High priests, bribes and a polis called Antioch
Date
175BCE
under Antiochus IV, before 167 BCEapproximate date
Before any royal decree, it was Jewish high priests who introduced Greek institutions into Jerusalem, and the rivalry between them paved the way for the king's intervention.
Sourced narrative
Each block is a verifiable statement. The number opens the cited page; amber or coral blocks flag tradition or contested interpretation.
9 statements
01Buying the high priesthood
The most powerful office in Judean society was that of high priest, which seems to have been restricted to the Oniad family. A priest named Jason ousted Onias III by bribing Antiochus; years later, Menelaus offered a bribe of his own, paid out of the Temple treasury, which outraged the population of Jerusalem.
02A gymnasium in Jerusalem
Jason founded a gymnasium in Jerusalem, a Greek institution where young men were trained in body and mind. According to 2 Maccabees, the young men began wearing Greek hats. That they trained naked is an inference by historians, since the sources do not say so; 1 Maccabees mentions epispasm, a technique for concealing circumcision.
Jason wanted to turn Jerusalem into a polis, with all the privileges that status brought (rights for its male inhabitants, the minting of coins), and even wished to give it the name Antioch, after Antiochus.
Menelaus went further: he took gold vessels out of the Temple so as to bribe a Greek official and then sell them to other cities, and had Onias, a former high priest who criticized him, murdered.
03Betrayal or pragmatism?
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.
Context
In the Hellenistic age, Greek identity did not in principle depend on birth: anyone willing to adopt the Greek language and customs could attain it. This offered social advancement, but many Jews also saw it as a threat to ancestral traditions and associated it with the loss of independence and with economic exploitation.
Whether or not to imitate the Greeks depended not only on geography but also on economic standing (probably only the privileged had access to the schools where Greek was learned) and on proximity to cities with Greek institutions.
Antiochus IV ruled the Seleucid kingdom from 175 to 164 BCE.
§ 01Geography
Where it happened
§ 03Historiography
What scholars debate
Scholarly debate · 01
Why did Antiochus IV persecute Jewish religious practice?
5 positions · no single answer · take a seat →
- A
Mental instability
Some scholars
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'.
- B
Claim to divinity
A hypothesis mentioned by the authors
As the title Epiphanes ('god manifest') suggests, he may have considered himself divine and resented the Jews' failure to worship him, as the emperor Caligula would later do.
- C
Anti-Jewish prejudice
Apion, a Greek writer of the first century CE
According to Apion, Antiochus acted out of indignation at supposed Jewish barbarity (the kidnapping and sacrifice of young Greeks). The authors judge that the account reveals more about Apion's prejudice than about the king's motives, and note that it anticipates the medieval blood libel.
- D
Pragmatic motives
Other scholars
On this view, the king acted for financial, political or military reasons: to reassert himself after his humiliating withdrawal from Egypt under Roman pressure, or to obtain the Temple's resources.
- E
Internal Jewish conflict
Elias Bickerman
On this reading, Antiochus became entangled in a conflict between cosmopolitan reformers (the priests Jason and Menelaus) and a religiously conservative faction. The idea of banning circumcision and the Sabbath would have come from the reformers, and the revolt would have been primarily a civil war.
§ 04Network
Connections
§ 05Bibliography
Further reading
Elias Bickerman, The Jews in the Greek Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962).
The Jewish encounter with Greek culture (a classic study, now dated according to the authors) · recommended in Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 87
Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine During the Early Hellenistic Period (London and Philadelphia: SCM Press and Fortress Press, 1974).
Judaism and Hellenism in Palestine (a classic study, now dated according to the authors) · recommended in Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 87
§ 06Apparatus
Sources on this page
- 01Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 73inspect
- 02Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 73; Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 73inspect
- 03Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 74; Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 74inspect
- 04Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 73inspect
- 05Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 73inspect
- 06Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 76inspect
- 07Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 63inspect
- 08Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 63inspect
- 09Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman, p. 519inspect
- Documented evidenceAttested by contemporary evidence: texts, inscriptions, coins, papyri or archaeology.
- Scholarly reconstructionHistorians' inference from indirect evidence.
- Tradition or narrativeA literary, traditional or religious account; significant in itself, but not independently verified.
- Contested interpretationScholars explicitly disagree; see the positions in the debate.
- Illustrative reconstructionA hypothesis or visual scheme to guide reading; not a historical claim.