The Age of the Maccabees (Illustrated)

by Annesley Streane

  Their repudiation of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body may be closely connected with the Hellenic influence, to which they so readily lent themselves. We are reminded of the Greek view of the matter by St. Paul’s experience at Athens. “Associating continually with those who thus regarded the very notion of the resurrection as incredible, it was but natural that the Sadducees should not believe in it themselves”.

  It would be an error to suppose that in all matters where religion or administration was concerned the Sadducees leaned to milder measures than their rivals. “The Sadducees thought that the punishment ordered by the Pentateuch for the infliction of any bodily injury—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth—should be literally interpreted and followed out, and obtained in consequence the reputation of being cruel administrators of justice; whilst the Pharisees, appealing to traditional interpretations of the Scriptures, allowed mercy to preponderate, and only required a pecuniary compensation from the offender. The Sadducees, on the other hand, were more lenient in their judgment of those false witnesses whose evidence might have occasioned a judicial murder, as they only inflicted punishment if the execution of the defendant actually took place”.

  So long as the struggle was for religious freedom, as it was in the days of the first generation of Maccabean brothers, the Pharisees were heartily on the side of the rulers. “When this contest had been brought to a successful issue, and Hyrcanus showed that his aim was for the aggrandizement and extension of the Jewish state, and even for his personal glorification as the civil prince, and not merely the chief ecclesiastical personage, their support began to be exchanged to some extent for suspicion and coldness. For all the earlier portion of his rule, however, he contrived to prevent a formal difference from manifesting itself. At length the crisis came.

  On the occasion of a banquet to the chief Pharisees, Hyrcanus, perhaps in order to test the sincerity of their friendship, and lead them to make the attack, for which he may have had good reason to think that they were preparing, asked them to mention anything in his conduct which they considered blameworthy. A certain Eleazar ben Povia replied that he should content himself with princely authority and transfer the high priest’s diadem to a worthier head, inasmuch as his mother had been made a captive during an attack on Modin by the Syrians. The charge which this implied was inquired into and found false. Hyrcanus called upon the Pharisees to inflict punishment for the slander. They condemned their colleague to the penalty assigned to ordinary slander, viz., stripes and imprisonment. The Sadducees suggested that a punishment so trivial in proportion to the offence of making this charge against the chief civil and ecclesiastical ruler showed disaffection on the part of the Pharisees to his rule. He thenceforward withdrew his favor from them, showing his estrangement by various changes in the details of administration, civil offices, as well as those connected with the Temple, being now given to the Sadducees.

  This clouded the short remainder of Hyrcanus’s days, and proved the commencement of discord and disaster to the nation. His house, indeed, appeared thoroughly prosperous.

  “It was because they had devoted such intense labor, and had been proved in the severest crisis, that the Hasmoneans, like David of old, had attained supreme power, which came to them unsought and yet, by the inevitable necessity of circumstances, backed by the acclamation and most earnest cooperation of the people ... Their position as rulers, therefore, was if possible more prosperous, and full of brighter promise for a long-future, than David’s had ever been. In John Hyrcanus and his five sons, it seemed that the perpetuity of their house was secured. But collapse was near. Hyrcanus died at the age of sixty, after thirty-one years’ rule, in the year 106 BC. Josephus says that “he was esteemed by God worthy of the three privileges—the government of his nation, the dignity of the high-priesthood, and prophecy”. Whatever we think of this last claim, we may at any rate accept it as a sign of the high estimation in which he was held by his countrymen during the greater part of his reign.

  FROM THE ACCESSION OF ARISTOBULUS TO THE DEATH OF JANNEUS (106—78 BC)

  HYRCANUS, before his death (of which no particulars have come down to us), named his wife as his successor, and his son Judah—better known by his Greek name Aristobulus—as high priest. The latter soon transferred his mother from the throne to a prison, and getting rid of his four brothers in a similar manner, he assumed the title of king, although he did not venture to place it upon the coins struck in his reign. His successors till the time of Pompey continued the regal title. It is doubtful whether he actually was called “Friend of the Greeks”. This, at any rate, expressed his line of action. His Greek leanings, however, did not prevent him from extending the Jewish territory in a northerly direction and Judaizing the inhabitants. The chief event of his reign was this expedition against the Itureans, a large section of whom he compelled to submit to circumcision and conform to the other requirements of the Law. Probably it was mainly Galilee that he thus annexed, extending in this way his country’s dominions northwards, as his father had done into the opposite region. Continued invasions in the same direction would have given the caravan roads leading from the land of the Euphrates to Egypt into the hands of the Judeans, which possessions, combined with the warlike courage of the inhabitants and the defensive condition of the fortresses, might have permitted Judea to attain an important position among the nations.

  The accounts which we possess of Aristobulus are in the main drawn from hostile sources. The Greeks, indeed, whose friendship he cultivated, seem naturally to have taken a favorable view of his character. The Pharisees, with whose party he completely broke, did not admit that he was possessed of any virtue. They attribute to him the deaths of his mother and brother, Antigonus. The latter, with, or more probably without, the sanction of Aristobulus, was slain in the palace, and the tragic circumstances of his end are said to have had such an effect on the already weak health of the ruler that his own death quickly ensued (105 BC).

  He was succeeded by his brother Alexander Janneus. The latter was a Grecized form of the Hebrew Jonathan, with Jannai as an intermediate stage. He and his brothers were released from the prison to which Aristobulus had consigned them, by the widow of the late ruler, Salome or Alexandra. It is almost certain that she gave him her hand in wedlock as well. If so, we see that he did not hesitate to violate the law that the high priest should not marry a widow. This falls in with the general character of his reign, in which the kingly side is much more prominent than the priestly. Simon ben Shatach, however, brother of the queen, soon assumed a prominent position, and thus the Pharisees’ influence was powerful throughout the reign.

  Janneus inherited the vehemence and warlike inclinations of many of his forbears, without possessing, to an equal extent, the prudence which had characterized the more distinguished of the Maccabees. He succeeded, however, in extending his dominion, with the help of his Pisidian and Cilician mercena¬ries, and without any very grievous disaster. At this time the rivals for the Syrian throne, Grypus and Cyzicenus, were too busily engaged with each other to cause him muchdisquietude in his attempt to acquire a firmer hold upon the coast towns. His troops overran the district of Gaza, while he himself proceeded to carry on a vigorous siege of Ptolemais, a city the possession of which was highly important for trading purposes. A further inducement no doubt consisted in the fact that it contained a large body of Jewish colonists.

  At this time (circ. 105 BC) Ptolemy Lathyrus had been driven from Egypt by his mother Cleopatra, the revolution being probably, in part at least, effected by the help of Egyptian Jews, with whose interests Cleopatra had identified herself. Lathyrus, who had taken up his abode in Cyprus, viewing the intestine troubles of Syria, bethought himself of retrieving his own fortunes by the attempt to bring Palestine again under the Egyptian dominion. Ptolemais refused to receive him. Janneus sought to keep him in play with friendly expressions, while he sent to Egypt to warn Cleopatra and request aid. Lathyrus, discovering Janneus’s real policy, atta
cked and routed him atAsophon, near the Jordan, a success which was followed, according to Jewish (probably exaggerated) tradition, by great cruelties practiced upon the neighboring inhabitants. Soon the combined army and fleet of Egypt, led respectively by Cleopatra and her son Alexander, brought Ptolemy’s hopes to a close, and he was obliged to return to Cyprus. The opposition of the Jews in Egypt was the only thing which saved Judea from becoming thereupon subject to Cleopatra’s rule. Her army had been despatched under the command of two Jews, Helkias and Ananias. Theformer had died during the expedition. The latter strongly protested against the annexation, pointing out that his countrymen in Egypt would not be slow to visit upon the queen what they were certain to consider a gross breach of faith.

  Janneus soon renewed his attempts upon various outlying cities, and with success. He captured Gadara on the Lake of Galilee and other towns, and after nearly a year’s siege obtained possession of Gaza (96 BC) through an act of treachery. The resistance was fierce to the end, and the overthrow complete. Before the siege the town was one of the busiest and most prosperous in Palestine; afterwards it was little better than a huge ruin, in which fire and spoliation had done their worst.

  On the ecclesiastical side Janneus was far from popular. The Pharisees, who had the warm support of the people, were offended at the indifference with which the high priest regarded the details of ritual, to which they attached the utmost importance. Simon ben Shatach doubtless fomented these quarrels, and the stories which have come down to us concerning him, while many of them are childish, and doubtless not without considerable accretions of tradition, yet show at any rate a man who had the skill to secure a powerful share in the conduct of affairs. At length a crisis came. It could only be with deep-seated resentment that pious Jews could look on and see a wild warrior like Alexander Janneus discharging the duties of high priest in the holy place, certainly not with the conscientious and painstaking observance of the ordinances regarded by the Pharisees as Divine. Even while he was discharging his priestly office it is said that for the first time they broke out in open rebellion. During the feast of Tabernacles, whenevery one taking part in it was required to carry a palm branch and a citron fruit as a festal emblem, Alexander was once, as he stood beside the altar about to offer sacrifice, pelted by the assembled people with the citrons. At the same time they insulted him by calling out that he was the son of a prisoner of war, and was unworthy of the office of sacrificing priest. Alexander was not the man to bear this quietly. He called in the aid of his mercenaries, and 600 Jews were massacred.

  Thus unpopular at home, Janneus proceeded to gratify his military instincts by leading his hired troops to attack Obedas, king of the Arabians. His enemy outmaneuvered him, shut up his forces in a narrow valley, and defeated them with great slaughter. Escaping to Jerusalem with difficulty, he found his people in revolt, and for the next six years (94-89 BC) he was engaged in civil war, dismissed by Josephus in scarcely more than the statement that “in the several battles that were fought on both sides, Janneus slew not fewer than fifty thousand of the Jews”. The disfavor with which he was regarded by the majority of his people was counterbalanced in several ways. His Sadducean leaning induced that party to assist him, and they formed by far the wealthiest portion of the community, and could avail themselves besides of the Temple treasury. The provinces on the east of Jordan, which had been taken from Obedas, were restored to him, and this probably secured him from feeling sufficient interest in the contest to intervene. Egypt, as we have seen, owing to the strong Jewish element there, was unable to make use of the divisions in Palestine for any purpose of aggrandizement, while Syria was still distracted by domestic strife.

  At length, however, the side opposed to Janneus obtained some help from the last-named quarter. Demetrius III (Eucaerus), the ruler of part of Syria, accepted the invitation proffered by the Pharisees, and armies composed, on both sides alike, of Jewish and foreign elements met near Shechem (88 BC). Demetrius was on the whole successful after an engagement in which the loss on each side was severe. Janneus withdrew to the mountain country, and was joined by a number, said to have been 6,000, of deserters from Demetrius. They divined the latter’s intentions of annexation, and apparently did not desire, whatever might be Janneus’s faults, that their country should again have experience of the Syrian yoke. Under these circumstances Demetrius hastened homewards, and Janneus proceeded to seize and punish with great cruelty those who had maintained so prolonged a resistance to his rule. For the rest of his reign the Pharisees were crushed.

  Judea now became for a short time the seat of war between the most powerful of the claimants to the Syrian throne, Antiochus XII (Dionysus) and the Nabatean king, Aretas. The latter, after a victory over Antiochus, vanquished Janneus, but was persuaded by concessions of territory to withdraw. For the next three years Janneus’ success in arms, and in the consequent acquisition of fresh territory for his country, was such, that when in 81 BC he returned to his capital, he was received with enthusiasm by the people who had so long opposed his rule. His health was undermined by a long course of excesses, and while seeking to repress outbreaks of disaffected subjects in 78 BC he died at the age of 49 years.

  It was one of the results of the peculiar warfare of the Hasmonean princes that Palestine gradually became studded with fortresses or castles apart from the main seats of their ancient history or civilization, and commanding the passes in which they entrenched themselves against their enemies. Such had been Modin under Mattathias and Judas, and Masada under Jonathan; such was Hyrcaneum under John Hyrcanus; such, under Alexander Janneus, was Macherusbeyond the Dead Sea, and Alexandreum in the mountains between Samaria and the Jordan valley, which subsequently became the recognized burial-place of the later princes of the Hasmonean family, as Modin earlier had been of the first. But Hyrcanus and Alexander were interred, in regal or pontifical state, in tombs which long bore their names close to the walls of Jerusalem. If extent of dominion be a test of prosperity, Janneus may certainly claim credit for winning a considerable number of cities with their neighboring territories. Also, in spite of his carelessness in regard to Pharisaic ritual or traditions, he insisted that those whom he conquered should accept Judaism,on the penalty of devastation of territory and large destruction of life. Accordingly he left the kingdom larger than it had been at any time since the Exile.

  This work of conquest however proved at the same time a work of destruction. It did not lead, as once the conquests of Alexander the Great had done, to the furtherance, but to the extinction, of Greek culture. For in this respect Alexander Janneus was still always a Jew, who subjected the conquered territories, as far as they went, to Jewish modes of thought and manners. If the cities in question would not consent to this, they were laid waste. Such was the fate which befell the greatand hitherto prosperous coast towns and the Hellenistic cities on the east of the Jordan. The Romans, Pompey and Gabinius, were the first to rebuild again those ruins, and re-awaken in them a new prosperity.

  THE REIGN OF ALEXANDRA (78—69 BC)

  WHEN Alexander was dying, he is said to have advised his wife Alexandra, on whom the sovereignty now devolved, to cultivate the favor of the Pharisees. According to one account, his words were, “Fear neither the Pharisees nor their opponents, but fear the hypocrites who pretend to be Pharisees, whose deeds are those of Zimri, and who claim a reward like that of Phinehas”. Strongly supported by the Pharisees, she succeeded in keeping her kingdom free throughout her reign not only from internal feuds, but to a large extent also from foreign attack. Josephus speaks of her as “a sagacious woman in the conduct of great affairs, intent always on the gathering of soldiers together, so that she in¬creased the army by one-half, and procured a great body of foreign troops, till her own nation became powerful at home and terrible to foreign potentates”.