Every winter, Jewish communities across the globe come together in celebration of the festival of Hanukkah. The image of the menorah and its iconic eight candles shining through the dark winter night is one of the most visually recognizable aspects of traditional Jewish culture- but from where does this ancient holiday ritual stem? To answer we must go back 2,200 years to a time when the descendants of Alexander the Great ruled in the land of Judea, and tell a story of the Ancient Jewish peoples’ struggle to win liberty against the forces of the Hellenic world.
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By the era of classical antiquity, the independent Kingdoms of Israel and Judah were in terminal decline. As a result, the history of the Jewish people soon came to be defined by the carousel of foreign Empires that took turns conquering, and subsequently ruling the ancestral Hebrew homeland. First came the Assyrians, then the Babylonians, and then the Persians- who ruled the Jews with a reasonably fair and light hand.
Finally, in 332BC, the Macedonian phalanxes of Alexander would steamroll the Achaemenid Empire out of existence, establishing classical Greek as the dominant language and culture of the Near East. It is here that the Jewish people became subjects of the Greek world. When Alexander died, his massive Macedonian Empire fractured into several monarchies, ruled by his closest comrades, and later their descendants.
These so-called Diadochi Kingdoms were constantly at war with one another, and the region of Judea, being situated in the borderland between the Ptolemies of Egypt and Seleucids of Syria, became a battleground where the two Macedonian dynasties jockeyed for power and influence. Despite this, life remained fairly peaceful for the Hebrews. The Hellenistic Kings generally used the same light touch the Persians had, interfering very little in the regions’ culture, religion, and internal politics.
The Jewish people were ruled semi-autonomously by a High Priest of the Judaic faith, who handled matters both religious and secular from the Great Temple of Jerusalem. In 198BC, Antiochus III had finally expelled the Ptolemies out of the Judea, putting the region firmly under the suzerainty of the Seleucid Empire. He lowered the taxes and affirmed the Jewish peoples’ freedom to live by their own faith and laws and for now, Judea was content.
Throughout world history, we often see subject peoples of a multi-ethnic Empire willingly adopt the language and customs of said Empires’ rulers, in an attempt to improve social mobility, so many Jewish peoples began to practice the Greek culture of their suzerains. This phenomenon was known as hellenization, and was perpetuated mainly by the upper strata of Jewish society, namely the wealthy priests, merchants and aristocrats in urban Jerusalem. The hellenization process was expedited in 175BC, when the culturally traditionalist High Priest, Onias III, was deposed by his philhellene brother Joshua, better known by his greek name, Jason.
Jason would go on to wield his power as High Priest to begin transforming Jerusalem into a classically Greek city by building a Gymnasium and an Ephebeum - essentially community centers for Greek education and learning. He also sent Jewish athletes to compete in a mimicry of the Olympic Games, hosted by the King in Tyre. There he offered a sacrificial tribute to the Greek demigod Hercules, to whom the games were dedicated.
Perhaps his most radical policy was to allow non-Jews in Jerusalem to set idols of their Gods within the Holy Temple itself. The fact that the High Priest was openly tolerating, and even promoting the polytheistic gods was deeply disturbing to many Jews who clung to their monotheist faith. This sentiment was especially strong in the poorer, rural communities of Judea, who had clung far closer to orthodox Judaism.
A strained situation was made worse in 175BC, when one Antiochus IV Epiphanes became the Seleucid basileus. Various ancient accounts describe him as a proto-Nero or Commodus, that is to say, erratic. His sobriquet, Epiphanes, meant “manifested from God”, but among his people he was secretly known by a variation of this title: “Epimanes”, which meant “madman”.
It was him who in the first year of his rule, supported Jasons’ coup against Onias III, hoping a pro-Greek High Priest would help hellenize the Jews. However, only three years later, Antiochus decided that Jason wasn’t hellenizing Judea fast enough, and so helped replace him with an even more pro-hellenic Priest Menelaus. With that matter settled, Antiochus then marched with his armies into Egypt, aiming to double the size of his Empire by seizing the Ptolemaic heartland.
While the King was preoccupied, Jason seized his opportunity and returned to Jerusalem, initiating a counter-coup and expelling the deeply unpopular Menelaus. However, Antiochus’ campaign was cut short when the Roman Republic intervened on behalf of the Ptolemies. Unable to match the strength of the legion, the king was forced to retreat to Syria.
Already utterly humiliated by Rome, Antiochus' mood turned wrathful when he found out that his subjects in Jerusalem had rebelled. He stormed Jerusalem with his army, slaying the supporters of Jason and reinstating his puppet Menelaus as High Priest. He then left Apollonios in charge of subduing the city, who accomplished his job by dismantling the walls of Jerusalem and building a fort, named Akra , on the nearby hill of Ophel, so everyone could gaze upwards and see the symbol of King Antiochus’ power.
Rather than leaving good enough alone, Antiochus began to actively exterminate Judaism, forbidding the people of Judea from observing the Sabbath, circumcising their sons, or performing other rituals. He had the holy temple in Jerusalem converted into a temple of Zeus, within which he personally spilled the blood of a pig, a deeply sacreligious ritual to the Judaic faith. The King declared that the Jewish people should begin worshipping the Greek Gods.
Hellenized Jews accepted these changes, but many others did not, resolving instead to fight. It is here that the Maccabees enter our story. Our story now shifts to the small Judean town of Modiin, where a local priest, Mattathias, and his five sons lived.
They belonged to the relatively minor Hasmonean family and were deeply orthodox Jews, who had remained true to every tenet of their religion, even as their countrymen became increasingly assimilated into Greek culture. Some time in 167BC, a Seleucid official arrived in Modiin and compelled the townsfolk to offer a sacrifice to the Greek Gods. Mattathias refused to make this offering and another one of the townsfolk, a hellenized Jew, stepped forth to do so in his place.
Flying into a rage, Mattathias drew his knife and murdered his countryman before he could perform the ritual. The Priest then cut down the Seleucid official as well, and destroyed the pagan altar for good measure. Knowing they would be branded outlaws, Mattathias and his five sons fled into the nearby hills, followed by many like-minded Orthodox Jews, known as the Hasidim.
From there, the fight had begun. While Mattathias died sometime in 166BC from causes unknown, he would be succeeded by his third son Judah, a dynamic young commander, who through a mixture of ferocity, ruthlessness and bravery would become known as “Maccabeus”, a word deriving from the Aramaic maqqaba: the hammer. At the early stages the rebellion was not a struggle between Jews and Greeks, but a civil conflict between pro and anti-hellenic Jews.
The Maccabees began their movement with a terror campaign, launching lightning raids upon predominantly Jewish towns. They killed many of their own countrymen who they considered too Greek, burning down their homes, and destroying the pagan altars where they worshipped. Most notably, they rounded up the sons of Hellenized Jews and had them forcefully circumcised.
The message was simple, Greek culture was to be purged from Judea. Before long, the Maccabees had earned the attention of the military governor Apollonios, who resolved to crush the rebels before they could sow any more chaos. In 167BC, after gathering a local army of around 2,000 men in Samaria, Apollonios marched south to the Gophna hills, where it was said that the elusive Judah was hiding out.
Here, the Maccabees proved they were capable of more than just murdering civilians and burning altars. Knowing they were outnumbered and out-equipped, Judah deliberately lured the enemy army deep into his native territory, where the hilly terrain made it impossible for the Seleucids to form up into their Macedonian Phalanx. With only 600 men, the Maccabees surrounded and ambushed the Seleucid forces just outside the town of Wadi Haramia, routing them off the field.
Apollonios was killed in the fighting, and Judah claimed the fallen commanders’ sword- wielding it as a symbol that his rebellion had been blessed by God. The Maccabees followed up their victory with another in 166BC, ambushing an army of 4,000 Seleucids led by Seron at the Beth-horon mountain pass. These two victories would set the theme for much of the Revolt- in which smaller, poorly armed contingents of Maccabean warriors would utilize terrain-based guerilla warfare to consistently outwit the well-armed Seleucid armies that outnumbered them greatly.
Later that year, Antiochus IV was forced to take the bulk of his armies eastwards to deal with a Parthian invasion, putting the local governor of Syria, Lysias, in charge of quashing the growing Jewish revolt with limited resources. Despite this, Lysias managed to field a significantly large army of some 10,000 professional Macedonian-trained soldiers. He put two experienced commanders, Gorgios and Nikator in charge of this force, and sent it into Judea.
The Hellenes set up an entrenched camp at the town of Emmaus, while Maccabeus responded by leading around 3,000 Jewish warriors to the adjacent town of Mizpah, where they fasted and prayed to God to deliver them victory in the battle to come. In the days that followed, some of the local anti-Maccabean Jews informed the Seleucid commanders where Judah had set up his base. Seizing the opportunity to catch his enemy flat footed, Gorgias rallied some 5000 infantry and 1000 cavalry and marched for Mizpah.
However, his heavily armoured Argyraspides were slow and cumbersome, and their presence was soon picked up on by Maccabean scouts. Rather than face Gorgios’ force head on, Judah decided rather ingeniously to abandon his camp, taking advantage of his army’s speed and maneuverability to skirt around the expeditionary force, and strike instead at their now more sparsely populated camp at Emmaus. Taken completely by the surprise, the reserve forces in Emmaus were either slaughtered or routed, and their supplies looted or burned.
After failing to find any rebels in Mizpah or the surrounding hinterlands, Gorgios returned to his camp, only to find it aflame. Seeing this, the morale of his army was crushed, and they fled for the coast. Reeling from yet another decisive defeat, the High Priest Menelaus in Jerusalem, with the support of Lysias, attempted to bring Judah and his cohorts to the bargaining table, offering to repeal some of the more egregious anti-Judaism laws of Antiochus.
However, these negotiations failed, for the Maccabees would accept nothing less than the total eradication of Hellenization in Judea. By 164BC, Governor Lysias had taken it upon himself to assemble and lead an army of some 20,000 men in Antioch, leading them south through Idumaea and the valleys east of Gaza to a town called Beth Zur, where he encamped his army in the local fortified citadel, hoping to strike at the Maccabee’s southern flank. By this point, Judah Maccabeus had some 10,000 men under his command, his numbers having swelled as the reputation of his victories grew.
Nevertheless, he was still outnumbered and outgunned by Lysias' army, so he stuck to tried and true tested methods to best his foe. Historical sources are vague on how the battle of Beth Zur played out, but it seems evident that the Maccabees spent the next few months harassing the Seleucids in through hit-and-run tactics, striking at foraging parties, patrols, and any platoon of Syrian Greeks unfortunate enough to be caught outside the town citadel. This was never enough to earn a decisive victory, but it was enough to keep Lysias and his army consistently on the backfoot.
The status quo changed in late autumn, when far in the east, the Seleucid Epiphanes contracted disease while campaigning against the Parthians, and died. The Monarchs’ death meant that his son, the ten-year-old Antiochus V was now basileus of the Seleucid Empire, and there would be no small amount of courtiers willing to influence the young boy for personal gain. Suddenly, Lysias’ priorities had shifted, and he was compelled to return to Antioch to secure control of the infant king in order to keep his power and influence in the royal court, which meant that the campaign in Judea was over.
Due to his persistence, cunning, and some plain old luck, Judah Maccabeus was victorious once more. With his victory at Beth Zur, he was able to march his army more or less unopposed to Jerusalem, which ironically, he was able to stride right into because the Seleucid governor Apollonios had destroyed its city walls a few years earlier. Following this, the Hellenized and other Seleucid loyalists retreated to Akra.
Now firmly in control of the Holy City, the Hammer of Judea entered the Temple, destroying the altar to Zeus, and the idols that had been erected during the reigns of Jason and Menelaus. His youngest brother, Jonathan Apphus, was installed as the new High Priest of Judea. Among the sacred objects to be restored was the menorah, a golden candelabrum whose seven branches represented knowledge and creation.
It was supposed to be kept burning every night, but its light had been extinguished during the persecutions. However, the temple had been so thoroughly pillaged that there was only enough oil to keep the candles of the menorah burning for one night. Despite this, once lit, the candles burned bright and true for eight full days.
This supposed miracle of God is the cornerstone of Hanukkah, and to this day, when Jewish communities around the world light eight candles on their menorahs, they commemorate each day the light burned for Judah Maccabeus and his freedom fighters. Jerusalem may have been taken, but the war was far from over. Seeking to keep his momentum, Judah besieged Akra in early 162BC.
He expected that Lysias, still locking horns with his political rivals in Antioch, would not bother sending a force to relieve the siege. He was wrong, and in a surprise to everyone, Lysias left Antioch with an army of some 50,000 infantry, 500 cavalry, and at least 30 war elephants. Maccabeus had a respectable 20,000 warriors loyal to him, so upon hearing this news, he broke the siege of Akra, and marched southwards, meeting his foe on the hills outside of the town of Beth Zechariah.
Confident in his numbers, and expecting the Greeks to be wisened to his guerilla-warfare tactics by now, Judah opted to, for once, match the Seleucid army in a pitched battle. This was a dire mistake. The Jewish warriors were not a match for the Macedonian Phalanx in the open field, and on top of that, the war elephants were striking deep fear in the heart of Judah’s troops.
In an attempt to inspire bravery in his men, the younger brother of Judah, Eleazar Horan, charged right into the Seleucid front lines, diving under the lumbering legs of an approaching elephant and stabbing into its soft underbelly. The beast was slain, but its corps feel on onto Eleazar, crushing the Hasmonean warrior in one of history’s more spectacular deaths. Despite this brave sacrifice, the Maccabean forces were still routed, and driven off the field.
Lysias was not able to savour this victory for long, for in the following year, the Hammer struck back, winning a minor victory over a Seleucid army at Adasa. This was not a crushing blow to the Seleucids, but once more, Lysias had to return to Antioch to deal with his rivals. He was forced to compromise with the Maccabees, repealing much of Antiochus IV’s religious laws to placate his foe, before retreating out of Judea.
Taking advantage of this reprieve, Judah sent envoys to Rome. As they had a vested interest in keeping their Seleucid rivals weak, the Romans signed a treaty of mutual defense with the Maccabees in 161BC, which legitimized Judah Maccabeus as a legitimate ruler of an independent Jewish State. Meanwhile over in Antioch, the situation was growing volatile, King Demetrius I Soter rose to power following a political coup that saw the murder of boy-king Antiochus V and his chief supporter Lysias.
King Demetrius turned out to be more aggressive than his predecessors, and ignoring the Roman-Judean treaty, he dispatched one of his top generals, Bacchides, at the head of 22,000 men to retake Judea. Bacchides managed to march right up to the gates of Jerusalem unopposed, catching Judah Maccabeus completely by surprise. He only had 3,000 men with him, and to make matters worse, most of them fled the city upon seeing how direly outnumbered they were.
Left with only a thousand or so men, the hammer of Israel opted to go out in a blaze of glory, charging out into the field outnumbered twenty to one. Despite a valiant attempt Judah and his men were overwhelmed, and cut down to a man. Judah’s brothers Simeon and Jonathan continued to fight on, eventually defeating Bacchides and retaking Jerusalem in the years that followed.
The brothers and their successors would continue to fight against the Seleucids for two more decades, before the declining Hellenistic Empire became mired in its own internal corruption and civil wars. In 141BC Judea came fully under the control of the Hasmonean dynasty, and the descendants of Judah Maccabeus and his brothers would rule it as a fully independent Kingdom for a time. It is worth noting that even after this successful bid for independence, elements of Hellenistic language and culture remained visible in Jewish society for centuries, especially after they were expelled from their homeland by the Romans after the Great Jewish Rebellion and forced into integrate as a diaspora community across a notoriously Greek-loving Roman Empire.
The Maccabean revolt has a somewhat mixed legacy. Were Judah and his followers brave freedom fighters, risking everything to preserve their culture and faith against an oppressive imperial regime? Or were they religious zealots, whose desire to force a rigidly theocratic society upon all Jewish people taint what could have been a noble legacy?
Whatever the case, their impact on world history cannot be denied, as each year, millions of people light the eight candles that cut through the winter dark and the story of the hammer of Judea is echoed once more. Once again, thanks to Supremacy 1914 for sponsoring this video. This Free Online PVP Strategy Game is set in a World War I setting, where you lead your country in the conquest of the world.
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