The Great Assembly  -  Alexander The Great  -  Greek Persecution  -   Revolt of the  Maccabees  -  The Romans      

 
The Men of the Great Assembly - in Hebrew, Anshei Knesset HaGedolah - were an unusual group of Jewish personalities who assumed the reigns of Jewish leadership between 410 BCE and 310 BCE. This time period follows the destruction of the First Temple, and includes the initial building of the Second Temple, up until the invasion of the Greeks, led by Alexander the Great.

Realizing that the Jewish people were growing weaker spiritually, a group of wise leaders came together - expanding the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Supreme Court, from 70 to 120 members - with a special aim of strengthening Judaism. Initially gathered together by Ezra (whose efforts to rebuild the Jewish people spiritually we described in Part 25), they defined Judaism in this tumultuous time when prophecy was all but gone from the Jewish people.

(Today's Israeli Parliament, which is called "the Knesset," also has 120 members in imitation of the Great Assembly.)

Among them we count the last of the prophets Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, as well as the sages Mordechai, (of the Purim story), Yehoshua, (the High Priest), Nechemia (the chief architect of rebuilding of Jerusalem), Shimon HaTzaddik (also a High Priest).

Keep in mind that at this time the Talmud has not yet been copiled. Knowing how to live a Jewish life depends on knowing the commandments of the Torah and their interpretations which have been passed down orally - in short, knowing what is known as the Written Torah and the Oral Torah, both of which date back to Moses' teachings at Sinai.

It is impossible to understand the Written Torah without its Oral complement. For example, when the Written Torah states: "And these words which I command you today shall be upon your heart ... and you shall write them upon the door-posts of your house and upon your gateways," it is the Oral Torah that explains which "words" the Written Torah is referring to, and that these words should be penned on a small scroll and affixed to the door frame. Without the Oral Torah we wouldn't know about the mezuzah and countless other ways of day-to-day Judaism.

ACCURATE TRANSMISSION

As the Jewish people struggle with the aftermath of exile, accurate transmission of this oral tradition becomes essential. And here is where the Men of the Great Assembly make the greatest contribution.

As we see in history, to the extent that the Jews stop living according to Jewish law and tradition (i.e. that which makes them Jewish), to that extent they assimilate and disappear. Therefore, the contributions of these men can be said to account to a large measure for Jewish survival.

The Talmud pays them great homage:

Moses received the Torah from Sinai and conveyed to Joshua, Joshua to the Elders, the Elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly ... Shimon HaTzaddik was one of the remnants of the Great Assembly. He used to say, "The world stands on three things: on the Torah; on the service of God, and upon acts of loving-kindness..." (Avot 1:1)

THE CONTENTS OF THE BIBLE

In addition to insuring the accurate transmission of the Oral Torah, the Men of the Great Assembly decide which of the multitude of Jewish holy writings should be in the Bible. The Jewish people have produced hundreds of thousands of prophets (both men and women). Which of their writings should be preserved for future generations and which had limited applicability?

The Men of the Great Assembly make this decision and give us what is known as the Hebrew Bible today - or the Tanach. (Tanach is a Hebrew acronym which stands for Torah, Prophets, Writings.)

This is what the Christians call the "Old Testament" but educated Jews never call it that. "Testament" is a Greek word meaning "covenant" and the Hebrew Bible was named so by the Christians because of their belief that God cancelled the covenant he made with the Jews and made a new covenant, "New Testament," with the followers of Jesus. As Jews deny that God would ever "change His mind" after promising the Jews they would be His "eternal nation" (a promise He clearly kept), they find that term insulting.

The Hebrew Bible consists of the five books of the Torah, eight books of the prophets (the last of which consists of twelve short books) and eleven books of various writings, which include the Psalms (largely attributed to King David), the writings of King Solomon (Song of Songs, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes), the books of Job, Ruth, Esther and Daniel etc.

PRAYER

The last thing that the Men of the Great Assembly do is formalize prayer. They actually begin a process which is not finished until the 2nd century CE, after the destruction of the Second Temple, but they lay down the key principles.

During the First Temple period, there was no formalized Jewish prayer liturgy, because the people had such a close, intense, personal relationship with God. Additionally, a great deal of what is now the object of prayer was formally accomplished through the offering of sacrifices. Of course, when the Second Temple was rebuilt, sacrifices resumed, but most of the Jews had not returned to the land of Israel and therefore had no access to this medium of communicating with God.

Therefore, the times of the formalized prayer are designed to correspond to times when things were done in the Temple: the morning prayer is designed to correspond to the Shacharit Service in the Temple; the afternoon prayer corresponds to the Mincha Service; a the evening prayer, Ma'ariv, corresponds to the nightly duties (as there were no sacrifices as night).

The centerpiece of each selection of prayers (repeated three times a day) is the Shmonei Esrai, "The Eighteen Blessings." Each "blessing" is stated in the plural, to underscore the interdependency of the Jewish people, and each blessing is rooted in Torah and Kabbalah.

The mystical depth of this prayer - a masterpiece of writing by the Great Assembly - is astounding. For example, the blessing for healing is composed of 27 words, corresponding to the 27 words in the verse in the Torah (Exodus 15:26) where God promises to be the Healer of the Jewish people. It is said (Nefesh HaChaim 2:13) that the text of the Shmonei Esrai is so spiritually powerful that even when recited without intention, feeling or understanding, its words have a great impact on the world. (See series of articles on Prayer for further elaboration.)

Through Divine inspiration and sheer genius the Men of the Great Assembly were able to create out of the ashes of a physically destroyed nation, a spiritually thriving people. Their work defined and anchored Jewish religious and national identity and created focus, unity and uniformity for the Jewish people, no matter where in the world they might be scattered.

The last surviving member of the Great Assembly was Shimon HaTzaddik. Under him, according to the ancient historian Josephus (Contra Apion 1:197), the Jews of Israel prospered and Jewish population in the land reached 350,000.

It helped the Jews physically (if not spiritually) that the Persians were such benevolent dictators. But the picture was about the change with the growing power of the Greek Empire looming on the horizon.

The 4th century BCE has been eventful for the Jewish people:

It is now 312 BCE and the last of the Men of the Great Assembly, Shimon HaTzaddik, is High Priest. On the other side of Mediterranean, a new threat is looming. It is called Greece.

THE RISE OF THE GREEK EMPIRE

The origins of Greece are shrouded in mystery and date back to the time of Abraham, 18th century BCE, or perhaps even earlier. Historians disagree as to where the Greeks came from - they could have been people migrating down from Asia down through Europe and settling in the Greek Isles, or they could have been seafaring people who settled along the coast.

Whoever they were, the earliest inhabitants of mainland Greece (called Mycenaeans after excavations found at Mycenae) developed an advanced culture. But, around 1100 BCE, the Mycenaeans were invaded by barbarians called Dorians and all their advances disappeared. Greece went into a black period to re-emerge hundreds of years later.

The classical Greek period begins as early as 7th century BCE, though we tend to be more familiar with its history in the 5th century when Greece consists of a group of constantly warring city-states, the most famous being Athens and Sparta. They are strong enough to spurn the Persians despite fighting among themselves, but they succumb in the 4th century to Phillip II of Macedon, who paves way for his son, Alexander the Great, to spread the Greek civilization across the world.

The 4th century is as eventful for the Greeks as it has for the Jews. This is the golden age of classical Greek culture - the birth of democracy, the time of Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato.

GREEK INHUMANITY

It is easy, while admiring the Greek contributions to civilization - its politics and philosophy - to forget what Greek society was really like.

For example, we've heard of the "Spartan lifestyle," but what did that mean in practice? Well, for starters, at an early age, like first grade, Spartan boys and girls were separated from their parents; they lived in military barracks where they were beaten, and not even given food so that they would learn to steal it. To be Spartan meant to be tough.

The Athenians, not as tough as the Spartans, were not what you'd describe as "soft" either. For example, they thought nothing of killing infants (a common practice in all ancient civilizations even the "elevated" ones). One of the most influential thinkers in Western intellectual history - none other than Aristotle - argued in his Politics (VII.16) that killing children was essential to the functioning of society. He wrote:

"There must be a law that no imperfect or maimed child shall be brought up. And to avoid an excess in population, some children must be exposed [i.e. exposed on the trash heap to die]. For a limit must be fixed to the population of the state."

Note the tone of his statement. Aristotle isn't saying "I like killing babies," but he is making a cold, rational calculation: over-population is dangerous, this is the most expedient way to keep it in check.

In warfare, the Greeks invented the "pitched battle" - with thousands of foot soldiers colliding with the enemy, slaughtering and being slaughtered as they advanced. While we tend to think today of the Greeks as cultured and noble, it is shocking to learn how they behaved when bent on conquest.

The one who took the Greek conquests to new heights was, of course, Alexander the Great.

ALEXANDER THE GREAT

Trained by Aristotle, and heavily influenced by Homer, Alexander comes to power young, at age 20, and goes off to war.

He embarks on what is considered the greatest feat in military history. With a force of 45,000 men he fights non-stop for a dozen years and takes over most of the known world. He leads the Greek army, himself charging in the front lines.

He is a military genius, winning battles where he is often outnumbered 10 to 1. His chief tactic is to aim for the strongest (rather than the weakest) point of the enemy line. When he fights the Persians, for example, he goes for the most heavily protected point of the Persian force, aiming to destroy the leadership. When the Persian emperor Darius flees at the battle of Gaulgamela, the Persian army collapses.

Before dying at age 33 of a fever, Alexander conquers most of Asia, Middle East and parts of North Africa, disassembling the entire Persian Empire and spreading Hellenism - the Greek lifestyle and culture - wherever he goes.

HELLENISM

What was Hellenism exactly? In a nutshell, it was an approach to life which focused totally on the human being.

The Greeks showcased all human talents - literature, drama, poetry, architecture, sculpture, etc. They glorified the beauty of the human body, displaying athletic prowess in the Olympics. Nothing regarding the human body was considered embarrassing, in need of hiding, or private for that matter.

(Running around naked was considered a normal thing in Greece. Public toilets often consisted of a bench on main street with holes in it; people sat there and did their business as others walked by.)

Naturally, human passions were venerated and this meant there were few sexual taboos - even pedophilia and pederasty. Indeed, the sexual initiation of a young boy by an older man was considered the highest form of love. Plato wrote of this in his Symposium (178C):

"I, for my part, am at a loss to say what greater blessing a man can have in earliest youth than an honorable [older] lover ..."

Even Greek gods were described in human terms and were often bested by human beings in Greek mythology; with time, it became the style of intellectual Greeks to denigrate their gods and speak of them with biting cynicism and disrespect.

In short, the Greeks introduced into human consciousness an idea which is going to come into play as one of the most powerful intellectual forces in modern history - humanism. The human being is the center of all things. The human mind and its ability to understand and observe and comprehend things rationally is the be-all-and-end-all. That's an idea which comes from the Greeks.

Above all, the Greeks thought that this was enlightenment, the highest level of civilization. They had a strong sense of destiny and believed that their culture was ordained to become the universal culture of humanity.

Of course, the Jews had a different vision. The Jews believed that a world united in the belief in one God and ascribing to one absolute standard of moral values - including respect for life, peace, justice, and social responsibility for the weak and poor - was the ultimate future of the human race.

This Jewish ideology was wedded to an extreme, uncompromising exclusivity of worship (as demanded by the belief in one God) and a complete intolerance of polytheistic religious beliefs or practices. There was only one God and so only one God could be worshipped, end of story.

To the Jews, human beings were created in the image of God. To the Greeks, gods were made in the image of human beings. To the Jews, the physical world was something to be perfected and elevated spiritually. To the Greeks the physical world was perfect. As Dennis Prager once put it, "To Greeks, what was beautiful was holy; to the Jews what was holy was beautiful."

Such disparate views were bound to clash, sooner or later.

THE GREEKS VS. THE JEWS

When the Greeks conquer the Persian Empire in 312 BCE, they occupy Israel as well.

The Talmud (in Yumoh 69a) relates Alexander's arrival in Jerusalem and his meeting with Shimon HaTzaddik, the last of the Men of the Great Assembly. Alexander is planning to destroy the Temple, egged on by the Samaritans who hate the Jews. But, when he meets Shimon HaTzaddik, he is shaken to the core, and he actually bows down before the Jewish sage.

Remember, this is Alexander the Great -- the greatest military genius of all time. He has a great ego to go with his name, and he never bows down to anyone. So this behavior stuns everyone. His generals are awed - what is happening here?

He explains that before every battle - and he has never lost a battle - he has a dream of a strange man. He takes the dream as an omen of victory. And the old man that has just greeted them - Shimon HaTzaddik -- is the man in the dream!

So Alexander the Great does not destroy the Temple. And he listens when Shimon HaTzaddik tells him that the Jews are not enemies of the Greeks but the Samaritans are.

As a result, the Jews are given free rein to go trash the Samaritans, which they promptly go out and do. And Israel and Jerusalem are peacefully absorbed into the Greek Empire.

As a tribute to that, by-the-way, the rabbis of that generation decreed that the first-born sons should be named Alexander. Till today Alexander is a Jewish name though in some circles, it has been shortened to Sender.

At first, the Greek authorities preserve the rights of the local Jewish population and do not attempt to interfere with Jewish religious practice. The Jews continue to flourish as a separate and distinct entity for 165 years - a rare phenomenon in the Hellenistic world.

The vast majority of the peoples conquered by Alexander the Great have willingly allowed themselves to be Hellenized. The fact that the Jews - with the exception of a small minority - reject Hellenism is a strong testament to that ever-present Jewish drive and sense of mission.

The famed classical historian Michael Grant, in his From Alexander to Cleopatra (p. 75), explains:

The Jews proved not only unassimilated, but unassimilable, and ... the demonstration that this was so proved one of the most significant turning-points in Greek history, owing to the gigantic influence exerted throughout subsequent ages by their religion...

But with time, Judaism, with its intractable beliefs and bizarre practices, begins to stand out as an open challenge to the concept of Hellenistic world supremacy.

For the generally tolerant Greeks, this challenge becomes more and more intolerable. It is only a matter of time before open conflict will arise.

Following the death of Alexander the Great, the vast Greek Empire is made up of three parts:

Initially, Israel falls under the part ruled by Ptolemies of Egypt. They are generally liberal and open-minded in keeping with the spirit of their capital city of Alexandria which is the world's cultural center.

But this changes in 198 BCE after the Battle of Panyas (or Banyas, a site in northern Israel which we can visit today) when the Seleucids of Assyria take over control of Israel from the Ptolemies.

However, the picture is volatile. And the new Seleucid emperor, Antiochus Epiphanes, finds himself under a lot of pressure, holding back the Ptolemies and worrying about the rising might of Rome.

He decides that the weak link in his defenses is Israel. Israel is bordered by Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea (from whence the Romans could come), and, worst of all, the Jews are not into Greek culture. This situation he now moves to remedy.

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE

Some years before, when the Greeks who had conquered the entire known world first met the Jews, they were astonished. They'd never encountered people like this before.

The Jews were then the only monotheists in the world and they subscribed to a worldview that is totally different from anyone else's - namely, that everything that exists had been created and is sustained by one infinite, invisible and caring God. This idea - particularly that this caring Being busies Himself with the lives of mortals - the Greeks found just about incomprehensible.

On top of that, the Greeks could not understand the Jewish view of the Torah. This was an ancient book, which the Jews claimed they got from God, and which contained odd teachings on how to lead a life of peace, brotherhood, social responsibility, respect for life - all values that were far removed from the Greek idea of a perfect world.

In short, the Greeks didn't know what to make of the Jews.

The Jews were likewise confounded. The Greeks were people who valued education and intellectual pursuits - something the Jews also valued and very much admired. The Greeks spoke a beautiful language, which the Jews appreciated very much. (The Talmud says that Greek is the most beautiful language in the world, it's the only language you can write a kosher Torah scroll besides Hebrew.)

Indeed, the Torah was promptly translated into Greek (in the 3rd century BCE) - the first such translation in Jewish history. This translation was called the "Septuagint" after the 70 rabbis who did it.

(This translation is considered a national disaster for the Jewish people. In the hands of the non-Jewish world, the now accessible Hebrew Bible has often been used against the Jews, and has been deliberately mistranslated. Most Christian Bibles in English today depend on the Greek translation which was then translated into Latin, the language of the Roman Empire, and from there into English. You can just imagine how many interpretations and mistakes were made along the way.)

However, it was inevitable that the Hebrew Bible would be translated into Greek because Greek became the language of the ancient Mediterranean world. It was as common everywhere as English is today! And the Jews who were mostly speaking Aramaic thanks to their foray in the Babylonian exile become conversant in Greek as well. (Hebrew was then a language primarily of prayer and of study.)

Despite this mutual appreciation - which incidentally lured a lot of Jews - the vast differences could not be tolerated by the dominant culture for long.

FORCED HELLENIZATION

The honeymoon period ends with a bang as Antiochus Epiphanes takes deliberate steps between 169 BCE and 167 BCE to Hellenize the Jews of Israel by attempting to destroy Judaism. The Book of Maccabees calls this period a "reign of terror."

The first thing that Antiochus does is to make the seat of Jewish power his own. He removes the High Priest from his position and replaces him with a Jew that he has in his back pocket. From this point on the High Priesthood becomes, to a large extent, a corrupt institution (as we explained in Part 25 ).

So here we begin to see a pattern which is going to evolve through later Jewish history of all the basic institutions being corrupted: the monarchy, the priesthood, the Temple service. What's going to be left relatively intact is the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Supreme Court, and its rabbis who will eventually write the Talmud, as we shall see.

After he installs his own High Priest, Antiochus tries to dissolve the Jewish calendar.

Antiochus, by this time, understands the Jews very well. To him these people are time obsessed - they try to make time holy. Destroy time and you destroy the Jews' ability to practice Judaism. Therefore, Antiochus forbids the observance of Shabbat, the observance of the New Moon (Rosh Hodesh), and the observance of the holidays - Passover, Shavuot, Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot.

Next, Antiochus forbids keeping kosher and studying Torah. Torah scrolls are publicly burned, and swine are sacrificed over sacred Jewish books to defile them. Indeed, Antiochus seems obsessed by swine, knowing that this animal is particularly repugnant to the Jews; he even forces the High Priest to institute swine sacrifices in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, and also to permit worship there of a whole array of Greek gods. (See 1 Maccabees 1:41-64.)

Lastly, Antiochus forbids circumcision. To the Jews, this is the physical, tangible sign of their covenant with God. And it's the one thing the Greeks - who worship the perfection of the human body - find most abhorrent. To them, circumcision is a mutilation.

Jews resist, so Antiochus and his henchmen go about driving the point home in a crude and cruel fashion. The Jewish historian, Rabbi Berel Wein relates this graphically in his Echoes of Glory:

Women who allowed their sons to be circumcised were killed with their sons tied around their necks. The scholars of Israel were hounded, hunted down and killed. Jews who refused to eat pork or sacrifice hogs were tortured to death ... Even the smallest hamlet in Judah was not safe from the oppression of the Hellenists. The altars to Zeus and other pagan deities were erected in every village, and Jews of every area were forced to participate in the sacrificial services. (p. 63)

This type of religious persecution was, until then, unknown in human history. Up to that time, no one in the ancient world declared war on other people's religions, because the attitude of polytheism was "I'll worship your god, your worship mine. The more gods the merrier."

(Later we will see Greek and Roman mythologies blending with Zeus becoming Jupiter, etc. The ultimate in pluralism - everyone's religion is as good as the next.)

In the polytheistic world no one died for their religion. No one, except the Jews.

The Jews maintain that there are things in this life that are worth dying for - things that are more meaningful than life itself. Jews are willing to give up their lives for Judaism. Not because God needs people to die for Him but because the ideology of Torah is something without which humanity is doomed. The Jews, who are supposed to be "the light unto the nations," cannot abandon their mission, even when their lives are threatened.

Of course, Jews don't have to be lambs going to the slaughter - they can fight against this type of tyranny and they do. What is most terrible in this fight, however, is that the Jews who are defending Judaism must fight the Greeks as well as some of their own fellow Jews who have converted to Hellenism.

JEW VS. JEW

When the Greeks attack Judaism they do it with the help of a certain splinter sect of the Jewish people -- the Hellenized Jews.

These were Jews who were sucked into Greek culture. And it is no wonder why. Greek culture was the major culture milieu of the ancient world.

We see this as pattern in Jewish history. A world culture comes along which is enlightened and progressive and is changing the world, and some of the upper class Jews always get into it. Why? Because they are rich, sophisticated, and have a lot of spare time. Then they say to the rest of the Jewish people: "Let's get modern. Forget this ancient Jewish stuff." (We will see this pattern repeated in Spain, and in Germany, and even today in America.)

At this time, we have a small but very vocal and powerful group of Jews, who align with the Greek authorities and who become Hellenized. They do everything the Greeks do.

They send their children to the gymnasium, and they reverse their circumcisions - a very painful operation - since so much of Greek stuff is done naked and the Greeks would consider them mutilated otherwise.

To make matters worse, the schism between the Hellenized Jews and mainstream Jews is paralleled by another schism -- between two factions of religious Jews.

It begins when two teachers named - Zadok and Bysos - begin preaching a new form of Judaism, devoid of belief in the Divinity of the Oral Torah (which we explained in Part 26). Their followers are called the Sadducees and Bysosim, though it is the Sadducees that go down in history. The mainstream observant Jews, who keep Jewish law as it has always been practiced, are called ironically "Pharisees," meaning "separatists," to distinguish them from the others.

Since the Sadducees do not believe that the Oral Torah comes from God, they maintain that they are only obligated to keep the laws of the Written Torah, which they read literally. But so many of the laws of the Written Torah are incomprehensible without the Oral Torah. Their answer? Each man for himself - anyone can decide what it means and act accordingly.

The Sadducees find natural allies among the Hellenized Jews, as Rabbi Berel Wein explains:

The Sadducees were always more acceptable in the eyes of the Hellenist Jews than their rabbinic foes. The alliance of the Hellenists and the Sadducees against traditional Judaism guaranteed constant turmoil in Jewish life throughout the time of the Second Temple and even thereafter. (Echoes of Glory, p. 38)

(We shall discuss the Sadducees in greater detail in future segments when we come to the Roman Empire and its domination of the Jews.)

This is how the ancient historian Josephus in his Contra Apion explains the beliefs of the Jews at this time:

The Pharisees [who are considered most skillful in the exact explication of their laws and are the leading school] ascribe all to fate and to God and yet allow that to do what is right or to the contrary is principally the power of men, although fate does cooperate in every action. They say that all souls are imperishable but that the souls of good men only pass into other bodies while the souls of evil men are subject to eternal punishment.

 

But the Sadducees are those that compose the second order and exclude fate entirely and suppose that God is not concerned with our doing or not doing what is evil. They say that to do what is good or what is evil is man's own choice and that the choice of one or the other belongs to each person who may act as he pleases. They also exclude the belief in immortality of the soul and the punishment and rewards of the afterworld.

Moreover, the Pharisees are friendly to one another and cultivate harmonious relations with the community, but the behavior of the Sadducees towards one another is to some degree boorish, and their conversation with those that of their own party is barbarous as if they were strangers to them.

You can see how the Sadducees were influenced by Greek thought. They are part of the reason that the High Priesthood and the Temple service became so corrupt (as many of the priestly class, an upper class at that time, became Sadducees). And this is why the Talmud says that so many High Priests died during the service of Yom Kippur. ( SeePart 25 )

The corruption of the Temple and the forced Hellenization and persecution finally becomes too much to bear for mainstream observant Jews. When they finally revolt against the Greeks, they take on their collaborators among the Jews as well.

The revolt of the Maccabees - which we celebrate today as Chanukah - is as much a story of a civil war between Jews as against Greece. It's not a war for national liberation, nor is it a struggle for physical freedom - it is a struggle of ideas.

We know the details of the Jewish fight against the Greeks and Hellenism from the two Books of the Maccabees.

(These chronicles are not included in the Hebrew Bible because, as we learned in Part 26, the Men of the Great Assembly had decided many years earlier what the Hebrew Bible should consist of and these events occurred much later in time. The Books of the Maccabees, which were probably written by a Hasmonean chronicler, who was certainly not a prophet, can be found in a collection called Sefer HaChitzonim which also contains other writings left out of the Hebrew Bible and which are mentioned or quoted in the Talmud.)

This revolt of the Jews sets a precedent in human history. It is the world's first ideological/religious war. No one in the ancient world died for their gods; only the Jews thought that their religion - the only monotheistic religion at the time - was worth dying for.

But (as we saw in Part 28), it is not just a war against the Greeks, it is also a civil war - Jews, who were loyal to Judaism, fighting other Jews, who had become Hellenized and who were siding with the Greeks.

The year is 167 BCE and the horrible persecution of Judaism by the Greeks is in full swing. The Greek troops show up in the town of Modi'in (a site west of Jerusalem which you can visit today off the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway) and demand that the Jews there sacrifice a pig to the Greek gods. The elder of the town, Mattathias, who is a cohen, that is of the priestly class, refuses.

But there is a Hellenized Jew in the town who is willing to do what is unspeakable in Jewish eyes. As he's about to sacrifice the pig, Mattathias stabs him, also killing the Greek official present. He then turns to the crowd and announces: "Follow me, all of you who are for God's law and stand by the covenant." (1 Maccabees 2:27)

Those who join Mattathias and his five sons - named Judah, Elazar, Yohanan, Yonaton and Shimon - head for the hills, expecting that the Greeks are going to come back and wipe out the whole village as a reprisal. In the hills, they organize a guerilla army, led primarily by the oldest of the sons named Judah, nicknamed Maccabee, which means "the Hammer." Maccabee is also an acronym for mi komocho ba'alim Hashem, "who is like you among the powers O God," - the battle cry of the Jewish people.

We don't know exactly how large this Maccabee army was, but even the most optimistic estimates put the number at no more than 12,000 men. This tiny force takes on the fighting Greek army of up to 40,000 men.

It's not just a numerical superiority the Greeks have. The Greeks are professional soldiers - they have equipment, they have training, and they have a herd of war elephants, which were the tanks of the ancient world. The Jews are vastly outnumbered, poorly trained, and poorly equipped (not to mention, they have no elephants), but what they lack in training and equipment they make up in spirit.

Most of the battles take place in the foothills leading from the coastal plain area (Tel Aviv) to Jerusalem. The Greeks are trying to march their armies up the natural canyons that lead into the mountain areas, the stronghold of the Jewish army. There's only a few places where the Greeks can ascend and this is where the Maccabees choose to take them on.

Now when we read the story of the Maccabees it seems like it's something that takes place over a few weeks - the battles take place, the Jews win, and the Greeks go home. But, in fact, it takes 25 years of fighting and a great many casualties on both sides.

CHANUKAH

After the first three years, the Jews are able re-conquer Jerusalem. They find the Temple defiled and turned into a pagan sanctuary, where pigs are sacrificed on the altar. When they re-enter the Temple, the first thing they do is try to light a make-shift menorah (as the real gold one had been melted down by the Greeks) but only one vial of pure lamp oil with the special seal is discovered. They use this vial to light the menorah and miraculously it stays lit for eight days, by which time fresh pure oil has been pressed and delivered to the Temple.

The Maccabees then purify the Temple and rededicate it on the 25th of Kislev, which is the date on the Hebrew calendar when we begin to celebrate the eight days of Chanukah. (The Hebrew word Chanukah means "dedication" or "inauguration.")

Chanukah - one of two holidays added to the Jewish calendar by the rabbis - celebrates two kinds of miracles: 1) the military victory of the vastly outnumbered Jews against the Greeks; and 2) the spiritual victory of Jewish values over those of the Greek. It is this spiritual victory which is symbolized by the lights of Chanukah. (For more on Chanukah click here.)

The rededication of the Temple does not end the fight however. Unfortunately, some of the Hellenized Jews are not happy that the Maccabees took over Jerusalem, and they join forces with the Greeks and the fight continues.

It's not until 142 BCE, during the reign of Seleucid monarch Demitrius, that the Greeks finally have enough of the fighting and sign a peace treaty with Simon, the last survivor of the five sons of Mattathias.

In [that] year, Israel was released from the gentile yoke; the people began to write on their contracts and agreements: "In the first year of Simon, the great High Priest, general and leader of the Jews." (1 Maccabees 13:41-42)

Thus Jewish sovereignty over the Land of Israel is officially restored.

THE REIGN OF THE HASMONEANS

As noted above, Mattathias was a cohen, and so it is not surprising that his son, Simon, should become High Priest. But Simon also takes on himself the title of nasi meaning "prince/president/leader." He did not call himself king because he knew full well that a Jewish king could only come from the line of David.

(The line of David - the line of kings - comes from the tribe of Judah, whereas the line of the cohanim, the priests, comes from the tribe of Levi, as per the blessing of Jacob on his twelve sons, the twelve tribes of Israel.)

This is a bad choice on the part of Simon because his descendants do not respect this distinction. They start a new ruling dynasty in Israel - the Hasmonean dynasty - which lasts for 103 years and which is marked by a terrible moral and religious decline. They should not have been kings in the first place and then they became corrupted by their own power.

The next ruler is Yochanan Hyrcanus, and we can see from his name the Greek influence that is creeping in -- the Hasmoneans are becoming Hellenized. This is a terrible tragedy since their ancestors had given their lives to throw off the yoke of Hellenism.

Among his many errors, Yochanan Hyrcanus does a terrible anti-Jewish thing. As part of his effort to expand the borders of Israel, he forcibly converts the newly conquered peoples. This is something Judaism has never done before nor since -- Jews discourage converts rather than the other way around.

One of the peoples that are forcibly converted at this time are the Idumeans. And this error costs the Jews dearly.

In Israel, near Beit Shemesh, there is a fascinating archeological site open to tourists called Beit Guvrin Maresha. It consists of some 2,000 caves that are mostly cut in the limestone. This was one of the major cities of the Idumeans. And you can even play archeologist and go there and dig for a day. This is one of the places that the Hasmoneans conquered, giving the people a choice - convert or leave.

One of the Idumean families that is forcibly converted will become very significant for its role in the drama some years later when the Romans invade. A descendant of this family - Herod - will be appointed Jewish king and he will be a schizophrenic ruler. He will murder the High Priest, 45 members of the Jewish Supreme Court as well as most of his own family, but he will also embark on a series of fantastic building projects that will include the city of Caesarea, the fortress at Masada, and a total re-building of the Temple. As we will see, Herod (who is only nominally Jewish) will have a very schizophrenic relationship with the Jews.

DECLINE OF JEWISH RULE

The son of Yochananon Hyracanus, Alexander Yanai, is a classic case of Hasmonean ruler gone totally off. He is completely Hellenized and siding with the Sadducees (the Jews who only follow the Written Torah, making up their own interpretations) against the Pharisees (the mainstream Jews).

When some of the Pharisees oppose him, he has 800 of them executed after first forcing them to watch the slaughter of their families. During the executions, Alexander Yannai hosts a Greek-style feast.

This is a classic case of one of the great tragic families starting off so illustriously and ending so disastrously, bringing the Jewish people to ruin.

The last two Hasmonean rulers are two brothers Hyrcanus and Aristobolus, both of whom are totally Hellenized. Hyrcanus is the weaker of the two but he has a strong advisor by the name of Antipater, a descendant of Idumean converts to Judaism (who just happens to have a baby boy named Herod).

The brothers are fighting with each other as to who should be king. The obvious answer is neither. But tell that to morally corrupt, power hungry men. They hit on the idea of asking Rome to mediate in their dispute.

Inviting the Romans in is not like inviting a multi-national peace-keeping force or international mediation team. We're talking about people with an incredible energy to conquer and gain all the territory they can.

The year is 63 BCE and the great Roman general Pompeii is cleaning up the last of the Greek Empire. He is more than happy to oblige and move his armies into Israel.

Before we tell the story of how the Second Commonwealth of Israel met its sad end at the hands of the Roman Empire, let us step back in time and delve into what Rome was about, and how it became a power that challenged the mighty Greeks.

Rome started out as a city-state, dating its history to 753 BCE. The founding of the city is rooted in a famous legend:

It was common practice of the settlers of the banks of the Tiber River to keep "vestal virgins" on whom they believed their fate rested. These young women had to stay pure and chaste, and if any vestal virgin strayed, she was put to death by being buried alive.

In the 8th century BCE one vestal virgin, named Rhea Silvia, found herself pregnant. But she got pregnant through no fault of her own -- she was raped by the god Mars!

(Here we have a familiar story, that predates the Christian one by some 800 years -- a woman who has a physical relationship with a god, ergo est, as they say in Latin, she remains a virgin yet she gives birth.)

Silvia Rhea gave birth to twins - Romulus and Remus - but the local king did not recognize them as demi-gods. Instead, he had them thrown into the Tiber River. Miraculously, they floated ashore, were nursed by a she-wolf, and then reared by a shepherd.

When they grew up, these boys established the city of Rome on seven hills overlooking the Tiber, near the very place where they had been rescued from drowning. (Later Romulus killed Remus and became the god Quirinus.)

Interestingly, Jewish tradition holds that the Romans were the descendants of Esau, the red-haired and blood-thirsty twin brother of Jacob. Judaism calls Rome "Edom", (another name given Esau in Genesis 36:1) from the Hebrew root which means both "red" and "blood." When we look at the Jewish-Roman relationship later on, we will see that the Romans were the spiritual inheritors of the Esau worldview.

ROMAN REPUBLIC

If we skip ahead a few hundred years from the time of Romulus, we find that circa 500 BCE the residents of Rome have overthrown the monarchy ruling them and have established a republic ruled by a senate. An oligarchy, the senate was made up of upper class, land-owning male citizens called the "patricians."

As any healthy and strong ancient civilization, the Romans went to war to expand their sphere of dominance. Roman ambitions met the like-minded Carthaginians, unleashing a titanic struggle known as the Punic Wars, which lasted from 264 to 146 BCE, and in which Rome was victorious.

The Romans went on to conquer the Greek colonies and Greece itself, and to become the great power in the Mediterranean. To a large extent they inherited the Greek view of the world. We call their culture Greco-Roman because -- although Greece and Rome were two different peoples, different civilizations and different cultures -- the Romans to a very large extent viewed themselves as the cultural inheritors of the Greeks.

Later on in Roman history, many Romans will view themselves, literally, as the reincarnation of the Greeks. The Greeks influenced roman architecture and much of the Roman worldview in many respects. But the Romans made their own unique contributions as well.

For one thing Rome was much more conservative, patriarchal society than Greece was. The Romans were also very hard-working and extremely well organized, and this is what made them masters of empire-building.

We see their ability to organize in all spheres:

ROMAN CONQUEST

The Romans revolutionized warfare. Unlike the Greeks, they did not conscript citizens; they employed a professional army. Their soldiers were paid to fight, and they made a lifelong career of it. Soldiering for Rome was not just a job -- it was a way of life. The Roman motto was captured in a famous saying of Julius Caesar, arguably Rome's greatest general: Veni, vidi, vici - "I came, I saw, I conquered."

Because they made a career of fighting, Roman soldiers were extremely well trained. And they were also extremely well equipped. Warfare was systematized, giving the Romans an advantage in battle that was unparalleled in human history.

Instead of the big, unwieldy Greek phalanxes that could not move quickly, the Romans created what they called legions, each of which was subdivided into 10 smaller and more mobile cohorts. The legion became the basic unit of the Roman army. The Romans would have between 24 and 28 legions, each with about 5,000 men, mostly infantry with a little cavalry.

The organization of these legions gave the Romans tremendous flexibility on the battlefield; they could be broken down into smaller units that would fight up to a hundred men at a time; they could maneuver around in ways that the Greeks could never do.

This is how the Romans chewed up the Greeks. They simply slaughtered them like they slaughtered everyone they encountered.

This brings us to another key feature of the Roman culture. Although the Romans were very sophisticated people, they were also very brutal, perhaps the most brutal civilization in history.

Their brutality can, of course, be seen in their warfare. They were an incredibly aggressive people, a people with seeming unbridled ambition to conquer everything. (This fits with the Jewish understanding of the descendants of Esau, who was gifted with the power to dominate physically; whereas Esau's twin-brother Jacob was gifted with the power to dominate spiritually.)

But even more strikingly, their brutality can be seen in their forms of entertainment. At 200 different locations throughout the empire, the Romans built amphitheaters where they would spend the day, eating, relaxing and watching people be grotesquely butchered. (The practice was extremely popular and Emperor Augustus in his Acts brags that during his reign he staged games where 10,000 men fought and 3,500 wild beasts were slain.)

This points up a very interesting lesson in human history. We often will find the most sophisticated cultures being the most brutal. You see it with Rome (and later with many others, most recently with Germany).

ROMAN EMPIRE

While the Roman armies were mightily victorious abroad, the republic wasn't doing so well at home.

In the 1st century BCE, Rome had to contend with internal strife and class struggle - of which the slave revolt led by Spartacus (72 BCE) is perhaps the most famous. The so-called "Social War" forced Rome to extend citizenship widely, but the republic was nevertheless doomed.

Pompeii emerged as a popular champion and found allies in Crassus and Julius Caesar, forming the First Triumvirate in 60 BCE. But within ten years Pompeii and Caesar fell out, with Caesar becoming the master of Rome and laying the foundation for the Roman Empire.

This is the point in time where we left off the story back in the land of Israel.

The last two Hasmonean rulers (from the line of the Maccabees) were two brothers: Hyrcanus and Aristobolus. Quarreling with each other as to who should be king, they hit on the idea of asking Rome to mediate in their dispute. And thus, in 63 BCE, Pompeii was invited to move his armies into Israel.

Josephus, the ancient historian, explains what happened next in great detail.

The Romans came in, slaughtered many Jews and made Hyrcanus, the weaker of the two brothers, the nominal puppet ruler of the country.

This was part of the Roman system. They liked to rule by proxy, allowing the local governor or king to deal with the day-to-day problems of running the country, as long as the Roman tax was paid and Roman laws obeyed!

Roman intervention in Israel had effectively ended Jewish independence and ushered in one of the bleakest periods of Jewish history. Rome ruled, not Hyrcanus, or any Jew for that matter. (The Sanhedrin's authority was abolished by Roman decree six years after Pompeii's conquest.)

The independent state of Israel ceased to exist, and became the Roman province of Judea. Pompeii split up much of the land giving large chunks to his soldiers as a reward for their prowess in battle. Gaza, Jaffa, Ashdod and other Jewish cities were now a part of the map of the Roman Empire.

Hyrcanus, though he might call himself king, got only Jerusalem, along with a few pieces north and south, but even this small area he could not govern without checking in with the Roman proconsul in Damascus.

As we mentioned in Part 29, a key role in the Roman takeover of Israel was played by Hyrcanus' chief advisor - the Idumean general Antipater. The Idumeans bore testimony to an unprecedented lapse in observance among the Jews -- they were the people whom Yochanan Hyrcanus forcibly converted to Judaism.

Antipater, the real strength behind the weak Hyrcanus, made sure, of course, that he positioned his own family in power while he had a chance. He continued to guide Hyrcanus and - when in 49 BCE, Pompeii and Julius Caesar became engaged in internal struggle - helped him choose the winning side. Soon, Antipater was the man in power.

The Romans judged correctly that this forcibly converted Jew did not identify with Jewish values or nationalism, and that with him in power, "militant monotheism" would not again rear its dangerous head.

While Antipater did not go down in history as a household name, his son Herod - who took after his father and then some - did. Coming from a family of forced converts that was only nominally Jewish, he nevertheless became one of the most famous kings of the Jews.

He went down in history as Herod, the Great.