Maccabean Revolt

The Maccabean Revolt (167–160 BC) was the Jewish uprising against the Greek king Antiochus IV, who had outlawed the faith and defiled the Temple. Its victory cleansed and rededicated the Temple — the origin of Hanukkah — and gave Israel a century of independence, shaping the very world into which Christ was born.

Overview

  • The Maccabean Revolt was an armed Jewish uprising (167–160 BC) against the Seleucid Greek king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who had outlawed the practice of Judaism, forced pagan worship, and desecrated the Jerusalem Temple by sacrificing to a pagan god on its altar.
  • Led by the priest Mattathias and his sons — above all Judas Maccabeus ("the Hammer") — the revolt drove out the Greeks, and in 164 BC the Temple was cleansed and rededicated, the event still kept as Hanukkah (the Feast of Dedication).
  • The story is told in 1 and 2 Maccabees, books of the Orthodox Old Testament, and it opens the "intertestamental" age whose politics — Hasmonean priest-kings, then Roman conquest and the Herods — form the immediate backdrop of the New Testament.

Summary

The Maccabean Revolt is the hinge between the Old Testament and the world of the Gospels. When the Greek king Antiochus IV Epiphanes tried to stamp out the Jewish faith — banning circumcision and the Sabbath, burning the Scriptures, and defiling the Temple with a pagan altar (the "abomination of desolation") — a priestly family from the village of Modein rose in armed resistance. Under Judas Maccabeus the rebels defeated far larger Seleucid armies, retook Jerusalem, and in 164 BC purified and rededicated the Temple, an event Jews have celebrated ever since as Hanukkah. The revolt won Israel roughly a century of independence under the priest-kings of the Hasmonean dynasty the Maccabees founded — until internal civil war invited Roman intervention, and in 63 BC the Roman general Pompey captured Jerusalem and even entered the Holy of Holies.[^jant] Rome afterward ruled Judea through client kings, chief among them Herod the Great, who rebuilt the Temple on a magnificent scale and whose dynasty reigns all through the Gospels.[^jant] So the fierce zeal for the Temple, the Law, and national deliverance that the Maccabees embodied — and the Roman occupation their independence eventually gave way to — are the living background of the hope into which Christ was born. Cross-link Judaism, Israel, Pharisees, Sadducees, The Tabernacle.

What happened

Around 167 BC, Antiochus IV Epiphanes — a Seleucid Greek king ruling over Judea — set out to force Hellenistic religion and culture on the Jews by law, on pain of death. He forbade the practice of Judaism, plundered the Temple, and erected a pagan altar upon the altar of God, compelling Jews to eat swine's flesh and sacrifice to idols (1 Maccabees 1). The persecution produced some of the first great martyrs of the faith: the aged scribe Eleazar, and the seven brothers who were tortured to death with their mother rather than betray the Law, confessing their hope that God would raise them up again (2 Maccabees 6–7). Resistance flared when the priest Mattathias refused to sacrifice and, with his sons, took to the hills. His son Judas Maccabeus proved a brilliant commander, winning victory after victory against the odds, and in 164 BC the Maccabees recaptured the Temple, tore down the defiled altar, and rededicated the sanctuary — the rededication that Hanukkah, the Feast of Dedication, still commemorates.

From the Maccabees to Rome — the world of Jesus

The Maccabees' victory founded the Hasmonean dynasty, priest-kings who ruled an independent Judea for about a century. But their line declined into dynastic rivalry and civil war, and this dissension drew in Rome: in 63 BC the general Pompey intervened, besieged Jerusalem, and — to the horror of the people — walked into the Temple's Holy of Holies out of mere curiosity.[^jant] Rome then governed Judea through client rulers. When no suitable Hasmonean remained, Rome backed Herod the Great, an Idumean of convert descent, whom the Senate proclaimed king; he secured his throne with Roman legions, ruled by repression and cunning, and rebuilt the Jerusalem Temple into one of the wonders of the ancient world.[^jant] Herod and his sons — Archelaus, Antipas, Philip — are the very rulers who move through the Gospels. Thus the political stage of the New Testament was set by the long aftermath of the Maccabean revolt: a people who had once won their freedom now living under Roman occupation, and longing all the more intensely for a deliverer.

Why it matters to Christians

The revolt matters to the Church in several ways at once. Its martyrs are honored as saints — the Orthodox Church commemorates the Holy Maccabees (the seven brothers, their mother, and the elder Eleazar) on August 1, among the first witnesses to die for God with an open hope of the resurrection. Its feast enters the Gospel directly: Jesus teaches in the Temple "at the Feast of the Dedication" — Hanukkah — in John 10.22. Its books, 1 and 2 Maccabees, are Scripture for the Orthodox, part of the Old Testament the Church received in the Septuagint. And its deepest legacy is the world it made: the ardent zeal for Temple, Law, and national restoration that shaped every party of Jesus' day — Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and the revolutionaries alike — and the Roman yoke that made the cry for a Messiah so urgent. The Maccabean pattern of deliverance leading to the Temple's restoration even echoes, transfigured, in the Gospel's close (see Notes). Cross-link John 10.22, Judaism, The Septuagint, Bodily Resurrection.

Sources

[^m]: 1 and 2 Maccabees (Orthodox Old Testament / deuterocanon) — the persecution under Antiochus IV, the martyrs (2 Macc 6–7), and the revolt and rededication under Judas Maccabeus; and John 10.22 (Jesus at the Feast of the Dedication). [^jant]: The Jewish Annotated New Testament (eds. Amy-Jill Levine & Marc Zvi Brettler, Oxford Univ. Press), essay "Jewish History, 331 BCE–135 CE" (Martin Goodman) — the Hasmonean dynasty founded by the Maccabees, its decline into civil war, Pompey's capture of Jerusalem (63 BC) and entry into the Holy of Holies, and Herod the Great's Rome-backed kingship and rebuilding of the Temple: the political background of the New Testament, (in-copyright scholarly reference; paraphrased, not reproduced).