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A Dictatorship of One's Own
Comparing the Maccabean Revolt to the American Revolution is at best ignorant, if not downright dishonest and despicable. The American Revolution was not fought on religious grounds, nor by religious zealots, nor in order to set up a homegrown theocracy. The Maccabean revolution and the later revolts under the Romans may have been about autonomy, but this was the same sort of autonomy as the witch-burning Puritans of Salem sought. Not freedom, but a dictatorship of their own.
While Antiochus certainly provided a wonderful incentive for secularizing Jews to side with the zealots, characterizing the Jews as a small band hanging on in Syria is simply ridiculous. The Jews were are very large ethnic group which had been granted special privileges by Alexander the Great and who lived throughout the Levant from Alexandria and Palestine to Persia and Greece. The zealots were a relatively small radical fundamentalist group that advocated strict Mosaic law including the usual stoning for blasphemy and adultery. Such practices had been abandoned by Hellenizing Jews who committed such sins as sending their sons to gymnasiums where they wrestled in the nude and studied Homer rather than the Torah. Antiochus was a madman who declared himself a god. His desecration of the temple was not a symptom of anti-Semitism per se, but of megalomania. (Meanwhile, Jews in Ptolemaic Alexandria and elsewhere flourished.) The Maccabean party did not establish freedom, unless one counts a homegrown Judean theocracy as an improvement. Once in power, the Maccabees were as murderous as their predecessors.
From Wikipedia:
The Maccabees
The revolt itself involved many individual battles, in which the Maccabean forces gained infamy among the Syrian army for their use of guerrilla tactics. After the victory, the Maccabees entered Jerusalem in triumph and ritually cleansed the Temple, reestablishing traditional Jewish worship there and installing Jonathan Maccabee as high priest. A large Syrian army was sent to quash the revolt, but returned to Syria on the death of Antiochus IV. Its commander Lysias, preoccupied with internal Syrian affairs, agreed to a political compromise that provided religious freedom.
Following the re-dedication of the temple, the supporters of the Maccabees were divided over the question of whether to continue fighting. When the revolt began under the leadership of Mattathias, it was seen as a war for religious freedom to end the oppression of the Seleucids. However, as Maccabees realized how successful they had been many wanted to continue the revolt as a war of national self-determination. This conflict led to the exacerbation of the divide between the Pharisees and Sadducees under later Hasmonean monarchs such as Alexander Jannaeus. [1]
Those who sought the continuation of the war of national identity were led by Judah Maccabee. On his death in battle in 160 BC, Judah was succeeded as army commander by his younger brother, Jonathan, who was already High Priest. Jonathan made treaties with various foreign states, causing further dissent among those who desired religious freedom over political power. On Jonathan's death in 142 BC, Simon Maccabee, the last remaining son of Mattathias, took power. That same year, Demetrius II, king of Syria, granted the Jews complete political independence and Simon, great high priest and commander of the Jews, went on to found the Hasmonean dynasty. Jewish autonomy lasted until 63 BC, when the Roman general Pompey captured Jerusalem and subjected judea to Roman rule, while the Hasmonean dynasty itself ended in 37 BC when the Idumean Herod the Great became de facto king of Jerusalem.
Jewish zealotry persisted throughout the Hellenistic and Imperial eras.
From Wikipedia:
Sicarii
Sicarii (Latin plural of Sicarius 'dagger-' or later contract- killer) is a term applied, in the decades immediately preceding the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, (probably) to an extremist splinter group[1] to the Jewish Zealots, (or insurgents) who attempted to expel the Romans and their partisans from Judea:
"When Albinus reached the city of Jerusalem, he bent every effort and made every provision to ensure peace in the land by exterminating most of the Sicarii." —Josephus, Jewish Antiquities (xx.208)
The Sicarii resorted to terror to obtain their objective. Under their cloaks they concealed sicae, or small daggers, from which they received their name. At popular assemblies, particularly during the pilgrimage to the Temple Mount, they stabbed their enemies (Romans or Roman sympathizers, Herodians, and wealthy Jews comfortable with Roman rule), lamenting ostentatiously after the deed to blend into the crowd to escape detection. Literally, Sicarii meant "dagger-men".
The victims of the Sicarii included Jonathan the High Priest, though it is possible that his murder was orchestrated by the Roman governor Felix. Some of their murders were met with severe retaliation by the Romans on the entire Jewish population of the country. On some occasions, they could be bribed to spare their intended victims. If the narrative of Barabbas is not an invention to create a parable, even convicted Sicarii were occasionally released on promising to spare their opponents, though there is no evidence for this practice outside the Gospels, which are largely in accord on this point. Once, Josephus relates, after kidnapping the secretary of Eleazar, governor of the Temple precincts, they agreed to release him in exchange for ten of their captured comrades.
Sounds just like celebrating July Fourth?
I am not an anti-theist nor particularly dismayed by modern, tolerant, non-fundamentalist forms of Judaism or Christianity. Indeed, Jewish by blood and Catholic in upbringing I have been accused of being sympathetic to those creeds on this list. I have made detailed and sympathetic studies of Jewish and Christian history, literature, and philosophy. But I am rather a partisan of the truth. The actual events which Chanukkah celebrates are not ones which any person who values human freedom and truth within historical context can celebrate. If one wishes to celebrate a fantasy with one's children, by all means, indulge them so far as one can do so without teaching mysticism, lies, or racial myths.
Ted Keer
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