Ahaliba StudioWho Was Antiochus Epiphanes, and Did He Destroy the Soul of Judaism?
Seleucus IV was assassinated by his deputy Heliodorus, and his brother Antiochus IV, known as Antiochus Epiphanes, ascended to the throne. This Antiochus found himself in a situation similar to his father’s, facing significant financial difficulties. Therefore, he set out to fight against Egypt and conquered Egypt up to Alexandria. There, a messenger from Rome arrived, and according to the story, the messenger drew a large circle around Antiochus and said to him, “You can step out of the circle and conquer Alexandria, but then you will have bought yourself a Roman enemy who will come to war against you, or you can step out of the circle and return as you came.” Antiochus understood that it was not wise to fight the Romans and lose to them, so he chose to return home. However, in the meantime, a rumor spread in Eretz Israel that Antiochus had died in battle, and the one who immediately exploited the situation was Jason, the former High Priest who had been expelled from the Temple. He arrived at the Temple with a thousand men, took control of it, and expelled Menelaus.
Antiochus heard what had happened and came to Jerusalem. He learned that the Jews had rebelled against him in Jerusalem and launched a severe campaign of killing and plundering against the Jews of Jerusalem, with Menelaus assisting him. Afterward, Antiochus also began to impose decrees on the Jews.
Diodorus, a historian from a slightly later period, had writings in his possession, and this is how he describes Antiochus’s arrival in Jerusalem: “Antiochus, called Epiphanes, after defeating the Jews, entered the Holy of Holies of the Temple of God, which only priests were permitted by law to enter. There, he found a marble statue of a man riding a donkey with a book in hand, which he assumed was an image of Moses, the founder of Jerusalem and organizer of the nation, who commanded the Jews in their depraved customs. And because Epiphanes was appalled by such hatred directed against all humanity, he set out to break their traditional practices. Therefore, he sacrificed a large sow before the founder and the open altar to the sky and poured its blood on it. Afterward, after preparing its flesh, he ordered the juices of the meat to be sprinkled on their sacred books containing the laws; to extinguish the lamp called by them ‘eternal,’ which burned continuously in the Temple; and to force the High Priest and the rest of the Jews to eat from the flesh.”
Diodorus’s words are the first direct non-Jewish testimony confirming the desecration of the Temple in Jerusalem by Antiochus Epiphanes. This testimony also acknowledges that the internal conflicts began with Jews who, out of the desire to seize the priesthood, brought the battles to the Temple. Still, Antiochus also had an agenda against the Jewish religion. He considered Judaism something terrible for humanity and, as such, saw his struggle as a fight against Judaism itself. Therefore, he imposed decrees and appointed various people to turn the Jews away from their religion and uproot Judaism from them.
After the power struggles in the Greek kingdom following Alexander’s death, the Jews in Eretz Israel found themselves between the northern Seleucid kingdom and the southern Ptolemaic kingdom in Egypt. Despite the initially positive attitude toward the Jews after the economic crisis in the Seleucid Empire following the defeat by Rome, the High Priesthood in the Temple became something bought by the highest bidder, so the High Priests turned Hellenistic and no longer reflected the will of Judaism. The priests also transformed Jerusalem into a Hellenistic city.
During Antiochus Epiphanes’s campaign to conquer Egypt, a rumor spread in Eretz Israel that he had died in battle, leading to a certain rebellion in Jerusalem. When it became clear that Antiochus was not dead, he reconquered Jerusalem, killed the priests and many people from the populace, carried out a great massacre in Jerusalem, and reinstated his Hellenistic priest, Menelaus, to power. After the massacre, plundering, and Hellenistic rule, Jerusalem became a city of Greeks and Hellenized Jews, marking the next stage in the Hasmonean story—the religious decrees.
The religious decrees of Antiochus against the Jews unfolded in several stages. In the first stage, Antiochus’s goal was to transform Jerusalem into a Hellenistic city fully. He placed his Greek men in power with overwhelming force in the city. His men built the Acra—a strong fortress strategically overlooking the Temple Mount. For years, archaeologists and researchers debated where exactly the Acra was located. Today, it is widely accepted that the Acra built during Antiochus’s time was located at the current Givati Parking Lot in Jerusalem. Significant excavations at the Givati site uncovered enormous archaeological findings supporting this, including many arrowheads, ballista stones, and coins from that period, indicating that it was a very active and central place and a site of struggle, war, and conquest.
The next stage was the decrees themselves. Antiochus Epiphanes saw his struggle against Judaism as something highly significant and personal. He viewed Judaism as negative and something to be fought against, and the decrees followed swiftly. Antiochus brought a special person from Athens to be responsible for this process. In this process, Antiochus decreed that the Jews were forbidden to circumcise their sons, banned the study of the Torah, ordered the burning of all Torah scrolls (with anyone found in possession of a Torah scroll sentenced to death), prohibited observing the Sabbath, forbade celebrating Jewish holidays, and required the Jews to eat forbidden and non-kosher foods, primarily pork. Antiochus ordered the erection of altars and shrines to Greek idols throughout Jerusalem.
Read About The Beginning of the Revolt: How the Legend of the Hasmoneans Was Born Here
How Far Would Antiochus Go to Eradicate Judaism?
The next stage of Antiochus’s war on Judaism was the Temple itself. Antiochus desecrated and defiled the Temple, turning it into a pagan temple of the Greek God Zeus. This was extremely difficult for the Jews, both because of the defilement of the Temple and the decrees. Seventy Jewish women dared to circumcise their sons, and the Greeks then executed them brutally in front of the crowd. Another source tells of a group of Jews who fled to caves in the desert to observe the Sabbath commandment; the Greeks pursued them to the caves and burned them alive inside. Two additional central stories, brought in by Maccabees II, describe great acts of sanctification of God’s name during those days.
The first story is about Eleazar the Priest, an elderly figure among the sages in Jerusalem. The Greeks tried to persuade him to eat pork, but Eleazar refused and remained faithful to the laws of the Torah. The Greeks tried every means to convince him, even offering a tempting proposal—that he only pretended to eat the pork without actually eating it so people would think he did, thereby sparing his life. But the righteous Eleazar refused even to pretend so as not to set a bad example, and he went joyfully to his martyrdom, executed in torment for the sanctification of God’s name.
The second, more well-known story in Jewish tradition is about a Jewish woman and her seven sons, who the Greeks captured. Antiochus’s men tried to force them to bow to idolatrous statues. One after another, the sons sanctified God’s name, delivering speeches filled with love for God and faith, refusing to bow to the statue, and were executed in cruel deaths. Thus, each of the woman’s sons (later sources identify her as “Hannah”) was killed, until the youngest son. The Greeks also tried to trick him, saying, “Just pretend to bow, and not only will we spare your life, but we will also elevate you to greatness and ensure your prosperity in this world.” It is told that Antiochus threw his ring in front of the statue and told the young boy, “Just pick up the ring, and people will think you bowed to the statue.” The young boy turned to his mother for advice, and she told him to remain faithful to God. The boy also delivered a speech filled with faith and was executed in severe torment in front of his mother, Hannah. In the end, the mother also died (some say of grief, others say by suicide).
The Jews were in a very difficult situation; they could not observe the laws of the Torah and were constantly persecuted. At this time, in the small village of Modi’in, not far from Jerusalem, the Greek rulers and their collaborators arrived, setting up an altar to force the locals to bow to a statue and eat pork. The Greeks first approached the most respected person there—Mattathias. Mattathias, from the Hasmonean family, had five sons (John, Simon, Judah, Eleazar, and Jonathan). As one of the most prominent figures in the area, the Greeks called on him to be the first to bow to the statue and eat pork. Mattathias adamantly refused to bow to the statue, but then another person from the locals, a Hellenized Jew, stepped forward, willing to bow. Before he could, Mattathias drew his sword, killed the Hellenized Jew, and killed the Greek official present. He called out to the Jewish crowd around him, “Who is for the Lord? Come with me!” (Who is willing to fight for God? Join me!) Then Mattathias and his men drove the Greeks out of the village and fled to the hills, thus beginning the Hasmonean revolt.
As they began organizing in the hills, more Jews were willing to fight for God, and the Torah joined them, and the rumor of the revolt spread among both Jews and Greeks. At first, the Hasmonean battles were local struggles; they went to surrounding villages, liberated them from Greek rule, expelled the Greeks, and helped local Jews circumcise their sons (something forbidden under Antiochus’s decrees). Thus, more and more Jews who were willing to fight gathered around Mattathias, his sons, and their men.
As the small Hasmonean revolt grew, it began to trouble the Greeks. The Hasmonean battles are divided into two periods: one before the purification of the Temple and one after. The first part, as mentioned, began with small local battles in villages, more like nighttime raids by the Maccabees on the Greeks, freeing the locals from Greek oppression. These small battles led the Greeks to send Apollonius, the Greek governor of the Samaria region, who gathered soldiers there to fight Judah Maccabee and his men. The first battle, the Battle of Apollonius, is said to have occurred in “Ma’ale Levona.” In this battle, Judah and his men ambushed Apollonius in a guerrilla attack under the cover of darkness and managed to defeat him, taking his sword. The sword Judah took from Apollonius became his weapon in all his subsequent battles.
After Apollonius was defeated, Judah Maccabee gained the image of a military leader, not just a rebel from the hills, and he even had a weapon—a sword. Once this news reached the Greeks, the military commander in Syria decided to bring a more significant and larger force to fight Judah. This battle called the Battle of Beth Horon, saw the Greeks arrive with a much more substantial force, though still not their elite units. Judah Maccabee’s men were initially frightened when they saw the approaching forces. Still, like King Saul before his battle with the Philistines, Judah stood and delivered an encouraging speech to his men: “There is no hindrance before heaven to save, whether by many or by few,” he told them. Judah and his men surprised and defeated the Greek army; a large part of the Greek army was killed in the battle, and the rest fled to the land of the Philistines.
After the victory at the Battle of Beth Horon, Judah had many more weapons, which he took for his fighters and would play a very important role in future battles. The victory of Judah Maccabee at Beth Horon became widely known, and the Greeks realized this was no longer just a small gang but a significant force that needed to be fought. Antiochus, the Greek king, wanted to go to Jerusalem to crush this revolt, but he lacked funds, so he first embarked on a “fundraising” campaign by plundering temples and treasures in the East. In the meantime, he appointed his deputy, Lysias, to handle affairs in his absence and suppress the revolt in Jerusalem. Lysias sent two senior officers, Nicanor and Gorgias, to fight Judah. According to Maccabees I, Nicanor took 40,000 soldiers and 7,000 cavalry with him, and they set out to fight Judah in one of the most significant battles, the Battle of Emmaus.
Nicanor and his men arrived at Emmaus (today the area of Canada Park, Latrun), where the large Greek camp was located, consisting of elite, battle-hardened units, augmented by others from the surrounding area who supported the idea of suppressing the revolt, as well as slave traders who thought there would be a large influx of enslaved people to capture and sell after the battle. The Greek officer Gorgias had internal intelligence and knew exactly where Judah Maccabee was and where he could be caught, so he decided to surprise Judah by attacking him at night. Judah Maccabee was at Mizpah (the area of Samuel the Prophet today) with 3,000 men ready to fight with him. At Mizpah, the Jewish fighters held an emotional ceremony, realizing they were few against many and thus placing their hope in God and faith. They offered prayers and blew trumpets.
Gorgias prepared to surprise Judah Maccabee at night, taking 5,000 of his men and beginning to ascend toward Mizpah at dusk. The ascent to Mizpah was very difficult (topographically), and a professional army like the Greeks, with many weapons and heavy equipment, struggled to climb. Like Gorgias, Judah Maccabee also had intelligence, and Judah knew what Gorgias was planning, so he left the torches burning in the camp as if they were occupied. Judah took his soldiers and descended by another route to the Greek camp at Emmaus. Thus, at dawn, Judah and his men attacked the sleepy, unprepared Greek camp, managing to kill several thousand Greek soldiers there while the rest fled in chaos to Gezer (a few kilometers away). Judah ordered his men not to be tempted to loot the camp because they had only done half the job, with another battle still ahead, so they set the Greek camp on fire and destroyed what remained of it.
Meanwhile, Gorgias finally reached Judah Maccabee’s camp at Mizpah and found it empty; realizing he had been tricked, he rushed back with his men to the camp at Emmaus. From a distance, he saw his camp in flames, and his soldiers panicked greatly, scattering in all directions. Thus, Gorgias’s battle against Judah Maccabee ended in a crushing failure. Judah emerged victorious from the battle with many new weapons, equipment, and significant prestige, becoming a leader and savior figure for all Jews in the area, gaining enormous public support while the Greeks became extremely anxious.
The Greeks were no longer satisfied with just a military officer; Lysias, the deputy to the king himself, came to Eretz Israel to crush the revolt and Judah Maccabee. Lysias learned that all his predecessors had come from the west-east direction (from the area of modern-day Beit Horon), and he understood that Judah had geographical and navigational advantages in those areas. Therefore, he approached from a different direction—this time from the south. Lysias arrived from the south to Beth Zur (located in today’s Halhul area, 2 kilometers south of Karmé Zur), bringing a large army with elephants (the tanks of that era). Judah Maccabee also arrived there, conducting several guerrilla raids on the Greek army. Lysias realized he could not defeat Judah this way, so he decided to return to Antioch, reorganize, and come back with a larger, more significant army to defeat Judah.
When Lysias returned, he learned that King Antiochus Epiphanes had died in the East during one of his plundering expeditions. Some say he committed suicide after hearing all the rumors about his army’s failures against Judah; others say he died of depression. According to Maccabees II, he suffered from a severe intestinal illness, fell from his chariot while traveling, and died in great agony. Lysias hurried to Antioch because he had to deal with the transfer of the kingdom to Antiochus’s son, Antiochus V. Therefore, he had no choice but to temporarily concede to the Jews, attempting to negotiate with them to grant them their rights in Jerusalem. But Judah did not wait for Greek permission and set out for Jerusalem to purify Jerusalem and the Temple.
Can Faith and Determination Turn the Few into Saviors and Defeat Antiochus?
The Hasmonean revolt began in the small village of Modi’in, from where they moved to the hills to organize. Then, they went out to local battles to liberate surrounding villages and help Jews free themselves from Greek oppression. Then came Judah’s great battles—the Battle of Apollonius, the Battle of Beth Horon, and the Battle of Emmaus, where Judah achieved a legendary military victory over the Greek army. Finally, the Battle of Beth Zur caused Lysias, the Greek deputy and leader after the death of Antiochus IV, to retreat and attempt to grant the Jews some autonomy in their region.
Judah did not wait for Greek permission and ascended to Jerusalem, beginning the purification of Jerusalem and the Temple. He removed the altars and shrines Antiochus IV had built for Greek idols in Jerusalem. The Greeks and Hellenized Jews in Jerusalem fortified themselves in the Acra fortress, and Judah besieged them, driving out the remaining Greeks in Jerusalem. Judah purified the Temple of all the statues and idols Antiochus had placed there. Initially, he debated what to do with the desecrated altar stones but ultimately decided to destroy the Jewish altar and bring new stones to rebuild them. Judah renewed the sacrificial service, lighting the menorah as described in Maccabees I:
“And they rose early on the morning of the twenty-fifth of the ninth month, which is the month of Kislev, in the year one hundred and forty-eight. And they offered a sacrifice according to the law upon the new altar of burnt offering, which they had made. At the very time and on the very day, the Gentiles had defiled it; on that very day, it was dedicated to songs, harps, lyres, and cymbals. And all the people fell on their faces and prayed and blessed heaven, which had prospered them. And they celebrated the dedication of the altar for eight days and offered burnt offerings with joy, peace offerings, and thanksgiving… And Judah and his brothers and all the congregation of Israel decreed that the days of the dedication of the altar should be observed in their season year by year for eight days, from the twenty-fifth day of the month of Kislev, with joy and gladness.” The dedication of the altar was celebrated festively, and already that year, Judah established a great eight-day festival to celebrate the great victory over the Greeks.
The story of the miracle of the cruse of oil is brought in the Bavli in Massehet Shabbat 21b at the beginning of the Hanukkah discussion: “When the Greeks entered the Sanctuary, they defiled all the oils in the Sanctuary, and when the Hasmonean kingdom prevailed and defeated them, they searched and found only one cruse of oil that was placed with the seal of the High Priest, and there was only enough in it to light for one day. A miracle occurred, and they lit from it for eight days. They established these [days] the following year and made them holidays with praise and thanksgiving.”
In his essay on Hanukkah, Rabbi Kook discusses the essence of the miracle of the cruse of oil. Rabbi Kook teaches that the miracle of the curse of oil is a microcosm of the entire Hasmonean period. The Greeks entered the Sanctuary and assaulted the Jewish people, damaging every good part of the nation. They harmed the Temple—the soul of the Jewish people—to the point of near-total despair. Yet there was a small cruse of oil, representing Mattathias and his sons, but they were very few. What could one family from Modi’in do? How could they possibly change the course of events and history? Then, a miracle occurred, and we see that the Hasmonean revolt, the fire ignited by the Maccabees, suddenly turned into a great fire and a significant event that transformed the face of the Jewish people. Therefore, the miracle of the cruse of oil, which the sages (Chazal) associated with the holiday of Hanukkah, actually symbolizes the entire event that took place during those days.
The purification of the Temple occurred in 164 BCE, three years after the Greeks placed their statues in the Temple. The purification of the Temple aroused great anger in the surrounding area because non-Jewish inhabitants of Eretz Israel feared the renewal of Temple service and Jewish political independence, leading to conflicts between Gentiles living in Eretz Israel and Jews beyond Judah Maccabee’s control in Jerusalem—that is, conflicts in the south and north of the land. Here, Judah emerged as a general Jewish leader for the people, not just a leader in Jerusalem, and he set out to defend Jews throughout the region. He split his forces between himself and Simon. Judah went with his men to address the distress of Jews in Gilead, leading them on a very complex campaign to Jerusalem, while he sent Simon to Galilee to handle the entanglements there for the Jews. Later, he heard of a problem in the coastal area and went there to fight the Philistines. Thus, Judah was occupied with local battles against specific enemies after purifying the Temple. In these events, Judah revealed himself as a leader of the Jewish people, not just a local leader but a protector and savior for Jews throughout Eretz Israel.
Credit: Written and edited from the series of lessons by Rabbi Zvi Haber, “Azi Bami Hashmanim.”
