Maccabean Revolt

The uprising of the Maccabees against the Seleucid Empire during the Hellenistic period is an integral part of the Hanukkah story. After the restoration of Jewish religious freedom, the Maccabees started another revolt to obtain total independence.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy Vee Wilson and I'm Holly fry. So. We've
got a lot of requests over the years to talk
about the Backuppian Revolt. We've also had a lot of

(00:23):
good intentions over the last few years to talk about it.
It's the historical event that's connected to the Jewish holiday
of Hanka, and two things have thwarted our plans to
talk about this repeatedly. And the first is that since
Hanakah falls on the Jewish calendar, which doesn't sync up
with the Gregorian calendar. Uh, I kept being surprised by

(00:47):
the fact that Hanka was imminent every year or or
head started. That's always mine already, Yeah, I didn't know um.
And also because this historic iCal event is in a
piece of ancient history that doesn't get as much coverage
in a lot of classrooms. When I would be surprised

(01:08):
by the eminent arrival of Hanukah, I would also realize
I just did not have enough foundational knowledge to be
able to put an episode together in that period of time.
Because it's this is after Alexander the Great and before Rome.
So it's in the it's in the Hellenistic period. So
that is just one of the places that I have
not had a whole whole bunch of history education. Um

(01:31):
My ancient history education kind of went Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt,
Classical Greece, Rome, and skipped the Hellenistic period almost entirely. Uh.
This year, however, I had my act together ahead of time,
Ye Tracy, so we finally have our episode on the
Macabean Revolt. Uh. I will say that every Hanakah observance

(01:55):
I have ever been to is just full of warmth
and love and comfort and light, and it's it all
feels very beautiful and friendly. And this history is not
really that. So if you're coming into this episode expecting
like a story of warmth and love and triumph, this
is not really going to be that. And then also,

(02:15):
having heard multiple experts pronounce a lot of the names
in this episode completely differently from one another, I'm just
gonna have a blanket apology in advance. I'm sorry if
we land on the one that's either not how you
say it or is just not right. I really did
have just contradictory responses and how to to say a
lot of these words and names. Alexander the Third of Macedon,

(02:39):
also known as Alexander the Great, famously built a massive
empire through a series of conquests, including conquering the Persian
Empire in the fourth century b C. And at its height,
this empire included a huge swath of territory around the Mediterranean,
Energy and Ceas, and then it stretched west across what's
now Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Greek culture also spread

(03:05):
through and influenced Alexander's territory to varying degrees. Even before
Alexander's death in early June of three BC, this massive
empire was starting to fracture, and after he died, his
generals divided it up among themselves. The two most relevant
to what we're talking about today both controlled territory along

(03:27):
the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea. These were the
Seleucid Empire, named for Seleucis Nicotour to the north, and
the Ptolemaic Kingdom, named for Ptolemy first Soto, to the south.
At first, the Sleucid Empire controlled what is now Israel, Lebanon, Syria,
and Jordan's and from there this territory stretched east to

(03:48):
Central Asia. In the Ptolemaic Kingdom primarily controlled what's now
northern Egypt, including the city of Alexandria. Even though the
Ptolemaic kingdom was initially much smaller, it was also one
of the most prosperous and influential of all of the
Hellenistic kingdoms, with Alexandria becoming one of the most important cities.

(04:09):
Perhaps unsurprisingly, these two neighbors spent a lot of time
at war with each other over territory, including who would
control Syria and the Levant in the eastern Mediterranean. This
ongoing struggle played out in spite of a number of
diplomatic and family connections that existed between the Ptolemys and
the Seleucids, and the fact that both Ptolemy and Seleucists

(04:30):
themselves had teamed up together against rival h and Antigonus,
the first just after Alexander's death. During many of these wars, Judea,
which is the area between the Mediterranean Sea on one
side and the Dead Sea on the other, was caught
in the crossfire, and it was passed back and forth
between the Ptolemy's and the Seleucids as the territory changed hands.

(04:55):
The city of Jerusalem, which is important some multiple religions,
including Judaea, the Christianity and Islam, is also located in Judea,
although at the time we're discussing today, Christianity and Islam
both had not yet been founded. Jerusalem had been home
to Solomon's Temple, also known as the First Temple, which
was destroyed in five eighties seven b c E, and

(05:16):
at the time that this story takes place, it was
home to the Second Temple, built in roughly five twenty
b C. These temples are of enormous religious, spiritual, and
social importance in Judaism. During the Fifth Syrian War, which
spanned from two oh two to one, the Soleucids soundly
defeated the Ptolemy's at the Battle of Panias or Banias,

(05:39):
also known as the Battle of Panium, and the details
of the battle itself are mostly lost to time, but
we do know that following this defeat, the Ptolemy's lost
most of their territory in the Lavant, including Judea. At first,
the region's Jewish population continued to live mostly as they
had been. Many of the Ptolemaic leaders who had controlled

(06:00):
Judea had been relatively tolerant of religious diversity. There was
definitely a social hierarchy at play, with the Greeks having
higher social and economic status than everyone else, but for
the most part, throughout the Ptolemaic Kingdom, people were allowed
religious freedom and expression. For example, under Ptolemaic rule, native
Egyptian religious traditions continued to be upheld, and newly built

(06:24):
Greek temples and other religious sites often drew inspiration from
Egyptian deities. The city of Alexandria in the Ptolemaic Kingdom
also had a sizable Jewish population, and it was in
Alexandria that the Torah was translated into Greek for the
first time. The degree to which Jews in Alexandria and
elsewhere in in Ptolemaic territories spoke Greek and adopted Greek

(06:48):
customs really really varied from community to community, in person
to person. There were, of course, a lot of different
schools of thought about how much assimilation with Greek culture
was acceptable. Some Jewish religious religious leaders advocated for a
total rejection of all things Greek, while others thought that
some degree of assimilation was fine as long as certain

(07:11):
Jewish laws and customs were still upheld. Later on, Jewish
religious texts written during this period would be viewed with
some suspicion because of this Greek influence. So that was
before the Fifth Syrian War and the Battle of Penias.
After Judea became part of the Seleucid Empire, at first
things stayed more or less the same. Seleucid rule continued

(07:35):
to allow free observance of the Jewish religion. Antiochus the Third,
also known as Antiochus the Great, then ruler of the
Seleucid Empire, helped rebuild parts of Jerusalem that had been
damaged or destroyed in the war. He suspended taxes in
Jerusalem for three years and banned the import of animals
that were unfit for consumption under Jewish law into Jerusalem.

(07:59):
He also allowed Jewish population of Jerusalem to govern itself
according to Jewish law. However, all that changed radically after
the death of Antiocus the Third. He was succeeded by
his son Selucius the Fourth, who was then assassinated by
one of his ministers who tried to take the throne
for himself, and ti Acas the Fourth Epiphanies, another of Antiocus,

(08:24):
the Third Sons, managed to take control of the Selucid
Empire in one seventy b C. And his ideas on
religious freedom were completely different than Antocus the Thirds had
been completely different than the Ptolemy's had been. Basically, it
was a huge shift from what had been going on
in Judea over the hundreds of years and many not hundreds,

(08:45):
but over the many decades and wars that had seen
it passed back and forth between different ruling empires over time.
We are going to talk about exactly how after a
quick word from a sponsor, Antiochus the Fourth wanted to

(09:07):
restore the Seleucid Empire to its former grandeur, and to
that end he started actively promoting and even requiring explicitly
Greek customs, language, and ideals. All the people in his
empire should be one people, and their culture should be Greek.
Monotheistic religions, including Judaism, were expected to abandon their own

(09:28):
customs and practices and instead begin worshiping the Greek Pantheon
of Gods. The high priest at the Jewish Temple had
been resisting Greek influence, so Antiochus replaced him with his brother,
that's the priest brother, not Antiochus's brother, with his brother Jason.
Jason had hellenized his own name from Hebrew, and he

(09:50):
built a Greek style gymnasium adjacent to the temple. A
gymnasium in Greece was a gathering place and a training
facility for athletes, and it was also an emblem of
Greek culture, and men who used the gymnasium did so naked.
This is a problem because nudity, especially public nudity, was
against Jewish law, so building this gymnasium near the temple

(10:12):
was not only a reminder of Greek supremacy, but also
something that was abhorrent in the eyes of many of
the people who were going to the temple for both
social and religious reasons. Jason was later replaced by Menelaois,
also a Hellenizer who continued to promote Greek ideas and
customs among the Jewish population. In one sixty eight b c.

(10:34):
Antiochus was away fighting the sixth Syrian War in Egypt,
and rumors started to spread that he had been killed.
This prompted some of Jerusalem's more traditional Jewish population to
rebel against Menelaois, who fled the city. When Antiochus returned
to Jerusalem and learned what had happened, he was outraged
and ordered his army to attack the Jewish population. Thousands

(10:57):
were killed or enslaved, and Tiakis then issued a decree
outlying Judaism. He specifically forbade Jewish religious observances and customs.
He outlawed Jewish modes of worship and observances of the
Sabbath and Jewish festivals, and he also outlawed the practice
of circumcision. The decree also required Jews to sacrifice pigs

(11:20):
to Greek idols, and the Second Temple was re dedicated
to the Greek god Zeus. Failure to obey all of
this was punishable by death, and many Jews, possibly thousands
of them, were martyred as a result. Although this decree
stood in direct opposition to Jewish law, a portion of
the Jewish community did follow it. Many but not all,

(11:44):
certainly did so under extreme darrists, but people who had
not considered Hellenization to be bad or threatening often followed
the law willingly. This meant that soon the most traditionalist
parts of the Jewish population were at odds both with
the Seleucid and with Hellenistic Jews who willingly followed the law.

(12:04):
An ti Akis's decree was not just directed at the
city of Jerusalem. It also applied to all of Salucid territory,
and he sent armed officers from town to town to
enforce it. This included This included demanding that priests publicly
make sacrifices to Greek idols or consumed pork, under penalty
of death if they refused. During this time, a Jewish

(12:28):
priestly family led by Patriarch matt at Yahoo or Matthias
or Matthias, depending on how you pronounce it, was living
in moda Een, west of Jerusalem. When anti A kisses
men came to moda Een to demand sacrifices to Greek gods.
Matthias refused. As recorded in First Maccabee's he said, even
if all the nations that live under the rule of

(12:50):
the king obey him and have chosen to do his commandments,
departing each one from the religion of his father's, yet
I and my sons and my brothers will live by
the covenant of our fathers. We will not obey the
King's word by turning aside from our religion to the
right hand or to the left. Then, when when a
Hellenistic Jew approached this Greek altar to make a sacrifice

(13:14):
as ordered, Matthias grabbed an officer officer's sword and killed him,
before then killing the officer, and then he rallied the
people who had witnessed this to join him in a
rebellion against the Seleucid Empire. Although some of the traditionalist
Jews in the Seleucid Empire had already been resisting Antiochus's
decree non violently, Matthias and his five sons started a

(13:37):
campaign of guerrilla warfare. They recruited others and based their
operations in hills and caves, eating plants they could scavenge
to avoid the need to eat food that wasn't kosher.
This revolt was the first war for religious freedom in
the West and possibly in the world. Matthias was already
quite old when this resistance started, and he passed away

(13:58):
not long after. His third son, jude To mccabee or
jud To the Hammer, became the leader of this resistance,
and estimates really vary about the size of the fighting
force that he recruited. It was somewhere between six thousand
to twelve thousand people, but that's still really paled in
comparison to the Solucid force of forty thousand. Even so,
thanks to their superior knowledge of the hills and caves

(14:20):
around Judea and the fact that the Solucids originally underestimated
what they were up against, they were able to successfully
resist and ultimately defeat the Greek force. It wasn't only
the Greek force that the Maccabee army was fighting, though,
They were also fighting back against the people they saw
as godless or Jews who are willing to follow Greek law. Today,

(14:42):
there's actually some debate among scholars about how much of
this resistance was really about the Greeks and how much
was about the Hellenistic Jews. When Antiochus the Fourth died,
he was succeeded by his son anti Acas the fifth.
He ruled from one sixty four to one sixty two
b c E. And Antiocas the fifth repealed his father's decree,
saying that he wanted the subjects of the kingdom to

(15:04):
be undisturbed in looking after their own affairs. He left
the Jewish community free to quote follow the customs of
their ancestors. Following Anti kis the Fifth Decree, the Jewish
community in Jerusalem began cleaning the temple and removing the
Greek idols that had been placed there. In mid December
of one sixty four b c. Or Kislev in the

(15:27):
Jewish calendar, it was ready to be rededicated, and this
rededication was an eight day observants that included songs, prayers,
and burnt offerings. The word Hanakah means dedication, and the
holiday is in celebration of this cleansing and rededication of
the temple. The Hanakah story that most people are the

(15:48):
most familiar with is that consecrated oil was needed to
re light the temple's minora, but there was only one
day's worth of oil and it would take a week
to consecrate more of it. However, in this story, a
miracle occurred and that one day's worth of oil burned
for eight keeping the manora lit, when more, keeping the
manora lit until more consecrated oil was ready for it.

(16:12):
This story was first written down hundreds of years after
the temple's dedication, so many people view it as symbolic
rather than as a historical fact, and instead of being
about burning oil, the miracle of Hanakah becomes a twofold miracle,
combining the spiritual victory of Jewish values over Greek values
and the military victory of the Jewish force over the

(16:33):
Seleucid army that vastly outnumbered them and had far superior training, equipment,
and supplies. And if the story ended here, it would
be kind of the like peaceful, happy, warm, delicious fried
food time that I have experienced with Hanneka. But and

(16:54):
ti akass decree and the rededication of the temple and
the restoration of religious items did not put an end
to the Maccabean revolt, and we will talk about how
and why it continued after a sponsor break. After the
restoration of Jewish religious freedom and the rededication of the Temple,

(17:18):
the mccabee's went on to start another revolt, this time
with the ultimate goal of obtaining total independence from the Seleucids.
Judah mccabee won a major victory against the fighting force
led by Seleucid general nicaaner In, and much of the
Slucid army was destroyed in this battle. This decisive victory

(17:39):
caught the attention of Rome. The maccabee's went on to
sign a treaty with Rome that same year. Rome had
become a threat to both the Ptolemy's and the Seleucids,
so doing this was a little bit of, you know,
the enemy of my enemy is my friend kind of thing.
After Judah mccabee died in battle, his brother Yonnton or Aonathan,

(18:00):
took over and established himself as the leader in Judea,
which soon became an autonomous part of the Salucid Empire
through a treaty with Seleucid king Alexander Balas. Following the treaty,
Jonathan established himself as ruler in one fifty three b c.
And at the same time, Jonathan was also a high priest.
This was a massive upward move in status for the mccabees,

(18:24):
who also came to be known as the Hasmanian family.
They had been village priests, and now they were both
the ruling family of an autonomous Jewish state and also
the high priestly family of the Jewish Temple. However, simultaneously
being the secular leader and the high priest was contrary
to Jewish law and to the hereditary lines of secular

(18:46):
and religious succession within Judaism, so Jonathan's leadership over religious
matters became especially problematic because he had been leading battles
during the revolt. All of this created big, big divisions
within the Jewish population because there were people who supported
the Maccabean leadership over both civil and religious matters, and

(19:08):
then other people who thought this combination of roles and
disregarding the way that that civil and religious leadership had
been passed down through generations, felt like that violated the
law and was wrong. When Jonathan was killed, his brother
Schumun or Simon, took over, and under Simon's rule, the
Maccabee's overthrew Acra, which was the Greek stronghold in Jerusalem,

(19:30):
in one forty two b C. Afterwards, Simon declared total
independence from the Seleucids, establishing an independent Jewish kingdom that
came to be known as the Hasmanian Kingdom. This was
a dynastic kingdom, with leadership passing down from father to son,
although it was later on in this dynasty before anyone
actually took the title of king. When Simon died, his

(19:54):
successor was Johannan's Hercanus or John Hercanus the First, who
threw a series of military conquests made the has many
In dynasty about as powerful as the Seleucids. He also
forcibly converted people to Judaism in this conquered territory. John
Hercanus's successor was his son Alexander Yunai, who also conquered

(20:17):
new territory and added it to the has Manian Kingdom.
And in addition to fighting with his Salucid neighbors, he
also took sides in a conflict among the various factions
that had arisen in response to has many In rule,
at one point reportedly executing eight hundred Pharisees who opposed him.
The has many And dynasty was in power for about

(20:39):
eighty years until sixty three BC. It started to decline
after the death of Queen salome A Alexandra and sixty
seven BC, and in fighting between her sons weakened the kingdom.
Roman general Pompey took advantage of these two sons rivalry
with each other to lay siege to Jerusalem, which ended

(20:59):
in a mass care and that was really the end
of the dynasty. As we mentioned earlier in the show,
the first Hanukah celebrations were in recognition of the cleansing
and rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, but as
the Hasmanian dynasty evolved, the celebration of Hanakah served another
purpose as well. Because the Hasmanian dynasty's dual role as

(21:21):
both priests and secular rulers was not met with universal approval,
they established a holiday that would reframe the revolt as
a noble struggle and ultimately Victoria's struggle against Greek oppression.
After the end of the Hasmanian dynasty, there was a
move away from celebrating Hanakah as a major Jewish holiday,

(21:41):
both due to its origins through the Hasmanian dynasty, the
fact that that dynasty was problematic for a lot of
people in terms of Jewish law, and the fact that
it isn't mentioned anywhere in the Torah. Today, though, Hanaka
has become a really a culturally important holiday for a
lot of Jewish people, particularly in the Jewish dia Aspera.
A lot of the traditions that are most associated with

(22:03):
Hanukah today, like eating latka and other fried food from
that has been fried and oil, come from these family
and community celebrations that started long after the end of
the Hasmian dynasty, and they've mostly been about, you know,
a community, a minority community that has often been living
in a place which where it's been oppressed and discriminated against.
So Hanakah celebrations around the world have come to reflect

(22:27):
that the communities and the traditions and the cultures where
they take place, uh much more so than the story
that originally launched the holiday, which as I was researching
this um, I would find I would find things about
the history of Hanakah that would basically stop at the

(22:48):
rededication of the temple and not really talk about what
went on with the Hasmanian dynasty after that. And then
I would find others by modern Jewish scholars and you
know rabbis living today, who were like this was anti Jewish,
Like this was not this this later part of this
history is not what we as Jews believe today about

(23:10):
religious freedoms and about Jewish law. So it was really
interesting as an outsider's perspective to see how like multiple
perspectives within one faith about how how this has talked
about in discussed because like they're there's are definitely people
who were like and this was an independent Jewish state,

(23:31):
and that was great, and people who are more like
this was an independent Jewish state, but they were making
a lot of decisions that I don't know that I
don't agree with. So uh. There is definitely diversity within
basically all religions, including Judaism as far as um, you know,
interpreting events from their past and interpreting events that are

(23:54):
now holidays with celebrations that are in some ways disconnected
from what actually happened to spawn that holiday. Do you
have holiday themed listener mail? Nope, No, I have listener
mail about prison. This is one of many personal accounts
that we have gotten from people about either their own

(24:15):
family members who have been incarcerated or people who work
in the prison system. And this person graciously gave us
UM permission to read this and asked that their name
be left off of it. H and uh And they say, ladies,
I'm a longtime listener and huge fan of the show.
As such, I was super excited to hear you taking

(24:36):
on the Attica prison uprising, and even more excited to
see you not refer to it as a riot. I'll
pause for a second and say that we did talk
about the beginning part of it basically being a riot,
but it definitely uh evolved into something that was much
more than that. I am from Western New York and
was raised by a New York State trooper, my grandfather.
When people mentioned the state police were called in to

(24:57):
help retake the prison, they're talking about my grand ha.
Much like some war veterans, Grandpa never talked about the
time in Attica, and it was understood as a part
of the family history that we were to know but
not discuss. Towards the end of his life, in a
rare moment of clarity, he mentioned that the atrocities that
Attica had never left him. Fear and shock led me

(25:18):
to change the subject rather than dig further, and the
history nerd and prison reform advocate in me have never
forgiven myself. I now work on behalf of prison reform
and multiple New York State correctional facilities, including Attica, which
is why I asked that this correspondence be anonymous. It
is important that we understand that how we treat the
incarcerated matters, and that the uprising at Attica was a

(25:39):
traumatic event for both the incarcerated and law enforcement that
did not have to happen. I really appreciate the even
handed view that you ladies took on a subject that
is still highly emotional for many of us in Western
New York, including those of us who work with the
incarcerated in general and in Attica specifically. Please please, please
keep up the good work, Anonymous. Thank you so much,

(26:02):
Anonymous listener for writing that into us. As I said,
we have heard, uh, quite a number of people's personal
accounts of either having grown up in Ataco with family
members who were working UM at the prison when the
uprising happened, or people who work in law enforcement and
and corrections and other states and other contexts, um and
a lot of these letters have been really moving, and

(26:26):
thank you very much for sharing them with us, because
a lot of them have been really quite personal. Uh.
If you would like to write the US about this
or any other podcast, where at history podcast at how
Stuffworks dot com. We're also on Facebook at Facebook dot
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(26:48):
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more that how stuff works dot com or ms and

(27:10):
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