Talk:Maccabees
From Academic Kids
This article contradicts the one on chanukah which says that, according to the Bible, the Seleucid king did want to Hellenize the Jews and rob them of their rights. What really happened?
- Who knows what really happened? The Maccabees article states that apart from the books 1 and 2 Maccabees (which are not part of the Hebrew Bible), there is no corroborating evidence of Hellenization. Instead we have Josephus writing ([1] (http://religion.rutgers.edu/iho/antioch.html#J&M)) about Jewish Priests & Greek Politics:
- Under attack by the latter, Menelaus and the sons of Tobias retreated to Antiochus (IV) and informed him that they wished to abandon their native (Jewish) laws and corresponding (priestly) civic order for those of the king and a Greek civic order. ... And abandoning all their other native (Jewish) customs, they copied the practices of other nations.
- Josephus also writes that in 169 BC Antiochus looted the Temple and left having "committed murder and spoken with great arrogance", and also:
- And many of the Jews followed the things the (Syrian) king ordered, some voluntarily but also through fear of paying the proclaimed penalty. But the noblest and best-born persons did not heed him but held their native customs to count more than the penalty he threatened for those who did not obey. And because of this they were abused each day. And they died, subject to bitter tortures.
