Hanukkah & the Maccabees

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 Sound Sign 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 https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tristan Hughes?

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• 1:46Tristan Hughes?

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• 2:30Tristan Hughes?

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• 3:06Tristan Hughes?

  It's The Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host. And in today's episode, 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 Judaean 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

• 3:51Tristan Hughes?

  central link to Hanukkah is a regular guest on The Ancients, Professor Jody Magnus from the University of North Carolina. Now, I'm a big fan of Jody 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.

• 4:16Tristan Hughes?

  Jody, it is wonderful, as always, wonderful to have you back on the podcast.

• 4:21Speaker 03

  And it's great to be back. Thank you, Tristan.

• 4:24Tristan Hughes?

  You're more than welcome. And we're talking about the Machabean revolt. And this feels like an incredibly important event in Jewish history and in the story of ancient Judea.

• 4:35Speaker 03

  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.

• 4:49Tristan Hughes?

  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 B.C., early second century B.C. Judea. What is the context for just before this revolt breaks out?

• 5:07Speaker 03

  Right. So in the early second century B.C. 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 B.C. 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,

• 5:49Speaker 03

  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 B.C., Judea was under the rule of the Ptolemies down in Egypt. But in the beginning of the second century B.C., it comes under the rule of the Seleucid, specifically a Seleucid king named Antiochus III.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  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. 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 Judaean, a person from Judea or of Judaean descent,

• 7:11Speaker 03

  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 Gerusia.

• 7:32Tristan Hughes?

  The Gerusia, that Greek name, yeah.

• 7:34Speaker 03

  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.

• 7:46Tristan Hughes?

  Respected your elders.

• 7:47Speaker 03

  Right, for their knowledge and their experience. And so that's basically the situation as we entered the second century B.C. The Jews now had been living, literally for hundreds of years already, with a great deal of relative autonomy and certainly religious freedom.

• 8:03Tristan Hughes?

  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, aren't 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.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  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.

• 8:31Tristan Hughes?

  Oh, our favorite.

• 8:32Speaker 03

  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. And this comes to a head in 175 B.C. So now we're entering, let's say, the second quarter of the second century B.C. The high priest in Jerusalem, whose name was Jason, basically paid off the Seleucid king

• 9:18Speaker 03

  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.

• 10:01Speaker 03

  And that includes things like theaters and

• 10:05Tristan Hughes?

  Gymnasiums.

• 10:06Speaker 03

  And yes, very important, a gymnasium and an ephibian. And what's important about that is that the gymnasia and ephibia, or gymnasiums and ephibians, if we put it in English.

• 10:18Speaker 03

  Were basically schools for youth, male youth, by the way, not women, but only only males. But they were 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, you know, Greek classics and and become acculturated to Greek culture. And this is the first time that we see something like this. Now, the the problem is that a lot of these aspects of Greek culture are antithetical to biblical Jewish law and and Jewish practice. And so, for example, the word gymnasium comes from the Greek word gymnos, which means nudity

• 10:59Speaker 03

  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 or wrestling matches or discus throwing. And those competitions were held in the nude. The those male Greek athletes competed in the nude, and that was also the case, by the way, at the ancient Olympic Games. And and, you know, 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 and we have a couple, you know, we have some ancient sources that talk about what's going on in Jerusalem.

• 11:44Speaker 03

  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 describes how and and is scandalized, describing how, for example, the priests serving in the temple would, you know, 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 so this marks a real, you know, turning point. But what's interesting is that there, even even though, let's say, the author of Second Maccabees obviously

• 12:27Speaker 03

  Was scandalized by this. There's no indication in our sources of any sort of real Jewish opposition to to any of this. So there's no indication that, you know, some of the families of Jerusalem rose up against Jason and, you know, anything like that. So 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.

• 13:01Tristan Hughes?

  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 this Greek culture. So where does the trouble begin, Jody? I'm presuming it's beyond the walls of Jerusalem, that there's a bit more fight back and resistance to this.

• 13:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, so here's where things get a little bit complicated.

• 13:27Tristan Hughes?

  Okay.

• 13:27Speaker 03

  But, okay, so I'll I'll try to explain. So I should point out that, you know, I just mentioned Jason, whose Hebrew name was Joshua, Yeshua, which is actually Jesus.

• 13:38Speaker 03

  It's a very common, yeah, it's actually a variant of the name Joshua, Yeshua, Joshua, Yahoshua. And so it's actually a very common name among Jewish men at the time. And and interestingly to notice, by the way, that this 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 Onaius, specifically Onaius 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.

• 14:20Speaker 03

  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, Onaius 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 B.C.

• 15:05Speaker 03

  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, you know, to be able to serve in their office. And this Menelaus was not, 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 Zaddachites. The Zaddachites were descended, or at least claimed, to be descended from the very first high priest, who Solomon had appointed to officiate as high priest in the very first

• 15:49Speaker 03

  temple that he built centuries earlier in Jerusalem. Since then, since Solomon's time, the high priests in the temple in Jerusalem had claimed ancestry from the original Zaddach, and they were called the Zaddachite line of high priests. And they became kind of the official, you know, the official high priestly family. So Menelaus was from a priestly family, but he was not a Zaddachite. 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.

• 16:20Tristan Hughes?

  Stuff.

• 16:21Speaker 03

  Right. And what is the king care? The king's like, sure, you know, I'll take more money. And so Menelaus is able to secure the high priesthood for himself now. And he goes back to Jerusalem. Now, there's a whole episode that occurs after this that I that I that I won't go into. But there ends up being kind of a little civil war between Jason and and Menelaus. And eventually Jason is ends up having to leave the country, actually ends up going to Sparta. And there's a really interesting connection between some of the the elite and high and, you know, 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.

• 17:05Speaker 03

  There was, you know, there was some dissatisfaction amongst them. And I should mention that 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 Seleucid, whatever, right? Anyway, the bigger background here is that by the time we get into, let's say, the 160s B.C., 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 of the god Olympian Zeus, the chief deity of the Greeks, and it means the manifest god.

• 17:46Speaker 03

  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. He actually, there's a whole backstory to this, too. He, his father had at some point sent him as a hostage to Rome after

• 18:05Tristan Hughes?

  Yes, the Romans defeat Antiochus III. Exactly. The Romans are rising in the background, basically. But the Seleucids are still a big power in the East.

• 18:11Speaker 03

  Exactly. So that's right. There had been a devastating battle that Antiochus III lost against the Romans in the year 190 B.C., 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 B.C., Antiochus III is dead.

• 18:55Speaker 03

  There actually 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 Appomea in 188 B.C. 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 was sort of permanently weakened. Well, so we get into the beginning of the 160s B.C. 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.

• 19:40Speaker 03

  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 a kind of a local uprising. All of this then puts Antiochus IV into a really, really bad mood. So on, you know, he's forced to withdraw from what had been a really successful campaign in Egypt because of Roman pressure.

• 20:20Speaker 03

  And, you know, he's withdrawing and he 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 B.C., Antiochus

• 20:40Speaker 03

  The fourth 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 you're, 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, 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.

• 21:25Speaker 03

  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.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  So now, the Jerusalem temple is rededicated to the worship of Olympian Zeus. Everybody, all Jews now are, 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, your boys. You're no longer allowed to prepare special food and, and abstain from eating pork. And, you know, 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.

• 22:46Speaker 03

  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.

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• 25:32Tristan Hughes?

  Just to summarise there, it seems like it's gone from more of a softer introducing of Greek culture, as you highlighted with Jason, and that was in the cities as well, so not really the countryside, to this next king, Antiochus IV, being in a bit of a strop after failing to complete his conquest of Egypt, and then go from that soft 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 didn't seem to be any resistance, but here it must be the complete opposite.

• 26:12Speaker 03

  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

• 26:54Speaker 03

  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 B.C. 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.

• 27:39Speaker 03

  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 Solusias, whatever, throughout their kingdoms.

• 28:20Speaker 03

  And the, the sort of advantage of doing this was that these Greek cities, which literally are called apolos, 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, 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.

• 29:01Speaker 03

  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, they had different populations, ancient Near Eastern populations. They spoke different languages, they had different customs, they worshipped different gods. And one of the ways that, 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.

• 29:46Speaker 03

  Unifying their kingdoms. And I actually think that that's what what Antiochus the fourth was trying to do here. I think, you know, we saw Judea, you know, it's got all these different people in this these customs, 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 is 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,

• 30:30Speaker 03

  but rather to deal with what he saw as a problematic part of his kingdom and, you know, 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?

• 30:43Tristan Hughes?

  Well, exactly, Joji. So that might have been how he saw it. But how do those in Judea, how do they see this?

• 30:49Speaker 03

  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 there among, you know, in some parts of the Jewish population, there was no opposition to this at all. And the revolt actually starts after the edict is is issued by Antiochus the fourth, when with 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 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.

• 31:33Speaker 03

  That's about halfway between today Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. It's called Modiin. And there there was a local village priest. His name was Mattathias, and he had five sons. And what happens is is that the 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

• 32:18Speaker 03

  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 is, it's a nickname. It means Judah the Hammer.

• 32:52Tristan Hughes?

  Yes, the word Maccabee. Yes, I mean, because we said, right, start Maccabean revolt. So I mean, what actually was the word Maccabee?

• 32:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, so it comes from Judah's nickname, right, Maccabee, and it kind of gives this name to the whole revolt. The family, by the way, sometimes we refer to them as the Maccabees, but they're actually the Hasmonian family. So and and they're they and their descendants will be known as the Hasmonians. 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.

• 33:40Speaker 03

  They hide out. And they 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 the fourth 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 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.

• 34:23Speaker 03

  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, you know, requirement to worship three gods and adopt three culture, and on the other hand, fighting against the Seleucid forces.

• 35:48Speaker 04

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• 36:02Speaker 04

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• 36:28Tristan Hughes?

  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.

• 36:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, so one of the interesting things, and I didn't mention this previously, but you know, when Antiochus IV, after the Egyptian campaign, and he finds all this unrest in Jerusalem, in Judea, one of the things that he does is to build a fortress in Jerusalem called the Akra, which apparently overlooked the temple, or at least overlooked the temple, but also apparently maybe guarded some of the access to the temple precinct.

• 37:03Tristan Hughes?

  So that was on Temple Mount as well, do you think?

• 37:05Speaker 03

  Well, no, it was not on the Temple Mount, and the location of the Akra 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 Akra, 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 Akra 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 B.C., when the revolt starts, of course, the Akra is still there, but the Akra will

• 37:50Speaker 03

  continue to be in Jerusalem and have a garrison of soldiers in it for another couple of decades, until finally, one of, 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 Akra and raises it to the ground. But, but, so that's the situation in Jerusalem, let's say, after 167. It basically, you know, this, 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

• 38:34Speaker 03

  to the same god Zeus, Zeus Hellenios, also after the king issued his edict. So again, no, no more worship of the god of Israel in the territory of the Seleucid Kingdom. So this, this, you know, kind of revolt, sort of internal civil war slash revolt goes on for several years until we get to the year 164 B.C. And during those several years, again, the Maccabees registered some, you know, 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 B.C. is that Antiochus IV dies. And when he died, he was succeeded to the throne by his son, Antiochus V, who was five

• 39:19Speaker 03

  years old at the time. Okay. Right, and so the kingdom now is put under the rule of a regent, basically. And Antiochus V issues an edict, or his regent. Not bad, 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 temples to rededicate it to the God of Israel.

• 40:01Speaker 03

  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, one of the pieces of furniture, cultic furniture, in the Jerusalem temple was a seven-branch 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.

• 40:45Speaker 03

  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. 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 lampstand and there's no, there's no oil. And they find, you know, a little jar of special oil that was somehow, you know, 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 lampstand 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.

• 41:28Speaker 03

  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 of Hanukkah, the lampstand was kind of adapted and an extra branch on either side was added to it.

• 42:12Speaker 03

  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, symbolizing the eight days and nights, you know, of Hanukkah. And so for the celebration of the holiday of Hanukkah, it became, you know, it became traditional to light this lampstand and every night an additional lamp was, was lit and still is lit until, you know, all of them are lit on, finally on the last night of Hanukkah. So that's how we get that what's called a Hanukkah menorah, right? That, 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

• 42:56Speaker 03

  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.

• 43:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, 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 Tzukot, which is the feast of tabernacles, and Passover, and Shavuot, which is the feast of weeks, and then you have the New Year, and then you have Yom Kippur, the day of atonement.

• 44:23Speaker 03

  And those are the major holidays. So this holiday, Hanukkah, has no scriptural basis. It is a holiday that was invented probably by the Hasmonians, 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 US. It's a holiday that's kind of like a national holiday in a way, but not a religious holiday.

• 45:05Tristan Hughes?

  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.

• 45:13Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And so everybody thinks Hanukkah, you know, and the cleansing of the temple is the end of the story. But, 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.

• 45:54Speaker 03

  So by 140 B.C., 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 them to Judaism and eventually establish a pretty significant independent kingdom that encompasses substantial areas outside of Judea.

• 46:34Tristan Hughes?

  So yes, absolutely. There's much more to the story, which we're going to have to do in separate podcasts in their own right. But still, Jodie, congratulations. You've filled in, you've given us so much information over the past 15 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 to me to say, as always, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today.

• 47:02Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 47:07Tristan Hughes?

  Well, there you go. There was Professor Jody 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/subscribe.

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• 48:32Speaker 04

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• 48:35Speaker 05

  Okay, let's see. We got the four kids, four gifts each, six teacher gifts? Wait, oh, what did we get? And Sandy and the dogs. Oh, can't forget the dogs.

• 48:46Speaker 04

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