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“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ
Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.”
(Romans
8:2)
Maccabees
– Britannica
The following is an Article “Maccabees” from Encyclopedia
Britannica:
Maccabees
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Historical context of the Maccabees
Prohibition of Jewish religious practices
Jewish resistance
Hanukkah: reconsecration of the sanctuary
The succession of Jonathan
The rule of Hyrcanus I
Maccabees (flourished 2nd century BCE) were a priestly
family of Jews who organized a successful rebellion against the Seleucid ruler
Antiochus IV and reconsecrated the defiled Temple of Jerusalem.
Historical context of the Maccabees
The name Maccabee was a title of honour given to Judas, a
son of Mattathias and the hero of the Jewish wars of independence, 168–164 BCE.
Later the name Maccabees was extended to include his whole family, specifically
Mattathias (his father) and Judas’s four brothers—John, Simon, Eleazar, and
Jonathan. Its use was also extended to John Hyrcanus, Simon’s son, who was next
in succession.
There is no unanimity about the meaning of the title
Maccabee. The Hebrew may be read as “Hammer,” “Hammerer,” or “Extinguisher.”
Since Judas held the initiative in the long war against the Syrians, he was
probably regarded in the same light as King Edward I of England, who was known
as the “Hammer of the Scots.”
Throughout the 2nd century BCE the city-state of
Jerusalem-Judah lay between the two great powers of Egypt and Syria. The
Ptolemies ruled in Egypt and the Seleucids in Syria. These were residual states
that had been left when Alexander the Great’s empire broke up about 20 years
after his death. Antiochus IV ruled Syria from 175 to 164/163 BCE. He carried
the substitute name Epiphanes, a Greek word meaning “god manifest.” A conqueror
of overweening pride, as he is described in the Book of Daniel in the Bible, he
set out to seize Judaea (or Judah), which until then had been a province of
Egypt. He aimed, moreover, to unify his vast and heterogeneous empire behind
the worship of Zeus and, therefore, severely restricted the practice of
Judaism, whose strict monotheism impeded the realization of that policy.
In Antiochus’s day the Syrians were devotees of the culture
of Greece. Antiochus sought to continue what he regarded as the “civilizing”
colonization process of Alexander. For him culture meant the pursuit of the
“good.” The restless, inquiring, creative spirit of Greece—what might today be
called the scientific spirit—was based on the assumption that “man is the
measure of all things.” The Jewish view of life, on the other hand, was totally
in opposition to that of the Hellenism that had spread throughout the Middle
East. It too was a total way of life, one lived in accordance with what the
Jewish people believed was revelation. They regarded Hellenism as a form of
nature worship. They saw it as the spiritual continuation of the religion of
the Canaanites, who had presented their views against Israel’s for all the
centuries since the days of Joshua. They were aghast that Antiochus encouraged
the Semitic-speaking peoples of the Mediterranean coast to regard him as the
ancient god Baal of the Canaanites. The Canaanite gods, they asserted, were
merely the mythologizing of the anger, hate, lust, envy, and greed of
unregulated human hearts.
Israel, its prophets proclaimed, was the chosen instrument
of the transcendent God, whose name was Yahweh. Yahweh was utterly “other” than
human—that is to say, he was “holy.” It was God who had created humanity, not
man the gods, and Israel was God’s chosen instrument to be “a light to lighten
the nations” (Isaiah). To make the meaning of its special relationship to
Yahweh evident to the world was therefore Israel’s reason for being. Its task
was to put the revelation of God into purposeful use by producing an ordered
human society that was ruled by God’s justice and love and not by human force
and greed.
Prohibition of Jewish religious practices
This conception of revealed religion and of loyalty to the
Word of God, rather than to a human king, Antiochus could not appreciate,
particularly since he himself delighted in the name God Manifest. In order to
extirpate the faith of Israel, therefore, he attacked Israel’s religious
practices. He thus forbade the observance of the Sabbath and of the traditional
feasts, for these had been ordained by a “jealous,” or intolerant, God. All
sacrifices were to come to an end. He forbade the reading of the Law of Moses
and gave orders to search out and burn any copies that could be found. He
forbade the practice of circumcision, for it was this that set the Jews off
from other peoples as the one “people of God.” In place of these practices, Antiochus
encouraged the development of cultural clubs called gymnasia, in which people
gathered to study, to learn, and to enjoy each other’s company. After competing
in various forms of athletics, men and women used to soak themselves in hot
baths. But because the pursuit of the “good” included a delight in the body
beautiful, such activities were performed naked. A circumcised Jew taking part
in the games in a gymnasium could not therefore hide where his loyalty lay.
Finally, in 168 BCE, Antiochus invaded Jerusalem and desacralized the Holy of
Holies in the Temple. This was the one place on earth about which Yahweh said
“My name” (the expression of his Person) “shall be there” (I Kings).
A number of Jews, under their leader Jason, the high
priest, took the easy way of conformity with the new universal trends. But with
Antiochus’s impious act, a strong general reaction set in. Thus, when, later in
the same year, Antiochus again entered Jerusalem, this time plundering and
burning and setting up his citadel, the Acra, on the hill overlooking the
Temple courts, he went too far, for his final act of spite, on December 25, 167
BCE, was to rededicate the Temple in Jerusalem to the Olympian god Zeus.
Jewish resistance
The home of Mattathias, a priest in the village of
Modiʿim (now Modiʿin), 17 miles (27 km) northwest of Jerusalem,
quickly became the centre of resistance. With him were his five sons, John
Gaddi, Simon Thassi, Judas Maccabeus, Eleazar Avaran, and Jonathan Apphus.
Flavius Josephus, the Jewish historian, gives Mattathias’s great-grandfather
the surname Asamonaios. From this title comes the name Hasmonean that was
applied to the dynasty that descended from the Maccabees in the following
century. Mattathias sparked the resistance movement by striking a Jew who was
preparing to offer sacrifice to the new gods and by killing the king’s officer
who was standing by. Then he and his family took to the hills. Many joined them
there, especially the Hasideans, a pious and strict group deeply concerned for
the Law of Moses. These at first refused to fight on the Sabbath and at once
lost a thousand lives. Mattathias then insisted that all groups of resisters
should fight if required on the holy Sabbath. The guerrilla war that followed
was as much a civil war as a war of national resistance. Mattathias treated all
degrees of collaborators with the same bitterness as he did the Syrian enemy.
After the death of Mattathias (c. 166 BCE), Judas
Maccabeus, the third son, became the leader of the resistance movement. In his
first battle he seized the sword of Apollonius, governor of Samaria, the
general leading the opposing army. But he was also a man of faith in the God of
his fathers. He saw himself as a charismatic, divinely appointed leader, like
Gideon of old. He would pause in his guerrilla tactics to assemble his men to
“watch and pray” and to read the Torah (the divinely revealed Law of Moses)
together. Judas saw his task as that of the successor of Moses and Joshua.
“Remember how our fathers were saved at the Red Sea,” he told his men, “when
Pharaoh with his forces pursued them” (I Maccabees 4:9). Then they would blow
their trumpets, as in the days of Joshua, and engage the enemy with renewed
vigour.
Moreover, Judas could be as cruel as Joshua was. After the
manner of his time and also of his enemies, he was ready to exterminate all the
males of a conquered city. Some of his activities are in accord with what today
would be called the “rules for holy war” as found scattered in sections of
Deuteronomy and as developed in great detail in one of the Dead Sea Scrolls,
written within the century following Judas and now titled The War of the Sons
of Light Against the Sons of Darkness.
Hanukkah: reconsecration of the sanctuary
In December 164 BCE, three years after Antiochus had
defiled it, Judas recaptured Jerusalem, all except the Acra. Judas then had
“blameless priests” cleanse the Holy Place and erect a new altar of unhewn
stones. They then reconsecrated the sanctuary on December 24 (Kislev 25 in the
Hebrew calendar). The Hebrew word for this act, Hanukkah (“Dedication”), is the
name still used for the Jewish eight-day Festival of Lights that commemorates
the event, which begins on Kislev 25 in the Jewish religious year.
Judas next continued the war elsewhere—in Galilee and even
in Transjordan. His name was greatly honoured “in all Israel and among the
Gentiles” (I Maccabees 5:63). The Syrians, in the war against him, fastened
wooden towers on elephants’ backs, and each beast then charged into battle with
a thousand armoured warriors surrounding it. Eleazar, Judas’s second youngest
brother, lost his life in 163 BCE when he stabbed an elephant from underneath.
In dying, the beast fell on top of him and crushed him.
When Antiochus Epiphanes died in 164 BCE, others
administered the kingdom because his son, Antiochus Eupator, was still a minor.
Lysias, the Syrian general, was now the real power. A peace of a sort was
agreed between Judas and the Syrian general, who was having trouble elsewhere,
and the Jews secured liberty of conscience and worship. The war, however, soon
resumed. Judas sent a delegation to Rome at one point to seek for help. This
marked the first step toward the eventual takeover by Rome. Judas was killed in
battle after more than five years of leadership.
The succession of Jonathan
Jonathan, his brother, succeeded him as general. Jonathan
more than sustained the dignity of Judas. King Alexander Balas (also known as
Alexander Epiphanes), now in control, made peace with Jonathan, calling him his
“friend.” In 153 or 152 BCE he elected Jonathan as high priest in Jerusalem.
Thus was born the high priestly Hasmonean line. The strict upholders of the
Law, however, were alienated, because the Law held that no man should be high
priest who was not of priestly descent from Aaron. From now on this group
formed a strong opposition party, later to be known as the most conservative
section of the Pharisees (the religious group whose interpretations and
applications of the Law, written and oral, became accepted tradition in later
Judaism).
The war continued. The Acra was still in enemy hands, and
Jonathan sought to wall it off from the city. He died by treachery and was
succeeded by his brother Simon, a man of character and prudence as well as a
born leader who had quietly and loyally served under his other brothers. On his
own initiative Simon brought peace and security to Jerusalem. He was the second
Hasmonean high priest. In 135/134 BCE he was assassinated.
The rule of Hyrcanus I
The succession of the Maccabees was maintained by Simon’s
son John, known later as Hyrcanus I. He remained as high priest in Jerusalem
until his death in 104 BCE. His was a long and disturbed reign, but he
consolidated and extended Jewish control, bringing Samaria into subjection and
even forcing the Idumaeans (the descendants of the ancient Edomites who lived
southeast of the Dead Sea) to accept Judaism. That is how the Idumaean king
Herod of Jesus’ day was a Jew by religion.
John Hyrcanus’s reign marked a turning point in the history
of the Maccabees. The movement that had begun with intense conviction and deep
patriotic zeal had so completely succeeded that all memory of its first wild
enthusiasm had gone. John in spirit had become a Sadducee, an upper-class
conservative who accepted only the Written Law as divinely revealed and
authoritative. In outlook he was worldly, agnostic, and urbane, utterly unlike
his grandfather.
George Angus Fulton Knight The Editors of Encyclopaedia
Britannica
CITATION INFORMATION
ARTICLE TITLE: Maccabees
WEBSITE NAME: Encyclopaedia Britannica
PUBLISHER: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
DATE PUBLISHED: 20 July 2026
URL: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Maccabees
ACCESS DATE: August 06, 2026