Antiochus IV Epiphanes, The Villain of Chanukah With Other Villainous Chanukah Characters

 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 IV is an important but evil figure in our history because of his, personal orders of  persecution of the Jews of Judea and Samaria, and the rebellion of the Jewish Maccabees.  What he did to the Jews was to occupy Jerusalem, plunder the Temple treasure, and tried to hellenize Judea by force in order to convert it into a reliable frontier province.  This brought about a rising which he had to suppress, and did so with great cruelty:  thousands of Jews were killed and many were sold into slavery.   Judah the Maccabee did his best to fight the hellenization by a calling to arms against it.                    

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.

                                              

According to the authors of the Books of the Maccabees, while Antiochus was busy in Egypt, a rumor spread that he had been killed. In Judea, the deposed High Priest, Jason, gathered a force of 1,000 soldiers and made a surprise attack on the city of Jerusalem. Menelaus, the High Priest appointed by Antiochus, was forced to flee Jerusalem during a riot.                                               

An aside about Menelaus: He died in 162 BCE.  He was not of a priestly family of Cohens, but belonged to the Tobiads, descendants of Tobiah, an estate owner and petty prince of Transjordania of 3rd century BCE who had married the sister of Onius II, high priest.  This is the IN that he claimed to become a high priest in 171 BCE by bribery. He supported the persecution of Judaism by Antiochus and plundering the Temple on the king's behalf.  In 162 BCE he was accused by Lysias, a Syrian General of being responsible for the war, and they executed him.  Earlier, in 165 BCE, he was a part of the peace negotiations between Judah the Maccabee and Lysias.  Lysias had been Antiochus's deputy, and had been ordered to suppress Judah the Maccabee.  He was defeated by Judah at Bet Tzur.  When Antiochus died, he was the ruler and invaded Judah in 163 to 163 BCE, this time defeating Judah at Bet Zechariah and besieged Jerusalem.  His attention was distracted by dynastic problems in Syria, so he now granted the Jewish religious freedom and autonomy in return for acknowledgement of Seleucid suzerainty.  The very next year he was murdered by the pretender, Demetrius Soter, dying in 162 BCE.  

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.

                                                    

When these happenings were reported to the king, he thought that Judea was in revolt. Raging like a wild animal, he set out from Egypt and took Jerusalem by storm. He ordered his soldiers to cut down without mercy those whom they met and to slay those who took refuge in their houses. There was a massacre of young and old, a killing of women and children, a slaughter of virgins and infants. In the space of three days, eighty thousand were lost, forty thousand meeting a violent death, and the same number being sold into slavery.

— 2 Maccabees 5:11–14                                                                                

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.

                    

Mina of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. a coin

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

I Maccabees presents a historical account of political, military, and diplomatic events from the time of Judaea’s relationship with Antiochus IV Epiphanes of Syria (reigned 175–164/163 BCE) to the death (135/134 BCE) of Simon Maccabeus, high priest in Jerusalem. It describes the refusal of Mattathias to perform pagan religious rites, the ensuing Jewish revolt against Syrian hegemony, the political machinations whereby Demetrius II of Syria granted Judaea its independence, and the election of Simon as both high priest and secular ruler of the Judaean Jews.

                                                           

 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

                                                   

I would say that it was the uprising against foreign oppression, and the by-product  which had brought about a division of Jewish belief which caused their Hellenization.  It's something we have remembered and celebrate for the past 2,000+ years for the miracle of the dab of oil burning for 8 days-which was needed to happen because the runner hadn't yet returned from getting the needed oil.  That was the miracle we celebrate, and the generals of the world can study the details of the war as to what they had gained. It's a joyous time to remember.  If it hadn't happened, there would be no Jewish or Christian religion today.  

                       

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