he could command the waves of the sea, and had imagined that he could weigh the high mountains in a balance, was brought down to earth and carried in a litter, making the power of God manifest to all. And so the ungodly man’s body swarmed with worms, and while he was still living in anguish and pain, his flesh rotted away, and because of the stench the whole army felt revulsion at his decay.— 2 Maccabees 9:5-9, NRSV
Punishment of Antiochus, engraving by Gustave Doré
Following up on the high priest decendancy, the high priest, Onias was the name of several high priests during the 2nd Temple Period.
1. Onias (II)-son of Simon the Just, high priest c 230 BCE: he refused to pay the 20 talents of silver given annually to Ptolemy II of Egypt, thus endangering the safety of Judea. His nephew, Joseph, son of Tobias, succeeded in pacifying the king.
2. Onias (III)-son of Simon II, grandson of Onias son of Simon the Just,; after the failure of Heliodorus to takae the Temple treasury, he was deposed by Antiochus Epiphanes in 174 BCE. Onias was later assassinated through the machinations of his brother, Menelaus, who had supplanted him as high priest.
3. Onias (IV)- son of Onias son of Simon II: He went to Egypt where many Jews had fled from the religious persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes. Settling at Heliopolis, he was given permission by Ptolemy IV to build a temple at Leonopolis.
1. Simon the Just, high priest-son of Onias I, having a strong and saintly personality, one of the last survivors of the Great Assembly, may have met Alexander the Great, 7 great things happened during his priesthood.
You can say all you want to about modernizing religion, but this only shows that Hellenization, the modernizing force, only brought out the worst in man. The ideal of religion and its place in society is to bring out the best that we have in relating to others, not the worst. I believe that Moses may not have realized the power that he had received in the words he share with his people, or did he? He was shaping the minds of our ancestors, putting in place events that would forever shape the minds of those he shepherded. From Moses to Chanukah, a thousand years, and hellenization had managed to affect some of the leadership.
Chanukah is a happy holiday and we give gifts to each other. Our ancestors used to give gelt to the children; coins. Here's one for the pot with a picture of on of the worst men in our history before the days of Hitler as my picture of Antiochus. .
Resource:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiochus_IV_Epiphanes
https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Books-of-the-Maccabees
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