The Ancients - Hanukkah & the Maccabees

Episode Date: December 8, 2024

It's perhaps the best known Jewish festival of the year, but what exactly are Hanukkah's origins, and why was it first celebrated?On today's episode of the Ancients, Tristan Hughes is joined once again by Dr Jodi Magness to answer these questions and unravel the holiday's complex history. On their journey they discover it emerged from an incredibly important event in ancient Judaean history - the Maccabean Revolt, over 2,000 years ago at a time when the successors of Alexander the Great ruled supreme. It is a gripping story of defiance, of Jewish civil war, and of resistance against the oppressive Seleucid Empire.Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Aidan Lonergan, the producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.The Ancients is a History Hit podcast.All music from Epidemic SoundSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode, well, we're exploring the origins of the most well-known Jewish festival of the year, Hanukkah. Hanukkah emerged from an incredibly important event in ancient Judean history, a revolt known as the Maccabean Revolt, which happened more than 2,000 years ago,

at a time when the great Hellenistic successor kingdoms of Alexander the Great reigned supreme over Judea and the Middle East. This is a story of defiance, of Jewish civil war, but also of resistance against a foreign Hellenistic superpower, the Seleucid Empire. Now the Maccabean Revolt is a complex topic, so joining me to help untangle it and its central link to Hanukkah is a regular guest on The Ancients, Professor Jodie Magnus from the University of North Carolina. Now, I'm a big fan of Jodie and her work. She's a wonderful speaker, a force of nature who knows

so much about the ancient Levant. I really do hope you enjoy as we explore the origins of Hanukkah and the story of the Maccabean Revolt. Jodie, it is wonderful, as always, wonderful to have you back on the podcast. And it's great to be back. Thank you, Tristan. You're more than welcome. And we're talking about the Maccabean Revolt. And this feels like an incredibly important event in Jewish history and in the story of ancient Judea. It is actually. And you know, it's funny, most people I think don't realise that they're familiar with this already, because most people are familiar with the holiday of Hanukkah, but are not necessarily aware of its connections to this revolt.

Yeah, very closely intertwined, aren't they? But from what I gather, we've got a lot to get through in the next 40 or 50 minutes. So without further ado, let's delve straight into it. Second century BC, early second century BC Judea, what is the context for just before this revolt breaks out? Right. So in the early second century BC Judea, which is sort of the area around Jerusalem, was under the rule of one of Alexander the Great's Greek successors. So here, I just have to go back a little bit to Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great had conquered the area of Judea with other parts of the Near East in, let's say, well, Judea in 332 BC. And after he died, his empire was split up among various generals. And two of his generals got the lion's share of his empire.

One was a guy named Ptolemy, who got Egypt. And the other was a guy named Seleucus, who got the area to the north of Judea, the area of Syria, Asia Minor, sort of through the area of what is today Iraq or Mesopotamia. And Judea, of course, lay right in the middle between those kind of two power blocks, those two kingdoms, which were ruled by the successors of Ptolemy and Seleucus, who are called the Ptolemies and the Seleucids. And it became sort of a bone of contention between them. And for most of the third century BC, Judea was under the rule of the Ptolemies down in Egypt. But in the beginning of the second century BC, it comes under the rule of the Ptolemies down in Egypt, but in the beginning of the second century BC, it comes under the rule of the Seleucids, specifically a Seleucid king named Antiochus III.

So at this point, Judea is under the rule of Antiochus III. And the situation of the Jews is interesting because these successors of Alexander ruled their kingdoms in different ways, by which I mean that there were different kinds of administrative units within their kingdoms. And a little bit different from most of the rest of these kingdoms, Judea was a bit of a semi-autonomous area. This had been the case for centuries, going back to the Persians, even before the conquest of Alexander. even before the conquest of Alexander, Jews were given the freedom and in fact required to live according to biblical Jewish law. That is that biblical Jewish law was the law of the land. If you were a Jew, meaning a Judean, a person from Judea or of Judean descent, you were required to follow those laws as the law of the land. So in a sense, Judea was this kind of semi-autonomous territory where the Jews enjoyed what we might consider today to be a great deal of religious freedom. And the administration of the territory was under the governance of a council called the Gerousia.

The Gerousia, that Greek name, yeah. That's right, a Greek word that comes from the word meaning elderly because it was a council of elders, older people. I always like to point out to my students that in these societies, older people were venerated, were respected for their knowledge and their experience. And so that's basically the situation as we enter the second century BC. The Jews now had been living literally for hundreds of years already with a great deal of relative autonomy and certainly religious freedom. So it's interesting because

you say the Seleucids and Ptolemies fought over this land. I think it's like one, two, three, four, five Syrian wars on there for control of Judea. Autonomy is there for the Jews, the people of Judea, but Greek influence is there too. That's really important to highlight. Greek influence is there too, especially when we come to the outbreak of the revolt. Yes, that's absolutely right. And so this is one of the really interesting things. And we see this actually in other periods as well. For example, we see this during the reign of Herod the Great. Oh, our favorite. Yes, exactly. Where especially there is external influence or cultural influence on the local elites who have the money, the means, to be able to adopt these kind of outside customs, which are sort of the fashion, the modern fashion,

even while continuing to observe biblical Jewish law. And we see that certainly among the Jerusalem elite after the conquest of Alexander. We see an increasing amount of sort of what we might call Greek influence on the local elite, after the conquest of Alexander, we see an increasing amount of sort of what we might call Greek influence on the local elite. And this comes to a head in 175 BC. So now we're entering, let's say, the second quarter of the second century BC. The high priest in Jerusalem, whose name was Jason, basically paid off the Seleucid king to get permission to turn Jerusalem into a Greek polis, into a Greek city. Right, to rename the city Antioch, to give some of the inhabitants of Jerusalem citizenship in this Greek polis. And as a result, Greek institutions were now

introduced into Jerusalem. I would qualify and say that the worship of the God of Israel was still allowed. There was no persecution for observing biblical Jewish law or worshiping the God of Israel. The temple in Jerusalem continued to function as it had previously as a place for the center of the worship of the God of Israel. But we now have the introduction of these sort of Greek-style institutions into Jerusalem, something we had not seen before. And that includes things like theaters and- Gymnasiums. And yes, very important, a gymnasium and an amphibian. And what's important about that is

that the gymnasia and amphibia, or gymnasiums and amphibians, if we put it in English, andephebia, or gymnasiums andephebians, if we put it in English, were basically schools for youth, male youth, by the way, not women, but only males. But they were Greek institutions where the youth, and here we're talking particularly about, again, the elites, would receive a good Greek education, and they would learn the Greek language, and they would learn Greek classics and become acculturated to Greek culture. And this is the first time that we see something like this. Now, the problem is that a lot of these aspects of Greek culture are antithetical to biblical Jewish law and Jewish practice.

And so, for example, the word gymnasium comes from the Greek word gymnos, which means nudity or naked, because one of the centerpieces of a good Greek education was that the male youth were also educated in athletics, right? They also participated in athletic competitions, you know, whether it's races or foot races or wrestling matches or discus throwing. And those competitions were held in the nude. Those male Greek athletes competed in the nude. And that was also the case, by the way, the ancient Olympic games. And biblical Jewish law considers nudity, human nudity, to be an affront to the eyes of God. And so this is completely antithetical, right, to now.

So we have the introduction and we have some ancient sources that talk about what's going on in Jerusalem. And one of them is a work called Second Maccabees, which you would find in a Catholic Bible, but not in a Hebrew or Protestant Bible. And the author of Second Maccabees obviously was completely opposed to these new innovations and is scandalized, describing how, for example, the priests serving in the temple would rush to finish the sacrifices before they would run off to watch the athletic competitions, and how the finest of the young Jewish men took to wearing the Greek hat and things like that.

So this marks a real, you know, turning point. But what's interesting is that there, even though, let's say the author of 2 Maccabees obviously was scandalized by this, there's no indication in our sources of any sort of real Jewish opposition to any of this. So there's no indication that, you know that some of the families of Jerusalem rose up against Jason and anything like that. So this is really an entirely internal thing. And it does, again, highlight the fact that, especially among the elite, or at least many of the elite, there was no problem reconciling the adoption of, let's say, in this case, Greek culture with the continuing worship of the God of Israel. So you have that in Jerusalem, but of course, the whole province

of Judea, it's much more than just the city. So that's happening there. And as you say, it's really interesting, even though it seems to be contrary to biblical Jewish law, that they are embracing this Greek culture. So where does the trouble begin, Jodie? I'm presuming it's beyond the walls of Jerusalem, that there's a bit more fight back and resistance to this. Yeah. So here's where things get a little bit complicated. Okay. But okay. So I'll try to explain. So I should point out that I just mentioned Jason,

whose Hebrew name was Yeshua, which is actually Jesus. Oh, wow. Hebrew name was Joshua, Yeshua, which is actually Jesus. It's actually a variant of the name Joshua, Yeshua, Joshua, Yehoshua. And so it's actually a very common name among Jewish men at the time. And interestingly to notice, by the way, that this high priest adopted also a Greek name, Jason, and he's known by his Greek name. But there's a little bit of background to Jason, because Jason actually was not the official high priest in Jerusalem. The official high priest in Jerusalem was his older brother, a guy named Onias, specifically Onias III, who, for various reasons that I won't go into,

had to leave Jerusalem and go up to Antioch in Syria, which was the capital of the Seleucid kingdom, in order to meet with the Seleucid king. While he's gone, he leaves his brother, Jason, in charge. So Jason was kind of like the interim high priest in Jerusalem, and it's when he becomes the interim high priest, he then actually bribes the Seleucid king to keep him in place as the high priest, because it was up to the Seleucid king to confirm the appointments of high priests. And Jason then obtains the position sort of permanently of high priest. And his brother, his older brother, Onias III, never returns to Judea. He actually ends up being assassinated in Antioch. There's a whole nother thread of a story connected with that. And then what happens

is, is that three years after Jason secures the high priesthood for himself. So now we're in 172 BC. He sends another priest who's an official in the temple, but not related to Jason, a guy named Menelaus to Antioch to make a payment to the king. Now, probably this was an annual payment. So probably the high priest had to sort of pay an annual fee to be able to serve in their office. And this Menelaus, not only was he not related to Jason, he was not a member of that family. So here I now have to see, I'm sorry, it gets a little complicated, but here I have to backtrack again. So Jason and his older brother were members of a family that were called the Zadokites. The Zadokites were descended or at least claimed to be descended from the very first high priest who Solomon had appointed to officiate as high priests in the temple in Jerusalem had claimed ancestry from the original Zadok, and they were called the Zadokite line of high priests.

And they became kind of the official high priestly family. So Menelaus was from a priestly family, but he was not a Zadokite. He goes to Antioch with the payment. And what he does is he meets with the king up there, and he outbids Jason. He says, you know what? If you make me high priest, I'll give you even more money. Brutal stuff. Right. And what does the king care? The king's like, sure, I'll take more money. And so Menelaus is able to secure the high priesthood for himself. And he goes back to

Jerusalem. Now there's a whole episode that occurs after this that I won't go into, but there ends up being kind of a little civil war between Jason and Menelaus. And eventually Jason ends up having to leave the country, actually ends up going to Sparta. And there's a really interesting connection between some of the elite and priestly Jews of this period and Sparta, which is kind of fascinating, actually. Anyway, he ends up eventually going to Sparta. Menelaus becomes the high priest. This transition, so to speak, leads to a kind of a lot of unrest. There was some dissatisfaction amongst them. And I should mention that the factions supporting Jason and Menelaus, it wasn't just religious, it was also political, because they

were also political factions, pro-Ptolemy, pro-Selucid, whatever, right? Anyway, the bigger background here is that by the time we get into, let's say, the 160s BC, the country is now under the rule of a son of Antiochus III, whose name is Antiochus IV, specifically Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Epiphanes is an epithet of the god Olympian Zeus, the chief deity of the Greeks, and it means the manifest god. And it's because Antiochus IV sort of venerated that particular god as his special patron deity. So he adopts the epithet of that god. Now, Antiochus IV had been raised in Rome. There's a whole backstory to this too. His father had at some point sent him as a hostage to Rome.

Yes, the Romans defeat Antiochus III. The Romans are rising in the background, basically, but the Seleucids are still a big power in the East. Exactly so. That's right. There had been a devastating battle that Antiochus III lost against the Romans in the year 190 BC, the Battle of Magnesia, Magnesia on the Meander in Asia Minor. As a result of that battle, the Romans imposed really harsh terms of surrender on Antiochus III. He actually ended up paying, if we put it into modern terms, what was the largest war indemnity in history until our time, basically bankrupted the Seleucid kingdom. And as one of the terms of surrender, his younger son, Antiochus IV, was sent as a hostage to Rome.

So by the time we get at the beginning of the 160s BC, Antiochus III is dead. There actually had been another king in the meantime. We'll skip over that. And now Antiochus IV, Epiphanes had been another king in the meantime. We'll skip over that. And now Antiochus IV, Epiphanes, is the ruler of the Seleucid kingdom. You know, one of the things that the Romans did in that peace treaty, it's called the Peace of Apamea in 188 BC, one of the things that the Romans did was to try and make it impossible for the Seleucid kingdom ever to become a threat to Rome again, right? So they wanted to make sure that the Seleucid kingdom was sort of permanently weakened. Well, so we get into the beginning of the 160s BC

and what does Antiochus IV do? He invades Egypt. And this Egypt campaign is going pretty well, actually, and the Romans are kind of monitoring what's going on. And at some point, it looks like Antiochus IV is going to be able to take Egypt. And at that point, the Romans are kind of monitoring what's going on. And at some point, it looks like Antiochus IV is going to be able to take Egypt. And at that point, the Romans apparently send some ships over and they threaten him. And they say, listen, you withdraw or you're going to suffer the consequences. And so he ends up having to withdraw. Now, while Antiochus IV was in Egypt, rumors began to spread around Judea that he had died, he had been killed. That then led to a kind of a local uprising. This is when Jason, by the way, reappears briefly on

the scene. Anyway, there's kind of a local uprising. All of this then puts Antiochus IV into a really, really bad mood. So, you know, he's forced to withdraw from what had been a really successful campaign in Egypt because of Roman pressure. And, you know, he's forced to withdraw from what had been a really successful campaign in Egypt because of Roman pressure. And, you know, he's withdrawing and he hears that basically Judea is up in revolt and, you know, it's a mess and he has to send troops to kind of, you know, put down all of that instability. And so all of this is kind of background to what happens the following year. So the following year, 167 BC, Antiochus IV issues an edict. And this edict now really does completely change everything that had been going on before. And that is that he basically mandates that everyone in his kingdom is now to

adopt Greek culture. And he doesn't put it this way, Greek religion, what we would call Greek religion. In other words, everybody's basically to become like Greeks. And that meant that now the worship of the God of Israel was outlawed because everybody's supposed to worship the Greek gods. The Jerusalem temple was rededicated to the worship of Olympian Zeus. And by the way, very interesting, the ancient Greeks and then the Romans later equated the chief deity of the Jews, who was the God of Israel, with their own chief deity. So in their minds, Jewish God was sort of equivalent to Olympian Zeus because these are chief deities who are celestial deities. I mean, the difference is that the Jews didn't worship other gods, didn't have a pantheon of other gods that they worshiped alongside their chief deity. But in the minds of the Greeks and the Romans, they're kind of equivalent. And so, for example, centuries later, it's not a coincidence that the Roman Emperor Hadrian builds a temple dedicated, well, supposedly, there's debate about whether he actually did this, but builds a temple or shrine dedicated to Capitoline Jupiter on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and makes that god, Jupiter, Capitoline Jupiter, the new patron deity of the city of Jerusalem.

So in their minds, this was kind of an equivalent thing. So now the Jerusalem Temple is rededicated to the worship of Olympian Zeus. Everybody, all Jews now are to adopt Greek customs. And it is now illegal. It is now outlawed to follow biblical Jewish law. You're no longer allowed to refrain from work on the Sabbath. You're no longer allowed to, let's say, circumcise your boys. You're no longer allowed to prepare special food and abstain from eating pork and all of that sort of stuff.

It all becomes outlawed on pain of death. So this is obviously very different from what had happened under Jason and also, you know, dramatically different from the from sort of the position that the Jews had enjoyed now for centuries, right, as sort of being this kind of semi-autonomous and having complete religious freedom. Just summarise that. It seems like it's gone from more of a softer introducing of greek culture let's say we as you highlighted with jason and that was in the cities as well so not really the countryside to this next king antiochus the fourth being in a bit of a strop right after failing to complete his conquest of egypt and then going from that softer approach to a much harsher approach and probably not really thought through. Because as you say,

this is a complete change in direction as to how he's treating his subjects, maybe a knee-jerk reaction, but surely that's not good. With Jason, as you're saying, it seems that there doesn't seem to be any resistance, but here it must be the complete opposite. Well, yeah, except, okay, so a couple of things. So remember with Jason, the initiative here came from within the Jewish community. It wasn't imposed on the Jews, right? The Jews requested it. You know, that's a big difference here. So it's not that what Jason did was kind of what we saw with Jason was some sort of punishment or imposition from an outside power on the Jews. In this case, though, this is imposed on the Jews. And there's, you know, there is a lot of discussion about why Antiochus IV did this. You know, it depends on who you follow. So, you know, if you look at the author of the Book of Daniel, in Daniel, there's a reference to this that,

you know, makes it sound like this was kind of the king being upset after the end of the Egyptian campaign and kind of punishing the Jews in that way. The Roman historian Tacitus, who's notoriously anti-Jewish or very negative towards Jews, at least, presents it as if Antiochus IV wanted to sort of obliterate Judaism, which is what this would have done in effect had it actually happened. And that's kind of the way that he presents it. That's not the way I understand it. So the way that I understand this is that, so if we go back to Alexander the Great and his successor. So when Alexander conquered all of these lands to create his empire, one of the places that he conquered was Egypt. In fact, he went through Judea in 332 BC on his way to Egypt. And while he was in Egypt,

one of the things that he did was to establish a new city on the coast, which he named after himself, Alexandria. His successors then followed Alexander's example and established Greek cities throughout their kingdoms, which they named after themselves. And this was a deliberate policy. For one thing, it helped them establish their legitimacy, their ties to Alexander by emulating what he had done. Because, you know, basically Alexander's successors were all usurpers. None of them were related to Alexander by blood. So they had to establish their connection to Alexander.

And one of the ways that they did it was by emulating what he had done. So they established throughout their kingdoms cities which they named after themselves. So you get Antiochias, you get Ptolemaeus, you get Seleucus, whatever, throughout their kingdoms. And the sort of advantage of doing this was that these Greek cities, which literally are called Apollos, which is the word for city in Greek, these Greek cities had a lot of advantages for the inhabitants. So if you were living in a city that was now newly established or a city that had already existed but was rebuilt and given the status

of a Greek city, you had the advantage of now living in a city where you had great new schools to send your kids to for an education, theaters where you could go and watch performances, new temples to worship the gods. There were other benefits, like for example, you had tax exemptions or tax breaks and things like that. So it was great benefit actually, but it also helped these successors of Alexander promote the spread of Greek culture because the kingdoms that these successors of Alexander ruled over were very diverse. They had different populations, ancient Near Eastern populations. They spoke different languages. They had different populations, ancient Near Eastern populations. They spoke different languages. They had different customs. They worshiped different gods. And one of the ways that Alexander's successors were able to sort of unify these diverse populations was by spreading Greek culture. And the establishment of these Greek cities was a way to sort of promote the spread of Greek culture. And now what you had were the youth learning the Greek language. And of course, even if you weren't young and you went to a theater play. And so this was a kind of a way that these successors of Alexander used Greek culture as a means of unifying their kingdoms.

And I actually think that that's what Antiochus IV was trying to do here. I think, you know, we saw Judea, you know, it's got all these different people with these different or what he probably thought were sort of weird customs or whatever. And, you know, he thought, well, let's bring them into the fold. Let's mandate that everybody's going to now adopt Greek culture and get rid of sort of these problems, which, you know, are fostered by these kind of internal civil wars and opposition and so on. So I think that he was using, I'll say this term, it's debated, but anyway, he's using Hellenization, meaning sort of the trying to promote the spread of Greek culture, not to punish the Jews per se, or to try to eliminate Judaism as a religion, but rather to deal with what he saw as a problematic part of

his kingdom and, you know and bring all of these people into the fold, so to speak. So I think that that's what's going on. Now, of course, it didn't have the desired impact, right? Well, exactly, Jody. So that might have been how he saw it, but how do those in Judea, how do they see this? Exactly. And so here again, we get that very different picture that apparently there were some Jews, certainly among the elite, but maybe even among the masses, who either thought this was fine with them, or, you know, were so busy just trying to subsist that they didn't really care one way or the other. And so in some parts of the Jewish population, there was no opposition to this at all. And the revolt actually starts after the edict is issued by Antiochus IV,

when with an incident in a small town, not in Jerusalem, the revolt didn't start in Jerusalem. And by the way, the first Jewish revolt against the Romans did not start in Jerusalem either, started in Caesarea. But in this case, this revolt starts in a, I mean, really it was a village that's about halfway between today Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It's called Modi'in. And there, there was a local village priest. His name was Mattathias, and he had five sons. And what happens is, is that the king's officials are sent out, you know, around the kingdom to make sure that everybody is complying with the new mandate.

And as part of that, there was a sacrifice being offered to a Greek god, apparently with pork, and a Jew was about to offer this sacrifice. And there's an officer, a royal officer there overseeing this. And this priest, this local village priest, Mattathias, who was already an elderly man at that point, but he kills the Jew. This is interesting, right? So he kills the Jew for complying, and he also kills the officer. The Jew and the officer are killed, and that then sparks the outbreak of the revolt, because at that point, of course, you've killed an officer of the king. You've not only disobeyed the edict, but you've also killed one of the king's officers. And so the revolt officially starts with this,

and Mattathias dies within a year of the outbreak of the revolt. As I said, he was elderly, but the revolt in its first years was led by the third son, whose name was Judah, who becomes known as Judah Maccabee. Maccabee, it's a nickname. It means Judah the hammer. Yes, the word Maccabee. Because we said, right, Maccabean revolt. I mean, what actually was the word Maccabee? Yeah. So it comes from Judah's nickname, right? Maccabee. And it kind of gives its name to the whole revolt. The family, by the way, sometimes we refer to them as the Maccabees, but they're actually the Hasmonean family. So they and their descendants will be known as the Hasmoneans. But Maccabee comes from that nickname that's given to Judah. And right, Judah the hammer. And so he, you know, our sources describe this. And again, a lot of our information comes from first and second Maccabees, which are these two books that

are included in the Catholic Bible. And then we also have some information from Josephus, the ancient Jewish historian. So what happens is, is that Judah gathers some supporters and they flee, right? They flee into the wilderness, they hide out. And they sort of, as they go around, they recruit more and more followers. And without going into a great deal of detail, of course, the Seleucid king sends, you know, troops to, I mean, Antiochus IV isn't going to put up with a revolt. So he sends troops to put down the revolt. And there are a series of battles that are fought. And it's one of the very, you know, really surprising things of history that the, let's call them the Maccabees at this point, were successful. They basically have a guerrilla band is what it is, right? But somehow they were able to register some significant victories

against the Seleucid forces. And there's been a lot of scholarship written about how this happened. And the other thing that I'll mention though, is that at this very early stage of the revolt, it wasn't just an external revolt against the Seleucids, but it was also an internal civil war because our sources tell us that Judah and his followers also rooted out men, men or people who they refer to as lawless. And lawless means Jews who were not observing biblical Jewish law, meaning Jews who were going along with the royal mandate, right, accepting it. So basically, it's kind of a two-pronged approach. On the one hand, rooting out anybody who is complying with this requirement to worship Greek gods and adopt Greek culture, and on the other hand, fighting against

the Seleucid forces. so does that then make jerusalem with that place i mean was that almost kind of an anti-maccabean stronghold at that time you know it was almost like a spotlight yeah so one of the interesting things and i didn't mention this previously but you but when Antiochus IV, after the Egyptian campaign, and he finds all this unrest in Jerusalem and Judea, one of the things that he does is to build a fortress in Jerusalem called the Acre, which apparently overlooked the temple, or at least overlooked the temple, but also apparently maybe guarded some of the access to the temple precinct. So that was on Temple Mount as well, do you think? Well, no, it was not on the Temple Mount. And the location of the opera is one of the most hotly debated points among archaeologists. And that's a whole nother story we can go into. But anyway, it was not on the Temple Mount, whether it was adjacent to the Temple Mount or somewhere else in Jerusalem. You know, a lot of disagreement about that. But he garrisoned the term Acre, which in Greek means high point, suggests that it somehow overlooked the temple.

Right. It was on some sort of a high point. And he garrisoned this fortress, the Acre Fortress, with Gentile soldiers, that is, non-Jewish soldiers, with the idea being, again, that they would be able to control the Temple Mount. Now, after 167 BC, when the revolt starts, of course, the Acre is still there, but the Acre will continue to be in Jerusalem and have a garrison of soldiers in it for another couple of decades until finally, a couple of decades later, one of Judah's brothers, this is long after Judah dies, one of Judah's brothers manages to take the opera and raises it to the ground. So that's the situation in Jerusalem, let's say, after 167. In addition, by the way, to

very interesting, to the temple in Jerusalem being rededicated to the worship of Olympian Zeus. You know, there was another temple dedicated to the God of Israel in a territory next door, which is Samaria, which is the territory of the Samarians or Samaritans. And that temple was rededicated to the same God Zeus, Zeus Hellenius, also after the king issued his edict. So again, no more worship of the God of Israel in the territory of the Seleucid kingdom. So this kind of revolt, sort of internal civil war slash revolt goes on for several years until we get to the year 164 BC. And during those several years, again, the Maccabees registered some surprising victories against the Seleucids. It wasn't always, they weren't always, but they had some very significant

victories. And then what happens in 164 BC is that Antiochus IV dies. And when he died, he was succeeded to the throne by his son, Antiochus V, who was five years old at the time. Right. And so the kingdom now is put under the rule of a regent, basically. And Antiochus V, who was five years old at the time. And so the kingdom now is put under the rule of a regent, basically. And Antiochus V issues an edict for his regent. Not bad for being five years old. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, he was very ahead of his years. He issues an edict.

And this edict then basically reversed his father's edict in allowing the Jews again to worship the God of Israel. The temple in Jerusalem was returned to them. They are, you know, Judaism is no longer outlawed. Jews are now free to worship the God of Israel, you know, without fear of persecution. And the temple then is returned to the Jews and Judah and his brothers then cleanse the temple to rededicate it to the God of Israel. So in the meantime, all sorts of practices had been done in the temple to rededicate it to the God of Israel. So in the meantime, all sorts of practices had been done in the temple that, you know, were again antithetical to Judaism, you know, the offering of pigs for sacrifice and I mean, all sorts of stuff like

that, which had basically polluted it in the eyes of Jews observing biblical law. So, you know, they cleanse the temple in order to rededicate it to the worship of the God of Israel. Now, cleansed the temple in order to rededicate it to the worship of the God of Israel. Now, one of the pieces of furniture, cultic furniture, in the Jerusalem temple was a seven-branched lampstand called the menorah. And there was special oil that was used for the menorah because, of course, these are basically oil lamps, right? So the oil that was used for the menorah, the lampstand in the temple, was a special oil that had to be prepared. It had to be ritually pure oil. And in the intervening three years, you know, during the revolt, there had been no preparation allowed of anything like that. There was no oil,

you know, no special oil to light the menorah. So the story, this is a story now, we're going into stories, but the story goes that they're cleansing the temple to rededicate it. They need to light the lamp stand and there's no oil. And they find a little jar of special oil that was somehow tucked away that had enough oil in it to last for one day and one day only or one night or whatever. And they light the lamp stand and somehow miraculously the oil burns instead of for one day, it burns for eight days. And in the meantime, they're able to go and prepare new special oil to keep the lampstand lit. And that then becomes sort of the origin story, if you wish, of Hanukkah, the holiday of Hanukkah,

which basically celebrates the outcome of the revolt, right? But this symbol of the lampstand becomes associated with the holiday of Hanukkah. And so Hanukkah then becomes a holiday that is celebrated for eight days, right? Eight days and eight nights. And where, you know, the lampstand, now the lampstand, by the way, in the Jerusalem temple had seven branches, right? It had seven branches. It had a central branch in the middle and then three branches on either side of that.

Well, for the holiday of Hanukkah, that lampstand for use in the holiday, and then three branches on either side of that. Well, for the holiday of Hanukkah, that lampstand for use in the holiday of Hanukkah, the lampstand was kind of adapted and an extra branch on either side was added to it. So now you have one central. So four each, yes. Right. And then four arms on either side of it with those four arms, meaning eight, arms on either side of it with those four arms, meaning eight, symbolizing the eight days and nights of Hanukkah. And so for the celebration of the holiday of Hanukkah, it became traditional to light this lampstand and every night an additional lamp was lit and still is lit until all of them are lit finally on the last night of Hanukkah. So that's how we get that what's called a Hanukkah menorah, right? That is sort of the symbol of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah today.

And so the holiday of Hanukkah actually celebrates the outcome of the revolt here, at least in 164, with the rededication of the temple to the God of Israel and symbolizing really the continued survival of the Jewish religion, right, of Judaism until today. So here I just want to point out to your listeners that Hanukkah, therefore, has nothing to do with Christmas. It has nothing to do necessarily with gift giving. There's no connection between Hanukkah and Christmas, except that they occur at roughly the same time of year. I teach my students about this a lot. I do my little, what I call my Hanukkah rant and rave, which is that if you ask most people, at least in the US today, and probably

in many other parts of the world, if they know of any Jewish holiday at all, can you name a Jewish holiday? Many of them will only be familiar with Hanukkah. Well, the same here. I would say I'd be exactly the same in the UK. Right, exactly. And the reason is because of its proximity to Christmas. Now, so because of that, Hanukkah has become presented as a major Jewish holiday. But actually, it's not a major Jewish holiday. In fact, it's a minor Jewish holiday, because the major Jewish holidays are biblically mandated. In other words, the major Jewish holidays have a scriptural basis in the five books of Moses. These are holidays that the God of Israel commanded his people to

observe. So the major Jewish holidays, well, you have the great pilgrimage holidays to the Jerusalem temple, right? So you have Sukkot, which is the feast of tabernacles and Passover and Shavuot, which is the feast of weeks Weeks, and then you have the New Year, and then you have Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and those are the major holidays. So this holiday, Hanukkah, has no scriptural basis. It is a holiday that was invented probably by the Hasmoneans, the successors of the Maccabees, to legitimize their dynasty. It's a holiday that probably was not, well, I could say certainly was not recognized for a while among at least some sectors of the Jewish population. The Qumran sect associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls would not have recognized this as a legitimate holiday. So the only reason it becomes important or it's important today is because of its temporal proximity to Christmas.

I like to compare it to Thanksgiving here in the U.S. It's a holiday that's kind of like a national holiday in a way, but not a religious holiday. Origins of Hanukkah is very much associated with the end of this part of the revolt, but we probably should stress it's this part because there is actually more to come. Absolutely. And so everybody thinks Hanukkah and the cleansing of the temple is the end of the story. But what happens after that is that Judah and his brothers continue the revolt, even after the rededication of the temple, because the Seleucid kingdom was growing very weak, and they took advantage of that. And, you know, there's another series of battles and Judah loses his life and, you know, another couple of his brothers, you know, eventually

die. But what happens eventually is that under a couple of Judah's other brothers, Jonathan and Simon, eventually the Jews are able to gain independence, complete independence from Seleucid rule. This finally happens under Simon, the youngest of the five brothers. So by 140 BC, there's an independent Jewish kingdom in Judea ruled by Judah's youngest brother. And then after Simon's death, the successors of these brothers, the Hasmoneans, rule this kingdom, which over the course of time expands through territorial expansion. They take over adjoining territories also that had been under Seleucid rule. Very interesting. They forcibly convert the populations of these territories that they conquer, which were not Jewish territories. They forcibly convert the populations of these territories that they conquer, which were not Jewish territories. They forcibly convert them to Judaism and eventually

establish a pretty significant independent kingdom that encompasses substantial areas outside of Judea. So yes, absolutely. There's much more to the story, which we're going to have to do in several podcasts in their own right. But still, Jodie, congratulations. You've filled in, you've given us so much information over the past 50 minutes or so, as you always do, whether it's the tomb of King Herod or the Dead Sea Scrolls,

origins of Jerusalem or Petra or the origins of Hanukkah and the Maccabean Revolt, as you have done today. It just goes for me to say, as always, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today.

Thank you. Well, there you go. There was Professor Jodie Magnus returning to the show to explain the origins of Hanukkah and its link to this Maccabean revolt that occurred more than 2,000 years ago. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Thank you for listening. Please follow The Ancients on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us, and you'll be doing us a big favour. Don't forget you can also listen to us and all of History Hits podcasts ad-free, and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe at historyhit.com

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