§ Debates · Ch. 3 · Jews and Greeks
Why did Antiochus IV persecute Jewish religious practice?
5 positions · no single answer
Position A · held by Some scholars
Mental instability
On this view, Antiochus suffered from a mental disorder. The thesis draws support from his reputation for bizarre behavior and from a contemporary joke that turned his title Epiphanes into Epimanes, 'the madman'.
Rests on: p. 74
Reads the same page as , , : the same source, different readings.
Where the debate comes up
- under Antiochus IV, before 167 BCEJason, Menelaus and the gymnasium of Jerusalem
- 167 BCEThe decrees of Antiochus IV
- 167 or 166 BCE to 161 BCE or the late 140s BCEThe Maccabean revolt
Statements tied to the debate
- When Jason and Menelaus brought in Greek institutions, they may not have been abandoning tradition, as 1 and 2 Maccabees allege, or pursuing an aggressive religious reform, as Bickerman argued. They may simply have been trying, for practical reasons, to raise Jerusalem's status in a Hellenized world.
- Antiochus issued an edict banning Jewish religious practice: circumcision, the Sabbath and the Torah. Copies of the Torah were destroyed and those who followed its laws were executed; there are reports of Jews forced to eat pork. The book's timeline dates the rededication of the Temple to Zeus and these prohibitions to 167 BCE.
- At first, as Bickerman proposed, the revolt may have been less a rebellion against foreign rule than an internal Jewish civil war, with the Maccabees attacking Jewish collaborators first.