332 BC to 63 BC
Under the Greeks
Alexander's conquest and the kingdoms of his successors. Greek language and custom press in everywhere, and the crisis under Antiochus IV provokes the Maccabean revolt.
332 to 63 BC
The world at this moment
What everyone else was doing while this part of the story was happening.
The successors
Alexander dies at thirty-two and his generals carve up the empire. Judea sits on the border between the Ptolemies in Egypt and the Seleucids in Syria, and is fought over by both for a century and a half, which is the ordinary condition of the corridor.
Hellenism
Not just conquest but a culture: the gymnasium, the theatre, Greek names, Greek dress, Greek as the language of anyone with ambitions. Some Jews embraced it, some resisted it, and the argument between them is the real subject of the Maccabean books. In Alexandria the Hebrew scriptures are translated into Greek, producing the Septuagint, which is the Bible most New Testament writers quote.
The crisis
Antiochus IV bans the practice of Judaism, plunders the temple, and sets up a pagan altar in it in 167 BC. The revolt under the Maccabees wins, the temple is rededicated in 164 BC, which is the origin of Hanukkah, and Judea has about eighty years of independence under the Hasmoneans before Rome arrives.
Further afield
Rome fights Carthage three times and ends up master of the Mediterranean. Euclid writes the Elements and Archimedes does his work at Syracuse. In China the Qin unify the country in 221 BC and the Han follow, opening what becomes the Silk Road.
Ordinary life
Greek is the second language of anyone doing business. Jewish communities are scattered across the eastern Mediterranean, most of them reading their scriptures in Greek. The parties that fill the Gospels, Pharisees and Sadducees, take shape in this period, as does the expectation of a coming deliverer.
What you would be reading
6 books sit here. Open any of them and every card in the margin will describe itself at this moment.
Who was alive
7 of the people written up in the Hall of Witnesses belong to this stretch of the story.
The Greek king who tried to abolish Jewish worship: he outlawed the Sabbath and circumcision, plundered the temple, and set up a pagan altar on it. The revolt that answered him is what Hanukkah remembers. He called himself Epiphanes, meaning God manifest, and his critics called him Epimanes, the madman.
A Jerusalem teacher who wrote the long wisdom book called Sirach or Ecclesiasticus, and one of the very few writers in this whole library who signs his own name. His grandson translated it into Greek and wrote a preface explaining the difficulty of the job.
Never named in the Hebrew Bible, but present in it. Daniel's goat from the west with a conspicuous horn, moving so fast it does not touch the ground, and whose horn breaks at the height of its power to be replaced by four, is read across traditions as Alexander and the four generals who divided his empire.
The priest Mattathias and his sons, who revolted when Antiochus IV banned the practice of Judaism and installed a pagan altar in the temple. Judas, nicknamed Maccabeus, probably the hammer, retook Jerusalem and rededicated the temple, which is the origin of Hanukkah.
When Alexander died his generals carved up the empire, and two of the resulting dynasties fought over Judea for a century and a half: the Ptolemies from Egypt and the Seleucids from Syria. Several kings and generals of both, named Demetrius, Ptolemy, Seleucus, Tryphon, Lysias, and Bacchides, move through the Maccabean books.
The commanders sent against Judas Maccabeus. Nicanor was defeated and killed at Adasa, and the anniversary was kept as a feast day for a time. Apollonius, Timotheus, and Gorgias lead other campaigns across 1 and 2 Maccabees.
The men who held or bought the high priesthood in the years around the Maccabean crisis. Onias III was respected and was deposed by his brother Jason, who purchased the office and built a gymnasium in Jerusalem. Menelaus then outbid Jason, and Alcimus later took the post with Seleucid backing.
The world as it stood
26 entries describe themselves differently at this moment than at any other. These are the same notes that appear in the margin while you read.
The land
Cities, regions, rivers, and kingdoms, as they stood.
Fought over by Alexander's successors, then the flashpoint of the Maccabean crisis when Antiochus IV desecrated the temple. Its rededication is still remembered at Hanukkah.
Defeated by Alexander in 331 BC and absorbed. Daniel's vision of the ram broken by the goat is read by most interpreters as this transition.
Besieged and taken by Alexander in 332 BC after a two-month resistance.
Finally taken by Alexander in 332 BC, who built a causeway out to the island to do it. That causeway silted up and Tyre has been a peninsula ever since.
A shrine to Pan at a spring gushing from a cliff face, with niches for statues cut into the rock. The Greeks called the place Paneas.
A major Greek port whose temple of Artemis, rebuilt after an arson in 356 BC, was counted among the seven wonders.
Past its political peak but still the intellectual capital of the world, with the schools of the philosophers running continuously since Plato.
The peoples
A nation's name outlives its power, often by centuries.
Ruled by the Ptolemies from Alexandria, with a large and prosperous Jewish community. The Septuagint was translated there, which is the most consequential thing Egypt ever did for the Bible.
Destroyed by Alexander between 334 and 330 BC. The empire that had let the exiles rebuild is itself swept away inside a decade.
Tyre holds out against Alexander for seven months behind its island walls until he builds a causeway out to it, which is still there. Ezekiel's oracle about scraping the city bare and casting its stones into the sea has been read against that ever since.
The Gerizim temple was destroyed by the Hasmonean ruler John Hyrcanus around 110 BC, an act that hardened the split for good.
Everything. Alexander's conquest in 332 BC put Greek language, cities, and schooling across the whole region, and the resulting pressure to assimilate is what the Maccabean revolt was fought over.
A rising western power the Maccabees treated as a useful counterweight, sending an embassy to make a treaty against the Seleucids. 1 Maccabees describes the Roman senate admiringly, and in hindsight a little ominously.
Divided over how much Greek culture to take on. That argument runs through the Maccabean books and is at least as much of the story as the Seleucid armies.
Living among Greeks makes the boundary a daily question rather than a theoretical one, and a class of God-fearers appears: Gentiles who attend the synagogue and keep some of the law without becoming Jews.
Worship and institution
The temple in Ezra is not the temple in Kings, and neither is the one Jesus taught in.
Under Antiochus, keeping it becomes a capital offence. A group of about a thousand was killed without resisting because they would not fight on it, after which the Maccabees ruled that defending yourself on the sabbath is permitted. It is an early and explicit case of weighing one command against life itself.
Attested across the Jewish diaspora from Egypt to the Aegean, where it works as school, court, hostel, and community treasury as well as house of prayer.
Banned on pain of death under Antiochus IV, and mothers who did it anyway were executed along with their infants. In the same years, some Jews who wanted to compete in the gymnasium, where athletes exercised naked, underwent surgery to disguise it. Both facts belong to the same crisis.
Takes shape in this period as a council of elders around the high priest, with the Hasmonean rulers treating it as an established body they have to reckon with.
Bought and sold. Jason outbid Onias for it and Menelaus outbid Jason, and Antiochus treated the appointment as his to make. The Hasmoneans later held the high priesthood and the crown together, which some Jews regarded as a scandal, and which is part of why the community at Qumran withdrew from the temple altogether.
The right to collect is auctioned to the highest bidder, who then has to recover the bid plus whatever else can be squeezed out. Some families made fortunes this way.
Jewish writing in this period develops the idea a long way, with the righteous and the wicked held apart while they wait. Most of the vocabulary the Gospels use is already in circulation before the Gospels are written.
Expectation sharpens under foreign rule and starts getting specific. The Jewish writings of this period picture more than one kind of deliverer, including a royal one and a priestly one, and they do not agree with each other.
The Septuagint renders it kyrios, Lord, the ordinary Greek word for a master or an owner. That translation decision is why the New Testament's use of kyrios for Jesus lands with the weight it does.
Plundered by Antiochus IV, who took the golden altar and the lampstand, and then desecrated in 167 BC when a pagan altar was raised on the altar of burnt offering. The rededication three years later is what Hanukkah remembers, and it is the festival John calls the Feast of Dedication.
The gods of the nations
What was actually on offer, and how strong the pull was just then.
Antiochus IV rededicated the temple in Jerusalem to Olympian Zeus in 167 BC and the sanctuary on Mount Gerizim to Zeus the Friend of Strangers. That is the specific act the Maccabean revolt is a response to.
And then
Two Hasmonean brothers take their quarrel to Rome for arbitration, and Pompey settles it by taking Jerusalem in 63 BC. Independence is over.