Nadene Goldfoot 
There was a family from Greece who held an awful lot of power in ancient Hellenistic times. It was the Seleucus family who produced many descendants that also held that power. This line was called the House of of Seleucus. The first of the line that was noteworthy was Antiochus III, a king, and that power stayed with the males of this family.
Antiochus III was followed by 12 other Greek kings of the House of Seleucus who ruled Syria in the Hellenistic Period.
Antiochus III reigned from 223 to 187 BCE. He transferred 2,000 Jewish families from Babylon to Lydia and Phrygia. After his capture of Jerusalem in 198 BCE, he treated the Jewish with understanding. It had been Nebuchadnezzar in 597 BCE and then again in 586 BCE that had been taken out of Judah (southern Israel) in the first place and brought to Babylon, so these Jews had remained there for about the past 400 years.
Located in western Anatolia (Asia Minor) a peninsula in SW Asia, and bordered by the kingdom of Phrygia to the east and Ionia to the west, the kingdom of
Could it be that some Turks of today carry some Jewish genes?
Antiochus IV Epiphanes reigned from 175 to163 BCE. He decided to attack Egypt but was turned back by Rome on his 2nd expedition in 168 BCE. He occupied Jerusalem, plundered the Temple treasure, and endeavored to hellenize Judea by force in order to convert it into a province he thought was reliable, beaten down. From this episode comes our history and remembrance with the festival of Chanukah. This brought about a rising which Antiochus suppressed with great cruelty: thousands of Jews were killed and many sold into slavery.
Antiochus IV Epiphanes followed it up with bringing in foreign settlers into Jerusalem and fortifying Acra as a stronghold of the Hellenizers to dominate the city. He now began a fierce religious persecution of the Jews, forbidding circumcision and observance of the Sabbath, desecrating the Temple altar, setting up pagan altars in the provincial towns, and compelling the Jews to participate in pagan ceremonies. His excesses caused the Hasmonean uprising and what we know about Chanukah.
Antiochus V reigned from 164 to 162 BCE. He was the son of Antiochus IV. He continued the war against the Jews until 163 BCE, when he granted them religious and some political autonomy in return for their acceptance of his rule.
Antiochus VII Sidetes reigned from 138 to 128 BCE and reasserted the Seleuicid claims on Judea. After an initial repulse in 138 BCE, reasserted the Seleucid claims on Judea. After and initial repulse in 138 BCE, he again invaded Judea and besieged Jerusalem in 135-134 BCE. John Hyrcanus was forced to surrender, destroy the walls of Jerusalem, cede his conquests outside Judea, and pay tribute, but after Antiochus VII's death in 129 BCE, he reasserted his independence. John was the son and successor of Simon the Hasmonean who ruled from 135 to 104 BCE. During his father, Simon's lifetime, John Hyrcanus was governor of Gezer (once the Canaanite center in 3rd and 2nd millennia, held by Egyptians who gave it to Solomon as dowry for his daughter, then recaptured by Pharaoh Shishak.), but after the murder of his father and 2 brothers by his brother-in-law Ptolemy, escaped to Jerusalem. Simon was one of the 5 sons of Mattathias of Modiin of our Chanukah story who rebelled against Antiochus IV and his hellenizing policy. From 166 to 164 BCE, the Hasmoneans fought a number of successful battles against the Syrians and in 164 BCE Judah captured Jerusalem back and rededicated the Temple that they cleaned out, taking their idol of Zeus out as well. This was followed up with a series of raids to rescue the Jewish population of Ammon, Idumea, Gilead, and Galilee.
Antiochus IX Cyzicenus reigned intermittently from 125 to 95 BCE and was severely defeated in 107 when endeavoring to assist Samaria (what had once been Israel, land of 10 of the 12 tribes that had split when Solomon died in 920 BCE which was under siege by a Jewish army. Samaria had been the capital under Jeroboam, Solomon's overseer who took command, then referred to all the land surrounding Samaria).
To hellenize the Jews meant to erase all connections that they had with their beginnings and turn them into the populace they were then living among; and here it was the Syrians who had already been turned into Greeks. We see it happening to American Jews as well, who have intermarried with American gentiles and have dropped the customs of their ancestors. They have been hellenized, are products of assimilation. There are groups of distinct gentiles in the USA who have maintained their ancestral customs such as the Swedes. They can return today to Sweden for holidays to rejuvenate their roots if they want.
Jews go back 4,000 years to their roots, so they have gone through so much hellenization, going through many cultures, yet keeping their religion just barely by today. Most show through DNA testing that marriages have been kept among Jews and not too much intermarriages due to the hatred other people have for Jews. Intermarriages have occurred more in the 20th century and this brings about more hellenization.
We find the Pashtuns, a distinct people found in Afghanistan, Pakistan and parts of India who have been practicing a few Jewish cultural acts without even knowing its origins or why they do so, who should win the prize for keeping something of their Jewish roots. However, they have long since stopped their Jewish thoughts and have accepted Islam, but they still have kept their own "Pashtunwali" precepts, which we find come from the Torah. DNA testing also shows our connection to these people.
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
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