A HISTORY OF NEW TESTAMENT TIMES IN PALESTINE, 175 BC-70 AD

CHAPTER I

THE JEWS UNDER THE SELEUCIDS

The conquests of Alexander began a new era for Palestine as well as for other regions of the East. After his victory over Darius III at Issus (333), Alexander advanced steadily, conquering Damascus and the cities along the Mediterranean coast, finally coming to Tyre, which refused to surrender. Thereupon began the famous siege, which, after seven months, resulted in the complete overthrow of the city, two thousand of its inhabitants being hanged upon its walls, and thirty thousand being sold into slavery. Just as he was entering upon this siege, Alexander summoned the Jews to renounce their allegiance to Persia, furnish him with provisions, and pay him such tribute as they had been accustomed to pay Darius III. Jaddua, the high priest, refused to obey, pleading his oath of allegiance to Darius. Alexander consequently threatened him with severe punishment, and after he had reduced Tyre, had allowed the Samaritans to establish a rival religion upon Mount Gerizim, and had taken Gaza, he proceeded against Jerusalem. Josephus’s account of the events that followed, although not beyond question, is possibly correct in its main features. On the arrival of Alexander at Scopus, he was met by Jaddua and a train of priests in their robes and a great multitude in white garments. The sight awoke the religious reverence of the young conqueror, and he treated the city with favor, even offering a sacrifice in the temple. He further granted the Jews the privilege of living in accordance with their own laws, and freed them from tribute during the sabbatical year. Palestine, however, was incorporated in the satrapy of Coele-Syria, with Samaria as its capital. The subsequent revolt of the Samaritans brought punishment only on themselves, and Judea was left in peace throughout Alexander’s life, Jewish customs and prejudices being treated with consideration.

With the later career of Alexander Jewish history has little direct concern, but his policy of binding together his vast empire by a Greek civilization was to be of almost fatal influence upon the nation. The realization of this magnificent conception was prevented by Alexander’s early death (June 13, 323 BC), but its fundamental idea, the unification of an empire by a common religion and civilization, was inherited by his successors. If Alexander indeed failed to establish a lasting empire, his efforts resulted in the Graeco-Oriental civilization.

The Jews subject to Egypt.

In the division of the Macedonian Empire among the Diadochi, or successors of Alexander, Coele-Syria fell to Laomedon. Ptolemy Lagus, who had received Egypt, proceeded at once to conquer Palestine and entered Jerusalem one Sabbath on the plea of wishing to sacrifice. As a result of his suzerainty many Jews were carried or emigrated to Alexandria and other cities of Egypt and Africa, Judea remaining in possession of the Ptolemies during the third century, though not without brief intervals of subjection to Syria. During these years the condition of Judea was not unprosperous, as little was demanded of the high priest except the annual tribute of twenty talents of silver.

In government Judea was a somewhat remarkable combination of a city-state and a theocracy. The high priest had political as well as religious supremacy, but associated with him was the Gerousia, or Senate of Jerusalem. Whether or not this body was the outgrowth of some ancient municipal institution of the Hebrews, or resulted from the influence of Hellenistic life cannot be determined with certainty. Possibly it was the outgrowth of the assembly of the heads of the 150 leading families which appears in the days of Nehemiah, but beyond the fact that it was aristocratic and composed of priests and elders we know little. The Jewish people could meet, perhaps, in popular bodies, but about this there is again little information. In a word, Judea was Jerusalem and its “daughters”.

The extent of this city-state during the Egyptian and Syrian suzerainty, while not definitely known, was certainly inconsiderable. Neither Samaria nor Galilee was included, nor the country east of Jordan, nor any considerable part of the maritime plain.

Nor are the relations of Judea, with Egypt and Syria, altogether clear. Each was in turn its suzerain, and, in fact, at one time it would seem as if, perhaps because of intermarriage, the Jewish tribute was divided between the two suzerains. But such an arrangement was but short-lived, and whether Egypt or Syria was for the time being dominant, the Jews were locally subject to this high priest, who saw to it that the tribute of 20 talents was farmed out, collected, and, with the Temple tax of 10,000 drachmas, paid. It is not clear that there was always a representative of the sovereign in Jerusalem, although the Seleucid house was later represented in the person of the eparch — a sort of early burg-graf.

Of even more significance than these outward political relations was the threefold development which, during the years of political change following the death Alexander the Great, characterized the inner life of the Jews—that of “wisdom” literature, of the ritual and priesthood and of legalism. In all of these particulars Jewish history is unique, but perhaps in none more unique than in the collection of proverbs and practical advice to be found in such writings as our canonical Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes, and such other writings as the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, and the Wisdom of Solomon. Like the other two tendencies this is rooted deep in the history of the Hebrew race, for wise sayings of very ancient origin are to be found in its early literature. But during the post-exilic period, and especially after the Greek influence began to be felt, “wisdom” found its most remarkable expression and became a literary form. To speak of its literature in detail is impossible, but one cannot overlook its knowledge of the world and its cynicism, as well as its more common characteristics, sobriety and moral earnestness.

But good advice is seldom more than a luxury, and the history of the Jews was to centre about the struggles between the two other tendencies which began during these years to show themselves so clearly. Indeed, the two hundred and fifty or three hundred years preceding the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus may be said to be filled with little else than the gradual and unobserved triumph of legalism in the persona of the Pharisees over ritualism, whether in the persona of the Sadducees or of the nation as a whole.

At the outset the two forces were in harmony. The Jewish state was a theocracy, the high priest at its head being held responsible for the tribute until Onias II, either from his pro-Syrian leanings or from sheer incapacity, neglected to send the required 20 talents to Ptolemy Evergetes of Egypt. Such an act was close to rebellion and nearly led to the destruction of Judea. As it was, it resulted in the sale of the taxes to one Joseph, an adventurer of extraordinary boldness and ability, who became a sort of satrap in Judea and for twenty-two years held this position, mingling severity with liberality so successfully that during the entire period the Jews were not only at peace with their neighbors, but reasonably prosperous in their internal affairs. The ultimate results, however, of this new departure in the administration of the state were not all so happy. Not only did it lead to civil strife, but the control of the taxes tended to concentrate wealth in the hands of Joseph and his sons and in those of the various agents they employed. There was thus formed a wealthy official class whose sympathies were increasingly with the Hellenistic culture discovered during their intercourse with the Egyptian court. Jewish society thus began more rapidly to feel those influences of Hellenism that were soon to play so tragic a rôle in its life—influences that were strengthened by the unofficial relations existing between Palestine and the Jewish communities already flourishing in Alexandria and other Egyptian cities.

Such a responsible position as this of Joseph in itself implies a loss of prestige on the part of the high priest, but seemingly did not involve any attempt at his humiliation or at the destruction of Judaism. Even, when after his victory over Antiochus III at Raphia (217 BC) Ptolemy IV (Philopator) entered into the temple at Jerusalem, he offered sacrifices, and his worst offence seems to have been that he forced his way into the Holy of Holies. At the battle of Banias  (198 BC) Palestine fell wholly into the hands of Antiochus III and a brighter day seemed about to dawn.

The Jews were kindly treated by their new ruler, who recognised their value as colonists and settled thousands of them in the various new cities which he founded. They were granted the right to live in accordance with their own laws, were relieved from a considerable portion of their taxes, while those of their number who were in slavery were allowed to return. This friendly legislation went so far as to make it a crime to carry into Jerusalem such meats as the Jews were forbidden to eat, while Seleucus IV is said to have borne all the costs of the sacrifices.

The failure of the attempt of Seleucus IV, through Heliodorus, to get possession of the temple treasures must have still further strengthened the position of the high priest. But this development was suddenly threatened, not alone by unaccustomed oppression on the part of Syria, but by the mistaken policy of the high priests themselves.

Under the Seleucid suzerains devotion to Hellenism became identified with loyalty. For there had grown up in Jerusalem a strong pro-Syrian party which sought political safety in complete dependence upon Syria. Its numbers were probably never large, but it embraced most of the prominent citizens of Jerusalem, and its position was strengthened by the fact that the high priest was now the king’s appointee. This political sympathy was very naturally accompanied by a predilection for Greek culture and by a willingness to abandon Judaism as a cult. It might have been expected that the high priest would have strongly opposed these latter particulars, and it is true that under the administration of Onias III an effort was made to stem the latitudinarian movement, but with unfortunate results. The lines of cleavage along religious and political lines were so close together as not only to make the Syrian elements Hellenistic, but to make their opponents apparently loyal to Egypt. So bitter was the opposition to Onias on the part of the Syrian party—notably on that of one Simon the Benjamite—that he was forced to leave Jerusalem and for some time to live as a sort of exile-ambassador at Antioch. His absence aided the Hellenistic Syrian party, for not only was his brother Jason (or Jesus), who acted as his representative, a strong friend of Hellenism, but the irrepressible son of Joseph, Hyrcanus, whom Onias had befriended, complicated the situation by continuing to collect taxes for Egypt throughout the region on the east of Jordan commanded by his great castle.

 Accession of Antiochus Epiphanes

It was while affairs were in this condition that Antiochus Epiphanes succeeded his brother Seleucus IV. Instantly the Hellenistic party grew stronger. Jason succeeded by large promises in getting Onias III removed and himself appointed as high priest. Antiochus Epiphanes, who had already determined upon the policy of religious conformity, willingly gave his consent. Jason was established as high priest. Then followed the extraordinary spectacle of a Jewish city undertaking to install a heathen civilization, of priests abandoning their sacrifices, of Jewish youths exercising under Greek hats, and of a high priest sending 300 drachmas of silver to Tyre for a sacrifice to Hercules. Jason suffered the fate he had brought upon Onias, for after three years a certain Menelaus, the brother of Simon the Benjamite, offered Antiochus a larger bribe than had he, and was made high priest. Under his influence the process of Hellenizing went on rapidly. Surgical operations removed traces of circumcision, and when Antiochus visited Jerusalem in 172 BC, he was welcomed in Greek fashion, by a torchlight procession, and in every way was made to feel that his policy would prove successful and that it was only a matter of time before the Jews, like others of his dependent peoples, would have become fused in a Hellenistic mould.

This tendency to reverse the course of religious development was not merely an evidence of the rise of a political party and of personal ambition on the part of the high priests and the Gerousia. It resulted also from the general Hellenistic movement, which since the days of Alexander had begun to be felt throughout Palestine. Not alone into Alexandria and Asia Minor but also into Galilee and the country east of Jordan, did Greek as well as Jewish colonists press. Great centres of Greek trade grew up alongside of the smaller towns of the Jews. Even before the time of Alexander, Gaza had commercial relations with Greece, and Dora was probably subject to Athens. Ptolemy Philadelphus had favored Greek colonization in Judea, and, as if to offset this tendency, there had already begun the emigration that was to carry the Jews into all quarters of the known world. In Alexandria, thanks to the efforts of Alexander himself, as well as natural emigration, the Jews numbered hundreds of thousands. Fortunately, the influences they there felt were not those of the Hellenism that so often ruined the Eastern peoples, but rather those which sprang from the schools. By the end of the second century we find at least one Jewish philosopher, Aristobulus, and several poets, and at least a few years later, Jews held high political and military 0ffice under Egyptian rulers. But they chiefly shared in the Graeco-Egyptian intellectual life, and already there had begun that synthesis which was later to give the world Philo and the Kabbala. The Hebrew Scriptures were already translated into Greek, and religious writings had begun to appear in the same language. Thus, by their own kin in Egypt as well as by the heathen who ruled and surrounded them, the Jews of Palestine were being brought under the influence of an Orientalised Greek civilization that rarely, if ever, failed to effect a change for the worse.

With Greek influences thus ubiquitous and persistent, it is not strange that men like Menelaus should have been eager to lead Judea out from its isolation into the circle of a more brilliant civilization. They may not have desired utterly to abandon Jehovah, but they very clearly were eager to abandon the exclusiveness of the Jewish cult in search for a denationalized religion. Such a tendency might very easily have become an outright conversion to heathenism, but this, with necessary exceptions, a just allowance for the sympathies of Josephus and the two books of Maccabees, will hardly permit us to discover. Theirs was a religious indifferentism coupled with the enthusiasm of an abortive renaissance, but it was not idolatry.

Protests against Menelaus.

The prostitution of the priesthood seems to have been endured within Jerusalem itself, whose inhabitants had been specially honored by Antiochus III, and where the Syrian garrison made resistance futile; but when the report of the doings of Menelaus reached the outlying country, there was a general rising in the interest of decency and religion. The Gerousia itself sent messengers to Antiochus to prefer charges against the high priest. But all was in vain. Menelaus bribed the king, stole and sold some of the sacred vessels of the temple, and the wretched accusers paid the penalty of their temerity with their lives, as did also the aged Onias III, whom even the sanctuary of Apollo at Daphne did not protect.

But opposition to Hellenistic religion and culture had been developing, notwithstanding these successes of the high priest. Along with the drift of the priesthood toward Hellenism there ran a counter-current of legalistic orthodoxy—the third great characteristic of the period. The members of the reactionary party were mostly scribes and their disciples, who, so far from desiring any share in Greek civilization, opposed it fanatically. Historically this party represented Jewish spirit quite as truly as the priesthood. From the days of Ezra the genius of the nation had been growing scholastic. The study of the Thorah, though by no means reaching its later preeminence, was growing more intense and widespread. To men filled with the spirit of Moses and the prophets, the friends of heathen civilization, priests though they might be, were “transgressors” and “lawless”. Even articles made of glass, according to Jose ben Jochanan, were defiling, since they were made from Gentile soil. The true Jew was told, “Let thy house be a place of assembly for the wise; powder thyself with the dust of their feet”, and every Sabbath, and indeed on other days, the Law was expounded in the synagogue by the professional teachers.

Rise of the Chasidim.

Under such inspiration the scribes and their followers slowly grew into a party—that of the Chasidim, or “Pious”. Scattered abroad over the little state, dwellers in small towns rather than in the capital, these earnest men and women studied and cherished the Thorah. Important as they were later to prove, both as a party and as the progenitors of parties, their lack of organization, as well as their dispersion and poverty, weakened their influence in the state, and, as with all incipient popular reforms, conflict and persecution were needed to bring the movement to self-consciousness.

And in Judea there was developing between Hellenism and Judaism an irrepressible conflict that was destined to destroy the Hellenizing influence of the aristocracy, give the nation a new dynasty and monarchy, reinstate an intense and uncompromising Judaism, and identify scribism with patriotism.

ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES AND THE LOSS OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

The dominance of the Hellenizing party in church and state brought neither peace nor prosperity. Not only were the morals of the people degenerating, but the taxes levied by Syria were oppressive. Before the conquests of the Asmoneans the Jews were essentially an agricultural people, and, before the rise of the family of Joseph, included few, if any, rich men. In the absence of commerce, any considerable middle class could hardly have existed, and the nation as a whole seems to have been composed of fellaheen and aristocrats, priestly or professional. The two classes had different origins, different ambitions, and very possibly different languages. The supremacy of the Hellenistic elements of the aristocracy was, however, calculated to deepen the misery of the masses, since what little fellow-feeling there may have resulted from devotion to the law was of necessity lost.

Upon such a people the irresponsible rule of the Syrians sat heavily. As wealth was almost exclusively in lands and cattle, taxes were comparatively easy to collect, and of necessity fell with crushing weight upon the unfortunate fellaheen. What these taxes were can be seen from the various privileges granted or promised by Demetrius and other kings. They included a tax on the salt mined at the Dead Sea, a sum supposed to be equivalent to one-third the grain harvested and one-half the fruit, and, in addition, poll taxes and crown taxes, or sums equivalent to the value of crowns, presented to the monarchs, as well as the temple tax of 10,000 drachmas. Further, Syrian officers had the right to seize cattle and stores for military purposes, as well as to enforce the corvée. When one recalls that all this was in addition to the tithes and gifts required of the people in support of their religion, it is not hard to realize the burden upon the people as a whole. Under Antiochus IV fiscal oppression was increasing, since his extravagance as well as the heavy demands of Rome, kept Syria always in need of new taxes. These were collected with a severity certainly not less than that shown previously by Joseph and later by Cassius, when persons and even cities, who could not meet the demands laid upon them, were sold into slavery.

Doubtless in part because of this wretched condition of their affairs, due to an irresponsible king and an unsympathetic local government, there arose a disaffection on the part of many Jews and a suspicion of the Jews on the part of the king.

In about 172 BC Antiochus became involved in a dispute with Egypt over the possession of Palestine, and war immediately broke out between the two nations, he himself acting on the offensive, and conducted one campaign each year between 171-68.

The origin of the dispute with Egypt over Palestine is as follows: Antiochus III, the Great, had given his daughter Cleopatra in marriage to Ptolemy V (Epiphanes), promising as her dowry Coele-Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine. Since the Jews congratulated Ptolemy V at the birth of his son, it would appear as if at that time Judea was in the possession of Egypt. But under Seleucus IV Palestine was again subject to Syria, and in 181 Ptolemy died while attempting to regain it. On the death of Cleopatra the guardians of her son demanded the territory in accordance with the promise of Antiochus III. This was refused, and war ensued.

In the second of these four campaigns Antiochus Epiphanes had conquered practically the whole of Egypt outside of Alexandria, when he suddenly started north, possibly because of the interference of Rome. As he came into Palestine he learned that Jason, whom he had deposed, had shut up Menelaus in the citadel, and, although driven from the city, was at the head of a revolt. This news, coupled with his natural suspicion of the Egyptian leanings of the Judaistic party, caused him to march upon Jerusalem. He sacked the city, massacred or enslaved large numbers of its inhabitants, and, although he made no attack upon Judaism, with Menelaus as his guide he entered into the sanctuary, where he is said to have found a statue of Moses riding on an ass. He robbed the temple of its treasure, and carried off to Antioch the golden altar, the candlestick, the table of shewbread, the cups and sacred vessels, and even scaled off the gilt with which parts of the temple were overlaid. Then he left the city in the control of Menelaus, who was supported by Syrian officials and troops.

These acts of Antiochus Epiphanes were but the beginning of a desperate attempt to extirpate the anti-Hellenistic party. Such an attempt was, in a measure, due to the peculiarities of the king himself. Brave, generous, and to a considerable degree possessed of cultivated tastes, he was at the same time eccentric, passionate, and possessed of immeasurable self-conceit. Added to these personal elements were the suspected sympathies of the Chasidim with Egypt. But doubtless with even greater truth it may be ascribed to an unbalanced determination to consolidate and prolong the Syrian state by the establishment of a common civilization. All should be one people. Had the already aggressive Hellenizing movement been allowed to run its course among the Jews, it is not impossible (though, on the whole, in the light of Jewish history, not probable, since such heathen tendencies would most likely have produced a revival of prophetism) that Judaism, like other ethnic faiths, would have succumbed. But here the king’s own character made patience out of the question and precipitated a struggle that was not to cease until the weak city-state was unexpectedly able to break free from a suddenly decadent empire, and the despised anti-Hellenistic party became supreme.

The policy of Antiochus.

This new policy of Antiochus was inaugurated by an attack upon Jerusalem, and again the occasion of the attack lay in the king’s Egyptian wars. In 168 BC he had all but conquered Egypt, when the Roman legate, Popilius, following the anti-Syrian policy which Rome then favored, unexpectedly ordered him to return to Syria. Antiochus demanded time for deliberation. The Roman drew a circle about the king with his staff and ordered him to “deliberate there”. The king deliberated—and retreated!

But now more than ever did he see danger in having on his southern frontier an unassimilated nation like the Jews, among whom a strong anti-Syrian party might easily develop, if indeed it were not already in existence. He determined once and for all either to convert or exterminate those of their numbers whose devotion to Judaism argued disloyalty to Syria. Indeed, it is not impossible that for purely political reasons he planned to exterminate the Jews of Jerusalem as a whole, and to replace them by heathen colonists. With such a combination of purposes—political, religious, and ambitious—he got possession of Jerusalem by treachery, again sacked and burned it, plundered the temple, massacred many of the citizens, carried off ten thousand as slaves, threw down the walls, strengthened the acropolis until it was a citadel which completely commanded the temple and the city, and placed in it a strong Syrian garrison.

Again this was but a beginning. For the first time in the history of the Graeco-Roman world there began a war of extermination of a religion. Its victims were those who clung to Judaism, and above all the Pious. The observance of all Jewish rites, especially the Sabbath and circumcision, was punished by death. Jewish worship was abolished. Heathen altars were erected in all the cities of Judea, and in the temple groves were planted, and a small altar to Jupiter, the Abomination of Desolation, was erected upon the great altar of burnt-offering. There in December 168 BC a sow was sacrificed and the desecration was complete.

Then began the brief period of Jewish martyrs. Royal officers went about the land to see that the commands of the king were obeyed. But while many deserted their faith, and the Samaritans obtained by petition the right to erect a temple to Zeus upon Mt. Gerizim, the Chasidim and their sympathizers preferred death to denial. Old men and youths were whipped with rods and torn to pieces, mothers were crucified with the infant boys they had circumcised, strangled and hanging about their necks. To possess a copy of the law was to be punished by death. It would be hard to name a greater crisis in the history of the Jews, or indeed of any people. To compare it with the fortunes of the Low Countries during the reign of Philip II of Spain is to discredit neither brave little land.

But the persecution only intensified the devotion of the Chasidim to their Thorah. They were ready to die rather than surrender such few copies as they might own. Indeed, as later in the case of the Christians under Decius, persecution itself helped them to draw more clearly the distinction between their sacred books and those that were not worthy of supreme sacrifice; and during these dark days we may place the first beginning of that choice between religious books which afterward was to result in the fixing of the third group or stratum of books in the Hebrew Bible—the “Sacred Writings”.

The literature of the persecution, Judith, Daniel, Enoch. The Messianic hope.

From the midst of this persecution, also, the hopes of the Pious leaped out in vision and prophecy. In the books of Daniel and Judith they pictured the deliverances wrought by Jehovah for those who kept his law in disobedience of some monstrous demand for universal idolatry, and traced the rise and fall of empires till the kingdom of the saints should come. Similar religious trust burst forth in lyric poetry, in which the misery of the land is painted no more vividly than the faith that the true Israel is the flock of Jehovah’s pasture. Even more in the Visions of Enoch does the heart of a pious Israel find expression. To their unknown author the Chasidim were lambs killed and mutilated by fierce birds, while the apostate Jews looked on unmoved. But he saw deliverance as well. The Lord of the sheep should seat himself upon a throne “in a pleasant land”, and cast the oppressors and the apostates into a fiery abyss; but the faithful martyrs should be brought to a new temple, and their eyes should be opened to see the good, and at last they should be like Messiah himself. For God would send his own anointed to his servants’ aid, and he should found a new kingdom, not in heaven, but  out of the depths of their sufferings proclaimed a Messianic time in which a revived and sanctified Israel would give the true religion to all the world.

Sustained by these bright visions—the seed of so much later Jewish hope—the Chasidim at first awaited Jehovah’s time. They could die as martyrs, but they would not live as soldiers. But deliverance was to come by the sword, and events were to make this plain, even to the Chasidim. For out of this persecution arose the Judea of Judas Maccabeus.

The misery of the land could not have continued long when, in accordance with the king’s dragonnade, Appelles, a royal officer, came to Modein, a small town upon the hills of Judea overlooking the maritime plain. There he ordered all the inhabitants to a heathen sacrifice. Among those who answered his summons were Mattathias, the head of a priestly family supposedly descendants of one Chasinon or Asmon, and his five sons, —John, Simon, Judas, Eleazar, and Jonathan. They were not members of the Chasidim but represented the wider circle of those whose devotion to the Law had been deeply stirred by the persecution. As Mattathias came to the little gathering the royal officer promised him a reward for conformity. Instantly the old priest with a great shout of protest killed the Jew who was attempting to offer a sacrifice, and his sons struck down the officer. Then, after leveling the altar with the ground, the entire family fled to the mountains. There they were joined by groups of the Chasidim, already fugitives, and by other men less religious but even more ready to oppose oppression.

No sooner was the affair at Modein known than the Syrians undertook to punish the rebels, and the fanatical devotion of some of the Chasidim to the Sabbath for a time threatened disaster. On one occasion a group allowed themselves to be slaughtered by the Syrians rather than break the Sabbath defending themselves. But the strong common sense of Mattathias convinced even these zealots that such devotion was ill-advised, and other bands of the Pious submitted to the stern necessities that were laid upon religion. Then, with his troop of fanatical, undisciplined, and ill-armed followers, Mattathias began a religious war. Up and down Judea the wild troops ranged, avoiding the larger cities, hiding by day, attacking by night, “smiting sinners in their anger and lawless men in their wrath”, pulling down heathen altars, forcibly circumcising children, pursuing after the “sons of pride”, and, as far as they were able, guaranteeing safety in the observance of the Law.

For perhaps a year the old man was able to maintain this rough life, and then he died (166 BC), urging his sons to “recompense fully the heathen and to regard the commandments of the Law”. The conduct of the struggle he bequeathed to Judas, his third son, but recommended Simon as a counselor. His followers buried him in the family tomb at Modein, and prepared for the greater struggle which was clearly before them.

II.

Judas Maccabeus and the Reestablishment of Religious Liberty (165-161 BC) Jonathan and the Beginnings of Nationality (161-143 BC) Simon and the Consolidation of Judaism (143-135 BC) 

HISTORY OF THE JEWS