The Law Of Opposite Attraction: Hellenization, Democracy

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                

Alexander the Great led Hellenization into the theocracy of King Saul and King David and Solomon's territory, and just about destroyed it.   He was king of Macedonia from 356 to 323 BCE, and swept into Judea with his great personality that made a deep impression on the Jews.  Josephus describes his visit to Jerusalem where as he was invading the country, he made the people feel he was honoring them. First he honored the high priest, Jaddua and praised him with flattery.  He showered the Jews with privileges to all Jews of Judah and the Diaspora.  The cause of Alexander the Great's death is debated by historians. He died in Babylon on June 11, 323 BC at the age of 32.                                                             

Saul (11th century BCE) son of Kish of the tribe of Benjamin had been selected for rule by the Prophet, Samuel out of great leader possibilities from the 11 other tribes.  It was at a time the people were being attacked by the Philistines and Ammonites and Saul was an organizer.  He organized a trained army and inflicted defeats on the enemy.  Internally, he carried out a purification of religion by eliminating witchcraft, but he kept arguing with Samuel.  This caused Samuel to go against Saul and he selected David as his successor who was becoming very popular with the people for his army fighting.  Saul became jealous, rightly, of David, and drove David out of the country. 

Then the Philistines launched a united attack and Saul fell with his 3 sons including Jonathan in the battle on Mt. Gilboa.  Saul's death led to a temporary domination of the Philistines, but the groundwork he laid for national unity eventually proved effective in establishing a strong and independent Israelite monarchy.  Solomon was king after his father's death and the line continued for Israel till Hoshea in 730-721 BCE, while Judah  continued to Zedekiah in  597 to 586 BCE.                                              

      Greeks and Minoans and their lives

                                                                       

     Jews during Greek and Roman days not faring well at all unless complying with Hellenization.  But in 332 BCE a young Alexander the Great led a Greek and Macedonian force that swept through the eastern Mediterranean and Egypt and extended east to include Persia and part of India. He died in the process, and as a result his empire splintered into successor kingdoms. Judah, now called Judea, lay at the boundary between two of these Greek successor kingdoms, the Seleucids in Asia Minor and the Ptolemies in Egypt. Fortune favored first one and then the other, and Judea remained a buffer state between them.

How Judea ceased to be the pawn in this imperial struggle and achieve independence is a compelling story, treated in 1, 2, and 4 Maccabees and texts of the Ethiopian Bible, and that kingdom was “comparable in Jewish history only with the kingdom of David.” Under the Persians, religious worship had remained a matter of local custom, generally protected by the benign paternalism of the imperial rulers. But the form of Hellenization in Syrian-ruled areas imposed a new kind of local administration. Greek colonization, coupled with the philosophical ideals of a universal world order, called for a more thorough transformation of local customs.   Greek cities founded colonies or reconstituted older cities by imposing the nomima, laws and customs, of the parent city. These included laws and a constitution, rituals, and a religious calendar. A dēmos, or roll of citizens, was established; a boulē or city council of aristocratic leaders was appointed; and a gymnasium and ephēbeum were constructed for the education of elite boys. A universal Greek education would ensure the inculcation of Greek values, and even native texts became increasingly modeled on Greek literature.

Greek or Macadamia and Judah civilization were opposites with opposing goals, yet wherever Alexander went, he charmed the population and his Greek culture was diffused over the Mediterranean and the Middle East after the end of the 4th century BCE as a result of his conquests.  It was about at that time that Judea (for it was not called Palestine until after 135 CE) fell under Greek rule and Judea was surrounded by a ring of hellenized cities.  At the same time, the Jewish Diaspora was expanding rapidly in Egypt, Cyrenaica, Syria and Asia Minor, which were all in process of hellenization.  By the 3rd century BCE, the Jews of Egypt had adopted Greek and the Septuagint translation of the Tanakh (Bible)  had been completed.                                                    

                                                Antiochus IV Epiphanes

There was antagonism between the traditional and hellenizing Jews in Jerusalem that brought on Antiochus IV Epiphanes' attempt to suppress Judaism and the Hasmonean revolt.                                                       

                                                        The Emperor, Herod

Though John Hyrcanus and Alexander Yannai broke the power of the Greek cities in Eretz Yisrael, later these were restored and strengthened as a result of Roman intervention aided by Emperor Herod and his descendants.  

By the Mishnaic Period, (70 to 200 CE) (legal codification of the Oral Law  done by Rabbi Judah Ha-Nasi;  Jewish material life in Eretz was mainly Hellenistic even though it had ended to be the political program of any Jewish faction.  Both the Mishnah and Talmud contain hundreds of Greek words that were absorbed into Hebrew and Aramaic and tomb inscriptions were in Greek, so that must have been the spoken language of the Period.  The Mishnaic period generally refers to the time period spanning from the late first century CE to the early third century CE, during which the Mishnah, a collection of Jewish oral laws, was compiled by rabbis known as Tannaim; essentially encompassing the period where the Mishnah was being assembled and the related rabbinic traditions were being codified.

                                             King Henry VIII of England

England was also ruled by Kings and was undemocratic.  Since the office of Prime Minister evolved rather than being instantly created, it may not be totally clear-cut who the first prime minister was. However, this appellation is traditionally given to Sir Robert Walpole, who became First Lord of the Treasury of Great Britain in 1721.  

The religious group of Pilgrims   left Holland, who had been Englishmen, for America on the ship, the Mayflower, seeking a democratic life in 1620.  The Mayflower carried 102 passengers in 1620, including Pilgrims, servants, contracted workers, and English families. The pilgrims who risked their lives to settle in a strange land were more – and less – than folklore heroes. They were extreme Puritans, that is to say they disapproved of several of the rituals and practices of the Church of England that had been established by parliament at the beginning of Elizabeth I's reign.  They had no say in the matter if they stayed in England, so they up and left for better lives.                    

                        " You don't need Fema! " The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), initially created under President Jimmy Carter by Presidential Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1978 and implemented by two Executive Orders on April 1, 1979. The agency's primary purpose is to coordinate the response to a disaster that has occurred in the United States and that overwhelms the resources of local and state authorities.

Now we're almost back to a kind of kingship again with our President Trump, who is acting like one.  He's trying to overthrow the 14th article in our constitution saying that a baby born in the USA is automatically a USA citizen.  This is being used to eliminate Mexican Nationals who entered the US illegally, and he's sending them all back.  

Yet, talk about opposing values, he has been the first president to treat Israel righteously, and they were at the point of needing some understanding badly.  Sadly, there was a problem with Obama and his background, though he tried to be fair and square, his prejudice came through.  It's my opinion that Trump's son -in law, Jerad Kushner, is the guide of Trump's understandings, as Trump is not known to be a reader or historian, but relies on his listening techniques to others, and then his gut opinions.  Trump, in his first few days, has kept all his promises made when running for the office, so people should not be shocked. This part of history, Israel helped by the man least interested, though his daughter had married a Jewish man, would stand by Israel when criticized so much by his own country, defies all reason.   

Hellenization became the fad, the favorite of a religious group, undoing much of their understanding and practice to "fit in" with others.  Trump won the president's seat over people of much better character;  in fact his was one of the worst.  The Republicans and Democrats were almost divided 50-50.  In both cases, people turned around and did  a 180 which was astonishing!  

Even in sex, opposites have been attracting each other.  It may have started with Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens.  In my own DNA, I carry 2.9% of Neanderthal genes.  We've had soap operas of Abie's Irish Rose, and copy-cat versions since then-the Jewish and Catholic love stories.  

I feel the whole theory of opposite attraction is to stir up the pot.  Get opposing ideas.  G-d must adore real debates;  not the kind held during election time but real ones practiced in high schools and colleges.  It's all to get us to see 2 sides of an issue, and the possible outcomes;  trying to stretch our brains a little.  Things adored and fought for must be worthy enough.  Otherwise, why bother?  Israel's history is full of being saved at the last minute in miraculous situations, and Trump is a part of that.  

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