Judaism Defined: Mattathias and the Destiny of His People (Studies in Judaism) 9780761851172, 9780761851189, 0761851178

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JUDAISM DEFINED

Mattathias and the Destiny of His People

Benjamin Edidin Scolnic

Studies in Judaism University Press of America,® Inc. Lanham • Boulder · New York · Toronto · Plymouth, UK

Copyright© 2010 by University Press of America,® Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard Suite 200 Lanham, Maryland 20706 UPA Acquisitions Department (301) 459-3366 Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America British Library Cataloging in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Control Number: 2010923004 ISBN: 978-0-7618-5117-2 (paperback: alk. paper) eiSBN: 978-0-7618-5118-9

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The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992

Dedicated to my parents Rabbi Samuel and Judith Edidin Scolnic who defined Judaism for their clan

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Studies in Judaism EDITOR Jacob Neusner Bard College EDITORIAL BOARD Alan J. Avery-Peck College of the Holy Cross Herbert Basser Queens University Bruce D. Chilton Bard College Jose Faur Bar Ilan University William Scott Green University of Miami Mayer Gruber Ben-Gurion University of the Negev GUnter Sternberger University of Vienna James F. Strange University of South Florida

Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction ................................................................................ 1 Chapter 2 Scholarly Views of Mattathias ................................................. 13 Chapter 3 Mattathias's Act of Rebellion .................................................. 19 Chapter4 Mattathias and the Priestly Clan of Jehoiarib ........................... 27 Chapter 5 Mattathias and the Ambitions of the Maccabees ..................... 45 Chapter 6 Mattathias and the Meaning of Circumcision ........................... 99 Chapter? Mattathias and Defensive War on the Sabbath ....................... 179 Chapter 8 The Nature and Provenance of I Maccabees .......................... 217 Chapter 9 Mattathias and the Definition of Judaism .............................. 229 Selected Bibliography .................................................................... 235

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Chapter One Introduction Every winter, Jewish people throughout the world celebrate Hanukkah, the holiday commemorating the valiant deeds of the Maccabees, a group of Jews in Judaea in the 2nd century BCE who rebelled against their Seleucid (Macedonian) overlords and won religious freedom and then political independence for their people. In evaluating the motivations and purposes of the Maccabees, it has become the scholarly trend to revise the story to say that pure ambition motivated the Hasmonaeans and that they should be seen as just one more power-seeking clan of petty princes in the Hellenistic era that used religion as a pretext for its own advancement. 1 Religious freedom was only a catalyst for revolution at the time of the persecution. Schwartz pleads that, as opposed to the popular conception and the work of earlier scholars, we should not be seduced by the version of the revolt found in I Maccabees. Instead, we must look for models by which we can understand the Hasmonaeans. Schwartz finds such a model for the Maccabees in contemporary families who were 'village strongmen'-that is, well-to-do landowners, living in areas relatively remote from centers of government authority-who were influential enough locally and zealous enough of their own prerogatives to resist official interference in their villages or farms. " 2 In the same vein, Eddy describes the situation prior to the revolution as follows: Mattathias and his sons were descendants of a man named Joiarib, or Jehoiarib. In the 5th century his family did not have priestly rank; in the 4th century it did; by the third it was reckoned among the leading clans with priestly status. The evidence is that in 167 BCE, the Hasmonaeans were not humble, rural priests, but a family on the rise. They lived in Jerusalem and owned an estate near Modern ... We have explicit statements that they had property around l. Seth Schwartz Imperialism and Jewish Society 200 BCE to 640 CE (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001) 32ff.; idem "A Note on the Social Type and Political Ideology of the Hasmonaean Family" JBL ll2/2 (1993) 305-17; Brent Nongbri "The Motivations of the Maccabees and the Judean Rhetoric of Ancestral Traditions" in Ancient Judaism in its Hellenistic Context ed. by Carol Bakhos, Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 95 (Leiden: Brill, 2005) 85-111; Erich S. Gruen Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998) l-40. 2. Schwartz "Social Type" 306.

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Judaism Defined: Mattathias and the Destiny ofHis People

the village, but that they normally lived in the city. When the revolt began, father and sons had only left Jerusalem for Modein to escape possible unpleasant consequences of Antiochos 's interdict. If the family were acting out of ambition would they have risked fighting Antiochos as they did? It is certainly possible. 3 Notice the elements in this reconstruction. The Maccabees were not descendants of priests; they were a lay clan that acquired priestly status and then moved into the ranks of powerful priests. They were wealthy landowners who started the revolution not out of religious zeal or political independence but to achieve power. I shall argue against this reconstruction and attempt to undermine its basis premises. My purpose is to counter the work of those scholars who would make the Maccabees into merely self-serving, ambitious, non-idealistic, non-pious, Hellenistic leaders who used Judaism as a tool for their own advancement. Intellectually, I admire these attempts to find the motivations of the Maccabees in contemporary parallels. In the absence of information, creative scholarship reconstructs history through the use of models that may be found in contemporary cultures or in the same culture from an earlier or later period. In this spirit, but with far less cynicism, I will try to develop another seemingly obvious model for the Hasmonaeans that has been largely ignored, namely that of a priestly family. The traditional Jewish belief is that the Maccabees were conservative, nonHellenized fighters for Judaism and the Jewish people. The modern scholarly revisionist idea is that the Maccabees were Hellenized would-be Greek princes. My position is that the Maccabees began as somewhat "Hellenized" but traditionally educated Jewish priests who were fighters for the priesthood, Judaism and the covenant between the Jewish people and God. My focus will be on the founder of the Hasmonaean dynasty, Mattathias. I will present him as a priest who saw the Antiochene persecution as a crisis of epic proportions and who was quite prepared to start a war and act in violence whenever and however he found it necessary. Some scholars have challenged Mattathias's priestly credentials but he was indeed first and foremost a priest, educated in the sacred texts that inspired his actions. He emphasized values and practices dear to the priesthood, especially Temple worship, circumcision and the Sabbath.

3. Samuel K. Eddy The King is Dead: Studies in the Near Eastern Resistance to Hellenism, 334-31 B. C. (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1961) 215.

Introduction

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The Book of !Maccabees shows how in their zeal, Mattathias and the Maccabees who followed him were prepared to use violence. Mattathias 's actions were very different from his contemporaries, emphasized in 2Maccabees, who were martyred in passive resistance to the persecution. When he kills the Jewish man of Modein who is willing to participate in a pagan sacrifice, the symbolism is that he is willing to kill all Jewish people who forsake their religion. He quite intentionally starts a war against those that he considers the internal and external enemies of his people. Mattathias forcibly circumcises babies. He is willing even to fight on the Sabbath when necessary, placing the priority on the success of the movement rather than the religious commandment. Mattathias would do anything and everything to perpetuate the covenant as he understood it from his priestly training. The motivations and actions of Mattathias 's Hasmonaean descendants must be separated from the original purpose of the revolution that brought the dynasty to power. Mattathias was ambitious, surely, as all great people of history are. But was that ambition merely self-serving, or was it primarily a by-product of his very real beliefs? I will portray Mattathias as what the Greeks called a megalopsuchos, a "great-souled" man who achieved worthy fame and glory through deeds that literally change history. His actions of zealous violence, as controversial as they were in his day and as controversial as they would be seen today, were primarily were for the preservation of his religion and people as he defined it. In fact, it was Mattathias who saved the Torah and defined Judaism and Jewishness for his time.

Mattathias in !Maccabees I will study every word of the account of Mattathias in 1Maccabees below as I proceed to examine every aspect of what we know or think we know about Mattathias's life and career. Here I will only list the elements in the order presented in this account: l. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6.

During the Antiochene persecution, Mattathias leaves Jerusalem and settles in Modein (1Macc. 2:1). Mattathias is the son of John the son of Simeon (1Macc. 2:1). He is a priest of the clan of J(eh)oiarib (1Macc. 2:1). He has five sons, John, Simon, Judas, Eleazar and Jonathan; each son has a nickname or epithet (lMacc. 2:2-5). Mattathias mourns for the plight of a conquered Jerusalem; he condemns the profanation of the sanctuary and the cowardice of the people in accepting foreign oppression (lMacc. 2:6-14). When the persecution reaches Modein, the king 's officials state that Mattathias is a leader of the town with strong family support. They try to

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7.

8. 9. 10.

II. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

Judaism Defined: Mattathias and the Destiny of His People

flatter and persuade Mattathias to be the first to participate in the pagan sacrifice, offering bribes of status and money (!Mace. 2:15-18). Mattathias adamantly refuses, stating that even if all of the other Judaeans obey king's commands, he and his family never will betray the sacred covenant (!Mace. 2:19-22). When a Jewish man comes to the altar to participate, Mattathias kills him and the king's official and destroys the altar (!Mace. 2:23-26). He and his sons leave all their possessions and run for the hills (1Macc. 2:27-28). When those who refuse to defend themselves on the Sabbath are massacred, Mattathias and his men mourn and decide that they will henceforth defend themselves on the Sabbath day (!Mace. 2:29-41). The Hasidim then join Mattathias, as do other refugees (!Mace. 2:42-43). Mattathias begins to achieve victories against the Jewish supporters of the kingdom (!Mace. 2:44). He and his supporters tear down altars (!Mace. 2:45). Mattathias and his friends forcibly circumcise children who were uncircumcised within the borders of Israel (I Mace. 2:46). They achieve continued success (!Mace. 2:47-48). Mattathias dies, delivering a farewell speech to his sons reviewing the greatness of some of the heroes oflsrael (1 Mace. 2:49-68). He appoints his son Simon to be "father" or political leader and Judas to be "captain" or military commander (!Mace. 2:65-66). Mattathias dies in the year 166/65 BCE and is buried in the family sepulcher at Modein; he is mourned by "all Israel" (!Mace. 2:69-70).

We will need to think about all of these elements of Mattathias 's life and consider the likelihood of the historicity of each one. To state some of the questions involved: • • • • •

•

Was Mattathias a priest of the line of Jehoiarib? Was J(eh)oiarib an old, established priestly clan? Did Mattathias assassinate a Seleucid official and a Jewish man in an incident at Modein? Did Mattathias initiate a policy of defensive warfare on the Sabbath? Did he forcibly circumcise babies? Which babies and where? What did circumcision mean to him? Or was his forcible circumcision a fiction made up to justify the actions of his royal descendants? Did he proclaim Simon as "father" and Judas as "commander" or is this an attempt to legitimize Simon and his heirs?

Without the answers to these and other questions, we cannot reconstruct the historical Mattathias.

Introduction

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The Omission of Mattathias in 2Maccabees One of the main arguments against the historicity of Mattathias is that for all of the information and drama in the account in 1Maccabees, 2Maccabees does not even mention the name Mattathias, not even in passing as the patronymic of one of his sons. 1 and 2Maccabees cover much of the same ground: the persecution, the character of Antiochus IV, the revolt, the steadfastness of the nation's faithful, the nature of the battles, the triumph of Judas's party, the lack of selfseeking on the part of the Jewish leaders, the dedication festival in 165/164 BCE, and the victory celebrated by Judas on Nicanor's Day; all these elements are found in common in both sources. Since these two books are our primary sources for the study of this era, any discussion of Mattathias must at least take the omission of his name in 2Maccabees into consideration. Critical scholars deal with this fact in various ways, leading to other interesting questions: Which of these two books was written first? Were they written as competing documents, dueling accounts of the same events? Scholars' assumptions about the relative dates of authorship will affect their judgment about the historicity of Mattathias. If the proHasmonaean author of 1Maccabees knew a text of 2Maccabees that did not have Mattathias 's name, then he added it to his account. If the author of 2Maccabees knew I Maccabees but omitted Matthias's name, why did he do this? Tcherikover thinks that Jason of Cyrene simply did not know the story of Mattathias because "he was not the official historian of the Hasmonaeans and did not know all the details of the family tradition created and preserved at the Hasmonaean court."4 The epitomist of Jason's work would not have neglected to include such a basic story if it had been found in the original work. 5 It is Niese who first describes the Mattathias story as purely fiction. Niese has a high opinion of the trustworthiness of 2Maccabees and a low one of the veracity of !Maccabees. Niese explains the omission of Mattathias in 2Maccabees by saying that it is not an omission at all; instead, Mattathias 's very existence is an act of commission by the author of !Maccabees. In this view, Mattathias is now the creation of the author of 1Maccabees for the purpose of magnifying the origins of the Hasmonaean dynasty and showing that Simon was part of the origins of the revolution, present at the inception, as it were. 6 He follows Geiger in charging the author of 1Maccabees with introducing Mattathias, or at least

4. Victor Tcherikover Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews trans S. Applebaum (Phil.: JPS, 1959) 480 n. 3.205. 5. Tcherikover Hellenistic Civilization 205. 6. Benedictus Niese Kritik der heiden Makkabiierbucher (Berlin: Weidmann, 1900) 46.

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Judaism Defined: Mattathias and the Destiny of His People

with exaggerating his importance, in order to glorify Simon with the reflected light of his father, and to legitimize the later Hasmonaeans, descendants of Simon, by making Mattathias on his death-bed appoint as leader Simon, " a man of counsel, a father unto you" (lMacc. 2:65). Momigliano provides two suggestions for why Mattathias is not found at all in 2Maccabees. The first is that 2Macc. presents a new concept of martyrdom, based partly on the willingness for self-sacrifice in Daniel (what we call Daniel A, following Ginsberg8) and Mattathias's proactive initiative to start the revolution takes away from the central role of God's response to the persecution and the prayers and the deaths of His faithful. Momigliano 's second suggestion is that 2Macc. is written entirely in the personal interests of Judas. Jason of Cyrene is credited with writing the original work of which 2Maccabees is an abridgement from five volumes to one (2Macc. 2:19ff.). In his preface, the abridger begins: "Jason of Cyrene narrated the history of Judas Maccabaeus and his brothers ... " From the outset, it seems that it is not the founder of the dynasty Mattathias but his son Judas and his brothers who is the main character not only of the abridgment but also of Jason of Cyrene 's longer work. This author archaizes the life of Judas in order to portray him like a Judge of the Bible. That the author of 2Macc. would carefully weave away from even speaking Mattathias 's name as father of the hero Judas seems to indicate that he has this or another reason in mind in his effort. For Momigliano, Mattathias 's name is omitted because of thematic considerations that have nothing to do with Mattathias's historicity. Since 2Maccabees does not mention Mattathias, it is Judas who starts the revolution in this source. 2Macc. 5:27 introduces Judas Maccabaeus without any reference to his father: Judas, also known as Maccabaeus, in a group of about ten, withdrew to the mountains, where he and his men eked out a living like beasts. There they stayed, eating herbs for tood, in order to keep clear of defilement. It is a humiliating introduction, very different from the stirring initial action of Mattathias in I Maccabees. This passage would have us think that Judas fled from Jerusalem, presumably his home, immediately after the attack by Apollonius, the Mysian commander (2Macc. 5:24-26). As Bar-Kochva has pointed out, there is something out of sequence here: This flight takes place

7. Arnold Momigliano "The Second Book of Maccabees" Essays on Ancient and Modern Judaism ed. by Silvia Berti trans. by Maur~ Masella-Gayley (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994) 43. 8. Harold Louis Ginsberg Studies in Daniel (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1948) 27-40.

Introduction

7

before the anti-Jewish decrees. 9 Judas and his men flee from Jerusalem so that they will "not take part in the defilement" but that pagan defilement will only occur later, in 2Macc. 6:1-11. 10 The story in 2M ace. of Judas running from Jerusalem to "the desert" with a band often, is open to question itself, especially because it is out of place in the chronology of that work. Thus Bar-Kochva turns the tables on the critics of the 1Mace. account and their emphasis on the omission of Mattathias in the origins of the Maccabees by attempting to undermine the validity of this parallel account in 2Macc.

Nevertheless, some scholars such as Tcherikover state that 2Macc. 5:27 has a realistic tone and is thus more historical than the account of Mattathias in !Maccabees: "This short narrative, lacking all legendary and rhetorical embellishments, is probably nearer historical reality than the artistic and patriotic story of I Maccabees." 11 One could argue, however, that the emphasis on eating undefiled foods reflects a very pious viewpoint, reminiscent of the youths in Daniel 1 who will not eat unclean food. The flight to the wilderness is another traditional motif that reminds us of Moses, David and Elijah. 12 This short narrative is composed of legendary embellishments. Doran's explanation is that Jason of Cyrene moves the account of the Maccabees' flight from Jerusalem to a time before the persecution in order to give the reader hope at the end of the horrible narrative about the martyrs. God's merciful response to the executions of His faithful is to raise up a hero who will save the people. 13 If Doran is correct, then we see the tendency of the author of 2Maccabees to shape history according to his thematic desires. His work is secondary to that of !Maccabees. Though Momigliano thinks that the author of 2Maccabees wants to promote the importance of Judas, the fact is that we do not see him again in this work until three chapters later: Judas, also known as Maccabaeus, and his men stealthily slipped into the villages and enlisted the aid of their kinsmen and gained also the adherence of those who had remained faithful to Judaism. Thus they raised a force of about six thousand. They called upon the LORD to look upon His people, oppressed by all; to pity His temple, profaned 9. Bezalel Bar-Kochva Judas Maccabaeus: The Jewish struggle against the Seleucids (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) 196-99. Again, there is nothing here about Mattathias's action in Modern after those decrees were implemented. I 0. C. Habicht 2 Makkabiierbuch (Giitersloh: Mohn, 1976) 228. II. Tcherikover Hellenistic Civilization 5. 12. Robert Doran "The Second Book of Maccabees" in The New Interpreters Bible (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996) 230. 13. Doran 2 Maccabees 230.

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Judaism Defined: Mattathias and the Destiny of His People

by impious men; to have mercy upon the city, which was being ruined and might soon be leveled to the ground; to hearken to the blood of the murdered, crying out to Him; to be mindful of the wicked massacre of innocent babes and also to avenge the blasphemies perpetrated against His name. 5 Having gathered around him a band of partisans, Maccabaeus immediately became invincible over the gentiles, because the wrath of the LORD had turned to mercy. Towns and villages Judas would take by surprise and bum. He would seize strategic points and rout considerable enemy forces. He used especially the nights as cover for such raids. Reports of his bravery spread far and wide. (2Macc. 8: 1-7) We note that some of the elements in the call to God here are similar to those in Mattathias's lament in I Maccabees 2. The Temple and the city of Jerusalem are in ruins. Innocent babies have been killed. Just as Mattathias was successful in his initial efforts, so Judas is here. Mattathias's lament and accomplishments are now folded into Judas's prayer and achievements, begging the question of why the name of Mattathias is so systematically erased in 2Maccabees. Since to name a figure from the past is to remember them, to omit a name from the past is to commit them to oblivion. In Deut. 29:19 (see also. Jer. 11: 19; Ps. 9:6, 59:29, 109:13,15; Prov. 10:7; TB Yoma 38b), the wicked arc to be destroyed by erasing their names from all mention and reference. 14 One wonders if the author or epitomizer of 2Maccabees sees Mattathias as a villain. In that case, what is the nature of his villainy? Again, why are Mattathias 's name and actions absent from 2Maccabees? I shall list five theories and respond to each in tum. l. The Mattathias story is purely fiction; the creation of the author of !Maccabees, a work that is secondary to 2Maccabees. 15 In order to refute this theory, we will need to establish that 1Maccabees is earlier than 2Maccabees. This will take a longer discussion that will also enable us to discuss the historicity of l Maccabees. I will attempt to accomplish this goal in the Appendix. 2. A modified position is that Mattathias is omitted here because his role has been "blown out of its historical proportion by the author of I Maccabees," a

14. On the Jewish holiday of Purim, worshippers make loud noise to obliterate the name of the villain of the Book of Esther every time his name is read. 15. Benedictus Niese Kritik der heiden Makkaberbcher. nebst Beitragen zur Geschichte der makkabischen Erhebung (Berlin: Weidmann, 1900) 46.

Introduction

9

pro-Hasmonaean author. 16 Jason of Cyrene, who was not an official court historian for the Hasmonaeans, did not know of the details about Mattathias and was uninterested in the history of the dynasty. 17 An even stronger possibility is that the author or the epitomist docs not mention Mattathias because he is antidynastic. If there were no Mattathias, would there be a reason for the author of I Maccabees to make him up? The story of a father who started the revolution, and of five sons who each played a role in the events that followed, could have legal implications. This theory would explain why power moved from Judas to Jonathan to Simon rather than to a son. But there was no such surviving son of Judas or Jonathan so this motivation is artificial. By creating a father who decrees on his deathbed that Simon is the "brains" of the operation, as opposed to Judas who is the "brawn," scholars such as Geiger continue, Simon's importance is increased at the expense of his brothers, particularly Jonathan who would assume the mantle of leadership after. Geiger and others use the example of the battle between Simon and Nicanor near Kafar Dessau as evidence for their theory, saying that I Maccabees intentionally omits this battle because Simon loses to the enemy general and the pro-Hasmonaean writer would rather not mention it. 2Maccabees 14, on the other hand, does record this battle. So I Maccabees aggrandizes Simon in his early role in the revolt and omits his defeat. 2Maccabees, on the other hand, is quite ready to describe Simon's defeat. We learn that its writer is anti-dynastic. 18 Since it is my view that !Maccabees was written earlier than 2Maccabees and that it was completed no later than the first part of the reign of John Hyrcanus, son of Simon, the notion that Simon is accentuated to the positive is attractive. That 2Maccabees would be uninterested in the dynasty makes sense especially if Jason ofCyrene, as his name indicates, did not live under the Hasmonaeans. Let us grant that this is true. Scholars who accept the theory that 1Maccabees promotes the role of Mattathias as founder of the Hasmonaean dynasty and that 2Maccabees disregards him completely to suit their different intentions should understand that neither assumption renders Mattathias fictitious. There is no real reason to deprive Mattathias of his historicity. On the contrary, we have the right to conclude that there was a historical Mattathias who started a revolution and became the stuff of legend, including

16. Daniel J. Harrington The Maccabaean Revolt: Anatomy of a Biblical Revolution (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1988) 67. 17. Tcherikover Hellenistic Civilization 480. 18. Abraham Geiger Urschrift und Ubersetzungen der Bibel 2nd ed. (Frankfurt/Main: Madda, 1928) 215-18.

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Judaism Defined: Mattathias and the Destiny of His People

traditions about a last will and testament that either mentioned or was tweaked to include Simon, a brother who survived the others and belatedly held power. 3. 2Maccabees knows !Maccabees and its treatment of Mattathias and had it in the five-volume work. It is only in the abridgment that it is left out. Even in an abridgement, Judas could have been named as the son of Mattathias. The omission certainly seems intentional. And as Tcherikover says, "It is hard to suppose that the Epitomator would have omitted such wonderful tales had he found them in Jason." 19 4. Judas is the emphasis of 2Maccabees. Mattathias is omitted in order to focus on Judas as the charismatic hero20 who is chosen by God, and does not just succeed by descent, for a great mission. If Judas is the hero of the book, we would want to know who his father was. Even more, his priestly credentials are extremely important for his re-dedication of the Temple. His lack of genealogy remains striking. 5. 2Maccabees deliberately omits Mattathias's name in a conscious and concerted effort to blot out the memory of one who innovated a law concerning defensive warfare on the Sabbath that was anathema to its author. Goldstein states: "Jason (of Cyrene) himself inflicted damnatio memoriae on Mattathias. " 21 I shall devote a long chapter to this theory below. The extended discussion will allow us to evaluate not only Mattathias's important actions but also the nature of the Judaism of the Maccabees. 6. 1Maccabees emphasizes heroic action and 2Maccabees martyrdom. Contrary to the third theory, Judas is not really the hero of 2Maccabees; he is closer to "the little help" of Daniel 11:34. The martyrs may be more important than Judas in ensuring God's help against the enemies. !Maccabees accentuates Mattathias while the author of 2Maccabees omits his actions in order to accentuate martyrdom as "the appropriate reaction to persecution (2Macc. 6:107:42), and for him it is the martyrdoms that bring God's mercy (7:38; 8:5)."22

19. Tcherikover Hellenistic Civilization 384. 20. Elias Bickennan Der Gott der Makkabiier (Berlin: Schocken, 1937) 149. 21.Jonathan Goldstein I Maccabees (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1976) 79; Tcherikover Hellenistic Civilization 480 n. 3. 22. Robert Doran "The Second Book of Maccabees" in The New Interpreters Bible (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996) 230. 2 Mace. does seem to know more than it's saying about the Macca bees. For example, in 2 Mace. 8:21-23, the Hasmonaean brothers are described as the commanders of the anny, something we know from infonnation in lMacc. (e.g. lMacc. 2:19).

Introduction

11

For now, we find the last two theories plausible. If Mattathias 's name is omitted in 2Maccabees for a thematic reason, because his actions are condemned or a different emphasis is at work, there is no reason to dismiss Mattathias 's historicity. In fact, ironically enough, omitting his name speaks to his importance. If he were a trivial figure, his name would have appeared, even if it were just as Judas's father. To systematically erase his name speaks of intention. And intention speaks to importance. Thus, ironically, the omission of Mattathias in 2Maccabees speaks to his historical importance.

Josephus Again, I will treat all of Josephus's statements about Mattathias as I proceed to explore the different topics involved in his life. For now, I will just list the elements in his account (AJXII vi.l.265ff.; BJ.l.3.36). 1. At the time of the persecution, Mattathias, a native of Jerusalem, is living in Modein, a village in Judaea. 2. Mattathias is the son of Joannes (Johanan), son of Symeon (Simon), son of Asamonaios (Hasmonaeus ). 23 3. Mattathias is a priest of the course of Joiarib. 24 4. He has five sons, listed in the same order as in !Maccabees. 5. Mattathias laments over the ruin of Jerusalem and the Temple and tells his sons that it is good to die for the laws of one's country. 6. The king's officers come to Modein to compel the Jews to perform the pagan sacrifices and invite Mattathias to be the first; Mattathias refuses; a Jewish man comes forward and Mattathias (and his sons, who have broad knives 25 ) kills the man, the officer (named Apelles 26) and a few of his soldiers, 27 pulls down the pagan altar and flees with his sons and without his property to the mountains. 7. After the massacre of about a thousand men, women and children who would not defend themselves on the Sabbath, Mattathias instructs his men to fight on the Sabbath, as Jewish people do "to this day." 8. Mattathias, with a large force gathering around him, tears down pagan altars and orders uncircumcised boys to be circumcised, driving away the officers who had prevented the rite from being practiced.

23. !Maccabees has no reference to Mattathias as the descendant ofHasmonaeus. 24. In BJ he is "a priest of a village called Modein." 25. Josephus adds to IMaccabees 2 the notion that the sons were directly involved and also the detail that they had broad knives (in BJ "choppers"). 26. He is not named in !Maccabees; in BJ, Josephus names him Bacchides. 27. Another added detail.

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Judaism Defined: Mattathias and the Destiny of His People

9. After a year in command, Mattathias falls ill and delivers a farewell speech, appointing Simon as father and counsel and Judas as commander ofthe army. 28 After this review, there is nothing in the Josephus account that indicates he had any source other than !Maccabees. It is true, as we shall see in detail, that Josephus makes some changes for his own reasons. Still, the fact that Josephus does follow !Maccabees 2 cannot argue against, and can only attest to its historicity.

28. Differing on many points from the last will and testament in !Maccabees, as we shall explore below.

Chapter Two Scholarly Views of Mattathias 1Maccabees is therefore our only primary source for the life of Mattathias. 2Maccabees, whatever its reason(s), provides a negative view of Mattathias through conscious omission; Josephus carefully follows l Maccabees and offers a kind of midrash of 1Mace. 2. A commentary has as its responsibility the explanation of the text, but a historian must at least distill the text, sifting for historicity. Many scholarly accounts merely summarize 1Maccabees 2, as do Rappaport 1 and Schafer. 2 In the case of Mattathias, a scholar can get downright emotional: There is something very touching in this figure of the strenuous old man, a typical Puritan warrior, zealous in doctrine and in battle, dying before the fruits of victory had been won, yet enjoying unto this day deathless renown, named on the Maccabaean festival in every Jewish house of prayer. Would the self-sacrificing, lion-hearted Judas have desired a finer fate than this, that his glorious career should be merged in the renown of his noble father in those Jewish "meetingplaces of God" which his deeds had helped to found or preserve? But if there be one matter in which rabbinic, that is Pharisaic tradition on the Maccabaean history has a message it is on the importance of the role played by Mattathias. The rabbinic tradition recognized Mattathias as the principle figure in the struggle for religious liberty. In the liturgy, it is he and not Judas who is named as the hero. (Compare the strong confirmation of this in I Mace. xiv. 26; see also xvi. 14, from which it appears that Mattathias was a family name). Even Wellhausen (in his fourth edition) insists that there is no doubt that Mattathias was the father's name. 3 A prominent historian like Green is more careful and less fawning. While he introduces Mattathias in the drama of the moment, and accepts as historical the incident at Modei'n, the escape to the hills, the decision to fight on the Sabbath, I. Uriel Rappaport "Mattathias" in ABD IV 615. 2. Peter Schafer "The Hellenistic and Macedon ian Periods" in Israelite and Judaean History ed. by John H. Hayes and J. Maxwell Miller (London: SCM, 1977) 585. 3. I. Abrahams "Niese on the Two Books of the Maccabees" The Jewish Quarterly Review Vol. 13, No. 3 (Apr., 190 I) 508-519; review of Benedictus Niese Kritik der heiden Makkaberbcher, nebst Beitragen zur Geschichte der makkabischen Erhebung (Berlin: Weidmann, 1900).

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Judaism Defined: Mattathias and the Destiny ofHis People

the enlistment of the Hasidim, Green is ready to see the historical figure in a less-than-favorable light and to question his importance: The time was ripe for action; and the time duly called forth the man. The spark for insurrection was provided by the action of a priest, Mattathias, of the Hasmonaean family ... Mattathias and his rapidly growing band of followers embarked on a kind of religious razzia, preaching open resistance, killing apostates, burning their towns and villages, tearing down non-Jewish altars, and forcibly circumcising all uncircumcised children. In the matter of intolerance there was, clearly very little to choose between them and their persecutors .... His importance in the rebellion has probably been exaggerated. 4 There is a distinction between accepting the existence of Mattathias, father of Judas and his brothers, and assuming the historicity of his actions as recounted by I Maccabees. That is, one can assume that there was a Mattathias but insist that he did not have the importance attached to him by I Maccabees. Here, again, is Tcherikover: As for Mattathias, no doubt need be entertained that he was a real person, for he is mentioned in an official document as Simon's father ( 1Mace. 14:29), but the attractive figure in I Maccabees belongs rather to the world of fiction than to historical reality. 5 Both Tcherikover in his negative view, and Abrahams (as we cited above) in his positive one, agree that there was a real-life person named Mattathias who was the father of the Hasmonaean dynasty. They are part of a scholarly consensus that states that the Simon document, IMacc. I4:27-45, is authentic. Again, this document is important here because it mentions Mattathias: Whereas: at a time when our land was repeatedly afflicted by wars, Simon son of Mattathias of the clan of Joiarib and his brothers exposed themselves to danger and resisted their nation's foes, in order that their sanctuary might survive, and the Torah; they won great glory for their nation ... (!Mace. 14: 29)6

4. Peter Green Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990) 517-18. 5. Tcherikover Hellenistic Civilization 205. 6. All translations are from Jonathan Goldstein I Maccabees (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1976).

Scholarly Views of Mattathias

IS

This is a public decree, engraved on brass tablets and set on pillars in the Temple, with copies placed in the treasury for future reference. It is passed by the Jewish people and proclaimed on the 18th of Elul, 140 BCE, giving Simon and his descendants both political and ecclesiastical power. As Zeitlin remarks, this is "a revolutionary document and marks a major departure in Jewish history." 7 Simon is elected to the high priesthood, a position that had been passed down for centuries in hereditary succession in the Zadokite/Oniad line. Simon's descendants will now form a new high priestly genealogy (lMacc. 14:41). He also is elected to be "the prince of God's people," the political head of the nation, the fulfillment of Mattathias 's instruction. One reason to think that this is a separate document and not a creation of the author of !Maccabees is that there are differences between the document and the rest of the book. For instance, as Sievers notes, the description of Simon's relationship with Rome and Demetrius II in 14:38-40 is different from the account in the document. In the latter, Demetrius II confirms Simon as high priest and makes him a Friend in 139 BCE because he has heard that the Romans had conferred honors on him. In the body of 1Macc. however, Demetrius takes these actions in 13:35-40 well before Rome hears about Simon in 14:16 and sends correspondence to Demetrius on Simon's behalf in 14:24. In the same light, it is interesting to notice that Judas is not mentioned in this document and Jonathan is, while Judas is mentioned in Mattathias 's speech in !Mace. 2 and Jonathan is not. 8 Goldstein also notes that there is no reference in this document to any of the events recorded in lMacc. 1-8. One could argue, however, that the beginning of the document, cited above, certainly refers to the events of the early years of persecution and revolution. The document's history seems to be as follows: 1. 2.

It began as an official decree written in Hebrew; It was incorporated and perhaps adapted somewhat in 1Mace. by a writer

3.

It was translated into Greek along with the rest of 1Macc.

writing in Hebrew; The document has been examined in several painstaking articles, 9 and has been compared to a number of contemporary encomiastic decrees composed by 7. Sidney Tedesche and Solomon Zeitlin The First Book of Maccabees Dropsie College Edition (New York: Harper and Row, 1950) 44. 8. Goldstein I Maccabees 504. 9. Joseph Sievers, "The High Priesthood of Simon Maccabeus: An Analysis of I Mace 14:25-49," SBLSP (1981) 309-18; Jan William van Henten "The Honorary Decree for

16

Judaism Defined: Mattathias and the Destiny of His People

Egyptian priests and officials for Ptolemaic kings and other Hellenistic kings. Since the decree was first written in Hebrew, why is the terminology employed so close to that of these Greek documents? The Simon decree in I Maccabees is not a free composition by the author of that work but an example of a genre that has a structure of five recurrent sections. An indication of the historicity and importance of Mattathias is that Simon has a son named Mattathias {apparently his third son; IMacc. 16:14). Following the practice of papponymy, 10 Simon's father Mattathias had to have been dead before his name could be used in the family again; we know that he died in 166/65 BCE. We see that Simon's first two sons were named John (IMacc. 13:53), later John Hyrcanus, and Judas (IMacc. 16:2) after two of his fallen brothers. John seems to have been the eldest, or at least the most capable (Judas is named before John in 16:2 which may indicate that Judas was older); John was appointed chief of the army upon reaching maturity. 11 If we assume that John was twenty in 139 BCE, this means he was born in 159 BCE; Judas had passed away shortly before this. That Simon would have named his first two sons not Mattathias but John and Judas would make good emotional sense; the loss of his brothers at a relatively early age would have been more devastating than the loss of their father at a ripe old age. Simon seems to have been following the order of his own family: The order of Mattathias 's sons was John, Simon, Judas, Eleazar and Jonathan. As another point speaking to Mattathias's historicity, we should remember that the author of !Maccabees speaks ofMattathias's tomb and Josephus claims that he saw it. It is unreasonable to say that Mattathias did not exist, or that he was not the

father of sons who led the fight for the independence oftheir country. In studying the various views of Mattathias, a historian will not only ask the question: Did he live at all? We must also think about the historicity of this figure and his actions. What were his motivations? What did he seek to

Simon the Maccabee (I Mace 14:25-49) in its Hellenistic Context" in John J. Collins and Gregory E. Sterling eds. Hellenism in the Land of Israel (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001) 116-145 and Edgar Krentz "The Honorary Decree for Simon the Maccabee" in Collins and Sterling Hellenism in the Land ofisrae/146-53. 10. Benjamin E. Scolnic Chronology and Papponymy: A List of the Judean High Priests of the Persian Period (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999). II. The complication in the birth order is that Judas is mentioned after Mattathias in 16:2, but this may be because Mattathias is being mentioned here for the first time; cf. Goldstein I Maccabees 524.

Scholarly Views of Mattathias

17

accomplish? What about his initial action of rising up against the persecution of Judaism after the paganization of the Temple? If we agree that Mattathias was an historical figure and that the events in which he was involved are narrated in conventional literary patterns, it would seem that we could find the historical Mattathias by removing the layers of motifs that may have been superimposed onto the historical kernel. But I will insist that just because an ancient text contains legendary or narrative embellishments does not necessarily make it untrustworthy. One can enfold a historical nucleus into the motifs and patterns of the literature of one's time. Mattathias may be aggrandized in !Mace. and omitted in 2Macc. but neither of these biased authors makes Mattathias unhistorical or insignificant. As we shall see, portraying Mattathias as a new Phinehas does not mean that his actions were not real-life ones that can be seen as a parallel to Phinehas. Employment of the fact does not mean that the fact is not historical. This is the thrust of my next chapter.

Chapter Three Mattathias's Act of Rebellion According to !Maccabees 2, the Maccabaean revolution begins with one crucial moment, Mattathias's act of defiance in Modein. When the father of the Hasmonaean dynasty kills the Seleucid official and a Jewish man who is willing to participate in a pagan rite, he attempts to rally those of his people who are still faithful to their God and religion to take history into their own hands. It may have involved the deaths of only two people but it was more than enough to make the point that it was time for action. We cite Green's statement again: The time was ripe for action; and the time duly called forth the man. The spark for insurrection was provided by the action of a priest, Mattathias, of the Hasmonaean family. 1 In other words, something was going to happen; centuries of tradition were not just going to melt into oblivion without some priestly resistance. But this is different from calling ambition the primary motivation for the initial act of rebellion. It means that there were great forces at work and Mattathias was merely an agent of those forces, that if he had not been the instigator, someone else would have been. While our emphasis is on Mattathias, we must remember that he only appears at the beginning of the 2nd chapter of 1Maccabees. In the preceding chapter, we see two laments, one when the Temple is robbed in 169 BCE (1:20-24) and the second when the citadel is occupied in 167 BCE ( 1:29-35). Mattathias 's lament in 2:7-13 is thus the third of this geme in close order. Since Mattathias lived in Jerusalem during the time of the persecution, he becomes an eyewitness to all of these events. The literary effect is cumulative; Mattathias has waited for the people to react during the successive evil acts of the oppressors. Now he has left Jerusalem but there is no escape from the persecution. As in Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, where the Spanish Civil War moves from the plains to the mountains, leaving no refuge from violence, there is no refuge from the Seleucid religious persecution of the Jews, even in Modein. According to 1Maccabees, Mattathias the priest leaves Jerusalem and comes to Modein, not only because of the profanation of the sanctuary but also because of the lack of response by the Jews in Jerusalem:

1. Green Alexander to Actium 517-18.

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Judaism Defined: Mattathias and the Destiny of His People

During that time, Mattathias, son of John son of Simeon, a priest of the clan of Joiarib, left Jerusalem and settled at Modei'n .... Seeing the impieties that were being perpetrated in Judah and in Jerusalem, he exclaimed, "Woe is me! Why was I born to see the ruin of my people and the ruin of the holy city? The people sat idle there as the city fell into the hands of enemies, the sanctuary into the hands of foreigners. Her people acted like a base coward. Her glorious furnishings have gone into captivity. Her babes have been killed in her squares, her young men by the sword of the enemy. What nation has not inherited kingdoms and has not seized her spoils? All her ornaments have been taken away; from a free woman she has become a slave. Behold, our sanctuary, our beauty, our glory has been laid waste, and the gentiles have profaned it. Why should we go on living?" Mattathias and his sons rent their garments and put on sackcloth and were overcome by grief. (lMacc. 2:1-14) The criticism of Jewish inaction could not be more severe. "The people sat idle" as the Temple was sacked. We are reminded of those who sat idly in the Biblical era of Deborah (Judges 5:7) when some of the tribes tarried, lingering in endless discussion, doing nothing while the nation's very existence was in dire straits. Mattathias says, to paraphrase, "What did you expect? Did a nation such as the Seleucid Empire ever conquer a kingdom such as ours and not take the kind of spoils that a Temple treasury provides? Where did you think that your pacifism would take us?" Notice what the text does not say: There is no condemnation of Jewish apostasy, no criticism of Jason or even Menelaus. It is only because the sanctuary is now in the hands of foreigners that it has been desecrated; the pollution of the sacred precincts is not the fault of the Jews. The crisis is not the fault of Jewish "Hellenizers" who were in control of the Temple and its worship. We know that this omission is consistent with the emphasis of !Maccabees in portraying the rebellion as anti-Seleucid and that 2Maccabees presents a very different picture of intense intra-Jewish party conflict.

Mattathias 's Act of Rebellion

21

1Macc. 2 recounts how Seleucid officials involved in the persecution of the Jewish religion come to the town of Modein. Since the townspeople seem to be unwilling to participate in the pagan rite, or because the officials have met this kind of resistance in other towns, they attempt to bribe the priest Mattathias to set an example and "be the first to come forward" and obey the king's command; the townspeople will certainly follow their leader. The king's officials in charge of enforcing apostasy came to the town of Modein to make them sacrifice. Many Israelites came up to meet them, and Mattathias and his sons were brought into the gathering. 2 The king's officials addressed Mattathias as follows, "You are a respected and distinguished leader in this town, supported by sons and kinsmen. Now be the first to come forward and obey the command of the king as all the gentiles have done, as well as the people of Judah and those who have been allowed to remain in Jerusalem. In return, you and your sons will be raised to the rank of the Friends of the King, and you and your sons will be honored by grants of silver and gold and many gifts." (lMacc. 2:15-18) While lMacc. 2:1 states that Mattathias "left Jerusalem and settled at Modein," indicating that he only comes to the town because of the events in Jerusalem, lMacc. 2:17 implies that Mattathias had returned home to be with his kinsmen. One possibility is that the author wants to create a connection between Mattathias and Jerusalem in order to give him a worthy and distinguished priestly heritage, worthy of the progenitor of high priests (Josephus will even make Judas a high priest even though he never served in this role). lfMattathias were just a local priest of the little town of Modein, it would not have served the cause of high priestly legitimacy; how could the sons and descendants of a mere local priest become the high priests? It could be suggested that the proHasmonaean author of I Mace. needs Mattathias to at least implicitly be serving some function at the Temple, to establish the credentials of the family. I shall dwell at length below on the status of the J(eh)oiarib priestly clan and develop a different theory, speculating that Mattathias did indeed have a specific and important priestly role in Jerusalem. The officer's appeal to Mattathias should be seen as bogus; that the Seleucid official, who is not of the rank of Friend of the King, would offer this title is completely impossible. We have a great deal of knowledge about the institution and power of the King's Friends, and since the Seleucid officers themselves had 2. Note that while many townspeople come of their own free will, Mattathias and his family must be forced to come to the gathering.

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Judaism Defined: Mattathias and the Destiny of His People

a status many levels below that of the Friends, this was a totally preposterous offer, as the author of !Maccabees surely knew (cf. lMacc. 10:65, 89; 11:2627).3 Even if he did have this rank, it would not be for him to give it to anyone else; this was a prerogative of the king and the king only. Why then does the author say this? One possibility is that the official actually made this patently false claim in attempting to seduce Mattathias to apostasy. The ancient reader would immediately recognize the Seleucid's duplicity. Another possibility is that the reader would see that Mattathias was worthy of secular honors but like Joseph (whom he will invoke later in the chapter) refuses to be lured by temptation. One considers the fact that Mattathias's son Jonathan later will be offered and will happily and proudly accept the rank of Friend of the King (lMacc. 10:20). 4 Does Mattathias's refusal to be swayed by the flattery make Jonathan's later action look unseemly? The answer would seem to be that we are speaking of completely different situations. 5 Mattathias supposedly is being offered the rank of "Friend of the King" if he will give up his religious beliefs. Jonathan is not only the Friend of the King but also the High Priest of the Judaeans in the Temple in Jerusalem; he does not give up any aspect of his traditional religion in accepting the political honor. Mattathias, given Jonathan's situation, might have done exactly as his son did. Mattathias defiantly and eloquently refuses the bribe, Mattathias replied in a loud voice, "If all the gentiles under the king's rule listen to his order to depart from the religion of their fathers and choose to obey his commands, nevertheless, I and my sons and my kinsmen shall follow the covenant of our fathers. Far be it from us to desert the Torah and the laws. We shall not listen to the words of the king, that we should transgress against our religion to the right or to the left."

3. See Gabriel Herman "The 'Friends of the Early Hellenistic Rulers: Servants or Officials?" Ta/anta 12/13 (1980-81) 103-49. While Goldstein correctly describes the privileges accorded those who held this rank, but does not explain how absurd it would be for an official of the king, who did not even have this rank himself, to make the appeal to Mattathias in this way. 4. Cf. 2 Mace. II :22. 5. What we see here is the same issue that we might discuss concerning Schwartz's conclusions about the authorship of !Maccabees (Seth Schwartz "Israel and the Nations Roundabout: I Maccabees and the Hasmonaean Expansion" JJS 42 (1991) 16-38); it is important to see the contradictions between the actions and beliefs of some of the early and later Maccabees, even as described within this pro-Hasmonaean work.

Mattathias 's Act of Rebellion

23

(1Macc. 2:19-22) Just as Joshua in his farewell speech demands that the Israelites choose between God and the other gods with the statement: "but I and my household will serve the LORD" (Josh. 24: 15), Mattathias claims that he and his family will be true to the Jewish God. Mattathias cannot bear to witness the apostasy of the Jewish man and kills him and a Seleucid official. When he had finished uttering these words, a Jewish man came forward in the sight of all to offer sacrifice upon the altar in Modein in accordance with the king's decree. When Mattathias saw this, he was filled with zeal and trembled with rage and let his anger rise, as was fitting; he ran and slew him upon the altar. At the same time he also killed the king's official in charge of enforcing sacrifices, and he destroyed the altar. He acted zealously for the sake of the Torah, as Phinehas acted against Zimri the son of Salom. (lMacc. 2:23-26) Creating a connection between Mattathias and Phinehas is not just idle rhetoric. To praise Mattathias for an action equal to that of Phinehas is a way to defend Mattathias from criticism for his deadly deed. It is not only modern sensibilities that could be offended by his act; those in Mattathias 's time who could not imagine rebelling against the empire and who were content to be martyrs and wait for God's salvation would have been startled and concerned about the repercussions. The author defends Mattathias by claiming that he did "as was fitting," in accordance with the laws of Deut. 13:7-10 and 17:2-7.6 It is interesting that Mattathias and his sons, despite their obvious rush to get out of town with their lives, destroy the altar where the objectionable rite was to be performed, in a kind of foreshadowing of the purification of the Temple. One thinks about the story in I Kings 23 where Josiah kills the offending party on the altar (23:20) and destroys the altar itself, and in general of Josiah's Deuteronomic reforming zeal. Mattathias is full of such zeal as described by the author who is extremely well versed in Biblical traditions. When the Israelites become involved in a fertility rite with the Moabites and Midianites at Ba'al-Pe'or in Numbers 25, God sends a plague that kills twentyfour thousand of the people. Aaron's grandson Phinehas sees an act that drives him to violence: 6. Goldstein I Maccabees 232 n. 24.

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Judaism Defined: Mattathias and the Destiny of His People

When Phinehas, son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, saw this, he left the assembly and taking a spear in his hand, he followed the Israelite into the chamber and stabbed both of them, the Israelite and the woman, through the belly. Then the plague against the Israelites was checked. It should be noted that, following Milgrom, "the chamber" is the Tabernacle; 7 the couple apparently engage in sexual intercourse at the Holy of Holies as part of their pagan rite, incorporating the Israelite sacred place into their ritual. Phinehas cannot let this happen and kills both of them on the spot. God first displays His approval of Phinehas 's act by stopping the plague that He had sent and then goes further and gives the savior of the cult and his descendants authority over the cult: The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, "Phinehas son of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest, has turned back My wrath 8 from the Israelites by displaying among them his passion for Me, so that I did not wipe out the Israelite people in My passion. Say, therefore, 'I grant him My pact of friendship. It shall be for him and his descendants after him a pact of priesthood for all time, because he took impassioned action for his God, thus making expiation for the Israelites."' The connection between Mattathias and Phinehas also is crucial to this foundation story of the Hasmonaean high priesthood. As Mattathias says to his sons on his deathbed: Phinehas, our ancestor, through his act of zeal received a pact of priesthood for all time. (lMacc. 2:54) Just as Phinehas's zealous act gains the "covenant of peace" and the high priesthood for his descendants, the non-Zadokite Hasmonaean line is given the high priesthood because of Mattathias's zealous act. Obviously, the stories of Phinehas and Mattathias are different. Feldman notices that in drawing parallels to Phinehas, Mattathias does not refer to his ancestor's great rewards: "In neither passage does Mattathias mention the divine reward of a covenant of peace. The

7. Jacob MilgromNumbers (Phil.: JPS, 1990) 476-80. 8. Wrath is an interesting theme in l Maccabees. l :64 states that, "indeed, very great wrath had struck Israel." First, the wrath of Antiochus wreaks havoc on Israel; then the wrath of God is exercised through the wrath of Mattathias on internal and foreign violators of the cult. See David S. Williams The Structure of 1Maccabees (Washington, D.C., CBQ, 1999) 84.

Mattathias 's Act of Rebellion

25

omission may suggest that peace in and of itself is not a goal to be sought. " 9 This fits perfectly with the image of Mattathias as I am portraying him throughout this book, as a zealot who understands the necessity of violence in certain situations. Still, in both the stories of Phinehas in Numbers and Mattathias in 1Maccabees, we have the profanation of the sacred, the ancient Tabernacle and then the altar both in Jerusalem and again in Modein. And in both we have the greatest possible reward for a violent act against desecration of sacred space, the authority of the high priesthood. Mattathias did not only start a revolution but built the foundation of a high priestly line. While, as we have seen, !Maccabees is our only primary source for Mattathias's actions, it is interesting to see what Josephus, whose narratives I have outlined above and described as the first commentaries on 1Maccabees, says about this figure's origins. In Jewish War 1.36, the historian places Mattathias in Jerusalem with his sons and kinsmen, killing Bacchides, the king's general, and then running to the hills. We do not know if this is based on a popular legend in which the Seleucid general did something in particular to warrant this assassination 10 or if Josephus uses the name ofBacchides because of his role in the persecution of the Jews. In Antiquities 12.268, however, Josephus presents the more familiar story that Mattathias, son of Yohanan son of Simeon son of Asamonaios, 11 a native of Jerusalem, had come to Modein because of the state of things in Jerusalem. Before taking any action against the king 's officers led by Apelles, 12 Mattathias has already told his five sons that "it was better for them to die for their country's laws than to live so ingloriously."

9. Louis H. Feldman "The Portrayal of Phinehas by Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Josephus" JQR XCII No. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 318-19. 10. Joseph Sievers The Hasmonaeans and Their Supporters: From Mattathias to the Death ofJohn Hyrcanus I (Atlanta: Scholars Press, t 990) 3 t. t l .It is interesting that the name Asamonaios, from which the term for the dynasty of the Maccabees, the Hasmonaeans, is derived, does not appear here in the list of Mattathias's ancestry, and that the term Hasmonaean never appears in I Maccabees at all. It is possible that Hashmonai is an epithet or additional name for Mattathias "as 'Maccabaeus's was Judas's" (Goldstein I Maccabees 18-19). That is, Josephus realized that he was incorrect in naming Mattathias's father as Hashmonai at BJ I 1.3.36 and corrected himself at AJ 12 6.1.265. 12. Cf. John D. Grainger A Seleukid Prosopography and Gazetteer (Leiden: Brill, 1997) 78 who calls Apelles a strategos. Since I assume that Josephus did not have another source aside from I Maccabees, I also assume that he has made up this name. I do not think that Ape lies is a variation of the Apollonius he mentions in AJ XII.262, because Josephus seems to identity Apollonius the Mysarch with the Apollonius who is the governor of Samaria mentioned in lMacc. 3:10.

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Judaism Defined: Mattathias and the Destiny of His People

To return to our study of 1Mace. 2: The local altar at Modei:n was of no major importance in itself but it afforded Mattathias the opportunity to do something more than the situation in Jerusalem would have allowed. There is a practical consideration here; Mattathias could have slain a Jewish person at the Temple in order to make his point but he would have been killed immediately. By retreating to Modei:n, he places himself in a situation where he can conduct a symbolic assassination and live, moving on to create a rebellion that might, if his plan succeeded, accomplish great things for his people. As Bar-Kochva puts it, "most certainly geographic and accessibility factors contributed to making Modei:n the site of the most serious spontaneous uprising against the authorities, and the cradle of the general revolt." 13 One cannot help but think that Mattathias was strategically sharp: Who would have followed his lead if he martyred himself in Jerusalem? Study of the Maccabees shows us that the Maccabees were almost always practical in their thinking and that martyrdom, unlike the beliefs of many other Jews, was not an optimal strategy. After hundreds of years of submission to the political authorities of the Persians, the Macedonians, the Ptolemies and the Seleucids, Mattathias 's act of rebellion is nothing short of a radical, epoch-making event. The act of killing a Jewish man willing to participate in the pagan rites is certainly a demonstration that Mattathias condemned apostasy in the strongest terms and was willing to risk his life and the lives of his sons to punish Jews who participated in pagan rites. This event was not only a signal to the Seleucids that a rebellion was beginning; it was meant as a signal to the Jews that the time of the fifth kingdom, the Jewish empire was finally at hand.

13. Bar-KochvaJudas Maccabaeus 194.

Chapter Four Mattathias and the Priestly Clan of Jehoiarib Who was Mattathias? Was he a priest, a scion of the prominent priestly clan of J(eh)oiarib? Or was J(eh)oiarib merely a name that through pro-Maccabaean scribal emendation retroactively became the first and most important priestly course? Many scholars maintain that the "ambitious" Maccabees tampered with the priestly lists that we now have in the Bible in order to establish the antiquity and importance of the Hasmonaean family and make the heirs of this nonZadokite and possibly even non-priestly line legitimate candidates for the high priesthood. 1 As a major piece of evidence, scholars state that the present form of the list of priestly families in l Chr. 24 is dateable to the time of Hasmonaean rule. 2 The proponents of this position point out that while the clan of J(eh)oiarib, the ancestors of the Maccabees, occupies the first place in the list of the priestly houses in 1 Chr. 24:7, the clan is mentioned only in the seventeenth place in Neh. 12:6, 19. From such points, scholars can then base a view of the Maccabees as in Eddy's formulation which we will cite here again for convenience: Mattathias and his sons were descendants of a man named Joiarib, or Jehoiarib. In the 51h century his family did not have priestly rank; in the 4th century it did; by the third it was reckoned among the leading clans with priestly status. Such a rise was certainly not unique. In the 51h and the 41h centuries the family of Hakkoz was forbidden a place in the priesthood because its name could not be found among the 1. Variations of these arguments can found, among others, in the following: Joseph Klausner The History of the Hosmonaeans Vol. 3 of The History of the Second Temple 6th ed. (Jerusalem: Achiasaf, 1963) 110, 139 (in Hebrew); Victor Tcherikover Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews (New York: Atheneum, 1970) 492-93; Jonathan A. Goldstein I Maccabees: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary AB 41 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976) 71, 75; Geza Vermes An Introduction to the Complete Dead Sea Scrolls (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999) 130-31; Paolo Sacchi The History of the Second Temple Period JSOTSup 285 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000) 237-38; and Deborah Rooke Zadok's Heirs: The Role and Development of the High Priesthood in Ancient Israel Oxford Theological Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) 255-56, 280-82. 2. Paul Winter "Twenty-Six Priestly Courses" Vetus Testamentum Vol. 6, Fasc. 2 (Apr., 1956) 216.

28

Judaism Defined: Mattathias and the Destiny ofHis People

proper genealogies; but in the 3rd century it was enrolled in seventh place among the twenty-four courses. 3 Mattathias's immediate ancestors, therefore, included aggressive men who wished, like Tobias, or Joseph or Hyrkanos or Jesus-Jason or Onias-Menelaos, to see the fortunes ofthe clan increase. The evidence is that in 167 BCE, the Hasmonaeans were not humble, rural priests, but a family on the rise. They lived in Jerusalem and owned an estate near Mode1n. 4 Following this line of thinking, Weitzman states: "The Maccabees ... and their Hasmonaean descendants always had to struggle to maintain their legitimacy. !Maccabees depicts the Maccabees as Jerusalem priests from the order of Joiarib (!Mace. 2:1), but that might obscure their true origins. Seth Schwartz argues that they really originated as "a group of ambitious 'village strongmen' who exploited the disorder in Jerusalem to establish their influence beyond their country district. ""5 Some disagree with the idea of Hasmonaean interpolations in the priestly lists. 6 For instance, Fairweather and Black state that, "in the division by lot of the sons of Aaron into 24 orders, the first place fell to the sons of Jehoiarib (= Joiarib, or Jehovah will contend). The prestige thus acquired placed them in the front rank of the Jewish nobility." 7 But how does a clan achieve prestige through the luck

3 .See our very different take on the status of the Hakkoz clan below. 4 .Eddy The King is Dead 215. 5. Schwartz "A Note on the Social Type" 309; Steven Weitzman "Plotting Antiochus's Persecution" Journal of Biblical Literature Vol. 123, No.2 (Summer, 2004) 231-32. 6 .Some scholars simply accept the idea of Maccabaean interpolations and then try to deal with them. Goldstein says that the theory that the Hasmonaeans are responsible for the importance of the clan in Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah is irrelevant because the interpolations were scriptural by the time of the author of I Maccabees. Goldstein (/ Maccabees 17 and n. 31 ). I take Goldstein's comment to mean that the author of I Maccabees would have known these Biblical books, assumed their information to be accurate, and therefore would not have kno~n that the books had been tampered with. But then, I would ask, who tampered with these lists, earlier pro-Hasmonaean scribes? If so, the Maccabees were ambitious social climbers, just as their scholarly critics maintain. This is a weak response to the attack on Hasmonaean credentials and not as strong a defense of the accuracy of the biblical texts as we find in the remarks of the scholars Goldstein cites; cf. Jacob Liver Chapters in the History of the Priests and Levites (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1968) 33-52 (in Hebrew); J. M. Grintz "From Zerubbabel to Nehemiah" Zion 31 (1972) 155-56 (in Hebrew). 7. William Fairweather and J. Sutherland Black The First Book of Maccabees (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1897) 73. See, much more recently, Uriel Rappaport who says that the family of Mattathias was prominent because it belonged to

Mattathias and the Priestly Clan ofJehoiarib

29

of the lottery? Dancy, referring to l Chr. 24:7 and Zeitlin (who simply calls Joiarib "an important priestly course 8") states: "The course of the sons of Jehoiarib (Joiarib) was the senior course."9 A "senior course" would seem to mean an older course. This is a positive view, that Jehoiarib is an ancient course and that the Hasmonaeans are not later usurpers. Still, there is an unwarranted assumption here: 'First' in the order of courses means 'first' in prominence or place. Another example of the assumption that order indicates rank is Winter's remark that "the standing and esteem in which particular priestly families were held by their contemporaries changed from time to time; different lists in Ezra and in Nehemiah name the families of priests in varying succession." 10 That is, the order of the priestly courses reflects the various clans' prominence at that time. I will contest the theory that the Hasmonaeans changed the order of the courses in favor of their priestly house of J(eh)oiarib and insist instead that Mattathias and his sons were indeed the descendants of an ancient priestly house. A very strong and helpful article in this regard is that of Schonfeld and Vanderkam who affirm that the Hasmonaeans were Zadokites by refuting the certainty ofthe claim of interpolations. They argue that since we do not have the original forms of these lists, there might or might not have been scribal emendations but that the burden of proof is on those who would insist on interpolations. 11 I would add that on the basis of these uncertain emendations, scholars have gone on to reconstruct early Hasmonaean history. In discussing one important list, Neb. 12, Schofield and Vanderkam make a crucial comment: "Order here seems not to imply rank." While this remark is restricted and they do not seem to develop the notion, they point to the topic I want to discuss here. To anticipate my conclusions: By the time of Mattathias, centuries had passed since the progenitors of the J(eh)oiarib clan were close kinsmen of the high priest. J( eh)oiarib now was one course involved in a lottery system that was utilized every year in order to assure ongoing equality among the priestly

the order of Jehoiarib, which "the first of the priestly orders list in I Chron. 24:7" ("Mattathias" in ABD IV 615). And yet he thinks this may be an interpolation. 8. The First Book of Maccabees trans. by Sidney Tedesche, introduction and commentary by Solomon Zeitlin (New York: Harper, and Brothers, 1950) 79. 9. Dancy I Maccabees 84. I 0. Paul Winter "Twenty-Six Priestly Courses" 17. 11. Alison Schofield and James C. Vanderkam "Were the Hasmonaeans Zadokites?"Journal ofBiblical Literature Vol. 124, No. I (Spring, 2005) 73-87.

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Judaism Defined: Mattathias and the Destiny ojHis People

houses. To say that a later, pro-Hasmonaean hand interpolated the name "J(eh)oiarib" to become the first course, when all courses were equal, is a scholarly assumption that ignores the very nature of the system of rotating priestly courses in ancient Judaea. I will argue that since the fact that the courses were chosen by lot demonstrates that all priestly houses were equal, at least for the purpose of scheduling the clans' duties in the Temple, then even if J(eh)oiarib were considered an important priestly house, when a lot was cast, the clan still could come at any point in the order. A lot was cast every year; any list of the priestly clans is just a snapshot of the order for that particular year. I will then go on to speculate that Mattathias may have been a rosh rna 'amad who was stationed in Jerusalem who went home to Modein because of the events in Jerusalem. Mattathias was a Zadokite priest of the clan of J(eh)oiarib.

The Origin of Priestly Courses Before we study the priestly courses of the Second Temple period, we need background about other ancient priestly orders from neighboring cultures. The idea of a priestly watch (in Egyptian, sa, in Greek, phyle) is known from the Old Kingdom in Egypt where each of the four shifts bore the responsibility for one month out of four for a total of three months a year. We have a staff list of the mortuary temple of Senwosret III from the 1800's BCE where there are nine permanent administrative officials and the rest of the priests are divided into four groups. In the Ptolemaic period, the era of interest here, there were five phyles. The rotation involved in corvt!e labor seems to have been the basis for the revolving service of the priests. 12 Though the Egyptian priesthood had started out simply, with relatively few temples, in the later dynasties the temples expanded into the hundreds. With such growth, a large bureaucracy was needed to keep the temples in good standing; and thenceforth, the small priesthoods of the Egyptians grew from an estimated hundred priests into the thousands, and with it came a priestly hierarchy. Though ancient Egypt was obviously a formally religious culture, there was no separate priestly class until the New Kingdom. An individual in the Old or Middle Kingdom who was employed in the state administration could serve as a priest for several months of the year and return to normal secular tasks. The 12. Jacob M. Myers I Chronicles AB 12 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965) 167; Hermann Kees Das Priestertum im iigyptischen Staat (Leiden: Brill, 1953) 300-8; idem "Die Phylen und ihre Vorsteher in Dienst der Tempel und Toten Stiftungen" Orientalia 17 (1948) 71-90, 314-25; J. Cerny Ancient Egyptian Religion (London: Hutchinson's University Library, 1952) 117.

Mattathias and the Priestly Clan ofJehoiarib

31

complex system of rotating phyles required administrators and servitors. From the 22"d dynasty on, part-time priests assisted the full-time servants of the gods. Temples were staffed mainly by "hour-priests" who served set shifts within a period of service that was usually one month out of four. Permanent priests were fewer in number but controlled the central operations of the temple. While the full-time priests lived close to or within the temple precincts, the part-time priests lived in their own homes away from the temple. Priests of both types were paid through land allotments from the temple estates and by rations of the daily food offerings reverted from dedication to the gods. 13 During the New Kingdom, which is the source of most of our information about the priesthood, the priests served in four phyles, each working for one month in three. For eight months, priests were part of the ongoing life of the society and carried on their normal profession or business, whether political, administrative or commercial, and then came into the temple.

The Orders of the Priestly Courses In Judaea, the twenty-four courses of priests conducted the daily worship in the Temple sanctuary. As each priestly order was called upon to officiate in the Temple twice a year for a turn of one week, the number of orders required by the lunar calendar was twenty-four. The courses changed on the Sabbath. During the Second Temple period, the twenty-four priestly divisions served in the temple at Jerusalem in a rotation system. It is important to see that, as in Egypt, the rotation of priests is a result of growing numbers of priests and also of the very nature of a system of priesthood that is not a full time, yearlong occupation. The priests themselves lived not only in Jerusalem but also in other settlements in the land of Israel. 1 Chronicles traces the origins of these divisions back to the time of David and Solomon when the large numbers of priests required divisions: David, Zadok of the sons of Eleazar, and Ahimelech of the sons of lthamar divided them into offices by their tasks. The sons Eleazar turned out to be more numerous by male heads than the sons of lthamar, so they divided the sons of Eleazar into sixteen chiefs of clans and the sons of lthamar into eight clans. They divided them by lot, both on an equal footing, since they were all sanctuary officers and officers of God-the sons of Eleazar and the sons of Ithamar ...

13 Richard H. Wilkinson The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2000) 90-1.

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Judaism Defined: Mattathias and the Destiny ofHis People

one clan more taken for Eleazar for each one taken of lthamar ... The first lot fell on Jehoiarib; the second on Jedaiah .... (I Chr. 24:3-5, 7) The evidence from Ezra 2:36-39 and 10:18-22, however, where only four families of those who returned from the Babylonian exile in Zerubbabel 's time were able to establish their claim to the priesthood, gives us confidence that I Chronicles is anachronistic and that this division into twenty-four courses is a Second Temple phenomenon. The priests: the sons of Jedaiah: the house of Jeshua-973; the sons oflmmer-1,052; the sons ofPashhur-1,247; the sons ofHarim1.017.14 Ezra 2:36-39 One is struck by the numbers involved. Many of the lay clans listed in Ezra 2 have far fewer people that the priestly clans. In fact, the priestly clans have more people than two-thirds of the lay clans, more than the people of a number of towns such as Bethlehem, Ramah, Nebo, and Bethel. Together, the priestly clans number a tenth of the total. The implication for the future generations is that these large priestly houses will be unwieldy when determining actual ritual service to the Temple and will need to be divided into more manageable units.

14. Later in the same list, we are given the names of priests who were disqualified: Of the sons of the priests, the sons of Habaiah, the sons of Hakkoz, the sons of Barzillai who had married a daughter of Barzillai and had taken his name-these searched for their genealogical records, but they could not be found, so they were disqualified for the priesthood. The Tirshatha ordered them not to eat of the most holy things until a priest with Urim and Thummim could appear. (Ezra 2:61-63) Notice that the priestly status of these houses is not denied; they are temporarily disqualified because of lack of adequate genealogical records and in lieu of a priest who could consult the oracles. The name Hakkoz jumps out of the passage because we know that this clan will be given full rights in the priesthood at a later point in time. Did the reemergence of Hakkoz mean that the community did find a priest who could consult the Urim and the Thummim? Or did a later generation simply accept the clan of Hakkoz as priests with full rights? Clearly, Meremoth son of Uriah son of Hakkoz was already an important priestly figure in the time of Ezra for the latter turned over the Temple vessels he brought back from Babylon to Meremoth (Ezra 8:33) and he may very well have been the son of Uriel the descendant of Hakkoz mentioned in Neb. 3:4, 21. It is possible that Avigad is right in suggesting that the Uriah found on a stamp seal impression is this Uriah; N. Avigad "A New Class of Yehud Stamps" /EJ 7 (1957) 146-53. This is opposed to Eddy's conclusion as cited above. I do not believe that the clan of Hakkoz rose from non-prie~tly to priestly rank; instead, the family was restored to its proper place after a period of doubt.

Mattathias and the Priestly Clan ofJehoiarib

33

Are these numbers reasonable? Yes. Williamson points out that the priests would have had the most to gain from a return to Judea, namely their livelihoods, from a restored Temple cult. 15 Josephus reports that Hecataeus of Abdera 16 (4th-3rd century BCE) stated that, "the total number of Jewish priests who receive a tithe of the revenue and administer public affairs is about fifteen hundred" (Contra Apionem I, 188). 17 Later in the same work, Josephus himself says that there were 20,000 priests in his time (1st century CE): For, although there are four priestly tribes, each comprising upwards of five thousand members, these officiate by rotation for a fixed period of days; when the term of one party ends, others come to offer the sacrifices in their place, and assembling at mid-day in the temple, take over from the outgoing ministers the keys of the building and al its vessels, duly numbered. Contra Apionem II, 108 We are surprised to see that Josephus refers to four priestly clans, as in the days of the return from Babylonia (Ezra 2:36=Neh. 7:39), rather than the twenty-four courses of later times, as he does in his other works and pointedly at the very beginning of The Life where he says: Not only, however, were my ancestors priests, but they belonged to the first of the twenty-four courses-a peculiar distinction-and to the most eminent of its constituent clans. The Life 2 Why doesn't Josephus speak of the twenty-four clans in Contra Apionem? Schurer-Vermes 18 thinks that four is a scribal mistake for twenty-four; if so, twenty-four times five thousand would give us the figure 120,000, an obviously highly exaggerated number of priests. 19 It is also possible that, more intriguingly, Josephus was working from the idea, which I assume to be correct, that the twenty-four courses all had their roots in the original four priestly ''tribes," as opposed to the later divisions which gradually developed through 15. H.G.M. Williamson Ezra, Nehemiah Word Biblical Commentary 16 (Nashville: Nelson, 1985) 34. 16. Who may actually have been pseudo-Hecataeus. 17. One wonders if an implication of this statement is that there were still others of priestly descent who did not receive money or function in a priestly role, that is, who may have, for whatever reasons, fallen or been pushed away from their role, again indicating the fluidity of priestly descent. 18. Emil Schilrer A History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ Vol. 2 (175 B.C. -A.D. 135) ed. and rev. by G. Vermes, F. Millar et al (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1973) 247. 19. Schwartz Imperialism and Jewish Society 95.

34

Judaism Defined: Mattathias and the Destiny of His People

normal growth and genealogical diffusion. I wonder if Josephus is not being intentionally anachronistic, what we might call traditionalist at this point in referring back to the four original Biblical clans. We must consider the context of this passage in Contra Apionem, a work that has as one of its themes the demonstration of Jewish antiquity. 20 If the Egyptians and Babylonians bestowed care on their ancient records, the Jewish people kept their records with "even greater . . . care . . . with scrupulous accuracy. " 21 In particular, priestly genealogies were of special importance: ... they took precautions to ensure that the priests' lineage should be kept unadulterated and pure 22 •••• But the most convincing proof of our accuracy in this matter is that our records contain the named of our high priests, with the succession from father to son for the last two thousand years. Contra Apionem I, 30-36 The succession of high priests has come down from the most remote antiquity. I would suggest that since, as we have seen, the Egyptian priesthood had four courses, Josephus was anxious to show that the Jews also had four authentic, verifiably pure priestly courses. Perhaps there is even the implication that the basis for the four Egyptian courses was the Israelite system. Twenty-four courses, on the other hand, would reflect change, dilution and disparateness, and Josephus did not want to allow for such inferences. Also at stake, of course, is, as we just saw in the citation from his Life, Josephus's own pure, priestly ancestry, about which he was very proud (Contra Apionem I, 54). To explain Josephus's remark that his ancestors were members of the most important course, I suggest that it was just one rotating clan but that after the time of Jonathan and Simon, it became, quite naturally, the priestly clan, as it was now the clan of the high priests. That is, the high priests were no longer Zadokites-Jedaites but J(eh)oiaribites. By the time of Josephus, two centuries later, they were indeed the pre-eminent clan. If we learn that J(eh)oiarib was an important figure/clan in the 51h century, and that his clan was already prominent at that time, we will undermine the foundation of the scholarly theory that the Hasmonaeans played with priestly lists and artificially created a history of significance for themselves in order to obscure the fact of their relatively lowly beginnings. If, however, we learn that Jehoiarib was a name interpolated into an early list, then the scholarly theory, 20. Steve Mason "Josephus" in Encyclopedia ofJudaism. 21. Josephus The Life, Contra Apionem trans. by H. St. J. Thackeray Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004) 22. As in Lev. 21:7 ff., so Thackeray Contra Apionem 175.

Mattathias and the Priestly Clan ofJehoiarib

35

one of the foundations of the "ambitious Maccabees" theory, would be substantiated.

The Lists of Priestly Courses As we have seen, the key Biblical text concerning the priestly courses of the Second Temple period is 1 Chr. 24:7-18. Of the various priestly lists, this is the only one that describes itself as an order of the clans. Yet Neb. 1:12-21 also should be considered a list of priestly courses; it lists the names of twenty-two "heads of fathers' houses" among the priests in the time of the high priest Joiakim, successor to Jeshua: In the time of Joiakim, the heads of the priestly clans were: Meriaiah-of the Seraiah clan; Hananiah-of the Jeremiah clan; Meshullam-of the Ezra clan; Jehohanan-of the Amariah clan; Jonathan-of the Melicu clan; Joseph -of the Shebaniah clan; Adna-of the Harim clan; Helkai-of the Meraioth clan; Zechariahof the Iddo clan; Meshullam-of the Ginnethon clan; Zichri-of the Abijah clan; .... of the Miniamin clan; Piltai-of the Moadiah clan; Shammua-of the Bilgah clan; Jehonathan-of the Shemaiah clari; Mattenai-of the Joiarib clan; Uzzi-of the Jedaiah clan; Kallai-of the Sallai clan; Eber-of the Amok clan; Hashabiah-of the Hilkiah clan; Nethanel-ofthe Jedaiah clan. An important question concerns why there would be two references to the Jedaiah clan. There would not be two heads of one priestly clan. The answer would seem to be that the Jedaiah clan is so big that it has split into two in this generation and now has two priestly courses. Thus Neb. 12 must be a list of the priestly rotation. Otherwise, the list maker would not need two references to one clan or the two would at least be listed one after the other. In addition, why list the heads of these houses at all, why even construct the list, except to present the order of the rotation? What is the order here based on? If the interpolation theory is right, why was this not changed as the list in 1 Chr. 24 supposedly was? And if order implies rank, why is Jedaiah, the clan of the high priests, found towards the end of the list? We would suggest, instead, that the order found in Neb. 12 is that of the priestly courses in one year of the high priest Jehoiakim. The lottery puts Joiarib and the non-high priests of Jedaiah where it does, which happens to be sixteenth out of twenty-one. It does not mean that the clan was lower, only to be made higher by a pro-Maccabaean interpolator who changed I Chr. 24 to place Joiarib first. The

Judaism Defined: Mattathias and the Destiny of His People

36

list was what it was because the lottery played out this way. It is a snapshot not of the entire time of Joiakim but of one year in that era. It may be that Josephus, in AJ VII xiv 7, basing his account on 1 Chr. 24, thinks, based on the later system of permanent priestly courses, that the lottery was only done once and forever. But that goes against the sense of the biblical passages that indicate an ongoing lottery. I am suggesting that the lottery system existed for centuries until it became fixed, perhaps, indeed, in Hasmonaean times.

We can learn about the nature of this kind of lottery from the chapter after I Chr. 24, where the Levite musicians from the houses of Asaph, Jeduthun and Heman, numbering two hundred and eighty-eight, are set in relays for service, younger equal to the older, master equal to the disciple: They cast lots for shifts on the principle of "small and great alike, like master like apprentice." (1 Chr. 25:8) 23 The idea of a lottery of "equal footing" militates against those modem scholars who think that one course takes priority over another.

Joiarib/Jehoiarib in Biblical Texts There are two references to the clan of Joiarib in 1Maccabees: During that time, Mattathias, son of John son of Simeon, a priest of the clan of Joiarib, left Jerusalem and settled at Modein. 1Macc. 2:1 Later in the book, in a decree, a dynastic document honoring Simon, we find: Whereas: at a time when our land was repeatedly afflicted by wars, Simon son of Mattathias of the clan of Joiarib and his brothers exposed themselves to danger and resisted their nation's foes, in order that their sanctuary might survive ... 1Macc. 14:29 We should notice that these references to the clan are casual and made without comment or embellishment, without saying that this was an ancient or senior or important clan. Joiarib is mentioned only when Mattathias and Simon are being introduced either to the reader of l Maccabees or to the audience for the historical document about Simon.

23. For the Levites, see I Chr. 9:25, 2 Chr. 23:4,8 Mishnah Ta 'anith iv 2; Josephus AJ

vii.l4.7.

Mattathias and the Priestly Clan ofJehoiarib

37

We now will list the key Biblical references to Jehoiarib in canonical order without any comment: 1. Ezra 10:18- "Jeshua son of Jozadak and his brothers Maaseiah, Eliezer, Jarib and Gedaliah."

2. Neb. 11:10 -11- "Of the priests: Jedaiah son of Joiarib, Jachin, Seraiah son of Hilkiah son of Meshullam son of Zadok son of Meriaoth son of Ahitub, chief officer of the House of God ... " 3. Neb. 12:1-7- "These are the priests and the Levites who came up with Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel and Jeshua: Seraiah, Jeremiah, Ezra, Joiarib, Jedaiah, Sallu, Amok, Hilkiah, Jedaiah. These were the heads of the priests and their brothers in the time of Jeshua." 4. Neb. 12:19-21 - "Mattenai-of the Joiarib clan; Uzzi-of the Jedaiah clan; Kallai-of the Sallai clan; Eber-of the Amok clan; Hashabiah-of the Hilkiah clan; Nethanel-ofthe Jedaiah clan." 5. 1 Chr. 9:10- "Of the priests: Jedaiah, Jehoiarib, Jachin, and Azariah son of Hilkiah son of Meshullam son of Zadok son of Meraioth son of Ahitub, chief officer of the House of God." 6.

1 Chr. 24:7- "The first lot fell on Jehoiarib; the second on Jedaiah."

If we only had these lists, and were unable to appeal to context or scholarly interpretation, we would surmise the following: Joiarib, a descendant of Eleazar and Zadok who lived in the 51h century BCE, was the brother of one high priest and the uncle of the next one. The Joiarib clan (Neb. 12:19-21) was named for Joiarib who was the son of Jozadak (Ezra 10:18), brother of Jeshua (Ezra 10:18) and father of Jedaiah (Neb. 11:1 0) and who came from Babylon to Judea in either the fifth (Neb. 12:1-7) or the fourth (Ezra 10, 1 Chr. 9:10) century BCE We will now briefly examine these passages in a slightly different order. As we proceed, I will emphasize the name of Jedaiah in his (its) relationship with the name J(eh)oiarib, as these names are crucial to our discussion. 1. Ezra 10: 18 lists the priests who married foreign women: Jeshua son of Jozadak and his brothers Maaseiah, Eliezer, Jarib and Gedaliah.

Jarib as brother of the high priest Jeshua is interesting. Since the passage lists the priests of the other three priestly families mentioned in Ezra 2, Immer, Harim and Pashhur, all four clans are listed in Ezra 10 as well. If we seek to understand how the priestly families developed, we can see the clan of Jehoiarib/Jarib stemming from the younger brother of the high priest.

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Judaism Defined: Mattathias and the Destiny ojHis People

2. The next important passage about priestly houses in post-Exilic times, Neh. 12:1-7, reports the priests who according to that record had accompanied Zerubbabel and Joshua when they returned from Babylonia to Jerusalem. 12:2 lists Joiarib and Jedaiah next to each other in this list: These are the priests and the Levites who came up with Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel and Jeshua: Seraiah, Jeremiah, Ezra, Joiarib, Jedaiah, Sallu, Amok, Hilkiah, Jedaiah. These were the heads of the priests and their brothers in the time of Jeshua. Whether or not we take the double reference to Jedaiah as an error, we have Joiarib in relationship with both Jeshua the high priest and Jedaiah, head of an original priestly clan in the Second Temple period. 3. Neh. 12:12-21 lists the names of twenty-two 'heads of fathers' houses among the priests in the time of the high priest Jehoiakim, successor to Jeshua. 12:1921 are of particular interest here: Mattenai-of the Joiarib clan; Uzzi-of the Jedaiah clan; Kallai-of the Sallai clan; Eber-of the Amok clan; Hashabiah-of the Hilkiah clan; Nethanel-ofthe Jedaiah clan. Notice that again in this generation the names of the Joiarib and Jedaiah clans are in close proximity. Another question concerns why there would be two references to the Jedaiah clan. The answer would seem to be that the Jedaiah clan is splitting into two houses in this generation. 4. 1 Chr. 9:10-13 is a list of returnees from Babylon. Of the priests: Jedaiah, Jehoiraib, Jachin, and Azariah son of Hilkiah son of Meshullam son of Zadok son of Meraioth son of Ahitub, chief officer of the House of God. . . . The first lot fell on Jehoiarib, the second on Jedaiah. Again we have Jehoiarib and Jedaiah in close proximity. One looks at this text and sees that the first three names, Jedaiah, Jehoiarib, and Jachin are not placed in any relationship to each other. We do not know how these three names relate to the second part of the passage, which links Azariah to Ahitub, the chief officer of the House of God, by a lineage of five generations. I Chr. 9:10-13 records three priests, Jedaiah, Adaiah of Pashhur and Maasai of Immer, leaving Harim as the only one of the four families mentioned in Ezra 2:37-38=Neh. 7:40-41; Ezra 10:20, 22, etc. that is missing. Japhet suggests that if 1198 priests are mentioned in Neh. ll but there are 1760 in Chronicles,

Mattathias and the Priestly Clan ofJehoiarib

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perhaps it is because Harim either fell out of the list or lost its priestly status. 24 If it is the latter, that is interesting because it shows tremendous flux in and out of priestly status. One wonders: Why would this have happened? How could this have happened? It is interesting that Pashhur is found in Ezra 2:38-Neh. 7:41 but missing from 1 Chr. 24. Does this mean that this, the largest priestly house which numbered 1,247 in the earlier list, died out, or were they disqualified (they are mentioned in a negative light in Ezra 10:22 in the passage about marriages to foreign women), so that its descendants were no longer functioning as priests at a later date? Perhaps this is simply another example of real-life fluidity and the descendants of Pashhur are to be found in some of the priestly clans that are named in the later period. The name appears in 1 Chr. 9:12 and Pashhur ben Immer is mentioned in Jer. 20:1-6. 5. Neb. 11:10 states "Of the priests: Jedaiah son of Joiarib, Jachin," which now gives us a relationship between two of our three names (though not with the third). The scholarly tendency is to accept Neb. 11 as the better, less corrupt text. Since Neb. 11: 11 has Seraiah instead of Azariah, Rudolph emends Jachin to ben "son of' and includes both Azariah and Seraiah as two successive names as in Ezra 7:1-5 and 1 Chr. 5, from which we can construct the following lists: Aaron Eleazar Phinehas Abishua Bukki Uzzi Zerahiah Meraioth Azariah Amariah Ahitub Zadok Shallurn Hilkiah Azariah Seraiah Ezra

Aaron Eleazar Phinehas Abishua Bukki Uzzi Zerahiah Meraioth Azariah Amariah Ahitub Zadok Shallum Hilkiah Azariah Seraiah Jehozadak

24. Sara Japhet I and II Chronicles (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster/John Knox, 1993) 211.

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Our interest is in those who followed the priests in these lists: Jedaiah, son of Joiarib, son ofSeraiah, son of Azariah, son ofHilkiah, son ofMeshullam, son of Zadok, son ofMeriaoth, son of Ahitub. So now we have Seraiah as the father of Ezra in Ezra 7, as the father of Jehozadak/Jozadak in 1 Chr. 5, and as the father of Joiarib in 1 Chr. 9. Jeshua is the son of Jozadak (Ezra 10) and Jedaiah is the son of Joiarib, so Joiarib is the brother of one high priest and the uncle of the next one. 6. We now return to our most important list, 1 Chr. 24: They divided them by lot, both on an equal footing, since they were all sanctuary officers and officers of God-the sons of Eleazar and the sons of lthamar ... one clan more taken for Eleazar for each one taken of Ithamar. 25 The first lot fell on Jehoiarib; the second on Jedaiah." Should we understand this statement to mean that there were two lots from Eleazar for every one from lthamar? It cannot be a coincidence that the older son Eleazar, with the rights of the firstborn, has two-thirds to the one-third of the younger son Ithamar (cf. Deut. 21: 17). The difference between the priestly descendants of Eleazar and Ithamar was that the former held the high priesthood and had twice as many courses. If so, that means sixteen from Eleazar and eight from Ithamar. How exactly were they picked? Was it two from Eleazar and then one from Ithamar, as Rudolph would have it? 26 This scheme would explain Jehoiarib and Jedaiah as the first and second lots. Alternatively, as Klein would have it, one clan was selected from Eleazar and lthamar until lthamar 's clans were exhausted and then the last eight of Eleazar were chosen consecutively. 27 If this were the case, as Curtis states, then the second, fourth, sixth, eighth, tenth, twelfth, fourteenth and sixteenth clans were from Ithamar, namely Jedaiah, Seorim, Minjamin, Abijah, Shecaniah, Jakim and Immer. Yet this would not seem to be the case since Jedaiah clearly is from Eleazar. The difference between the priestly descendants of Eleazar and Ithamar was that the former held the high priesthood and had twice as many courses. Still, there seems to be nothing unequal about these courses. The very idea of a lottery assumes equality.

25. We see a Daniel of the descendants oflthamar in the return with Ezra (Ezra 8:2). 26. See Wilhelm Rudolph Chronikbiicher HAT (Tubingen: JCB Mohr, 1955) 160 and Ralph W. Klein I Chronicles (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2006) 460. 27. Eleazar 1,3,5,7,9,11,13,15, 17-24; Ithamar 2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16. So Klein I Chronicles 467.

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What all of these details tell us is that if we assume that the high-priestly genealogy was factual, then the clan of J(eh)oiarib was of great importance from the beginning of the return in the Slh century BCE. A theory of interpolation would need to say that not just one list of priestly courses was tampered with but all of these priestly lists. Considering the importance of the high priestly line and the fame attached to the holders of this office, it is difficult to think that all of these lists were tampered with. If the Hasmonaeans had interpolated, they would not have bothered to elevate the clan of Joiarib over the other twenty-three courses, which would have been impossible anyway, but instead would have tried to establish high priestly credentials for their ancestors. An even stronger argument is that if there were interpolations, the relationships would have been made clearer. It would not have taken great biblical scholars many centuries later to tease out these relationships between J(eh)oiarib and the high priestly line.

Rabbinic Texts and Mattathias Priesthoods are by their very nature conservative. Biblical texts refer to a priesthood that had been entrenched for many centuries. It is at least theoretically possible that rabbinic materials, even those written after the Second Temple was destroyed, could yield information about the practices of that temple when it existed. There is an important rabbinic tradition about the account of the origin and organization of the priestly courses of service: Four courses of service came back from the exile, viz. Jedaiah, Harim, Pashhur, and Immer .... Then the prophets that were among them arose and made twenty-four lots and put them into an urn. And Jedaiah came and drew five lots, which, including himself, would therefore make six. And Harim came and drew five lots, which including himself, would therefore make six .... And heads of the courses of service were appointed. And the courses were divided into houses. And there were courses sonsisting of five, six, seven, eight or nine houses. In a course consisting of five houses, three of them had to serve one day each, while the remaining two had to serve two days each; in a course consisting of six houses, five of them had to serve one day each, while one had to serve two days .... 28 28. Jerusalem Ta "anith iv:68 trans. and abridged by Emil Schurer A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ Second Division vol. I trans. by Sophia Taylor

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According to M. Ta'anith IV:l-4, the priests were divided into twenty-four courses of service each of which had to take its tum in coming before God, every day for a week, in representing the people while the daily sacrifice was being made to God. These divisions were called ma 'amadot or stations, but the entire division was not required to go up to Jerusalem when its tum came. 29 The early Prophets 30 established twenty-four Divisions and for every Division there was a section in Jerusalem of priests, ofLevites, and of Israelites. When the time came for a division to go up, the priests and Levites thereofwent up to Jerusalem, while the Israelites of that same Division assembled in their own towns and read the Chapter on the Creation. M. Ta 'anith IV:2 A priest such as Mattathias would have a role in the Temple in Jerusalem at certain points in a given year and live in his hometown ofModei"n the rest ofthe year. Bikkurim II1:6 assumes that there were station-districts or circles marked off by different boundaries and having some leading town as the centre of each. A priest was needed to assign the various roles of the different priests of the clan who came to Jerusalem for their duties; he was called rosh ma 'amad, "head of the station." In Tamid v 6, we see that the rosh ma 'amad was regularly present in the capital. Mattathias may have been rosh ma 'amad, the head of his priestly clan, who stayed in Jerusalem for most or all of the year as the administrator. This would explain his presence in Jerusalem and Modei"n. It would also explain his standing in the town of Modei"n. Mattathias was stationed in Jerusalem and then left because of the events in Jerusalem. We can thus understand the Jerusalem/Modei"n problem that has confused scholars. The pertinent evidence is from !Mace. and Josephus: During that time, Mattathias ... a priest of the clan of Joiarib, left Jerusalem and settled at Modei"n. ( 1Mace. 2:1)

and Peter Christie (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994) 216-7; cf. Tosefta Ta 'anith ii; BT 'Arachin l2b. 29. In M. Sukkah V:6-8, all of the courses were involved in special holiday rites in which they all took turns determined by lot. 30. That is, Samuel and David, reflecting the tdeology of Chronicles.

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At that same time there was a man living in the village of Modai in Judaea, named Mattathias . . . the son of Asamonaios, priest of the course of Joiarib and a native of Jerusalem. (AJ XII vi.l.265) Goldstein thinks that Josephus is trying to elevate Mattathias to being a Jerusalemite rather than merely a man from "obscure Modein;"31 lMacc. also has Mattathias living in Jerusalem. Sievers is closer in saying that as a priest Mattathias would have served in Jerusalem several times a year; 32 the texts, however, do not imply that he was there for short stays. Tedesche thinks that he was a Jerusalemite who flees to Modein; the texts, however, have the king 's official in lMacc. 2 speaking of Mattathias's roots in the town. He wants Mattathias to lead the sacrifice and thus confirms Mattathias 's status through his attempted bribery. The king's officials addressed Mattathias as follows, "You are a respected and distinguished leader in this town, supported by sons and kinsmen. Now be the first to come forward and obey the command of the king as all the gentiles have done, as well as the people of Judah and those who have been allowed to remain in Jerusalem. In return, you and your sons will be raised to the rank of the Friends of the King, and you and your sons will be honored by grants of silver and gold and many gifts." (2:15-18) This passage makes it clear that Mattathias has not recently fled to the town for the first time. Our solution would have Mattathias as a priest from Modein who lives in Jerusalem in his position as rosh ma 'amad and who then goes home when the Temple is controlled by those whom he finds religiously objectionable and who may have deprived him of his position and duties. Mattathias, as an official of the Temple, may have been outraged not only that the king 's official ordered a pagan sacrifice at Modein, but also that it was a sacrifice that was not being made at the Temple.

Conclusion J(eh)oiarib was an ancient and well-known course of priests, once close to the high priestly lineage. By the time of Mattathias, centuries had passed since its members were close kinsmen of the high priest. Now it was no more important than any other priestly course in terms of rank or the duties it performed in the 31. Goldstein I Maccabees 231. 32. Sievers The Hasmonaeans and Their Supporters 27.

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Temple. The lottery system was used every year; otherwise, if the order were permanent, it would render the idea of equality moot. Saying that the name J( eh)oiarib was interpolated in 1 Chr. 24 to become the first course, when all courses were equal, ignored that it only happened to be first in certain lists. Mattathias may have been a rosh ma 'amad, the administrative head of his clan; this is a possible solution to the problem of whether Mattathias lived in Jerusalem or Modein. The clan of J(eh)oiarib was an ancient Zadok.ite clan that had existed for centuries by Mattathias's time. The name was not interpolated or moved in 1 Chr. 24. Scholars of the Hasmonaeans who have sought to attack that family's pedigree on this basis have built their case on a foundation that is shaky at best. 33

33. These scholars who attempt to destroy the antiquity and prestige of the Jehoiarib clan are, in a sense, preceded by rabbinic traditions that attack the clan of Jehoiarib with derogatory remarks; Goldstein I Maccabees 20-21; Saul Lieberman Tosefta Ki-Fshutah (New York, 1954-55) part v 1076-77, 1115 (in Hebrew). The course of Joiarib was the one that was officiating on the day on which the temple was destroyed (BT Ta'anith 29a). While Yehoyarib means "the LORD contends (with them in their efforts)," the word could also mean, grammatically speaking, that "the LORD contends (against them)," as it does in Isa. 49:25; Jer. 18:19; Hosea 10:6; and Ps. 35:1. Of course, no person or clan would be given such a negative name, and so the following rabbinic passage is obviously polemical: Said R. Levi, "Yehoyarib--the man; Meron-the town; Resisters-He delivered the house over to the enemies." Said R. Berekhyah, "The Lord contended with His children because they rebelled and resisted Him. Yeda'yah, Profound, Sepphoris-the Lord knew the profound plot in their hearts and exiled them to Sepphoris." TY. Ta 'anith 4:2, 68a. After listing the books of the Bible, Origen adds that, "outside these there is the Maccabaean History, which bears the title 'Sarbethsabanaiel"', probably "Book of the Dynasty of God's Resisters" (Eusebius Historia ecclesiastica vi 25.1-2).There seems to have been a complicated history in which the opponents of the Hasmonaeans claimed that the ancient clan name of Yehoyarib described those who resisted God's will while their proponents claimed that they were resisters or contenders for God (Goldstein I Maccabees 15-21 ). Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the two occasions when Jehoiarib is mentioned in !Maccabees are when Mattathias resists Antiochus IV's persecution in order to follow God's will and when in honoring Simon a decree celebrates the strong resistance of the clan against the foes of the people.

Chapter Five Mattathias and the Ambitions of the Maccabees Modem scholarship, led by such major figures as Bickerman, Gruen and Cohen, has provided a necessary corrective to the traditional Jewish view that the Maccabees were anti-Hellenists. In the process, the emphasis has been on the Judeans' knowledge of Greek culture. My concern is that in studying the popular topic of the effects of Hellenism Jews and Judaism, scholarship sometimes has neglected the more obvious topic of the education that Jews received about Judaism and in particular the Bible. My goal here is modest, to provide a reminder that Mattathias and his sons and followers believed in their Scriptures and knew the passages and themes that we will review here. If they knew these passages and believed in one stream of political ideology that can be found in them, a crisis could have provoked them to serious action. In this chapter, I will attempt to establish that Mattathias and his sons were inspired not just by personal ambition, economic need or social antagonism but first by the urgent needs of a persecuted people that in its primary literature had dreamed of a great destiny. Collins states that, "there was considerable curricular variety in the gymnasia of the Near East. Second Maccabees does not complain that people were reading Homer instead of the Torah, only that they were obsessed with the novelty of Greek athletics." 1 Doran attempts to reconstruct the curriculum for the education of a young man in Jerusalem in the Hellenistic period. He concludes that both Greek and Jewish subjects were taught and that there may not have been a clear line separating the two. While Doran admits that his discussion is speculative, it is quite intriguing, for he sketches a curriculum that includes for example, the works of Ezekiel the Tragedian. 2 The audience of these plays and tragedies must have known their Bibles. My point is, again, very simple: If Diaspora Jews, a minority living in a different culture and land, knew their Bible, how much the more so did Mattathias the priest who lived in Jerusalem and Modei"n? What was the education of Mattathias? First, what do we know about schools in ancient Israel/Judah/Judaea? There do not seem to have been schools in early

I. John J. Collins "Cult and Culture: The Limits of Hellenization in Judea" in Hellenism in the Land of Israel ed. by John J. Collins and Gregory E. Sterling (Notre

Dame: University ofNotre Dame Press, 2001) 46. 2. Robert Doran "The High Cost of a Good Education" in Hellenism in the Land of Israel 94-115; idem "Jason's Gymnasium" in Of Scribes and Scrolls Studies on the Hebrew Bible, Intertestamental Judaism, and Christian Origins ed. by Harold W. Attridge, John J. Collins and Thomas H. Tobin (Lanham, Md.: UPA, 1990) 99-109.

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Israel. 3 But even if there were no schools as such, all would agree that there was paternal instruction in a craft, and for a priest, that craft was the Torah and its rituals and the lore of the people. That is, a priestly education should always be distinguished from a layman's education. In the later period, Josephus and Philo claim that even Jewish children knew the Law of Moses and describe the custom of the public reading of the Torah in the synagogues. 4 During this time, moreover, more formal education began to emerge. Boys were taught how to read and write. Elementary education in childhood taught the Jewish boy to read and memorize portions of the Hebrew Bible, especially the Pentateuch. Primary education gave the Jewish boy a thorough knowledge of the history of Moses. Higher education was given to the detailed study of the Law--its practice and definition. Looking for a model for what Mattathias would have known, we look to the life we know something about, that of Josephus, who according to his writings, was both a priest and a descendant of the Hasmonaeans. We may doubt the latter but we should not doubt his priestly descent, 5 despite Rajak's theory that Josefhus's claim of priestly descent was a falsehood to impress his pagan readers. After thoroughly dispensing with Rajak's arguments, Mason states, "Josephus's priesthood was in fact, as he plainly declares, basic to his self-understanding." 7 Here is how Josephus describes himself: He [Josephus] was an interpreter of dreams and skilled in divining the meaning of ambiguous utterances of the Deity; a priest himself and of priestly descent, he was not ignorant of the prophecies in the sacred books. (BJ 3.8.3.352)

Concerning his review of the Bible in AJ, he says: I have translated the sacred scriptures being a priest by birth and trained in the wisdom of these writings." (CA 1.10.54)

3. Shaye Cohen From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987) 120-23; James Crenshaw Education in Ancient Israel: Across the Deadening Silence (New York: Bantam Doubleday, 1998) and idem "Education in Ancient Israel" JBL 104 (1985) 601-15. 4. Cohen Maccabees to the Mishnah 120. 5. Daniel R. Schwartz "Priesthood and Priestly Descent" JThS 32 (1981) 129-35. 6. Tessa Rajak Josephus: The Historian and His Society (London: Duckworth, 1983) 18-19. 7. SteveN. Mason "Priesthood in Josephus and the "Pharisaic Revolution"" Journal of Biblical Literature Vol. I 07, No. 4 (Dec., 1988) 659-660.

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In his Life, Josephus states that he was born a priest and that his priestly education equipped him with superior erudition in the laws. He claims that while educated with his brother Matthias, he forged ahead into a vast wealth of education, being reputed to excel in both memory and insight. While still a boy, really, about fourteen years old, I used to be praised by everyone because [I was] bookloving; the chief priests and principal men of the city. 8 Life 1.2.8-9

This passage is the sequel to AJ 20.12.1.265-66, in which Josephus claims that scriptural erudition is the only virtue recognized by the Jews. Although many have labored to achieve this goal, he has succeeded where few others have. Josephus's priestly education manifests itself in important ways. Lindner has shown that Josephus's view of history in BJ has a priestly perspective, 9 and both Rappaport and Heller see this bias in his use of the Bible. 10 Josephus's belief that the priests are the proper guardians of the law is found throughout his writings. 11 In Contra Apionem he states: ...this charge [to the priests] further embraced a strict superintendence of the law and the pursuits of everyday life. (2.21.185-87) In the same work, Josephus claims that the priests preserved the Bible and the Jewish texts that were in their sacred trust with careful precision (CA 1.6-7.2936). The priests and the sacred texts are intertwined. In BJ, Josephus presents the leaders of the people and the Pharisees going to the "priestly experts in the traditions" for guidance on certain matters (BJ 2.17.4.417). He shows that the priests were not just Temple functionaries but also the official guardians of the Law, whose ongoing activity is crucial to the well- being of Judaism (CA 2.17 .173-74). As Mason puts it, "The role of the priests as protectors and expositors of the law was indispensable.... Josephus always assumes the

8. Life ofJosephus Translation and commentary by Steve Mason (Leiden: Brill, 201) 12-14 Vol. 9 Flavius Josephus Translation and Commentary edited by Steve Mason. 9. H. Lindner Die Geschichtsauffassung des Flavius Josephus im Bellum Judaicum AGJU 12 (Leiden: Brill, 1972) esp. 41, 142-43. I 0. S. Rappaport Agada und Exegese bei Flavius Josephus (Vienna: A. Kohut Memorial Foundation, 1930); B. Heller, "Grundziige der Aggada des Flavius Josephus,' MGWJ 80 (1936) 237-46, esp. 238-39. II. J. Blenkinsopp, "Prophecy and Priesthood in Josephus" JJS 25 (1974) 239-62; and W. C. van Unnik "Die Prophetie bei Josephus" in his Flavius Josephus als historischer Schriftsteller (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1978) 41-45.

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legitimacy and comprehensiveness of the priestly mandate over scriptural exegesis." 12 There should be no doubt, based on the writings concerning the Jewish past that he produced later in his life, that Josephus had an extensive priestly education and that he was extremely well-versed in the Bible and Jewish history. It would seem that he displays "an education appropriate to his social class" of well-to-do priestly families in Jerusalem. 13 Schwartz's interesting and serious challenge to the extensiveness of Josephus's training in Scripture has been refuted, 14 but we can be grateful to Schwartz for making us focus on the depth of Josephus's leaming. 15 For if what Schwartz initially learned from his study of the Biblical references in BJ is that Josephus did not know his Bible very well, being forced to respond to this claim makes us focus on the importance of Scripture in Josephus's early intellectual development. In order to call Josephus knowledgeable, Schwartz felt that he had to find parallels to Josephus's statements in Jewish interpretation. 16 On the contrary, Josephus's knowledge was deep enough that he could use the Biblical texts at will and bend them for his purposes. What Schwartz took to be reflections of Josephus's confusion and ignorance about the sacred texts seem to me to be reflections of the learned historian's skill and knowledge. While I will treat this topic elsewhere, here it must suffice to say that Josephus the priest knew his Bible even in the first stage of his career as a writer and historian, reflecting his early intellectual training. Most of the cases of Biblical references in BJ are found in one long speech, 5:362-419. 17 Speaking of himself in the third person, as the character in his own narration of a great historical event, the conquest of Jerusalem in 70 CE, Josephus speaks to the Judaeans behind the walls of the besieged city in his attempt to induce them to surrender. Josephus does not create any aspect of this speech out of ignorance. If anything, Josephus not only knows the text but also knows it so well he can maneuver it for his own goals. In traditional Jewish vocabulary, midrash is based on 12. Mason "Priesthood in Josephus" 659, 661. 13. Schwartz Josephus and Judaean Politics 56. 14 Steve Mason "Review of Seth Schwartz Josephus and Judaean Politics Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition 18 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1990)" Ioudaios Vol. 200.8 (Aprill992) x, 257. 15. Schwartz Josephus and Judaean Politics 24-35; see his refreshing acknowledgment that his position was "correctly criticized" in Schwartz Imperialism and Jewish Society 90 n.l 02. 16. Schwartz Josephus and Judaean Politics 29. 17. Otto Kaiser "Our forefathers never triumphed by arms ... ": the interpretation of biblical history in the addresses of Flavius Josephus to the besieged Jerusalemites in Bell. Jud. V.356-426" Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature Yearbook (2006) 239-264.

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expertise and knowledge of the text. It is done with full knowledge of the peshat, of the contextual and literal interpretation of the text. Josephus's speech is a powerful piece of rhetoric. This does not mean that Josephus ever delivered the speech, or if he did, that it was anything like this recounting of Biblical events. But even in retrospect, it is a tour de force, more remarkable in its use of Biblical materials than most of Antiquities. Another interesting topic in discussing Josephus's Jewish education is whether it included the Book of Daniel. There is no question that Josephus uses Daniel in important ways in AJ where that book becomes, as Mason put it, the "basis for his interpretation of world history." 18 The question is whether the historian knew and used Daniel in BJ. Mason and before him F. F. Bruce, 19 though differing in approach, make a strong case that "Danielic themes of the rise and fall of nations under divine supervision, Jewish pacifism, and opposition to rebellion run deeply throughout his earlier work. It seems, therefore, that this outlook sprang from his youth and education. " 20 We thus confirm the extent of Josephus's Jewish education, and ask: If Josephus was so learned, why not Mattathias? Mattathias, like Josephus, was one of the upper class priests who were landowners, judges, and legal authorities. 21 Something of great relevance can be found in this understanding of the education of a priest such as Mattathias or Josephus. To quote Mason again: Josephus's priestly piety shows particular affinity with the writings of Jeremiah and Daniel. From an interpretive tradition of these texts, he has learned a lesson with practical benefits: to recognize the rise and fall of nations under the sovereignty of God and to allow God to bring about changes in world rule. Josephus expects that the Judeans, with

their superior constitution, will one day take their tum on center stage. By the time of his last known composition, he imagines that he sees this dream being realized. 22 Apply this paragraph to Mattathias and one has a summary of the section to follow. It will be Jeremiah and Daniel that will be the touchstones of our

18. Steve Mason "Josephus, Daniel and the F1avian House" in Josephus and the History of the Greco-Roman Period: Essays in Memory of Morton Smith ed. by Fausto Parente and Joseph Sievers (Leiden: Brill, 1994) 190. 19. Steve Mason "Josephus, Daniel and the Flavian House" 161-91; Frederick F. Bruce "Josephus and Daniel" AST/4 (1965) 148-62. 20. Mason "Josephus, Daniel and the F1avian House" 190. 21. Schwartz Josephus and Judean Politics 69-70. 22. Steve Mason "Josephus and Judaism" in The Encyclopedia ofJudaism 561.

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understanding of Mattathias's vision of the future of his people that motivated him to initiate a revolution. Since they knew their Torah and the other Biblical writings such as Jeremiah and Daniel, the Maccabees could very well have been inspired by such books and dreamed of a different destiny for their people. It was not only the destiny of their clan that concerned them but also the destiny of their people.

The Biblical Vision of the Jewish Kingdom or VVhatVVentVVrong? Mattathias and the Maccabees not only sought control of Jerusalem and Judaea but of the history and the destiny of the entire world. While others have emphasized their acquaintance with the Greek world, I will emphasize that these priests were learned in their own religion and based their dreams of empire on important biblical texts. It is necessary to survey these texts to provide a historical context for the Maccabaean dream. I will quickly review an ideological stream that flowed through the veins of Mattathias and his sons and motivated them to their epoch-making actions. The Bible is the record of God's relationship with the people Israel. In the beginning, God created human beings who failed to be obedient (Gen. 2-3) and who eventually became deserving of worldwide punishment. Starting again with Noah, a kind of second Adam, God wanted to fill the world with humanity, each nation in its own land with its own language and culture (Gen. 10). One nation was to have a special role. In the grand Biblical scheme, Abraham and his descendants are called to be the focus of history: I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, And curse him that curses you; And all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you. (Gen. 12:2-3)23 While Abraham will be one nation among many, others will be judged by their treatment of God's special people. This prophecy assumes that there will be nations that will attack and hurt the Israelites but who then will be judged accordingly. The blessing to Abraham's son Isaac's wife Rebekah speaks of the small clan turning "into thousands of myriads" so that they will "seize the gates of their foes" (Gen. 24:60). Again, there will be war with enemies and the

23. All translations of the Hebrew Scriptures are from Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia: IPS, 1985).

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Israelites will be victorious. When Isaac blesses his son Jacob (thinking he is the first-born Esau), he prays: Let peoples serve you and nations bow to you; Be master over your brothers, and let your mother's sons bow to you. Cursed be they who curse you, blessed they who bless you. (Gen. 27:29) The Abrahamic blessing of domination and judgment over opposing nations continues in both this prophecy and the very ancient Oracles ofBil'am: 24 How fair are your tents, 0 Jacob, your dwellings, 0 Israel! Their king shall rise above Agag, their kingdom shall be exalted. God who freed them from Egypt, Is for them like the horns of the wild ox. They shall devour enemy nations, crush their bones, And smash their arrows .... Blessed are they who bless you, accursed they who curse you! (Num. 24:5-9) Again note the end of this citation, hearkening back to the Abrahamic blessing in Gen. 12. Bil'am goes on to envision how A star rises from Jacob A scepter comes forth from Israel (Num. 24:17) It is interesting for our theme that the Hasmonaean king Alexander Jannaeus (1 03-76 BCE) had a star on some of his coins/5 perhaps to say that he, the king who wielded the scepter over Judaea, was the star that was predicted by Bil'am. 26 According to Bil'am's oracle, Israel will conquer Moab and Edom. The Amalekites 27 and the Kenites 28 , on the other hand, will perish (Num. 24:2021). Great nations come and go at the will of God: 24. Jacob Milgrom Numbers: The JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: JPS, 1990) 185ff.

25. Ya'akov Meshorer Jewish Coins of the Second Temple Period (Chicago: Argonaut, 1967) 18 nos. 8-11. 26. Milgrom Joe. cit. and C. Roth "Star and Anchor: Coin Symbolism and the Early Days" Eretz /srae/6 (1960) 13-16. 27. They will not perish until they have played a role into the time of Saul and David. 28. The history of the Kenites and their complex relationship with the Israelites is an interesting subject for speculation. It involves the wanderer Cain (lit. "smith") in Gen. 4:1 ff. and his descendant Tubal-cain, "who forged implements of copper and iron" (Gen. 4:22); the complicated references to Moses's father-in-law Jethro/Reuei/Hobab (Ex. 2: 18; 18; Judg. 1:11) and Heber the Kenite (and his wife Jael) in the story of Deborah (Judg. 4

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Alas, who can survive except God has willed it! Ships come from the quarter of Kittim, They subject Asshur29 , subject Eber. They, too, shall perish forever. (Num. 24:23-24) The term Kittim will resound in later writings as an important symbol. Kittim will mean Macedonia in the very first verse of 1Maccabees ( 1Mace. 1: 1): This is a history which began in the era of the Hellenistic dynasty. The dynasty had its origins in the time of Alexander son of Philip, the Macedonian. This Alexander marched out from the land of the Chetiim .... Goldstein, who thinks 1Maccabees was written during the time of Alexander Jannaeus, wonders whether this introductory verse does not incorporate the prophecy of Num. 24:24. By referring to Alexander the Great as "the son of Philip, the Macedonian" and "this Alexander," the author may be setting up a contrast to the later, Jewish Alexander Jannaeus. 30 Originally, the term Kittim seems to have referred to Kition on Cyprus. 31 Jeremiah refers to the western "isles of the Kittim" (Jer. 2: 10). By the time of Daniel 11 :30 in the 160s BCE, Kittim seems to mean the islands and coastlines of the Mediterranean and specifically Rome 32 in its efforts to thwart Antiochus IV: Ships from Kittim will come against him. He will be checked, and will turn back, raging against the holy covenant. To continue with our survey, the Biblical promise of Israelite conquest is repeated and affirmed in different ways. Moses tells Joshua and the Israelites: You have seen with your own eyes all that the LORD your God has done to these two kings; so shall the LORD do to all the kingdoms into which you shall cross over. (Deut. 3:21) 33 and 5). They seem to be located in the mountains of the Sinai Peninsula ("Though your abode be secure/ And your nest be set among cliffs" (Num. 24:21 )), which would fit with Jethro's connection to Mt. Sinai. The prophecy that the Kenites will perish is surprising in terms of the role that they still will play. Could this be a prophecy that, like many other biblical predictions, did not find fulfillment for many centuries? 29. Milgrom and others must be correct in assuming that it is not Assyria that is meant here but an earlier people referred to as the Asshurim in Gen. 25:3, 18 and Ps. 83:9. 30. Goldstein I Maccabees 191. 31. Or the whole island; cf. Milgrom 21 0; Goldstein I Maccabees 191. 32. See also All 6.l.l28. 33. Goldstein's reference to Deut. 3:41 (Goldstein I Maccabees 232) must be a typographical error for verse 21.

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He will deliver their kings into your hand, and you shall obliterate their name from under the heavens: no man shall stand up to you, until you have wiped them out. (Deut. 7:24) A common biblical theme is that the rulers of the nations such as Assyria in Isa. 11: 14 are arrogant about their conquests and wealth and so they will be ruined when God decides to take it all away from them. In the post-exilic vision of Isa. 60, darkness will cover the earth but God's light will shine on the Judaeans; the world will be blessed through them. And nations shall walk by your light, kings, by your shining radiance (Isa. 60:3) The wealth of the coastlands and the nations will flow to the Judaeans. As in the days of Solomon, caravans will bring the riches to Jerusalem and the great flocks will be brought from the richest lands for the sustenance of the Judaeans. All will bring offerings and sacrifices to the Temple in Jerusalem. Obadiah's urgent call of vengeance against the nations is relevant to our considerations, for the prophet claims that it is time for battle against the nations (Obad. 1:1 ). While his anger is channeled specifically against Edom for its sins against Judah, the day of revenge against all of the nations is imminent: Yea, against all nations, the day of the LORD is at hand. (Obad. 1:15b) The same cup from which the looters of the Temple drank will now, from God's hand, contain contents that will have a disastrous effect on them. To paraphrase the prophet in modem terms: "You wanted to get drunk from My cup? You won't only be drunk and oblivious, you will be sent into oblivion forever." But on Mt. Zion, the holy remnant of the people shall maintain the sanctity of the holy site and, despite everything that has happened, emerge victorious: The House of Israel shall dispossess those who dispossessed them .... Thus they shall possess the Negeb and Mount Esau as well, the Shephelah and Philistia. They shall possess the Ephraimite country and the district of Samaria, and Benjamin along with Gilead. And that exiled force of Israelites [shall possess] what belongs to the Phoenicians as far as Zarephath, while the Jerusalemite exile community of Sepharad shall possess the towns of the Negeb. For liberators shall march up on Mount Zion to wreak judgment on Mount Esau, and dominion shall be the LORD's. (Obad. 17b, 19-21)

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Even after a disaster, the prophet calls for revenge and redemption. Haggai 2 is remarkable in that it is very time-specific. Haggai lives in the time of a scion of the Davidide line, Zerubbabel, and showers him with great hope and faith: Speak to Zerubbabel the governor of Judah: I am going to shake the heavens and the earth. And I will overturn the thrones of kingdoms and destroy the might of the kingdoms of the nations .... On that day . . . I will take you, 0 Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, . . . and make you as a signet; for I have chosen you-declares the LORD of Hosts. (Hag. 2:21-23) We do not know what happened to Zerubbabel; one thinks that the Persians disposed ofhim because of words like those of Haggai. All of these blessings and prophecies are well and good, but the reality of history, so promising to begin with in the days of David, certainly did not unfold in a way that was even vaguely reminiscent of such glory. The Judaeans witnessed the capture of Jerusalem and the destruction of the First Temple in the sixth century, the subjugation by the Persians in the 5th century BCE, the defeat of the Persians by Alexander in the 4th century BCE, the rule of the Ptolemies in the 3rd century BCE and Seleucid rule over Judaea at the beginning of the 2nd century BCE. A Judaean had every right to say, "This is not how it is supposed to be. We are not supposed to be living under the rule of any other power. That would make us just one more religion. We are not like the other religions; we are monotheistic and that means a faith in a God Who controls the whole world. What went wrong? Where is the fulfillment of the great blessings?" "The answer," Cohen states, "was provided by Jeremiah." 34 As opposed to the visions of a Jewish empire stands the great figure of Jeremiah who warns the Judaeans not to rebel against the Babylonians and who preaches political quietism until God's plan could run its course. What went wrong was that the Judaeans sinned and brought God's punishment through the agency of foreign powers: Assuredly, thus said the LORD of Hosts: Because you would not listen to My words, I am going to send for all the peoples of the north-declares the LORD-and for My servant, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, and bring them against this land and its 34. Shaye J. D. Cohen From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987) 28.

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inhabitants, and against all those nations roundabout. I will exterminate them and make them an object of hissing-ruins for all time ... This whole land shall be a desolation. And those nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. (Jer. 25:8-11) During the period to follow the destruction, there should be a quietist acceptance of Judaean subjection to the sequence of foreign empires. Jer. 29:5-7 says that 'in the meantime', while the Judaeans will be powerless not before the emperors but before the Will of God, the Judaeans should be content to live in Exile, support the foreign powers and pray for their well-being: Build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their fruit. Take wives and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters. Multiply there, do not decrease. And seek the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you and pray to the LORD in its behalf; for in its prosperity you shall prosper. Just as the Israelites in Egypt multiplied in exile, so the Judaeans should not refrain from perpetuating the covenant with God. The line of the Judaeans must continue, even in exile, so that they can return to their homeland in the future. We need to be reminded, however, that the Book of Jeremiah is a complex book that covers a highly significant period in Jewish history that included the Deuteronomic reformation, two rebellions against the Babylonians in 597 BCE and 586 BCE, and the era of the Exile and its need for a new theological understanding. If the Temple was destroyed because of God's punishment, and if the sins of the fathers would be visited upon their children and descendants, what hope could there be for the future? Jeremiah countered these fears by preaching individual responsibility and stating that it had not been the people's sins that had brought the punishment of God through His foreign agents but instead that God had done this for His own reasons (Jer. 27:2-8). 35 Jeremiah's call in the first chapter of the book includes both of his missions, both positive and negative: Before I created you in the womb, I selected you; Before you were born, I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet concerning the nations. (Jer. 1:5)36 35. Cohen From the Maccabees to the Mishnah 28. 36. In the earlier chapters, there are a number of passages on this topic: 1:10, 9:25; 25:15f., 27:2ff. etc.

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See, I appoint you this day Over nations and kingdoms To uproot and to pull down To build and to plant. (Jer. 1:10) Since, obviously, both missions will not be fulfilled simultaneously, Jeremiah will be called upon to deliver different kinds of prophecies at different times. Jeremiah is not a just a prophet of justice and doom or a prophet of mercy and comfort; he is both, and he knows this from the beginning of his career (and we know it from the beginning of the book). God says that He will be watchful to make certain that His Word will be fulfilled (1:11). The beginning of that word is a prophecy of how the kingdoms of the north will set up a throne in Jerusalem (l:l3ft). In the first period of Jeremiah's career, from his call in c. 626-621, Jeremiah's mission is to warn that these nations from the north will invade Judah because of its spiritual and ritual sins. Despite scholarly discussion, it has become clear that the foe from the north is Babylon. Even as he warns the people of impending doom, however, Jeremiah also tells them that God remembers Israel's devotion when she was a young bride in covenant with Him (2:2-3). Jeremiah displays his passion for the people's welfare; he suffers terribly as he thinks about what will be if the people do not change their ways (4:19-22). Jeremiah must have been relieved and thrilled when the young king Josiah came to the throne and the reformation began in 621 BCE. His support of the reaffirmed covenant can be seen in Jer. 11, where he curses those who will not obey its terms (ll :2fT.). One of the most important verses in the Book of Jeremiah for the centuries to follow is Jer. 25, a prophecy delivered by Jeremiah in the year 605 (1 ' 1 year ofNebuchadnezzar, 41h of Jehoiakim): "And those nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years." (25: 12) We will see the importance of this famous verse below when we examine Daniel 1-6. What is essential to understand is that seventy years is a temporary term of power for the Babylonians, and that their time, historically-speaking, will be over in the blink of an eye. After Jer. 42, where the prophet's dire predictions tragically have come true, Jeremiah prays for the remnant of the people and makes new dire predictions about what will happen to Judah's enemies for their role in the destruction of God's people. Thus Jer. 50 and 51, the chapters at the end of the book, are

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prophecies of doom on Babylonia. 37 Some scholars who are anxious to prove that the centuries of Judaeans that came after Jeremiah followed his subservient position want to separate these chapters from the main body of the book. Calling these prophecies "late" is a way of saying that they were not by Jeremiah himself. But earlier prophecies that are not of doubtful provenance, that are surely by Jeremiah himself, also say that God will give the Babylonian monarchs power only to take it away from them. Thus Jeremiah quotes God as saying: It is I who made the earth, and the men and beasts who are on the earth, by My great might and My outstretched arm, and I give it to whomever I deem proper. I herewith deliver all these lands to My servant King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon; I even give him the wild beasts to serve him. All nations shall serve him, his son and his grandson-until the turn of his own land comes, when many nations and great kings shall subjugate him. (27:5-7) But then Jeremiah also states the following: "For thus said the LORD: When Babylon's seventy years are over, I will take note of you, and I will fulfill to you My promise of favorto bring you back to this place." (29:10) Add to this a quite convincing argument made cogently by Brighe 8 that 50-51 could not be later than 539 BCE because they does not know ofthe overthrow of Babylon; the conquest is not to be by the Persians but the Medes (51: 11 ). If this wasn't Jeremiah, it had to be one of his circle, a disciple or editor who reflected Jeremiah's own position. In other words, it makes little to no difference whether these words were actually by Jeremiah or not. Cohen says, ''The prophecies of Jeremiah also provide the ideological context for the political behavior of the Jews in antiquity. " 39 The Jews certainly did exhibit quiescent political behavior under successive empires but Jeremiah would have been shocked and dismayed to find what had happened in the centuries after him. He fully expected Babylonia to fall but did not foresee the Persian, Macedonian and Seleucid empires. Jeremiah saw the subjugation of the

37. John Bright Jeremiah (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965) 307; Jack R. Lundbom "Book ofJeremiah" ABD III 715. 38. Bright Jeremiah 360. 39. Cohen From the Maccabees to the Mishnah 29.

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Judaeans as temporary. Jer. 27:2-8 is a prophecy that three generations of Nebuchadnezzar's family will rule: It is I who made the earth ... and I give it to whomever I deem proper. I herewith deliver all these lands to My servant, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon ... All nations shall serve him, his son and his grandson---until the tum of his own land comes, when many nations and great kings shall subjugate him. (Jer. 27:5-7) Jeremiah never meant that this submission, brought on by God in response to the sins of the Judaeans, would go on for hundreds of years. It may be true that some later literature uses those prophecies of Jeremiah counseling acquiescence to foreign powers to advise the Jews of later generations to do the same. But it is also true that other later literature, including the passage about Jeremiah's golden sword in 2Macc. 15 that we will discuss below, uses those prophecies of Jeremiah that speak of a time beyond the one of subjection, a time of judgment upon the nations. These prophecies, as we shall see, inform Daniel 1-6, which speaks again and again about the passing of the etppires and the rise of the Jewish empire. The quietist political position was maintained for centuries under the Persians, Greeks, and Ptolemies and, until the events we are studying, the Seleucids. But this position was maintained more because of political and military reality than theology. The Judaeans could not win their independence from a Darius or an Alexander. Theologically speaking, however, there is evidence to indicate that at least by the 3'd century, there were those who looked forward to an end to the long series of foreign emperors and towards the emergence, at long last, of the kingdom of God. For example, 'the Apocalypse ofWeeks's in 1 Enoch 93 seems to be an a~ocalypse with an independent origin from the surrounding material in I Enoch. 4 There is no evidence whether it ever actually circulated as its own document, but it does seem to be distinct and self-contained. The schematization of history in such works has one goal: a period of history to end history as we know it. This overview of history says that time is controlled by God and that the world is not out of control. When a temporary, expedient explanation works for the realities existent for hundreds of years, it becomes the Truth. When did the emphasis on the pacifistic side of Jeremiah's message become an emphasis on the more violent and

40. George W.E. Nickelsburg Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981) 145 tf.

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punishment side of Jeremiah? When the historical realities allowed the Jewish vision to expand to its full dimensions.

Jeremiah's Golden Sword Judas's great vision at the end of 2Maccabees is a very important passage because it uses Jeremiah as a symbol not of political acquiescence but of revolution and violence. 41 Before the final battle recorded in 2Maccabees, the victory over Nicanor at Adasa, Judas rouses his men to battle by relating a great and detailed vision: Furthermore, by telling them of a trustworthy dream, he roused their spirits beyond measure. His vision was as follows: he saw Onias the late high priest, a good man and true, of modest bearing and mild manner, whose utterances were always fitting, who from childhood had practiced every aspect of virtue. Onias stretched forth his hands to pray for the entire company of the Jews. Thereafter, in the same posture, there appeared a man remarkable for his white hair and his dignity; he had certain majesty about him, marvelous and magnificent. On being asked, Onias replied, "This lover of his brethren, who offers many prayers for our people and for the holy city, is Jeremiah, the prophet of God." Jeremiah stretched forth his hand to give Judas a golden sword, and as he gave it to him, he addressed him as follows: "Take the holy sword as a gift from God, and with it shatter our enemies." (2Macc. 15:11 b-16) Collins stresses how ironic it is that the figure of Onias III endorses the Maccabaean movement, considering that his son has gone to Egypt to build a temple in Leontopolis in an attempt to rival the Jerusalem temple rededicated by the Hasmonaeans. Strictly speaking, Alcimus, hardly a Hasmonaean supporter, controlled the Temple at that moment. Collins goes on to speak of the unintended irony in invoking the name of Jeremiah "who had counseled surrender to the Babylonians, and was accused of "weakening the hands of the soldiers who are left in this city (Jer. 38:1-6). No biblical figure would be less apt to endorse the Maccabees.'"' 2 Again, we disagree, and call this a one-sided misunderstanding of Jeremiah's prophecies and attitudes. Collins does go on to

41. The other reference to Jeremiah in 2 Mace. is in 2:1-8 where the prophet hides the Temple vessels and the sacred fire until God discloses their whereabouts. 42. John J. Collins Daniel, First Maccabees, Second Maccabees with an Excursus on the Apocalyptic Genre (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1981) 356.

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explain that Jeremiah is chosen because of the image of the sword in Jer. 50:3538: A sword against the Chaldeans---declares the LORDAnd against the inhabitants of Babylon, Against its officials and its wise men! A sword against the diviners, that they may be made fools ot1 It seems clear that this sword has been passed down from Jeremiah to Judas. 43 But Collins demurs, "Even though Jeremiah has God fight against Israel more often than not (e.g. Jer. 21 :3-7) the oracle provides a basis for linking Jeremiah with a sword against the gentiles. " 44 He then also appeals to 1 Enoch 90: 1, from the Animal Apocalypse of 1 Enoch, where a big sword is given to the sheep: Then I saw that a great sword was given to the sheep; and the sheep proceeded against all the beasts of the field in order to kill them; and all the beasts and birds of heaven fled from before their face. (1 Enoch 90: 19) While this reference to the sword is not specific enough to connect to Jeremiah's golden sword in 2Macc. 15, the tie to 1 Enoch is most welcome and correct. At least key parts of 1 Enoch are written during the Maccabaean uprising and there is a great deal of material there about the sequence of time periods that is specifically derived from Jeremiah. It is possible to speak of two streams in the political tradition of post-Exilic

Judaism. The first is apparently accepting of foreign rule. Jeremiah is the theological spokesman and Ezra and Nehemiah are its religious and political representatives. The second is of vengeance on the nations for their centuries of rule; Jeremiah also is its spokesman. And its representative may be found in this passage from the end of his book: You are My war club, [My] weapons of battle; With you I clubbed nations, with you I destroyed kingdoms; With you I clubbed horse and rider, with you I clubbed man and woman, With you I clubbed graybeard and boy, with you I clubbed youth and maiden With you I clubbed shepherd and flock, With you I clubbed plowman and team 43. Doran's interesting discussion of related folk-motifs in this passage does not mention Jeremiah; Doran Temple Propaganda: The Purpose and Character of 2 Maccabees 73-75. 44. Collins Daniel, First Maccabees, Second Maccabees 356.

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With you I clubbed governors and prefects. But I will requite Babylon and all the inhabitants of Chaldea For all the wicked things they did to Zion before your eyes --declares the LORD. (Jer. 51: 20-24) Babylon is called the 'hammer of the whole earth" in the previous chapter (50:23); now this foreign power "has been hacked and shattered." According to 2Maccabees, Judas Maccabaeus, who receives Jeremiah's golden sword, is this war club, or as his epithet indicates, this hammer.

Mattathias and the Dream of a Jewish Empire 45 Modern critical study of the Book of Daniel has been consumed with some significant riddles. One concerns the unity or lack thereof of the book. The consensus of scholarship is convinced that the book falls into two easily divisible parts, Ch. l-6, called Daniel A by Ginsberg, 46 and Ch. 7-12, Ginsberg's Daniel B, which was written in the Maccabaean period before the death of Antiochus IV in 164 BCE47 The author of Daniel II did not know of the death of Antiochus IV in late 164 BCE; if he did, he would not say that Antiochus would die in the land of Israel (11 :45). Daniel B tries to predict history, but history has its own reality that does not conform to visions. "Happy are those who wait" (12:12) with the key word being 'wait'; the redemption of the people has not yet happened. 7:25 says that the persecution will last 3 Yz years, counting from December 167 BCE, the profanation of the Temple; 8:14 says it will last 1150 days, 12:11 gives 1290 days, 12:12 offers the figure of 1335 days. The text feebly tries to adjust the predictions to events, undermining the power of its words.

45. J. J. Collins Daniel, with an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984); C. Flusser "The Four Empires in the Fourth Sibyl and in the Book of Daniel" Israel Oriental Studies 2 (1972) 148-75; J. G. Gammie "The Classification, Stages of Growth and Changing Intentions in the Book of Daniel" JBL 93 (1976) 356-85; M. McNamara "Nabonidus and the Book of Daniel" ITQ 37 (1970) 13149; H. H. Rowley "The Unity of the Book of Daniel" in The Servant of the Lord and Other Essays 2"d ed. rev. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965) 249-280; idem Darius the Mede and the Four World Empires (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1959); J. W. Swain "The Theory of the Four Monarchies: Opposition History under the Roman Empire" CP 35 (1940) l-21. 46. Harold Louis Ginsberg Studies in Daniel (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1948) 27-40. 47. Another riddle: Is Daniel 7, which is in Aramaic and not in the Hebrew of Daniel 8-12, its own document, a third major stage of the book?

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Daniel l-6 expresses the idea that the Jeremian acceptance of empires, embodied by the high political position of the figure Daniel, was always limited in time and meant to end. Daniel A does not reject Jeremiah but understands the book as we have above, that the Exile and the centuries of political subjugation that followed were God's Will. At God's appointed time, one stage of history will end and the next will begin, just as one empire has given way to the next. Let the name of God be blessed forever and ever, For wisdom and power are His. He changes times and seasons Removes kings and installs kings. (Dan. 2:20-21) For the Jewish people, Daniel A states, the next stage is about to begin. Daniel A takes us back to the Babylonian Exile to show that from the beginning of this period, the end of it was already planned. The prophecies are vaticinia ex eventu, prophecies after the event, with the author identifying his generation with, or superimposing the travails of his generation onto a mythical one in Babylonia. The pseudepigraphic nature of the work may have elevated its status to gain it acceptance as a contemporary account of the persecutions in the sixth century, the time of Daniel. I do not assume that Daniel A was written in Babylonia; 48 on the contrary, a Babylonian Jew who believed in the coming Jewish empire would live in Judaea, not Babylonia, for the empire would begin in Judaea and nowhere else. The well-known historical mistakes in Daniel A concerning the names of emperors show chronological and geographical distance. For example, there was no king called "Darius the Mede" (6:1; cf. 9:1, 11:1) and Belshazzar (5:1, 2, 30; cf. 7:1) may have ruled in his father Nabonidus's stead but was never a king by whose regnal years history was dated. For that matter, it is crucial to remember that as far as we know, Babylonian Jews fared well in their "exile." Even invading emperors respected the greatness of Babylon and Babylon seems to have treated its Jewish community well. The Babylonian Jew would probably be quite content with his lot. Daniel A, according to Humphreys49 and others, is supposed to be a blueprint for living in the Diaspora; I see it very differently, as a provocative blueprint for the coming of a new empire. Daniel was not content to live in the Diaspora; he 48. As both traditionalists and some modern scholars such as Collins do. See J. J. Collins The Apocal)ptic Vision of the Book of Daniel (Missoula: HSM, 1977) 54-59; W. Lee Humphreys "A Life-Style for the Diaspora: A Study of the Tales of Esther and Daniel" JBL 92 (1973) 217-23. 49. Humphreys "A Life-Style for the Diaspora" 211-23.

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never stopped praying to the west; as grand as his position was, he kept looking toward Jerusalem, the center of the world: When Daniel learned that it had been put in writing, he went to his house, in whose upper chamber he had had windows made facing Jerusalem, and three times a day he knelt down, prayed and made confession to God, as he had always done. (Dan. 6:11) Jerusalem was more than a city on the map; it was a symbol that stood for God's choice of Israel and God's faithfulness to the covenant. Even the seemingly simple act of prayer reflects the dream of Daniel A, the end of the foreign empire and the coming of the Jewish empire. In Daniel 1, Daniel and his friends Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah are given the education necessary to "serve in the royal palace" including training in "the writings and the language of the Chaldeans" (l :4). They also accept the names provided by their Chaldean rulers, Belteshazzar, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (l :7). The use of double names, as we have seen elsewhere at length, 50 can mean social but not religious assimilation. It is clear that these young men are certainly not completely assimilated. An emphasis in the chapter is how the four maintain strict dietary laws and yet flourish with meager nutrition. It is not the king's food but God's Will that sustains the Jew in Exile. They never commit idolatry. Yet the young Jewish men of Daniel A do not isolate themselves from their environment. They compete with other Chaldean courtiers on their own ground, not only literally but also in dream interpretation. Their success relative to the Chaldeans demonstrates the power of God over the so-called power of the Babylonian gods. The political loyalty exemplified by Daniel and his friends is not loyalty to a foreign power which only reigns over the Judaeans because it is God's Will but loyalty to that Will. Are these young men models or parallels for the young men who will be called the Maccabees? The double-names of Daniel and his colleagues may correspond to those ofMattathias's sons who are socially but not religiously assimilated. Daniel A speaks of four sequential kingdom which rise and fall because of God's Will: the Neo-Babylonian kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar, the Persian empire of Cyrus and his successors, the Macedonian empire of Alexander the Great and the two parallel kingdoms of the Ptolemies and the Seleucids which began in 323 BCE. Ptolemaic Egypt controlled Palestine from 301-198 BCE. Seleucid

50. Benjamin Edidin Scolnic Thy Brothers Blood: The Maccabees and the Dynastic Morality in the Hellenistic World (Lanham, Md.: UPA, 2007) 133ff.

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Syria controlled Palestine as of 198 BCE when Antiochus III won the Battle of Banias. When was Daniel A written? The date is important for my purpose here in establishing the traditions from which Mattathias and the Maccabees derived at least part of their inspiration to rebel. We can begin to see evidence for this dating when we show that either the narrator or a later interpolator of Daniel 2 was contemporary with the event referred to in Daniel's articulation and interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar 's dream. Anyone can interpret another person's dream but who could possibly tell another person his dream? The answer is God, Who sent the dream in the first place. Daniel, with God's help, tells Nebuchadnezzar his dream without even a hint to go by. In the description ofthe dream (vv. 31-35), the key verses for our task here are 32-33: The head of that statue was of fine gold; its breast and arms were of silver; its belly and thighs of bronze; its legs were of iron and part clay. Each foot will have some iron and some clay; the idea is that the fourth kingdom will eventually be divided into two, the Ptolemaic and Seleucid dynasties. But when Daniel interprets this image, he says something unexpected: You saw the feet and the toes, part potter's clay and part iron; that means it will be a divided kingdom; it will have only some of the stability of iron, inasmuch as you saw iron mixed with clay. And the toes were part iron and part clay; that [means] the kingdom will be in part strong and in part brittle. You saw iron mixed with common clay; that means they shall intermingle with the offspring of men, but shall not hold together, just as iron does not mix with clay. (Dan. 2:41-3) Since we have heard the details of the dream before Daniel interprets it, we are surprised by v. 43. Notice the toes, which did not figure in the description of the dream. What makes this statement quite noticeable as an interpolation is that we are in the middle of an interpretation of a dream that Daniel has already articulated to Nebuchadnezzar to prove that he has true wisdom. As opposed to that description, where each foot was part iron and part clay, now some of the toes will be completely iron and others completely clay. When the two kingdoms will attempt to merge through marriage, nothing will hold; iron cannot be combined with earthenware. What we have here is a later correction, based on new historical events, which changes the interpretation to fit what has happened in real life. We know what happened. The author of this statement speaks of the mixing of the dynasties in marriage and believes that the culmination of history is at hand. Following

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Ginsberg, 5 1 we have a reference here to an event in 252 BCE when Antiochus II Theos (261-246 BCE) married Berenice, daughter of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285-246) with the goal of producing an heir who would inherit both of the kingdoms. This marriage may have been doomed by its own complexity. In order to marry Berenice, Antiochus II had to divorce his wife and half-sister Laodice and had to announce that their two sons, Seleucus and Antiochus, would not succeed him. Antiochus reconciled with Laodice who then apparently poisoned him and had Berenice's child and eventually Berenice herself killed. So much for the intermingling of the kingdoms. In 246 BCE, Ptolemy III, Berenice's brother, sought revenge for her death by invading the Seleucid Empire. Do we know when the original passage was written and when it was interpolated? Ginsberg points to c. 304 BCE for the original and cites the 1.1ext verses where Daniel concludes his interpretation of the king 's dream: And in the time of those kingdoms the God ofHeaven will establish a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, a kingdom that shall not be transferred to another people. It will crush and wipe out all these kingdoms, but shall itself last forever-just as you saw how a stone was hewn from the mountain, not by hands, and crushed the iron, bronze, clay, silver, and gold. The great God has made known to the king what will happen in the future. The dream is sure and its interpretation reliable. (Dan. 2:44-45) Notice that at the time of the fourth kingdom, the first three kingdoms are still in existence, though weakened. Ginsberg handles the much-discussed question of the identification of the kingdoms with direct evidence from the book itself. The first kingdom, the gold, is identified as the Babylonian or Chaldean Empire (2:37-38). Dan. 2:30 and 6:1,29 (cf. 8:1; 9:1; 10:1; 11:3, 5, 20-21) show us that the silver kingdom belongs the Medes and the bronze represents the Persians. Ginsberg looks for an era when these first three kingdoms, though no longer empires, were still monarchies at the same time as a single but divided Greek Empire. He finds this political situation around 304 BCE, when Seleucus in his satrapy in Babylon called himself king while fighting still raged within what was still nominally one empire between that king and Ptolemy, Antigonus and others. The Median monarchy was called Atropatene and Persia was called Persis at that 51. Ginsberg Studies in Daniel 8-9; he follows C. C. Torrey "Notes on the Aramaic Part of Daniel" Transactions of the Connecticut Academy ofArts and Sciences 15 (1909) 247-48. Actually, as Collins points out, this connection was made by Polychronius who died in 430 CE (Collins Daniell70, n. 173).

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time. By 301 BCE, there were clear and separate Greek kingdoms and the Greek Empire of Alexander no longer existed. Thus Ginsberg concludes that the original Daniel A was written before this date at the end of the 41h century BCE The interpolations of 2:43-44 must have been written between 252-246 BCE, after the inter-dynastic marriage and before the invasion of the Seleucid Empire by Ptolemy III. 52 Daniel B, written later during the reign of Antiochus I, is written by several writers whom Ginsberg calls the "four apocalyptists." In Dan. 7, the first of these writers updates the dream and interpretation of Dan. 2 that we have just reviewed. The single Greek Empire that made up the fourth kingdom of that dream is now the Seleucid Empire. The Seleucid dynasty saw itself as the true heirs of Alexander the Great and so his kingdom is their kingdom. If 7:24 refers to ten horns and ten kings, that tenth king is Antiochus IV in a direct line from Alexander. 53 Looking into the future from the time of Daniel, God states that the tenth king of that fourth kingdom will be the last of that line. Interestingly, we are not told about the sins of that king; nothing about his persecution of the Jews or the pollution of the Temple through paganism. So this chapter, minus some later interpolations, must have been written between 175 BCE and 168 BCE. Daniel 8 was written by a second author after December 168 BCE, Daniel 9 by a third author before 164 BCE who has the scheme of "weeks of years" (to explain what went wrong with Jeremiah's prediction of seventy years) 54 and who interpolates this system into the other chapters of Daniel B. Daniel 10-12, again minus interpolations, is the work of a fourth author before 165 BCE.

52. Daniel B has its own updated version of this inter-dynastic marriage in Dan. II (in what Ginsberg calls "a remarkably accurate account" of the wars and alliances between the Seleucids and the Ptolemies all the way down to Antiochus IV): The king of the south will grow powerful; however, one of his officers will overpower him and rule, having an extensive domination, after some years, an alliance will be made, and the daughter of the king of the south will come to the king of the north to effect the agreement, but she will not maintain her strength, nor will his strength endure. She will be surrendered together with those who escorted her and the one who begot her and helped her during those times. (Dan. 11 :5-6) The king of the southern state is Ptolemy I and the king of the north is Seleucus I. 53. The list often is as follows: Alexander the Great, Alexander II (who came to the throne in 317; cf the Seleucid king list in Pritchard ANET 567), Seleucus I, Antiochus I, Antiochus II, Seleucus II, Antiochus III, Seleucus IV and Antiochus IV. 54. Louis E. Hartman and Alexander A. Dilella The Book of Daniel Anchor Bible Series 23 (New York: Doubleday, 1977) 246-7.

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The development of Daniel B with its various authors and interpolators, not to mention the interpolative activity found in Daniel A, demonstrates the importance of the Daniel traditions to the generations of Jews that we are studying. No other Biblical book or tradition was such a focus of intellectual activity and theological and political speculation during this period. It was as if everything was at stake in the understanding of the Book of Daniel. Daniel A looked at the rise and fall of four kingdoms in its hopes that the fifth kingdom was at hand. I cite Dan. 2:43 again: And in the time of those kingdoms the God of Heaven will establish a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, a kingdom that shall not be transferred to another people. It will crush and wipe out all these kingdoms, but shall itselflast forever ... But nothing happened. To state the facts again: Judaea, under Ptolemaic Egypt for a little over a century (30 1-198), found itself part of Seleucid Syria as of 198 BCE when Antiochus III won the Battle of Banias. The apocalyptists of Daniel B could re-interpret the prophecies and write new ones as events were unfolding, with writers scurrying to keep the prophecies up-to-date. So the question: "What went wrong?" persisted into a new age. Believers waited for decades, looking for a situation that would allow for a revolution. They believed that God counts the time and controls destiny. They believed that time was on their side and that their day would come. Daniel A, in a sense, bore two sets of children: Daniel B, 2Maccabees, The Testament of Moses, and then the Maccabaean revolt and its text in !Maccabees. Daniel B is an updated reading of Daniel 1-6 in which the emperors will fall before the pacifistic faith of the Jews. Just as the various empires fell, so will that of Antiochus IV. This is a legitimate reading of Daniel A, which narrates stories of how God miraculously delivered the characters from acute danger without their action. Daniel A does not betray a hint of rebellion, even if the king is mad. The ideal is non-violence to bring on the vengeance of God, and it is the theme of 2Maccabees. In another important text, The Testament of Moses (= The Assumption of Moses), which is a kind of later revision and expansion of Deut. 32-34, we find this message in that Pentateuchal text revolving around the figure of Moses. Taxo and his Seven Sons resolve: Let us fast for the space of three days and on the fourth let us go into a cave which is in the field, and let us die rather than transgress the commands of the Lord ... for if we do this and die, our blood will be avenged before the Lord" (9:6-7).

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The martyrs represented by Taxo and those poor martyrs mentioned in sorrow by 1Mace. 2 might have expected to be vindicated through an afterlife, as they say in the latter text: Let us all die in our innocence; heaven and earth testify for us that you are killing us unjustly. 1Macc. 2:29-38 Then the Kingdom of God will be revealed before the whole earth. The program is full observance of the Law, martyrdom if necessary, and the resulting Vengeance of the Lord will be swift and sure. The vengeance is certainly not a new idea; it seems to be directly derived from Deut. 32:35-43: The sword shall deal death without, as shall the terror within, To youth and maiden alike, the suckling as well as the aged. To be my vengeance and recompense, at the time that their foot falters, Yea, their day of disaster is near, and destiny rushes upon them. For the LORD will vindicate His people and take revenge for His servants, when he sees that their might is gone ... Let them rise up to your help, and let them be a shield unto you! See them, that I, I am He; there is no god beside Me .... When I whet My flashing blade and My hand lays hold on judgment Vengeance will I wreak on My foes ... (Deut. 32:25, 35, 36, 38, 39, 41) Daniel B looks forward to the ultimate redemption of the martyrs in eternity (after death): It will be a time of trouble, the like of which has never been since the nation came into being. At that time, your people will be rescued, all who are found inscribed in the book. Many of those that sleep in the dust will awake, some to eternal life, others to reproaches .... And the knowledgeable will be radiant like the bright expanse of sky, and those who lead the many to righteousness will be like the stars forever and ever. (Dan. 12: 1-3)

The enlightened ones are ready to die with the hope of eternal glory. The people are, in a sense, pre-Christians who are looking for their reward in eternity. Mattathias had a very different vision of history. It is the vision of Daniel 1-6, but with a new and crucial modification. To get to the next stage of history, he said, the Judaeans would have to do it themselves. The Maccabees looked for deliverance in the here and now. In 1Maccabees, the Maccabees decided that it

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was time for the vision of Daniel to be fulfilled. While the Book of Daniel says: 'Wait for God', !Maccabees says: 'We are doing God's Will.' As opposed to martyrdom to bring God's wrath, they believed in righteous violent actions. Mattathias was a true believer who said that the Jews had waited for centuries and that the time had come to take matters into their own hands. He concluded that things were so bad that it was the time to which their ancestors had been looking forward. Mattathias and Judas were not just a part of a conservative group, and they were not really that anti-Hellenistic. Instead, they were a group that believed that the fifth kingdom is at hand, that the Jewish time had come. Maccabaean Judaism was a Judaism that existed in this world, in real-life, in history. While their pacifistic opponents were, in a sense, proto-Christians, the Maccabees were the true heirs of Jeremiah's golden sword, the truly Jewish interpreters of tradition.

The Ambitions of the Maccabees There is a blatant criticism of the Maccabees in the revisionist scholarship; they weren't idealistic fighters for religious freedom but ambitious men who through ruthless and relentless striving for power, and even genealogical falsification usurped the high priesthood. Were the Maccabees ambitious? Of course. Almost every person who has done great things has been at least partly motivated by ambition. In the most famous speech in William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (or just about any other work of literature), Marc Antony defends his master against the charge of ambition by Marcus Junius Brutus by saying that the proofthat Caesar was not ambitious is that he turned down the crown three times: The noble Brutus Hath told you Caesar was ambitious: If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Caesar answered it .. Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest, (For Brutus is an honourable man; So are they all; all honourable men) Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral ... He hath brought many captives home to Rome, Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill: Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? When that the poor have cried,

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Caesar hath wept: Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man You all did see that on the Lupercal I thrice presented him a kingly crown Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition? (Julius Caesar Act 3, Scene 2) Why is ambition such "a grievous fault," a terrible accusation? Clearly, all of the major characters in the play, including Brutus, are ambitious. So was everyone in public or military life in Rome. Ambition here means seeking the throne, a very specific charge of personal aggrandizement at the expense of the Republic. The scholars who would make the Maccabees ambitious mean something similar, that they wanted the power of petty Hellenistic kings. In order to respond to the specific question of the Maccabees' ambition, we will have to understand the meaning of the concept in both Jewish and Greek sources. Traditional Jewish and pro-Hasmonaean sources compare the Maccabees to ancient Biblical heroes, for whom personal ambition is obscured by a theological overlay. The Greek sources such as Aristotle with which educated Jews of the Hellenistic age would have been familiar struggle with ambition, attempting to distinguish between great and self-centered leaders. The Maccabees may not have built gymnasia but had absorbed the agonal spirit and realized that they needed to be seen as a synthesis of the best of both worlds in order to fulfill the dream of their people. Nonetheless, they were Jewish heroes who pursued the Biblical dream of a free Israel as the center of the world. As we have seen, Mattathias was a visionary not so much for his family's ambitions as for something much greater, the long dreamed-of Jewish empire.

Ambition in Ancient Greece We can evaluate Maccabaean ambition from a study of the meaning of ambition in the world in which they lived. Under the influence of Robert Faulkner's The Case for Greatness, we should review our prejudices against political ambition and learn from Aristotle's view of the virtue of greatness of soul. 55 To be very basic: Why do people seek political leadership? How shall we separate fundamentally praiseworthy motivations from purely self-centered ones? Aristotle thinks deeply about the question of who is a great man: Who is 55. Robert Faulkner The Case for Greatness: Honorable Ambition and Its Critics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).

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the highest human leader? Does he aspire to the highest values, or is he selfserving, acting out of selfish motives? Aristotle struggles with the concept of ambition and attempts to distinguish between the ambition of the great soul and the ambition of the self-centered man. In Aristotle's discussions of honor and justice in the Nicomachean Ethics and the debate between oligarchy and democracy in the Politics, the great philosopher does not overlook the element of self-concern inherent in ambition, but also emphasizes its concern for justice and its potential for public good. He does so partly by making important distinctions regarding rolitical ambition that have been largely neglected by modern political thought. 5 Aristotle distinguishes between the virtues of megalopsuchia ("greatness of soul") and philotimia, which literally means "love of honor." Greatness of soul means that the leader does not exploit others and does not exhibit prejudice, selfabsorption, pride or the wish for domination. 57 The truly great-souled leader has moderate expectations and does not seek honors, which are external rewards. Virtue is its own reward and the only measure of one's worth. 58 As opposed to Achilles in the Iliad, who could not tolerate dishonor, 59 the great-souled person can tolerate dishonor because he holds himself moderately toward dishonor as well. 60 Therefore the great-souled man is he who has the right disposition in relation to honors and disgraces. . . . it is evident that honor is the object with which the great-souled are concerned, since it is honor above all else which great men claim and deserve .... And inasmuch as the great-souled man deserves most, he must be the best of men; for the better a man is the more he deserves, and he that is best deserves most. Therefore the great-souled man must be a good man. (Nicomachean Ethics IV iii 10-14t 1 There is something interesting, perhaps even paradoxical, in that if one has the highest ambition to be truly great, he must look beyond ambition. 56. Hamilton, Susan. "The Passion for Honor and Justice: Aristotle's Account of Political Ambition;" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, 2008-l 0-14. http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p l4328l_index.html. 57. Faulkner The Case for Greatness 21-30. 58. Faulkner The Case for Greatness 26, 35. 59. Faulkner The Case for Greatness 31; c( 37. 60. Faulkner The Case .for Greatness 31. 61. Aristotle The Nicomachean Ethics trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library XIX (Cambridge: 2003) 217.

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If we talk about the Maccabees knowing Greek and Greek philosophy, would not Aristotle be a basic part of that training? Can we not speak about Mattathias, Judas and the Greatness of Soul? Can we see these Jewish heroes from the perspective of the mega/opsuchos? Aristotle's concept of the virtue of greatness of soul finds exemplars in the description of Mattathias and Judas in !Maccabees. The revisionists could immediately respond, 'But we know that !Maccabees, a pro-Hasmonaean work, presents the Maccabees in a favorable light. We're talking about what these people were really like.' Even so, we should evaluate the Maccabees' motives through a prism of the ideals of their age. At the very least, we will be able to understand the presentation of the complex figure of Mattathias in !Maccabees in a different light.

Ambition in the Bible In thinking about the topic of ambition in the Bible, we find ourselves in a completely different world than that of Aristotle's philosophy. The question is not about whether a man is ambitious but how the events of the world unfold. The Biblical writers superimpose a theological grid on facts to make the point that God, not human beings, creates history. Think about the major heroes of the Bible: The patriarch Abraham, prophets such as Moses and Isaiah, the 'judge' Gideon and monarchs like King David. They were all "called," one way or another, by God. None sought his or her role in the major events of their time. They all protested, claiming that they were unworthy. To be "called" means: 'I am not just speaking or acting for myself. I am only the agent of God's will or the transmitter of His words.' The call is so common, such a convention that one may wonder if there is not more to learn from it than mere description. Biblical scholarship has taught that the call narrative should not be seen as the testimony of personal, mystical experiences. Instead, we should view these passages as examples of a genre, as the Biblical method of expressing the selfrevelation of God to the Israelite people. This Biblical form developed as a standard way to express how the Israelites understood God to be at work through their leaders; an individual is a mere agent of God who was chosen for his role. The commissioning Senre can be seen as the Biblical community's theological view ofleadership. 62. The extensive literature includes Gerhard Von Rad Old Testament Theology Vol. II The Theology of Israel's Prophetic Traditions trans. D. M. G. Stalker (New York: Harper and Row, 1965) 50-69; M. J. Buss "An Anthropological Perspective Upon Prophetic Call Narratives" Semeia 21 (1982) 9-30.

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The primary Biblical commissioning accounts include Moses, Gideon, Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel as well as Micaiah ben Imlah, and in modified form, Amos and Jonah. We usually find five basic elements in these accounts: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Confrontation - a situation of distress or crisis in which God confronts the person;63 Commission - the commissioning of the person for some action or message; 64 Objections- raised by the person in the form of inadequacy for the task; 65 Assurance- of God's help, often in the formula "I will be with you"; 66 Sign- to confirm the commission, often with the content of the mission. 67

The accounts of the calls of Moses, Gideon, and Jeremiah share all of these elements, while the narratives of Samuel, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Micaiah only exhibit abbreviated versions of the form. 68 The standard and most complete (in terms of these admittedly artificial categories) of these narratives the call of Moses is in Exodus 3-4 and again in Ex. 6. The third element in the call sequence, that of objection, is not the leader's admission of a character flaw. Instead, this feature is a theological statement; the claim of inadequacy serves to focus on the inability of the human agent to accomplish the task. God's assurance in the formula "I will be with you" emphasizes His commitment to the human agent in spite of his inability to accomplish the task.

63. Moses (Ex. 3:7-9); Gideon (Jud. 6:11-13); Samuel (I Sam. 3:2-10); Isaiah (Is. 6:17); Ezekiel (Eze. 2:1-2, 3:12-15, 22-24); Micaiah (I K 22:19); Jeremiah (Jer. 1:3). 64. Moses (Ex. 3:10); Gideon (Jud. 6:14); Samuel (I Sam. 3:ll-l4); Isaiah (Is. 6:813); Ezekiel (Ez. 2:3-8,3:4-11, 16-21, 25-27). 65. Moses (Ex. 3:ll,l3; 4:1,10, 13); Gideon (Jud. 6:15); Jeremiah (Jer. 1:6). Moses voices a series of five questions or objections to God, all expressing his hesitancy to accept the task of leading God's people out of Egypt: "Who am I that I should go?" (3:11); "What shall I say to them?" (3: 12); "What if they do not listen?" (4: 1); "I am slow of speech" (4:10); "Send someone else" (4:13). 66. Moses (Ex. 3:12, 14-22,4:2-9, ll-12, 14-17); Gideon (Judg. 6:16); Jeremiah (Jer. 1:7-10, 17-19); 67. Sign Moses (Ex. 4:2-9, 17); Gideon (Judg. 6:17-24) Jeremiah (Jer. l:ll-16); Ezekiel (Ezek. 2:8b-3:3). 68. Some scholars have noted that in the case of the latter group, there is an emphasis on a Divine Assembly or Heavenly Council that gives shape to the commissioning. Isaiah only volunteers to be God's messenger when he sees a vision of the celestial court (Is. 6). In this case, the encounter with the divine provides its own assurance and alleviates the questions or objections before they can be spoken.

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In the context of the study of ambition in the Bible, we can further the discussion concerning the genre of commissioning a prophet or a leader. I would suggest that one of the intentions of this convention is to state that these important figures were not ambitious men like the kings and tyrants of other lands, that their roles were thrust upon them; that they were commanded to rise in power and fame. They did not seek these missions nor consider themselves worthy of these tasks, but simply obeyed the words of God. Biblical leaders do not seek leadership; they think of themselves as inadequate for the task. They are commissioned not because of their ability because they are willing to acknowledge their inability. None of these figures campaign to be prophet, judge or leader. None of them say, 'Thank you, God, I've been waiting for this opportunity.' The great leaders of the Bible do not campaign for their positions; God selects them for His own reasons at times of His own choosing. Leadership of God's people is not something to be sought and cannot be accomplished by the skills and strengths of the individual. Even with figures that are remembered as having great personal skills (Joseph, David, Solomon, Nehemiah), the Bible attributes their "success" to God's presence in their lives and their understanding of their role in the service of God, not to their personal abilities. In general, there is a constant warning to Israel throughout the Bible to avoid the temptation to assume that success is ever the result of human effort and skill (Deut. 8:11-20; Josh. 7:3). God only calls prophets because of unfolding, compelling historical events. God is at work as Amos rises to prophesy the year that King Uzziah died, at the end of an era, when a series of natural calamities including an earthquake and the social imbalances caused by Jeroboam II's wars were in the process of bringing the land to a crisis. Hosea spoke out during a time of crisis bordering on anarchy. Nahum spoke of a Nineveh about to fall. Jeremiah and Zephaniah prophesied when the Assyrians were falling and as the Chaldeans approached. 69 To summarize: Most Biblical leaders were called when certain historical situations required them and were ad hoc solutions to particular crises. Some, such as the monarchs, were called for leadership in general. The Bible takes great care to emphasize that these leaders, from Abraham to Moses to David to Isaiah, were not ambitious. They did not seek their roles and were compelled by God to fulfill certain important tasks.

69. R.B.Y. Scott The Relevance of the Prophets: An introduction to the Old Testament prophets and their message (New York: Macmillan, 1968) 95-6.

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All of this is the Biblical theological move against ambition and against the idea that human beings affect history. The 'call' is a trope against human ambition. The Bible recasts human ambition, the driving force of human history, with an overlay of God's commandments. Surely, Joseph is an ambitious man. Joseph rises from a slave to the second most important man in the Egyptian empire. One way to read the character of Joseph is to see him as a cocky braggart. But an alternate way is to see him as a willing agent of God. The dreams that Joseph dreams and interprets can be seen as messages from God. Scholarship certainly has explored David's ambition. 70 He joins the enemy Philistines, becomes king of Judah before his predecessor Saul's death and perhaps even steals Saul's wife Ahinoam. I and II Samuel strain under the weight of the conflict between the God-directed rise of a shepherd boy and David's ruthless actions on his way to rule over all Israel and Judah. God comes to Solomon, David's successor, in a dream at Gibeon and offers him anything (I K 3:4 ff.). Solomon replies that he is but "a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in .... Give thy servant therefore an understanding mind to govern thy people, that I may discern between good and evil; for who is able to govern this thy great people?" Whatever greatness Solomon attains is a gift from God. And yet even from the Biblical narrative, we know that Solomon's accession to the throne is marked by deft court intrigue and the imprisonment or execution of his rivals. One could multiply these examples at will. It is as if we have two strata, the historical level of human ambition and the Biblical level of God's commission, with the latter deliberately superimposed on the former. In attempting to reconstruct the motivations of the leaders portrayed in the Bible, the historian cannot say, "God called these people." The historian can only say, at most, "These people felt called by God." The cynical historian will not allow for such feelings and attribute only base motives to the aspiring leader, claiming that he or a later writer consciously creates a story of Divine selection. We have seen antagonism toward political ambition from Aristotle and the Bible and from the revisionist scholars. Aristotle will admire only those who are 'great-souled' and the Bible will deny that its leaders were ambitious, while the revisionists will attempt to level every great leader in history down to the size of self-serving power-seekers.

70. E,g. Baruch Halpern and Jon. D. Levenson "The Political Import of David's Marriages" JBL 9914 (1980) 507-18.

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I will argue in another book that these scholars may be anachronistically reading the later ambitions of Jonathan, Simon and his heirs onto the early stages of the Maccabaean revolution. I will agree that, beginning at a point in the career of Jonathan, things changed. As I shall explore at length, Jonathan seems to have taken his own look at the Hellenistic world and said, "Why not us?" But this is a far cry from the religious and nationalistic fervor of Mattathias. It seems implausible, to say the least, to suggest that Mattathias gathered his sons in Modein and said: Boys, I have a plan to tum our clan into the greatest family in Judaea. Here's what we're going to do: 1. Defeat the Seleucid am1ies so that they allow our people to have religious freedom; 2. Regain the Temple; 3. Take over the high priesthood from the Zadokites-Oniads; 4. Win political independence; 5. Become the monarchs of an independent Jewish kingdom. Imagine, as we laugh at this scene, the reaction of the sons. Instead, Imagine this more plausible scene in which Mattathias speaks to his sons: 'Everything we are, everything we have, is at stake. Everything we believe in is being destroyed before our eyes. If we are to think practically, and not just from the core of our beliefs, then understand who we are: we are priests of God. If our religion goes, so does our livelihood. If our people assimilate into the Greek world, we are no longer leaders of a people that no longer exists.' !Maccabees does not claim that God calls Mattathias; there is no Divine voice or court or any kind of theophany. One could say, however, that in a sense, priests are not like charismatic prophets and do not have to be called; they have their duties and responsibilities ordained by their heritage and lineage. God may not have called Mattathias but he felt compelled by events, which in reality is probably, leaving aside theological considerations, exactly what happened with all of the other leaders, too. That is, when !Maccabees has Mattathias refer to a number of Biblical figures, there may be an implied dimension that he, like they, was compelled to act. We can explore the ambitions of Mattathias and his descendants, the Hasmonaean dynasty, by studying his deathbed speech.

Mattathias's Deathbed Speech in lMacc. 2 In lMacc. 2:49-68, Mattathias speaks to his sons about the leadership of the family and the movement after his death. The speech is an important passage not

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only because the elderly leader passes the mantle of leadership on to Simon and Judas but also is of special interest in determining the date of the composition of !Maccabees. For my purpose here, this passage is especially significant because it reflects a synthesis of the Biblical and Greek perspectives on ambition. What is so striking about this speech is its very theme. Mattathias attempts to inspire his sons to great deeds not only for their faith but also for the sake of gaining eternal fame and reputation. When the time drew near for Mattathias to die, he said to his sons, "Now arrogance has grown strong, and outrage; it is a time of calamity and of fierce anger. Therefore, my children, be zealous for the Torah, and be ready to give your lives for the covenant of our fathers. Remember the deeds of our ancestors, which they did in their generations, And win for yourselves great glory and undying renown. Was not Abraham found to keep his faith under trial, and was it not reckoned to his merit? Joseph in his time of distress kept a commandment and became lord of Egypt. Phinehas, our ancestor, through his act of zeal received a pact of priesthood for all time. Joshua by fulfilling the Word became a Judge in Israel. Caleb by bearing witness before the congregation received an inheritance of land. David for his piety received as his heritage a royal throne for ages. Elijah for his acts of zeal on behalf of the Torah was taken up as if into heaven. Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael because they maintained their faith were preserved from the fire. Daniel through his guiltlessness was saved from the mouth of lions. In this manner consider the generations past: all who place their hopes in Him shall not falter. Have no fear of the words of a wicked man, for his glory is destined for dunghills and worms. He will spring up today, but tomorrow he shall not be found, for he shall have turned back into his dust, and his plotting shall perish. My children, be valorous and resolute for the Torah, because through the Torah will you win glory. Your brother Simeon, I know, is a man of counsel; Always listen to him; he shall serve as your father. Judas Maccabaeus has been a mighty warrior from his youth.

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He shall be commander of your army and shall fight the war against the nations. You shall join to yourselves all who observe the Torah, and take vengeance for your people. Bring retribution upon the gentiles, and give heed to the command of the Torah. Mattathias instructs his sons to remember the actions of their ancestors and the rewards that each of the heroes received for these actions. To highlight a few of the verses I have just cited: Remember the deeds of our ancestors, which they did in their generations, and win for yourselves great glory and undying renown. My children, be valorous and resolute for the Torah, because through the Torah will you win glory. On the other hand, Have no fear of the words of a wicked man, for his glory is destined for dunghills and worms. While Mattathias says that it is a time of "calamity and great anger," the emphasis here is on the glory that his sons may attain by fighting against the arrogant enemies. If ambition means the desire for great power, there is nothing here about becoming kings or rulers on any permanent basis. Judas is to become the commander of the army after his father's death, and Simon is to be some kind of wise chief. But there is nothing about a dynasty or a crown or even the acquisition of the high priesthood. 71 There also is no reference to the Temple. Mattathias sees their effort as an ad hoc solution to a terrible crisis. If, as an alternative, ambition means the desire for fame and honor, then Mattathias's speech is directed toward this goal. To use Aristotle's terms, Mattathias commands his sons to seek the everlasting honor accorded the 'greatsouled' famous heroes of the Bible. Before I examine the list of heroes in this passage, I need to provide background about this type of list. This passage reminds us of a group of Biblical texts that may be called "historical surveys." For my purpose here, I will make a distinction between those surveys that explicitly name the human heroes/agents of God and those that do not. In the latter group we will place Ezek. 20:4-44 and Ps. 78, 135, and 136 which do not mention Moses despite their extensive reviews of the events in Egypt and the wilderness. To the first group we could add the so-called "Credo" of God's achievements in texts such as Nehemiah 9:6-37 (the original form seems to be in Deut. 26:5-10) where Abraham and Moses are mentioned. In the 71. Contrary to Josephus, Judas never strives for the high priesthood.

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former group, the texts that interest us here, Ps. 105 refers to stories about Abraham (vv. 14-15 review the commonly-called wife-sister tales of Gen. 12 and 20 and are mentioned as illustrations of God's protection of his anointed ones/prophets), Joseph (who is sold into slavery but is "purged" by "the decree of the LORD" and rises to rule over Egypt and teach Pharaoh's elders "wisdom"), Moses and Aaron. Ps. 106 refers to the saving actions of Moses, Aaron and Phinehas. To these Biblical texts we add the very important apocryphal text Sirach 44-50, "In Praise of Israel's Ancestors,''72 which seems to be in close relationship with Mattathias's deathbed speech in lMacc. 2. Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us. The Lord hath wrought great glory by them through his great power from the beginning. All these were honored in their generations, and were the glory oftheir times. Sirach 44:1- 7 Our distinction between texts that name heroes and those which do not becomes useful when we see that the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon 10:1-12:27, in which there are no names in deference to the power of Wisdom, and Judith 5:5-21 (again without even a single name of a hero) are often grouped with lMacc. 2 and Sirach 44-49. Yet what could more antithetical to "Let us praise famous men"' than failing to mention the names of the famous men? A few words about Ben Sira are important here as background to our comparison between the two lists. Ben Sira, more properly The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, seems to have been written between 198 BCE and c.l75 BCE73 Scholarly consensus arrives at the first of these dates because of the laudatory eulogy of the high priest Simon the Just, the last-mentioned man of renown (50: 1-21) who, it is said, is referred to as a figure in the past. Simon died

72. See for example T. R. Lee Studies in the Form of Sirach 44-50 SBLDS 75 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1986); B. L. Mack Wisdom and the Hebrew Epic: Ben Sira Hymn in Praise of the Fathers (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1985). 73 .We know from manuscripts that Ben Sira wrote in Hebrew and that his grandson translated it into Greek. For background on the work, see J. J. Collins Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Age (Louisville: Westminster, 1997) 42-lll; M. Gilbert "Wisdom Literature" in Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period Section Two Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Qumran Sectarian Writings, Philo, Josephus Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum: The Literature of the Jewish People in the Period of the Second Temple and the Talmud ed. Michael E. Stone (Assen:Van Gorcum, 1984) 290.

s

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in 198 BCE. 74 Yet scholarship also agrees that Ben Sira saw Simeon II in person; hence the panegyric. I am less certain that Simeon was dead at the time of the writing of Ben Sira because of this passage: May his kindness toward Simeon be lasting; May he fulfill for him the covenant with Phinehas So that it may not be abrogated for him Or for his descendants, while the heavens last. (Ben Sira 50:23-24)75 Still, the passage does seem to be written in the first quarter of the 2nd century BCE. The date of c.l75 BCE for a terminus ad quem is derived from the fact that there is no retlection of or reaction to the beginning of the Hellenistic reforms of Antiochus IV in the entire work. These dates are important because we need to know the relationship between Ben Sira and 1Maccabees. Scholarship has deduced a great deal from the last part of Mattathias 's speech for it would seem to provide us with a date for the writing of at least this part of !Maccabees, ifnot the entire work: Your brother Simon, I know, is a man of counsel; Always listen to him; he shall serve as your father. Judas Maccabaeus has been a mighty warrior from his youth. He shall be commander of your army and shall fight the war against the nations. Since it is Judas who will assume the role of leader after Mattathias and not Simon, scholars have reasonably deduced that I Mace. was written during the time of Simon, a period which would not begin until Jonathan's death in 143 BCE and which would end in 134 BCE, or that of his son John Hyrcanus (134104 BCE) or grandson Alexander Jannaeus (103-76 BCE). The theory is that Judas was the next leader but the text is written to aggrandize Simon's role. 76 As opposed to so many ancient works that tell us little to nothing about their authors, Ben Sira tells us that he was a government official and a teacher of 74. George W. E. Nickelsburg Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah (Phil.: Fortress, 1981) 64; G. H. Box and W. 0. E. Oesterley in R. H. Charles Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1912) 291-94. 75. This is a translation of the Hebrew version; the Greek version of the conclusion to the panorama of heroes present an interesting difference: "May he entrust us to his mercy!/And let him deliver us in our days." The Greek version implies that the political situation is unsatisfactory and that the people require deliverance, while the Hebrew does not admit to the fact that the people are subject to foreign rule. 76. It is striking that the passage omits Jonathan's name altogether. Is the omission an effort to make Jonathan less significant?

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wisdom to youth in Jerusalem. What makes this of interest here is that just as Ben Sira reveals his identity, he also seems to initiate the form of a name-list of Biblical heroes; the emphasis is on the individual, a characteristic of Greek literature. Thus we have established that Ben Sira would not seem to have been written later than 175 BCE and !Mace. does not seem to have been written earlier than 143 BCE (see the Appendix). This suggests possible dependence of the list of heroes in Mattathias 's speech on the list in Ben Sira. Before we study the names in the respective lists of Ben Sira and 1Mace., we will consider the meaning of these lists of names.

Immortality Through Fame Achieved by Deeds of Faith These lists are central to these works because they represent the only possibilities for immortality in the views of their writers. Neither Ben Sira nor the author of !Maccabees speak of the themes of immortality and resurrection; like almost of all the Biblical texts, they emphasize this world. They do offer a kind of immortality that one can achieve through deeds of faith that bring a great reputation and glory. Eternal fame is the only immortality one can hope for, but it compensates for the brevity and travails of life. Certain Biblical references form the background of this idea: I will give them, in My house, And within my walls, A monument and a name, Better than sons or daughters. I will give them an everlasting name Which shall not perish. (lsa. 56:5)

He shall never be shaken; The beneficent man will be remembered forever. (Ps. 112:6) The name of the righteous is invoked in blessing, But the fame of the wicked rots. (Prov. 10:7) Ben Sira develops the idea and offers continuation through children ( 14: 18) and a good name (37:25-26, 41: 11-13) and combines both in our passage of interest on the famous men of the Bible:

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All these were glorious in their time, each illustrious in his day. Some of them have left behind a name so that people recount their praises; But of others no memory remains, For when they perished, they perished completely. And are as though they had never lived, they and their children after them .... For all time their progeny will last, their glory will never be blotted out. Their bodies are buried in peace, but their name lives on and on ... (Sirach 44:7-14) In !Maccabees, death ends all for the wicked but the good would go on through their fame (2:62-63). So Mattathias seems quite comfortable with dying, knowing that his sons will carry on with the work he has initiated (IMacc. 2:49 ff. ). We find a parallel in the words of Simon, the only one of Mattathias 's sons to reach old age, when he speaks to his two eldest sons Judas and John near the end of his life: I and my brothers and the older generations of our family have fought the enemies of Israel from my youth down to the present day, and many times have we succeeded in rescuing Israel. Now, however, I have grown old, whereas you, thanks to His mercy, have reached the age of competence. Take my place and the place of my brothers. Go, and champion the cause of your nation, and may the help of Heaven be with you. (IMacc. 16:2-3) This passage presents children as perpetuation but does not give us perpetuation of the name through children. One needs fame, and glory through military success and adherence to God's commandments is a running theme of this work. A poem describing Judas declares: "By his deeds he brought bitterness to many kings and joy to Jacob; forever shall his memory be blessed ... his renown spread to the end of the earth" (I Mace. 3:7 -9). Judas's "fame reached the king, and every nation told of Judas's battles"(lMacc. 3:26). We are speaking of international renown. In good Greek fashion, even the lesser figures in IMacc. strive for fame through heroic deeds. "Eleazar gave his life to save his people and win eternal fame" (I Mace. 6:44). "Seron said, "I shall win renown and glory in the empire by waging war against Judas and his men who despise the word of the king"" (!Mace. 3:14). When Judas, Jonathan and Simon win victories, "the commanders of the army, Joseph son of Zechariah and Azariah, heard of their

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exploits in battle. They said, "Let us, too, win fame and go into battle against the neighboring gentiles" (!Mace. 5:56-57). I want to stress that the desire for fame is presented as a constant, conscious motivation for the deeds of the heroes of lMacc. When Judas prepares for what will be his last battle, he cries: "If our time has come, let us die bravely for the sake of our brothers and not leave behind a stain upon our glory!" (1 Mace. 9:1 0; cf. 5:63f.; and 15:9). Simon's pyramid monuments were designed to publicize the names ofhis fallen family (13:27-30; cf. 14:10). Here is a chart comparing the lists of famous men from Ben Sira and !Mace.: BENSIRA

!MACCABEES

Adam Seth Enoch Noah Shem Abraham (Isaac Jacob) Not mentioned Moses Aaron Phinehas Joshua Caleb Judges Samuel Nathan David Solomon Elijah Elisha Hezekiah/Isaiah Josiah Ezekiel ZerubbabeVJeshua Nehemiah Daniel and Friends Simon son of Onias

Not mentioned Not mentioned Not mentioned Not mentioned Not mentioned Abraham Joseph Moses Not mentioned Phineas Joshua Caleb Not mentioned Not mentioned Not mentioned David Not mentioned Elijah Not mentioned Not mentioned Not mentioned Not mentioned Not mentioned Not mentioned Daniel and Friends Not mentioned

In comparing and contrasting these lists, the differences are at least interesting, if not revealing. The selection of names in Mattathias 's deathbed speech may tell us a great deal about the intentions if not ofMattathias then at least of the author

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of 1Mace., who has given us everything we know or think we know about Mattathias. Does this list, in the names it includes and the reasons given for those names, tell us something about Mattathias or how his heirs understood him? Each list is a selection, making choices about who is to be included and excluded. We can now examine the list of Mattathias 's heroes.

Abraham Was not Abraham found to keep his faith under trial, and was it not reckoned to his merit? This verse is more difficult and more interesting than it may appear, and refers to either Gen. 15:6 or Gen. 22:lff. In Gen. 15, Abram questions God's promise that the land will be given to his descendants since he is childless, but then accepts God's promise: "He believed the LORD; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness." lfMattathias invokes Gen. 15 to his sons, he means that though the Judaeans are undergoing a severe trial in their own time, they must keep their faith and the result will be that they and their descendants will possess the land. The alternative is that Mattathias alludes to the more famous Gen. 22:1 ff., usually referred to as 'the Binding of Isaac,' which speaks of God's wish to test Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his beloved son. If Mattathias refers to this story, he may be drawing a parallel to the trials of the faithful parents who have been forced to risk the lives of their sons in the conflict with Antiochus IV, with the assurance that they will be rewarded just as Abraham was. It also is possible that the verse here combines Gen. 15:6 and Gen. 22:1, and draws on traditions about the trials that Abraham faced, including a later, very popular tradition that Abraham, like the three friends in Daniel, was thrown into a fiery furnace in Chaldea because ofhis rejection of paganism. In contrast, Ben Sira begins with two pre-Israelite figures, Enoch and Noah, and refers to them again at the end of the list, along with Adam, Seth and Shem. Ben Sira speaks of Enoch's ascension to Heaven and states that he was "an example of repentance to all generations" (Sirach 44: 16). "Everlasting covenants" were made with Noah. I Mace. has none of this and omits these names, probably because they are not Israelite/Jewish heroes who are heirs of the covenant. We thus learn something about the purpose of this list; it is in keeping with the theme of I Maccabees that sets the Jewish people against their non-Jewish oppressors and neighbors. As Mattathias says in this speech: "Bring retribution upon the gentiles, and give heed to the command of the Torah." Ben Sira emphasizes Abraham's primary connection to circumcision: "He established the covenant in his flesh, and when he was tested he was found

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faithful" (Sirach 44:20). I assume that the two parts of this sentence refer to Gen. 17 and Gen. 22 and that the test involved is not the circumcision itself. I find it striking that lMacc., in which Mattathias forcibly circumcises Jewish babies, does not refer to this sign of Abraham's covenant that was so controversial during the Antiochene persecution. I would not have noticed the absence of a reference in the 1Macc. list to Abraham and circumcision ifl were not reading it in contrast with Ben Sira. If Mattathias 's list is dependent on that in Ben Sira, why is circumcision not mentioned in the reference to Abraham? ·

Joseph Joseph in his time of distress kept a commandment and became lord of Egypt. Mattathias states that Joseph "kept a commandment" in "his time of distress" and becomes "lord of Egypt" (2:53; cf. Gen. 41:40-45). This may be praise of the way that Joseph refused to commit adultery with Potiphar's wife (Gen. 39); Jub. 39:6 retells the story so that Joseph refrains from congress with his mistress because he "remembered the Lord and the words which Jacob, his father, used to read." The commandment is the prohibition of adultery; while the term 'commandment' would seem to be anachronistic as we are speaking in a time before Moses, other evidence such as Gen. 20 makes clear that adultery was considered 'the great sin' even in these early eras. Goldstein suggests that the reference to Joseph's distress and rise is an intriguing prophecy about Jonathan's survival and rise to become a lord of the Hellenistic world (1Macc. 10:19-20, 62-65, 88-89; 11:27, 42-51, 58-60). If so, then the omission of Jonathan at the end of the passage becomes even more puzzling. I would prefer to say that the prophecy concerns the rise of the Hasmonaeans in general. In comparing Mattathias's list to that of Ben Sira, we note that Joseph is found in the former but not the latter, again forcing us to wonder if there is any dependence: If the author of 1Mace. does base his list on that of Ben Sira, why would he add Joseph? Joseph was a lord of the Diaspora who assimilated into Egyptian culture. The answer may be that the theme of this list is that God rewards those who follow His commandments. Joseph's 'time of distress's occurred when his brothers sold him into slavery in Egypt. He kept "a commandment," perhaps refraining from adultery, perhaps even keeping the dietary laws as did Daniel and his colleagues, and therefore was rewarded by God with great power. The implicit theology is that Pharaoh did not raise Joseph to high office; only God brings glory to His heroes. The point is that despite what he endured at the hands of his brethren, Joseph was loyal to God and was

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rewarded with great honor, that fidelity to the commandments brings honor and renown.

Phinehas It is interesting that I Mace. goes on to speak about Phinehas rather than Moses and Aaron, especially when one looks at the lengthy sections on the two in the Ben Sira passage. It may be that Moses and Aaron are not included because the two themes of the list are fighting paganism and receiving rewards. In light of the Golden Calf episode (Ex. 32), Aaron would be nothing short of an embarrassment; he would not fight the Israelites who were engaged in gross sins. Aaron is the antithesis of the kind of hero mentioned here. We go on to Phinehas, who is one of the heroes to be praised: Phinehas, our ancestor, through his act of zeal received a pact of priesthood for all time. Mattathias calls Phinehas "our ancestor," thus perhaps pointing to the later claim of the legitimacy of the Hasmonaean high priesthood. Just as Phinehas 's zealous act gains the "covenant of peace" and the high priesthood for his descendants, the non-Zadokite Hasmonaean line is given the high priesthood because of Mattathias 's zealous act. Obviously, the stories of Phinehas and Mattathias are different. But in both we have the profanation of the sacred, the ancient Tabernacle and then the altar both in Jerusalem and again in Modein. And in both we have the greatest possible reward for a violent act against desecration of sacred space, the authority of the high priesthood. I emphasize that Phinehas saves Israel in a time of internal strife, when most of the Israelites have gone over to pagan worship. He kills an Israelite who is engaging in an act that will tum the Tabernacle into a shrine of a fertility cult. Ben Sira does speak of Phinehas and in a way that fits this reading of 1Mace.: The third in glory is Phinehas the son of Eleazar, because he had zeal in the fear of the Lord, and stood up with good courage of heart: when the people were turned back, and made reconciliation for Israel. Therefore was there a covenant of peace made with him, that he should be the chief of the sanctuary and of his people, and that he and his posterity should have the dignity of the priesthood forever. Sirach 45:23-26) While Ben Sira could not have had the Maccabees in mind, they will respond in a time when the people are "turned back" and become the high priests of the Temple. In I Mace., Phinehas's act brings everlasting glory; so will the actions of Mattathias's sons.

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Joshua/Caleb Joshua by fulfilling the Word became a Judge in Israel. To state that Joshua fulfilled "the Word" would seem to refer to the statements in Josh. I (cf. Deut. 31:7-8, 23; 34:9) concerning the leader's succession to the role of Moses: Let not this Book of the Teaching cease from your lips, but recite it day and night, so that you may observe faithfully all that is written in it. Only then will you prosper in your undertakings and only then will you be successful. (Josh. 1:8) If Joshua will be faithful to the ways of God and Moses, he will succeed as leader. This success will lie in his accomplishments and will not be measured in personal honors. In the !Mace. list, on the other hand, the emphasis is on Joshua's reward, which is worded in a unique formulation: Joshua is nowhere else called a "Judge." Divergence reveals intentionality. Goldstein does not seem to make much of Joshua, Caleb and David in this list, 77 but does make the interesting suggestion that the purpose is to foreshadow the descriptions of Jonathan as a Judge in 1Macc. 9:28-53. Again, this would contradict the theory that Jonathan is omitted in the speech so as to elevate Judas and Simon. Still, this is a very subtle way to legitimize or aggrandize Jonathan. Who but a scholar of Goldstein's talents would tease this conclusion out of this verse about Joshua? What reader would have understood this connection? Ben Sira does not make Joshua a judge, but he does move in the direction of glorifying the great hero. In Ben Sira's list, Joshua was Moses' prophetic successor and a valiant warrior in the fight against the Canaanite cities who won great glory when he lifted his hands to make the sun stand still. Who before him so stood to it? for the Lord himself brought his enemies unto him. Did not the sun go back by his means? And was not one day as long as two? He called upon the most high Lord, wheri the enemies pressed upon him on every side; and the great Lord heard him. (Sirach 46:7)

77. Goldstein I Maccabees 8.

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For our purpose here, the point is that Mattathias 's speech invokes the Biblical heroes to demonstrate that obedience to God's commandments reaps honor and glory. If his sons will act in accordance with the Torah, they will win renown. Joshua and Caleb share the distinction of standing firm in the assembly against the ten other scouts that surveyed the land of Canaan (Num. 13 -14; Deut. 1:36; Josh. 14:6-15). Unlike any other Israelites of their generation, they are rewarded with the opportunity to enter the Promised Land. Notice that lMacc. does not state that they received this honor, but instead emphasizes Joshua "judgeship" and the gift to Caleb of the land that had been the home of the very giants that had made the other scouts afraid: Caleb by bearing witness before the congregation received an inheritance of land. The Caleb reference in lMacc. seems to be a shortened quote of Ben Sira on Caleb. In the time of Moses also he (Joshua) did a work of mercy, he and Caleb the son of Jephunne, in that they withstood the congregation, and withheld the people from sin, and appeased the wicked murmuring. And of six hundred thousand people on foot, they two were preserved to bring them in to the heritage, even unto the land that floweth with milk and honey. The Lord gave strength also unto Caleb, which remained with him unto his old age: so that he entered upon the high places of the land, and his seed obtained it for an heritage ... (Sirach 46 Iff.) Ben Sira does speak first of the ability to enter Canaan, but for the author of lMacc., this is unnecessary; the sons already live in the land and there is no incentive in mentioning this distinction. Instead, the point is that Caleb shows his faith "before the congregation" as the Hasmonaeans have expressed their devotion to God against those Judaeans who had lost their faith. They will receive great political office (as did Joshua) and material rewards (as did Caleb) if they remain steadfast in their obedience to the Torah.

David As in our other verses in the list, we have a righteous act or quality and the ensuing reward: David for his piety received as his heritage a royal throne for ages. Two other translations read:

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David, for his piety, received as a heritage a throne of everlasting royalty. (NAB) David, because he was merciful, inherited the throne of the kingdom forever. (NRSV) The word translated as mercy or piety is the Greek term oleos, which in turn is the usual translation in similar Greek texts for the Hebrew word hesed. We should seek a translation that is closer to hesed, 'covenant faithfulness.' The question becomes: What in this summation of David's life would fit here? Doran states, "that David was rewarded because he was "merciful" ... seems out of place in this list." 78 I would offer a different speculation that I have not seen elsewhere. We find the word hesed in I-II Samuel relating to David in a significant story. Before David flees from the wrath of King Saul, David and Jonathan make a covenant: Now deal loyally with your servant, for you have brought your servant into a covenant of the LORD with you... If I remain alive, deal loyally with me; by if I die, never cut off your loyalty from my house. (I Sam. 20:8) According to source criticism, 79 these verses may be editorial interpolations placed in anticipation of II Sam. 9 where David is discharged of his responsibility by showing mercy to Mephibosheth, Jonathan's son. This theme begins in I Sam. 18:2, where Jonathan and David make a covenant. The idea of interpolations or two sources would make a great deal of sense and explain the confusion in I Sam. 20. Whether interpolations or not, this source critical theory highlights the importance of the theme of hesed and covenant, or, again, covenant faithfulness.

An alternative way to express this speculation is to say that if hesed does mean 'merciful,' as some translators would have it, could it be that David is merciful to Jonathan, son of his internal rival and enemy Saul, and his family? Was that his test, his struggle, for which he was rewarded with the kingship? If, on the other hand, hesed here means 'piety', the verse in lMacc. can be a summation of Ben Sira. Ben Sira points out that by killing Goliath, he took 78. Doran I Maccabees 51. 79. P. Kyle McCarter Jr. I Samuel The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1980) 341-2.

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"away reproach from the people" and "so the people honoured him with ten thousands, and praised him in the blessings of the Lord, in that he gave him a crown of glory." In the spirit of the Biblical re-writing of David's life and career in I Chronicles and the superscriptions to many psalms, David praises "with words of glory," with praises and "sweet melody" that fill the Temple, with feasts and festivals. "The Lord took away his sins, and exalted his horn for ever: he gave him a covenant of kings, and a throne of glory in Israel" (Sirach 47:212). It is one thing to recount how God selected a little boy to kill a giant in order to demonstrate His might, but quite another to emphasize the shame of the Israelites' cowardice in the face of the giant's taunts and the honor accorded David as a result. That is, here Ben Sira is heading in the direction of !Maccabees, thinking in terms of the hero's honor. Either way, David acquires a throne for his hesed, as the Hasmonaeans will. The Maccabees may have seen themselves as merciful to their former internal enemies once they achieved power.

Elijah Elijah for his acts of zeal on behalf of the Torah was taken up as if into heaven. Elijah also faces internal enemies in Ahab and Jezebel. Elijah's act of zeal at Mount Carmel (I Kings 19:10, 14) is parallel to that ofMattathias at Modein and the rewards are heavenly. Note how this verse transmutes the heavenly transport in II Kings 2:1-13 to one which is "as if into heaven," whatever that would mean. Goldstein suggests that Ps. 115:16 agrees: "The heavens belong to the LORD, but the earth He gave over to man," and cites later Rabbinic midrashim that express the same sentiment about Elijah. 80 It is interesting that there is an attempt to downplay Elijah's glory at the same time that he is being listed as one of the glorious heroes. Elijah and Enoch both were" taken" by God. 81 It may be that Enoch is not mentioned in this list not only because he was a pre-Israelite but also because of the apocalyptic stories revolving around his supposed ascension to heaven. Could it be that this is why Moses, about whom a tradition said that he departed in a cloud rather than died, 82 is not listed here?

Daniel The references in lMacc. 2:59-60 are to the Book of Daniel: 80. Louis Ginzberg Legends of the Jews I 125-40, V 157-64 and VI 322-23 n. 32. 81. For Enoch, see Gen. 5:24 and Genesis Rabba 25:1 J.T. Milik The Books ofEnoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976) 4-135. 82. Josephus AJ iv.326; c. f. S.E. Loewenstamm "The Death of Moses" Tarbiz (1958) 142-57.

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Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael because they maintained their faith were preserved from the fire. Daniel through his guiltlessness was saved from the mouth of lions. 1Macc. 2:59 is a reference to Daniel 3; 1Macc. 2:60 is to Daniel 6; both are found in Daniel A, which, as we have seen, was written well before Daniel B. Zeitlin insists that since the Book of Daniel was not yet canonized, this passage could not have been a part of the original lMacc. but was added later. 83 Goldstein points out that the author does accept Daniel A as sacred but his rejection of Daniel B is proved by his omission of any reference to resurrection or empire. I disagree on the latter point (as I have shown above at length); Daniel 2 is clearly about empires and the reference concerning David's throne is to a Jewish kingdom.

Names Omitted in !Maccabees Though Present in Ben Sira's Account It is striking that Moses and Aaron are treated at length in Ben Sira and found in Psalms 105 and I 06 but are missing in Mattathias 's speech. As we have seen, there are few historical surveys in the Bible that mention any names at all, so the fact that Moses and Aaron are named is very significant. In Ben Sira, Aaron receives more space (Sirach 46:6-22) than any other figure except the high priest Simon (Sirach 50:1-21). 84

Aaron's most notable action is committing the sin of the Golden Calf; indeed, the fact that Aaron did not follow the commandment prohibiting idolatry and yet won great glory as the first high priest and progenitor of the priests is an embarrassment and a contradiction to the meaning of Mattathias 's speech. It is Phinehas, however, who did the great deed of killing those committing apostasy at Ba'al-Pe'or and it is Phinehas who will be the direct ancestor of the high priestly lineage. While Ben Sira discusses Hezekiah and Isaiah, neither is mentioned in I Maccabees. In fact, Mattathias's deathbed speech does not refer to any classical prophets at all; we only find Elijah, the prophet of action. When we turn back to Ben Sira, we see that the same basic idea is at work. The selection process highlights the accomplishments and not the words of the prophets who are mentioned at all: Joshua, Samuel, Nathan, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the twelve so-called "minor" prophets as a group. Even the prophets 83. Zeitlin First Maccabees 32, 87. 84. Martha Himmelfarb A Kingdom of Priests (Phil.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) 35.

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involved who are known to us from their towering verbal prophecies are spoken of here as men of great deeds: Isaiah saved Jerusalem from the Assyrians, Jeremiah was involved in the destruction of Jerusalem. It is true that Ezekiel and the Twelve do not figure in such events, but Himmelfarb makes the cogent point that Ben Sira plays down classical prophets as they do not exist in his day and instead accents the importance of figures who in one sense or another played the role of teachers of Wisdom or scribes. I have mentioned the importance of Simon for Ben Sira; he becomes like a tree (Sirach 50:5-11), echoing Proverbs on Wisdom as the Tree of Life (cf. Sirach 24:13-17; Prov. 3:18); Himmelfarb says he almost becomes "Wisdom's double." 85 Three characters who surround David's life, Samuel, Nathan and Solomon all rate mention in Ben Sira, with Samuel and Solomon receiving a paragraph, despite the fact that Ben Sira lived in an era when his people lived under foreign domination. !Maccabees is written during a time when the Jewish people had once again asserted self-rule. As I have said, David acquires a throne for his faith as the Hasmonaeans do. I do not think that the author of 1Maccabees is as troubled by the fact that the Hasmonaeans are not of Davidic descent as scholars living under the spell of later Messianic beliefs seem to think they were; thus the author of l Mace. can describe the Maccabees as "that seed of men to whom had been granted the deliverance of Israel through their agency" (lMacc. 5:62). 86 Goldstein's conclusion that Mattathias's sons will reap rewards like these heroes is apt: if they will follow God's commandments and fight paganism, God will regard them as righteous like Abraham, give them high office under foreign kings as He gave Joseph, give them a dynasty of high priests as he gave Phinehas, give them their own private land holdings as he did Caleb, make them kings as he did David and work miracles through them as He did through Elijah, Daniel and his colleagues. 87 That there is an emphasis on the honors received by the biblical heroes is not biblical where the creed is to focus on God's accomplishments. The list in 1Macc. constitutes a major difference that, it would seem, is due at least partly to Greek influence.

85. Himmelfarb Kingdom ofPriests 38. 86. Jonathan A. Goldstein "Biblical Promises and 1 and 2 Maccabees" 88 and John J. Collins "Messianism in the Maccabaean Period" 103-104, 106 both in Judaism and its Messiahs at the Turn of the Christian Era ed. by Jacob Neusner, William S. Green and Ernest Frerichs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 87. Goldstein "Biblical Promises" 79.

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One should be prepared to die in honorable defense of one's nation. And yet it is important to see that love of glory seems equal to love of nation as an incentive to fight. It is as if each hero has his agon, his struggle, in which he is tested. Mattathias is saying: Here is our agon. These are the heroes that we admire for we see our struggle prefigured by theirs.

Josephus's Version 88 Josephus's paraphrase of the Bible is well known for its aggrandizement of the important personalities in his belief that, according to Feldman, "history is the biography of great men." 89 It is possible that Josephus wrote in reaction to the accusation that the Jewish people had not produced any geniuses or special characters (Contra Apionem 1 135). The role of God, so essential to most biblical history, perhaps the very reason for the accounts, is de-emphasized in the effort to describe the wonderful qualities of the figures of Israelite and Judean history. It is at least ironic, therefore, that Josephus chooses to omit the names of the biblical heroes in his revision of Mattathias 's testament; not one of them is mentioned. Josephus does not review Jewish history at all: But after being in command for a year, he fell ill, and calling his sons, made them stand around him, and said: "I myself, my sons, am about to go the destined way, but my spirit I leave in your keeping, and I beg you not to be unworthy guardians of it, but to be mindful of the purpose of him who begot you and brought you up, and to preserve our country's customs and to restore our ancient form of government, which is in danger of passing away, and not to make common cause with those who are betraying it whether of their own will or through compulsion; but since you are my sons, I wish you to remain constant as such and to be superior to all force and compulsion, being so prepared in spirit as to die for the laws, if need be, and bearing this in mind, that when the Deity sees you so disposed, He will not forget you, but in admiration of your heroism will give them back to you again, and will restore to you your liberty, 88. Louis H. Feldman "Josephus's Portrayal of the Hasmonaeans Compared with I Maccabees" in Fausto Parente and Joseph Sievers eds. Josephus and the History of the Greco-Roman Period: Essays in Memory of Morton Smith (Leiden: Brill, 1994) 41-68; Isaiah M. Gafni "Josephus and I Maccabees" Josephus, the Bible and History ed. by Louis H. Feldman and Gohei Hata (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1988) 116-31. 89. Feldman "Josephus's Portrayal" 67.

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in which you shall live securely and in the enjoyment of your own customs. For though our bodies are mortal and subject to death, we can, through the memory of our deeds, attain the heights of immortality; it is this which I wish you to be in love with, and for its sake to pursue glory and undertake the greatest tasks and not shrink from giving up you lives for them. But most of all I urge you to be of one mind, and in whatever respect one of you is superior to the others in that to yield to one another, and so make the best use of your several abilities. And since your brother Simon excels in understanding, look upon him as your father, and follow whatever counsel he give you; but Maccabaeus you shall take as commander of the army because of his courage and strength, for he will avenge our nation and will punish our enemies, and also admit to your ranks the righteous and pious, and so increase their power. (AJ Xll.vi.4.279-284) This is a very different speech from the one attributed to Mattathias in 1Mace. Again, one wonders why Josephus does not review the names of the Biblical heroes referenced in Mattathias's speech in lMacc. It has nothing to do with space; the addresses are of about equal length (Josephus's address is thirty-six words shorter). One possibility is that the rhetorical effort in !Mace. is designed to compare the Maccabees to selected biblical heroes, but the biblical names mean nothing to Josephus's Roman audience. What would be significant to this audience? A Roman audience would cherish a hero prepared to sacrifice his life for his nation's freedom and who strives for his people's unity. The ideal of liberty means the right to live one's life in accordance with the customs and laws of one's ancestors. Unity requires all factions in a nation to be in agreement. Mattathias, according to Josephus, wants his sons ''to preserve our country's customs and to restore our ancient form of government." Josephus seems to be channeling Livy or other great Latin writers on this subject. 90 There is nothing in Mattathias's testament in !Mace. about the Jewish form of government, because Mattathias does not aspire to form a government, another indication that the revisionists are incorrect in their estimate of what Mattathias 's ambitions were. Since Josephus's account would seem to be secondary, does it have any worth in establishing the historical Mattathias? Feldman thinks that Josephus

90 Josephus explicitly mentions Livy at one point in this work AJ 14.68; Feldman "Josephus's Portrayal" 45 n. 7.

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"undoubtedly had oral traditions about the earlier family tradition. " 91 Feldman finds Josephus more objective than the author of !Maccabees and states that he had more sources such as the work of Nicolaus of Damascus. 92 Feldman also points to other influences on the form and content of Josephus's version of Mattathias's speech to his sons, citing Aeneas's farewell speech to his son Ascanius before he goes off to his final encounter with Turnus: Then with a close embrace he strain'd his son, And, kissing thro' his helmet, thus begun: "My son, from my example learn the war, In camps to suffer, and in fields to dare; But happier chance than mine attend thy care! This day my hand thy tender age shall shield, And crown with honors of the conquer'd field: Thou, when thy riper years shall send thee forth To toils ofwar, be mindful of my worth; Assert thy birthright, and in arms be known, For Hector's nephew, and Aeneas' son." (Virgil Aeneid 12.435-440). Actually, Feldman could go further and see that Virgil's model is to be found in Homer's portrayals of Achilles and especially Hector in the Iliad. Aeneas's speech to Ascanius 93 recalls the scene between Hector and his son in Iliad 6: ... and forthwith glorious Hector took the helm from his head and laid it all-gleaming upon the ground. But he kissed his dear son, and fondled him in his arms, and spake in prayer to Zeus and the other gods: Zeus and ye other gods, grant that this my child may likewise prove, even as I, pre-eminent amid the Trojans, and as valiant in might, and that he rule mightily over Ilios. And some day may some man say of him as he cometh back from war, 'He is better far than his father'; and may he bear the blood-stained spoils of the foeman he hath slain, and may his mother's heart wax glad. So saying, he laid his child in his dear wife's arms ... (Iliad 6.474-80)

91. Feldman "Josephus's Portrayal" 42. 92. And that as a priest he had supplementary knowledge about the Temple and religious affairs. 93. And Ajax's prayer for his son in Sophocles's Ajax 545-83.

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The characterization of Aeneas stands in complex comparison to the Homeric models. 94 There are similarities between Achilles and Aeneas who both display a combination of a furious desire for revenge and a certain resignation based on a fatalistic lack of concern for their own lives. Aeneas's resignation to his unfortunate fate and the way he looks beyond his own life to his son's future, are in the spirit of the Achilles of the Iliad 18-24. There is a difference, however, in the resignation of Achilles, primarily a recognition that with Patroclus gone, life is not worth living, combined with the understanding that once he has killed Hector, his own death will follow shortly (Iliad 18.79-126).95 Aeneas's weariness, on the other hand, has a longer history, rooted not so much in the death of Pallas as in all the losses that he has sustained since leaving Troy (Aeneid 12.435). In !Maccabees and Josephus, Mattathias does not share the personal need for vengeance and does not seem to be weary or depressed; he's just old and ready to die. Still, Feldman is correct in sending us to the kind of classical sources that Josephus might have had in mind when transforming Mattathias 's speech for his Roman audience. Unlike Feldman, Gafni, while, acknowledging the feasibility of the proposition that Josephus used other sources, thinks that his version of Mattathias's speech is a relatively free composition. 96 My conclusion is similar, but I would add that if Josephus did not know all of these sources, he certainly knew the motif of a heroic and famous father who is about to die and who expresses his fervent wishes for his son(s) who will have to live his life without him. Josephus may have had another Jewish source at hand in composing a new speech for Mattathias. Goldstein brings convincing evidence to show that the historian also may have drawn from the famous passage in 2Macc. about the mother and her seven martyred sons. 97 Here is the last son before he is executed: My brothers, having borne pain for a short while, now have inherited eternal life under the terms of God's covenant, whereas you shall suffer through the judgment of God the punishment for your arrogance. I following my brothers' example, give up my body and 94. Thomas van Nortwick "Aeneas, Turnus, and Achilles" Transactions of the American Philological Association Vol. 110 (1980) 303-14. 95. C. Whitman Homer and the Heroic Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958) 202-04. 96. Gafni "Josephus and I Maccabees" 127. 97. Goldstein finds echoes of 2 Mace. 6:18 - 7:42 in AJ xii 5.4.255-56 as well as in Josephus's revision ofMattathias's speech (AJ xii 6.3.279-84).

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soul for the sake of the laws of our forefathers, praying to God that he speedily have mercy upon our nation .... With me and my brothers may the Almighty put an end to the rightful anger inflicted upon our entire people. (2Macc. 7:36-38) The unnamed mother of 2Maccabees is a courageous figure, equal to any male in the evaluation of this author: "Filled with noble resolution, she took her womanly thoughts and fired them in a manly spirit." The mother says that just as it was God and not she who gave them "spirit and life" in the womb, so it will be God who "with mercy will restore spirit and life" to them after they are executed because they had sacrificed themselves "for the sake of His laws." Here is Mattathias in lMacc., but it could just as well be the mother of the martyred sons: Therefore, my children, be zealous for the Torah, and be ready to give your lives for the covenant of our fathers .... And win for yourselves great glory and undying renown .... Have no fear of the words of a wicked man, for his glory is destined for dunghills and worms. He will spring up today, but tomorrow he shall not be found, for he shall have turned back into his dust, and his plotting shall perish. My children, be valorous and resolute for the Torah, because through the Torah will you win glory. The mother promises immortality as a reward for her sons' sacrifices, and Mattathias in lMacc. also guarantees the immortality through fame if his sons will fight for the Torah and the Jewish people. But the types of immortality are very different. 2Maccabees believes in resurrection and immortality with God. I Maccabees, on the other hand, is like Ben Sira in speaking of the immortality one achieves through fame and, to a lesser extent, children. 98 Here is Josephus's amplification ofMattathias's speech: .... but since you are my sons, I wish you to remain constant as such and to be superior to all force and compulsion, being so prepared in spirit as to die for the laws, if need be, and bearing this in mind, that when the Deity sees you so disposed, He will not forget you, but in admiration of your heroism will give them back to you again, and will restore to you your liberty, in which you shall live securely and in the enjoyment of your own customs. For though our bodies are mortal

98. The doctrine of resurrection is prominent in 2 Mace., whereas there is no allusion whatsoever to the doctrine in l Mace.

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and subject to death, we can, through the memory of our deeds, attain the heights of immortality; it is this which I wish you to be in love with, and for its sake to pursue glory and undertake the greatest tasks and not shrink from giving up you lives for them. Against Goldstein, I would maintain that Josephus echoes the quest for immortality through fame that we find in Mattathias's speech in lMacc. and not the actual immortality of the spirit that we find in 2Macc. The list in lMacc. is another departure from the biblical mainstream in its offer of eternal life as a reward for righteous actions: "Through our deeds achieve immortality." Again, the goals of achieving glory and immortality are later, non-biblical ideas under Greek influence. On the other hand, Josephus does seem to write in the spirit of 2Macc. in omitting the name of the famous men of the past. In studying these texts, I am presenting an opposition: named vs. unnamed, specific vs. general. Aeneas and Hector are named heroes with specific contexts. The reason that Josephus's Mattathias sounds like the mother of the martyred sons in 2Macc. is that there is no specificity, and this is intentional. Neither the mother nor her martyred sons is named because they are every Judaean; they are the unnamed common people who suffered under the Antiochene persecution as opposed to the named Mattathias and his sons in 1Mace. 2Macc. is therefore more biblical in that it is about God and not the Maccabees; Josephus's Mattathias speech is more about the nation and its laws. These contrasts shed light on what the author of lMacc. does with the speech of Mattathias, placing him and his sons in the stream of biblical tradition while describing that stream in a new and remarkable way.

Chapter Six Mattathias and the Meaning of Circumcision I will now discuss the meaning and historicity of Mattathias 's forcible circumcision of Jewish male babies in order to determine the motivations and character of this key figure. If we can demonstrate that Mattathias forcibly circumcised Jewish babies, we will learn a great deal about his religious zeal. If Mattathias were a simply ambitious person, he would not have led his men in this dramatic action; he would have chosen to make friends and influence people by being inclusive of everyone's sensibilities, especially on such a controversial and delicate matter. He would not have destroyed his potential popularity with more assimilated Judeans by violating their families' rights in such a violent way. For Mattathias, the ostensible issue was: What could he do to preserve his people's covenant with God? He understood that for an ethnic group, continuity is maintained through difference from the rest of the society; discontinuity is based on creating similarities with the society. Ethnic continuity is based on the creation and then re-creation of otherness. 1 Since, as Bickerman and others have established, all Jewish people in Judaea were assimilated to one degree or another, and since we see the so-called heroes of anti-assimilation themselves, the Maccabee brothers, bearing Greek names, holding Greek offices, instituting a holiday in consonance with Greek practice, where do we find the assertion of Jewish separateness? This otherness is symbolized by the insistence on circumcision. In 1 and 2Maccabees, circumcision is an important and controversial practice for all of the important participants: Antiochus IV, who proscribes the observance in Judaea (168/167 BCE); those who would radically assimilate into Greek ways and either refrain from or reverse circumcision; and those who hold so strongly to the beliefs and laws of their religion and people that they risk death or in the case ofMattathias and his followers even forcibly circumcise the babies of those Jews who had chosen not to do so. We can offer a spectrum of possible (not necessarily actual) Jewish stances toward circumcision in Judaea in the 2nd century BCE:

1. Mario I. Aguilar "Rethinking the Judaean past: questions of history and a social archaeology of memory in the first book of the Maccabees" Biblical Theology Bulletin (Summer, 2000).

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1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

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Jews who forcibly circumcised formerly non-Jewish males; Jews who forcibly circumcised Jewish males; Jews who circumcised their own male babies, risking and sometimes enduring martyrdom for their actions; Jews who would have circumcised their sons but were afraid to do so because of the Antiochene decree; Jews who chose not to perform circumcision on their sons because they saw themselves as part of the Hellenistic world; that is, practicing Jews who were uncircumcised; Jews who practiced epispasm in order to be fully accepted in Greek athletics.

I will use this spectrum as a grid as I explore the following topics: a.

Circumcision in the Bible: Was it the essential mark of Jewish identity before the Maccabaean period? Or did it only become a defining issue in the Maccabaean period? b. The Antiochene Prohibition of Circumcision. What was the relationship between the decree of Antiochus IV and the movement among Jews away from circumcision, symbolized most graphically by epispasm? Was the removal of circumcision by Jewish "hellenizers" fact or metaphor? Epispasm would show that circumcision was one of the main issues of the time and a symbol that was as central, say, as abortion is in the United States of America today. Did it really occur? If there was so much movement away from circumcision among the Jews from 175 BCE on, why did Antiochus IV need to promulgate this decree seven or eight years later? c. Why were some women willing to circumcise their sons at the risk of death both for them and those babies? We will explore a theory that their motivation was theological-eschatological as much as it was nationalistic and ethnic. d. Did Mattathias forcibly circumcise Jewish babies? Was his motivation different from that of the martyrs who sacrificed their lives in practicing this rite? e. Did later Hasmonaean kings forcibly circumcise non-Jewish babies, and if so, why? f. What can we learn about Mattathias from a study of this topic?

Circumcision In The Biblical Period How important was circumcision in Israel/Judah/Judaea before the Maccabaean period? Shaye Cohen states that the practice was common in the ancient Near East but is only given prominence is a few passages in the Bible: "The Bible as a whole generally ignores it and nowhere regards it as the essential mark of

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Jewish identity or as the sine qua non for membership in the Jewish polity. It attained this status only in Maccabaean times."2 Before I study circumcision as the primary symbol of Jewish identity in the Maccabaean period, I must outline my disagreement with the first part of this statement, that the Bible "generally ignores" circumcision. As Lawrence Hoffman says, "Male circumcision is well attested in the various strands of Hebrew Scripture. " 3 I do not subscribe to Hoffman's conclusion, however, that the connection between covenant and circumcision developed later in the evolution of Biblical literature, as I do not believe that the Priestly document (which includes Gen. 17, Lev. 12:2-3, etc.) is Exilic or post-Exilic. It is important for my purpose, however, to understand that these texts are priestly, for such texts and traditions form part of Mattathias 's view of the essential nature of the rite for the future of Judaism. I will (very) briefly review some of the key Biblical texts. In a sense, Israelite religion and 'peoplehood' begin with Gen. 17, the basic text in which God makes a covenant with the first Hebrew, Abram, who receives a new name, Abraham, and the eternal promise of fertility for his descendants. Abraham will now be able to father a child through his wife Sarah (who also receives a new name). The male reproductive organ will be changed in order to symbolize this covenant of fertility. The people will be defined by this symbolic act. 4 God establishes circumcision as a covenant, He says, "between me and you and your descendents after you" (Genesis 17: 14). If circumcision brings one into the covenant with God, failing to circumcise places one outside of that covenant: "Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised on the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant" (Gen. 17: I 0). If one is not circumcised, one cannot be a part of the people. Lev. 12:2-3 reiterates the commandment: "When a woman at childbirth bears a male, she shall be unclean seven days . . . . On the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised." To marry into a family of uncircumcision was reproachful. In Genesis 34, after Shechem, prince of the Hivites, rapes Dinah, daughter of Jacob, and offers to marry her, her brothers say that they will only agree to the match if all of the Shechemites are circumcised; to be uncircumcised, they say, "is a disgrace

2. Shaye J.D. Cohen From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (Phil.: Westminster, 1987) 52. 3. Lawrence Hoffman "Circumcision" in The Encyclopedia of Judaism Vol. I, ed. by Jacob Neusner, Alan J. Avery-Peck and William Scott Green (New York: Continuum, 1999) 89. 4. M. Fox "Sign of the Covenant: Circumcision in the Light of the Priestly 'ot Etiologies" RB 81 (1974) 537-96.

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among us" (Gen. 34:14). Despite the cynically strategic nature of the demand, as the brothers intend to kill the people of their sister's rapist while they are lying in pain after the operation, the story does indicate the importance of the rite in Biblical tradition. One cannot be a Hebrew or marry a Hebrew girl without being circumcised. In Jud. 14:3, Samson's parents plead with him to marry one of his own people: "Is there no one among the daughters of your own kinsmen and among all our people, that you must go and take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?" In Ex. 4:24-26, Egypt because Israelite people family. Again, circumcised. 5

God attacks Moses on his way to liberate the Hebrew slaves in he has failed to circumcise his son. Moses cannot lead the without performing this procedure on the next generation of his this text indicates God's insistence that Jewish males be

Only circumcised males could partake of the Pesach sacrifice, one of the central Israelite observances (Ex. 12:44, 48). In Josh. 5:2-9, the Israelites cannot enter the land of Canaan before circumcising the males who had not been circumcised during the wilderness years. The play on the name Gilgal expresses the "rolling away" of the "reproach" on the Israelites for failing to perform circumcision. The Egyptians, that is, their kings and priests, practiced circumcision. 6 They felt disdain, Ezekiel implies, for those who were not circumcised (Ezek. 32; see at length below). When Samson fears that he is going to die of thirst after his victory over the Philistines at Lehi, he prays that he will not fall "into the hands of the uncircumcised" (Jud.l5:18). The Philistine enemies often are referred to as the "uncircumcised" (I Sam. 14:6, 2 Sam. 1:20) that dare to defy the God of the Israelites (1 Sam. 17:26, 36). Saul fears that an uncircumcised Philistine will kill him (1 Sam. 31:4; I Chr. 10:4). When King Saul offers David his daughter as a bride in exchange for the foreskins of one hundred dead Philistines (1 Sam 18:25), he obviously does this as a rite of domination rather than a rite of conversion. It also was very simply a way of counting bodies; circumcised soldiers would have their hands cut off. 7 Weitzman compares this action to the Native America practice of scalping the

5. It is interesting to see the emphasis on the repugnance of the Midianite Zipporah (Moses's wife) about this specifically Israelite ritual. 6. H. Bonnet Reallexikon der A'gyptischen Religiongeschichte (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971) 110; Jack Sasson "Circumcision in the Ancient Near East" JBL 85 (1966) 473-76. 7. J. H. Breasted Ancient Records of Egypt Ill (1906; repr. New York: Russell and Russell, 1962) 248-49.

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enemy. 8 Still, there seems to be a kind of triumphant statement: "Ha! We beat you because you aren't circumcised!" It may be more than just taking a scalp; it may be contempt of uncircumcision that led both Egyptians and Israelites to cut off the uncircumcised penises of their dead enemies. 9 At least some Israelite wars seem to be conducted between male armies, circumcised vs. uncircumcised. There is evidence of the stripping naked of corpses in 1 Sam. 31 :8-9; 2 Sam. 23: 10 and in other iconography in the ancient Near East where "the eye of the circumcised is drawn to the despised member." 10 Other nations are spoken of as uncircumcised (e.g. Isa. 52: 1) but this is not the prophets' concern: "For all these nations are uncircumcised, but all the House of Israel are uncircumcised of heart" (Jeremiah 9:25). Therefore, as in Deut. 30:6, God will circumcise the heart of His people in covenantal relationship. The term thus has its metaphorical uses, as in Moses saying that he is of "uncircumcised lips" (Ex. 6: 12, 30) or that the people have hearts that are blocked in their pride and sinfulness (Lev. 26:41). Fruit trees are figuratively said to be "uncircumcised," meaning that they are forbidden for eating (Lev. 19:23). In one form or another, the root 'are!, "obstructed" 11 appears forty-nine times in the Hebrew Bible. All of these references demonstrate the usability and common understanding of this well-known term. To quote Hoffman again, "the Bible presents circumcision as a custom that is taken for granted as normative for all Israelite men." 12 In a sense, Mattathias simply follows this commandment. Based on this evidence, I would replace Cohen's statement with Haber's formulation: From the emergence of Judaism, circumcision was considered a central ritual for Jewish culture as a whole--the quintessential male rite of passage transmitted from father to son. In Hellenistic Judaism,

8. Steven Weitzman "Forced Circumcision and the Shifting Role of Gentiles in Hasmonaean Ideology" HTR Vol. 92, No. I (Jan., 1999) 37. 9. Moshe Greenberg Ezekiel 21-3 7 (New York: Doubleday, 1997) 661. 10. Greenberg Ezekiel 21-3 7 662. See Richard David Barnett Assyrian Palace Reliefs and their Influence on the sculptures of Babylonia and Persia (London: Batchworth Press, 1960) plate 128; Y. Yadin The Art of Warfare in the Lands of the Bible (Jerusalem and Ramat Gan: International, 1963) 420-21; E. Porada "The Iconography of Death in Mesopotamia in the Early Second Millennium B.C." in B. Alster, ed. Death in Mesopotamia (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1980) 259-60 and plate ix b. 11. So Rashi on Lev. 9:23. 12. Hoffman "Circumcision" 89.

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it became the mark that identified the Jew and distinguished him from his Greek counterpart. 13 If one does not understand that circumcision was central in the centuries before Mattathias, one cannot understand why Mattathias wanted to maintain and/or restore the most and ancient Jewish ritual of them all. It is true, as an encyclopedia article puts it, that "circumcision was not merely a religious practice; it also took on a national character." 14 If circumcision already was central in the Biblical period or if it became a high priority during the Maccabaean period, it does seem that the rite acquired a new emphasis. We want to understand how and why.

Antiochus IV's Decree If some Jewish families and eventually Mattathias rebelled against the religious persecution that included the prohibition of circumcision, we must understand why Antiochus IV prohibited this ancient rite in the first place. The king sent letters by messengers to Jerusalem and to the towns of Judah containing orders to follow customs foreign to the land, to put a stop to burnt offerings and meal offering and libation in the temple, to violate Sabbaths and festivals, to defile temple and holy things, to build illicit altars and illicit temples and idolatrous ·shrines, to sacrifice swine and ritually unfit animals, to leave their sons uncircumcised 15 , and to draw abomination upon themselves by means of all kinds of uncleanness and profanation, so as to forget the Torah and violate all the commandments. Whoever disobeyed the word of the king was to be put to death. Letters to the same effect he wrote to all his kingdom, and he appointed officers to watch over all the people and sent orders to the towns of Judah to offer sacrifices in every town. (lMacc. 1:44-51) Many are happy and willing to follow these decrees and drive those who resist to "places of refuge" (1Macc. 1:5-53). But others stay and face a terrible fate: The women who had had their sons circumcised they put to death according to the decree, hanging the babes from their mother's necks

13. Susan Haber "Living and dying for the law: the mother-martyrs of2 Maccabees" Women in Judaism Vol. 4, No 1 (2006}. 14. "Circumcision" EJ 568. 15. For future reference, this is l Mace. l :48.

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and executing also their husbands and the men who had performed the circumcisions. (lMacc. 1:60-61) Though 2Maccabees does not have an explicit prohibition of circumcision in the record of the Antiochene decrees involved in 2Macc. 6:1ff., the prohibition is assumed: Two women were brought to trial for having circumcised their children. Their babies were hanged from their breasts, and the women were paraded publicly through the city and hurled down from the walls. (2Macc. 6: 10) We do not know of any parallel to this decree in Biblical history. 16 Herodotus (1.104.3) tells us that the neighboring non-Jewish peoples practiced circumcision. Until the Greeks came to Judaea, circumcision was not an issue at all. With the coming of the Greeks, however, the Jews were confronted with a very different view of their ancestral rite. Greek (and later Roman) repugnance to circumcision is well established. To remove the prepuce was considered mutilation. In Hellenistic societies that practiced public nakedness, a circumcised penis with its exposed glans was seen as vulgar because it looked like an erection; it was considered improper and/or humorous. 17 This attitude was of no little consequence for circumcised Jews. Athletics in a Greek gymnasium, a prerequisite for social acceptance or advancement, often required nudity. A circumcised penis effectively precluded such participation. Roman writers criticized and satirized this Jewish practice. 18 Most scholars state 16. The article "Circumcision" in EJ (Vol. 5 568) reports that the practice was abandoned in the time of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, and claims that it was Elijah's resistance to the pagan influences that merited him a place in Jewish tradition where he is said to visit every circumcision. But this statement is an interpretation, at best a clever midrash, of I Kings 19:14 where Elijah says to God at Horeb: "I am moved by zeal for the LORD, the God of Hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken Your covenant, tom down Your altars, and have put Your prophets to the sword." In order to interpret the neglect of the covenant in this verse as the abandonment of circumcision, we would need to know something from this period of history that could corroborate such a theory. 17. Frederic M. Hodges "The Ideal Prepuce in Ancient Greece and Rome: Male Genital Aesthetics and their Relation to Lipodermos, Circumcision, Foreskin Restoration, and the Kynodesme" Bulletin of the History of Medicine 75 (200 1) 376. 18. John J. Collins Between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000) 8; Nissan Rubin "A Study of Change in Custom" in The Covenant of Circumcision: New Perspectives on an Ancient Jewish Rite ed. Elizabeth Wyner Mark (Hanover and London: Brandeis University Press, 2003) 89

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unequivocally that almost three centuries later, the Roman emperor Hadrian (117-138 CE) outlawed circumcision as a kind of castration, an offense against the Greek view of the natural beauty of the human body; they claim that there seems to have been a relationship between his decree and the revolt led by Bar Kokhba, what would be an obviously interesting parallel to the revolution led by Mattathias. 19 Recently, however, Abusch has questioned (in rather stunning fashion) whether Hadrian did indeed forbid Jewish circumcision. 20 If Abusch is correct, the significance here is that Antiochus's decree was the only prohibition of circumcision in ancient Greco-Roman history. Some Jews in the Antiochene period may have neglected or even reversed circumcision to be acceptable to their Greek peers. These Jews may have submitted to epispasm because they grew to share the Greek revulsion toward circumcision. We see a strong statement of this phenomenon early in the narrative of lMacc. where Jewish Hellenizers went to great lengths to reverse their circumcisions: Therefore they built a gymnasium in Jerusalem according to the customs of the gentiles and underwent operations to disguise their circumcision, rebelling against the sacred covenant. They joined themselves to the gentiles and became willing slaves to evildoing. (lMacc. 1:14-15) According to Josephus, some Jews "concealed the circumcision of their private parts in order to be Greeks even when unclothed, and giving up whatever other national customs they had, they imitated the practice of foreign nations" (AJ 12.240-41). Hall follows 1Macc. and Josephus in saying that Jewish Hellenizers tried to camouflage their ritual marks. 21 His assumption is that at least some Jews responded to the Greek prejudice against circumcision. Schtirer states that removing the traces of circumcision became "still more common in later times," citing later Latin sources, and "was done with a view to escape the reproach of the heathen in the baths and in the exercise grounds. " 22 and references on 224 notes 12-14. 19. E.g. E. M. Smallwood "The Legislation of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius against Circumcision" Latomus 18 (1959) 308-19. 20. Ra'anan Abusch "Circumcision and Castration under Roman Law in the Early Empire" in The Covenant of Circumcision: New Perspectives on an Ancient Jewish Rite ed. Elizabeth Wyner Mark (Hanover and London: Brandeis University Press, 2003) 7586. 21. Robert G. Hall "Circumcision" ABD I 1029; idem "Epispasm and the Dating of Ancient Jewish Writings" JSP 2 (1988) 71-86. 22. Emil Schfirer A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ First Division Vol. I trans. by John Macpherson (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994) 203 and

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A very different line has emerged in recent scholarship to question whether all of this is true, whether anyone actually underwent epispasm or if it was just a metaphor. Goldstein makes the point that 2Maccabees, which severely condemns the gymnasium, does not say that anyone worked out in the nude or disguised their circumcisions. 23 After being given the right to create a gymnasium and an ephebic organization, Jason, according to 2Macc., went even further: On taking office, Jason immediately brought his fellow Jews over to the Greek style oflife .... Overthrowing the civic institutions of the Torah, Jason brought in new usages which were contrary to the law. I will briefly review the historical background. After the accession of Antiochus in 175 (as in lMacc l:llff.), Jason, who had usurped the position of high priest from his brother Onias III through bribery and political intrigue, wanted to establish a new polis, Antioch in Jerusalem (like the other cities named Antioch in that part of the Greek world) in order to secure the economic privileges enjoyed by Hellenistic cities. 24 These cities and peoples had substantial autonomy. 25 Antiochus IV granted the right to create such a polis in eighteen other cities in his realm, including Babylon. As Goldstein emphasizes, the king was very interested in creating an Antiochene re!Jublic on the analogy of the Roman republic, creating his own institutions modeled on those that he had seen in Rome. The Seleucid Empire already had many of the necessary features in place. What Antiochus IV brought to this situation was the idea of citizenship in the empire. For the record, so did the Ptolemaic Empire under which Jews could become "Hellenes" with full rights: the Ptolemies granted these dispensations to those prepared to "go Greek," to change their name and patris, join the gymnasium and play their part in the new Greek-language sphere of Ptolemaic Egypt. 26 By seeking to become both the high priest and the founder of an n. 24. Schtlrer defends the feasibility of the operation against Jerome's charge that it was impossible. 23. Jonathan Goldstein "Jewish Acceptance and Rejection of Hellenism" in E. P. Sanders with A. I. Baumgarten and Alan Mendelsohn eds. Jewish and Christian SelfDefinition (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981) 77-78 and in his II Maccabees 229-30. 24. Tcherikover Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews 205; Hengel Judaism and Hellenism 1.277. 25. Tcherikover Hellenistic Civilization 92-107. The peoples under Seleucid control were kept in line by the threat of military colonies of Greeks and Macedonians in their land (cf. Josephus AJ xii 4.1.159). 26. Dorothy J. Thompson "Census and Taxes in Ptolemaic Egypt" in Hellenistic Constructs edited by Paul Cartledge, Peter Garnsey and Erich Gruen (Berkeley: University of California, 1997) 247-48.

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Antiochene community at Jerusalem, with the right to decide who would be the citizens of this community, Jason strove to make Judaea part of this program. He wanted to change Jerusalem from an ethnos with the right to live under the laws of the Torah to a polis with a Greek name. 27 Jason wanted to change the very nature of the entity of the Jewish people and yet, there was no revolution from below. Despite its very clear polemical thrust, it is instructive that 2Maccabees does not record a dramatic reaction to these changes in Jerusalem. It does, however, describe and condemn Jason's actions: Indeed, he took pleasure in founding a gymnasium beneath the very citadel and in making the education of the noblest adolescent boys consist of submission to the broad-brimmed Greek hat. The Greek hat, the petasos, was worn by Greek epheboi who may have participated in their exercises and games in the nude and donned the hats to protect themselves from the sun; the hat constituted a kind of uniform. Goldstein thinks that if they had only been wearing the hat, the text would have been anxious to say so in its bitter denunciation: "Had the Hellenizers dared to ape the Greeks completely by having the participants at the gymnasium exercise naked, surely our indignant writer would have trumpeted the fact! All he can say is that the boys wore the broad-brimmed hats. Hence, at least they covered their loins (cf. Thucydides 1.6). " 28 We will respond to this statement below; Goldstein may not understand the import of the Thucydides reference in this context. The passage in 2Macc. goes on to emphasize what the priests at the Temple in Jerusalem did and did not do: The enormous wickedness of the impious Jason-no true high priest he-brought it about that the aping of Greek manners reached a peak and the adoption of gentile ways a height, such that the priests were no longer eager to perform their duties at the altar but made light of the temple and neglected the sacrifices, in their haste after the gong sounded calling them to participate in the illicit entertainment in the wrestling yard. Setting at nought their hereditary distinctions, they put the highest value on Greek honors. For that very reason, grievous troubles came upon them; the Greeks, whose way of life they admired

27. Tcherikover Hellenistic Civilization 205. Bickerman differs from this description and states that Jason only sought to create a limited Hellenistic corporation, a politeuma, which would be constitutionally distinct from Jerusalem itself. The Hellenized Jews, those who would be named on "the list of the Antiochenes in Jerusalem" (2 Mace 4:9; cf. 2: 19), would establish a Greek quarter of the city. 28. Goldstein II Maccabees 230, with references.

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and whom they wished to ape in every way, became their enemies and the executers of their punishment. 29 (2Macc 4: lOb-16) Goldstein emphasizes that the author is much more concerned with antiHellenism than with any details about athletics in the gymnasium. 30 In regard to epispasm, Goldstein states in reference to the passage in !Maccabees that, "isolated cases of such acts may have occurred then, as in many other periods, but there is good evidence in the sources contemporary with the events that our author's sweeping generalization here is false." 31 For scholars such as Goldstein who maintain this position, the fact that Jubilees, a contemporary source, does not mention the gymnasium or epispasm is very significant, while the evidence of epispasm in the first century CE does not tell us anything about the practice in the 2°" century BCE Doran goes even further and thinks that epispasm here is nothing more a metaphor: The author has used the image of all the Hasmonaean opponents making foreskins to wear in order to invoke consciously how they had rejected God's covenant (cf. 17: 14. He has wrought a new metaphor in response to the Greeks' pride in their uncircumcision, a metaphor which mocks the aping of God's ways. 32 29. J. R. Bartlett The First and Second Books of the Maccabees The Cambridge Bible Commentary on the New English Bible (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973) 246; cf. Liddell and Scott A Greek-English Lexicon ed. Jones (Oxford, 1940) s. v. hellenismos; cf. Martin Hengel Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period trans. by John Bowden (Eugene, Oregon: Wipfand Stock, 1947) 2f. 30. It is interesting that of the five references to the term hellenismos!Hellenism in 2 Maccabees, three concern Jason's actions and are mentioned in this passage; he led his people "to the Greek way oflife" (2 Mace. 4:10), he led them to a "peak ofHellenism" (2 Mace. 4: 13) so that the priests under him wanted to attain "Greek honors" (2 Mace. 4:15). The other two references are to Antiochus IV who killed all those who would not come over to "Greek ways" (2 Mace. 6:9) and Antiochus V in his acknowledgment that the Jews would not follow those Greek ways (2 Mace. 11 :24). In fact, Jason of Cyrene may have coined the term hellenismos, in contrast to ioudaismos/Judaism (2 Mace. 2:21, 8:1, 14:38) for this passage. 31. Goldstein "Jewish Acceptance and Rejection of Hellenism" 79 and 323 n. 92. 32. Robert Doran "Jason's Gymnasium" in Of Scribes and Scrolls: Studies on the Hebrew Bible, Intertestamental Judaism, and Christian Origins presented to John Strugne/1 ed. by Harold W. Attridge, John J. Collins, and Thomas H. Tobin (Lanham, Md.: UPA, 1990) 106-08.

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Doran calls the decircumcision at 1Mace. 1: 15 a "highly poetical image"33 and suggests that even the hat is a metaphor because, he asks following Harris, what kind of athletics can be done wearing a hat like that? 34 He points out that Roman athletes were not naked. If the Jewish athletes were not naked and uncircumcised, they had no reason to practice epispasm. 1Mace. 1: 11-15 is thick with Biblical allusions and is metaphorical; 2Macc. does not use these symbols of assimilation to Greek ways. Gruen agrees with Goldstein and Doran and reviews 2Maccabees 's silence about nudity or camouflage of circumcision: "The worst that the author can find to say is that Jason placed the epheboi under a Greek-style hat. Had they been compelled to appear in the nude and to alter their appearance by contravening Jewish law, 2Maccabees would surely have pounced upon that information." Gruen also wonders whether the removal of circumcision actually happened or whether it could it be a metaphor for the actions of those who removed themselves from Judaism. He notes that Jubilees 3:31 condemns nudity and 15:11-14 the absence of circumcision but neither passage refers to the gymnasium or the aping of Greek ways. 35 While !Mace. 1 mentions the gymnasium and epispasm, 2Maccabees does not mention nudity or epispasm. In order to resolve this discrepancy, Gruen suggests that the reference to epispasm in lMacc. 1:15 which is echoed in AJ 12.241 may reflect the time ofthe persecution, not the period of Jason's ascendancy seven or eight years earlier. Gruen does not explain why the author of l Maccabees would push epispasm back to that point in the chronology of events. Goldstein, Doran and Gruen state that the Jewish athletes were not nude in the gymnasium, so their circumcisions were irrelevant and epispasm unnecessary. We can list their arguments: •

Goldstein admits that for non-Jewish epheboi to wear the petasos might seem to imply that they exercised naked. Since the author of 2Macc., in the midst of his polemic against Jason's Hellenization, does not explicitly say that the Jewish epheboi were naked, 2Macc. 4:10-17 should be taken as evidence that the Jewish epheboi were not naked and at least used a loincloth, as did the Asians in Thucydides 1.6. As for the reference to the

33. Robert Doran "The High Cost of a Good Education" in Hellenism in the Land of Israel eds. John J. Collins and Gregory E. Sterling (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001) 106. 34. H. A. Harris Greek Athletics and the Jews (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1976) 31. 35. Erich S. Gruen Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition (Berkeley: University ofCalifomia, 1998) 29-30.

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petas_os, Doran thinks it is just a metaphor, since exercising with such a hat on one's head would not work. •

Jubilees 3:31, a contemporary source, does speak of nakedness, but it is a warning against public nudity, not a report of Jews actually displaying themselves.

•

1Mace. 1: 14-15 speaks of the gymnasium in Jerusalem and epispasm, which would seem to imply nudity. While Josephus (AJ xii 5.1.241) and Goldstein himselF 6 thought this to be so, the fact that 2Macc. 4 does not mention nudity means that it was not a Jewish phenomenon.

•

Epispasm, according to Goldstein, was relegated to a few Jews. 37 Doran and Gruen think that epispasm did not occur but is a metaphor for the imitation of Greek ways.

I can now respond to this line of thinking.

Nakedness in the Gymnasium As opposed to the statement that the Jewish athletes were not nude when they participated in Greek games, we may still assume that this nudity is implied because Greek athletics were performed in a state of nakedness. 38 The word gymnos itself means "naked". What is striking, of course, is that athletic nudity was the prevailing factor in the nomenclature- that the training center should have been widely called the nude place rather than, say, the running place, as it appears to have been in Crete. " 39 The gymnasium had its own guardian deities, including Herakles. 40 Herakles, mythical founder of the Olympic games, 41 was the quintessential naked god. It 36. Goldstein I Maccabees 200. 37. Goldstein I Maccabees 200; II Maccabees 230. 38. John Mouratidis "The Origin of Nudity in Greek Athletics" Journal of Sport History Vol. 12 No. 3 (Winter, 1985) 213-32; James Arieti "Nudity in Greek Athletics" The Classical World 68 ( 1975) 431-36. 39. Wendy J. Raschke The Archaeology of the Olympics: The Olympics and Other Festivals in Antiquity Wisconsin Studies in Classics (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002) 159. 40. M. Nilsson Die Hel/enistische Schule (Munchen: Beck, 1955) 61 ff. 41. Mouratidis "Origin ofNudity" 229. Herakles is associated through myth with the origin of the Olympic Games in the Tenth Olympian Ode of the poet Pindar. Pindar relates that Herakles, in his fifth labor, cleaned the stables of King Augeas of Elis. Herakles promised Augeas that he would clean the stables for the price of one-tenth of the king's cattle. When Augeas agreed, Herakles changed the courses of the Kladeos and

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was Herakles who was the symbol of the "importance of the human body and its symbolism as an incarnation of energy and power. "42 The ideal images of the athlete and the hero merged in Herakles. Since Herakles was the athlete's hero, his protegees imitated his nudity. The nudity of the warrior-athlete developed into athletic nudity. The Olympic athletes competed naked, not only as the weather was appropriate but also as the festival was meant to celebrate, in part, the achievements of the human body. A recent popular book on the subject is entitled The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games. 43 Goldstein's reference to Thucydides 1.6 is interesting because that passage indicates that Greeks exercised in the nude but that others did not: On the contrary, a modest style of dressing, more in conformity with modem ideas, was first adopted by the Lacedaemonians, the rich doing their best to assimilate their way of life to that of the common people. They also set the example of contending naked, publicly stripping and anointing themselves with oil in their gymnastic exercises. Formerly, even in the Olympic contests, the athletes who contended wore belts across their middles; and it is but a few years since that the practice ceased. To this day among some of the barbarians, especially in Asia, when prizes for boxing and wrestling are offered, belts are worn by the combatants. And there are many other points in which a likeness might be shown between the life of the Hellenic world of old and the barbarian of to-day. 44 Thucydides, at the beginning of his history, describes the conditions of early Greece as too primitive for a conflict on the scale of the Peloponnesian War, and says that the Lacedaemonians were the first to contend naked, strip themselves in public and anoint their bodies with oil. Thucydides writes that the barbarian athletes, even in the Asia of his day, wear girdles when receiving prizes. The historian expresses the superiority of the Greeks when he states: "and one might A1pheos rivers so that they flowed through the stables (which must have been quite filthy to require the cleansing power of two rivers). Augeas did not pay Herakles, however, as promised. Herakles finished his other labors and then returned to Elis and sacked the city. He then instituted the Olympic games in honor of his father, Zeus. It is said that Herakles taught men how to wrestle and measured out the stadium and/or the length of the footrace. Herakles was the hero for whom the games at Olympia may have been held until Zeus became the god ofthe festival. 42. Mouratidis "Origin ofNudity" 229. 43. Tony Perrottet The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games (New York: Random House, 2004). 44. Thucydides The History of the Peloponnesian War translated by Richard Crawley (Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 2004).

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show many other points in which the old Greek ways are like the barbarian ways of today" (1.6). According to Plato, Socrates argued that the Greeks could adjust to a new and better set of rules: It is not long since it seemed shameful and laughable to the Greeks, as it still does to the barbarians, for men to be seen naked, and when first the Cretans and then the Lacedaemonians began to engage in athletics, it was open to the sophisticates of that time to make sport of these things ...but when experience showed it was better to strip and reveal all, then that which had appeared laughable yielded to what appeared best to reason. (Republic 452C) Herodotus remarks on the difference between the Greeks and barbarians in the question of public nudity: "for among the Lydians, as among the barbarians generally, to be seen naked, even for a man, is considered a great shame" (1.10).45 As these authorities state, nakedness in athletic contests marked a great difference between Greeks and the barbarians; the Greeks considered this difference an example of their superiority over the rest of the world. A Hellenized Jew who wished to participate in Greek events, would want to show his 'Greekness' by disrobing; he would not want to seem barbarian by wearing clothes. The Classical Greeks felt so strongly about their nudity that they believed that to be ashamed to be seen naked in the gymnasium was the characteristic, the proof and the sign of a barbarian. 46 Thus the reference from Thucydides actually is evidence against Goldstein's point. The question is not whether Greek athletes competed in the nude but why. In what way would Greeks such as Thucydides deem themselves superior through their nakedness? What was the reason for athletic nudity? According to the traditional story, during the 15th Olympic games in 720 BCE, Orsippus's loincloth flew off. After that, no male Greek athlete would ever take up the cloth again, competing in a nakedness scorned by "barbarians" but 45. Cf. also Euripides (Andromache 595-600) who mentions the Asians' disgust with public nudity. 46. Mouratidis "Greek Nudity" 231.

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glorified by the Greeks themselves. 47 Pausanias ( 1.44.1-2) describes the grave of Orsippus and states that the athlete dropped the loincloth on purpose because a man would run more easily naked. Pausanias also tells a story of Callipateira (5.6.7-8), the point of which is that men compete in the nude to prove that they are not women. Frankly, a loincloth would not have made much of a difference, anyway. Neither of these reasons seems credible. Bonfante thinks that the Greeks felt so strongly about nudity that it was thought to have a magical effect (c.f. the apotropaic use of the phallus, gestures against the evil eye, etc.). Their athletes thought themselves to be protected in some way by their nudity. 48 Licht writes that the Greeks felt a covering of the sexual parts to be unnatural, and recognized that such covering only had meaning if one had ascribed an inferior value to their natural functions. Far from being ashamed of these organs, the Greeks rather regarded them with pious awe and treated them with an almost religious reverence as the mystical instruments of propagation, as the symbols of nature, life-producing and fruitful. 49 In a different vein, Miller suggests that the prevalent Greek practice of nudity in sports anticipated democratic commitment to equality of opportunity: the practice of public nudity advertises that if one strips away clothing, which is likely to signal class difference, men are all similar. 50 Anthropologists maintain that the principal reason for clothes is to distinguish the various ranks of individuals in a society. But Arieti says, with great humor, that there could not have been "sufficient differences in the loincloths of the athletes to tell a noble from an ordinary citizen."51 Nudity is not about leveling rank. Among athletes at the gymnasium, nakedness was the source for a good deal of sexual arousal. The competitors used olive oil not only to keep skin smooth but also to provide an appealing look. Physical exercise and gymnasia were chiefly responsible for sexual indulgence and homosexuality (Plato Laws 6368). Socrates relates that at seeing another man's nakedness, he can no longer control

47. James A. Arieti "Nudity in Greek Athletics" The Clasl·ical World Vol. 68, No. 7 (Apr. -May, 1975) 431. 48. Larissa Bonfante Etruscan Dress (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975) 102. 49. Hans Licht Sexual Life in Ancient Greece (London: Routledge, 1956) 88-89. SO. Stephen G. Miller "Naked Democracy" in Polis and Politics [Festschrift Hansen] ed. P. Flensted- Jensen, T.H. Neilsen, L. Rubinstein (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2000) 277-96. S1. Arieti "Nudity in Greek Athletics" 433.

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himself, overcome by a sort of "bestial appetite" (Plato Charmides l55C-D). 52 In Aristophanes's Clouds, 'Better Argument' (~iKato~ A6yo~) goes into detail, rather lustily, on the practices of the gymnasium to control sexual arousal (972978). That the mind ought to control the body was a pervasive Greek ideal. When Orsippus threw away his loincloth in the 15th Olympics, he showed that he was an athlete strong in body and temperate in mind. Nakedness in athletics became a point of honor to later generations of Greeks, and was perfectly consistent with the Olympic demeanor. This self-control and decorum was to be expected of those participating in athletic contests. Since the athletes were entirely stripped, stripped even of the loincloth the barbarians continued to wear, if they yielded to whatever sexual arousal they may have felt, it would have been blushingly apparent to all the spectators. Nudity enabled the athletes to show the complete control they exerted over their bodies. Since the Greeks were the only people to compete naked, they could well believe they were the only people capable of such self-control: here, perhaps, was a clear superiority over the barbarians, who had to hide themselves both to avoid tempting others and to conceal their own lack of control. Again, Goldstein refers to Thucydides 1.6 to make the point that Asians, and thus presumably the Judaeans, did not practice athletics in the nude. On the contrary, this distinction between Greek and barbarian would be exactly why the Judaeans in the newly-formed Antiochene community in Jerusalem would have participated in full nudity, which would then make it necessary to perform epispasm. An intersection of our texts and the subject of Greek games is found in the story about the Judaean delegation sent to the games honoring Herakles. While I have previously taken this passage to indicate the resistance to Jason's apostasy, here I want to emphasize the point that a delegation was sent to the games. What could it mean that a delegation was sent to the games other than that the delegation participated in the events? When the quinquennial games were being celebrated at Tyre in the presence of the king, the abominable Jason sent a delegation representing the Antiochenes from Jerusalem bearing three hundred drachmas ... (2Macc. 4:18ff.)

52. Other passages in Plato where gymnastics and sexual activity are linked are Republic 458D and Symposium 217B.

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Shall we understand that gifts were sent for sacrifices to Hercules but that there were no Jewish participants in these games? Wasn't the whole point of these games participation in the athletic events? If so, candidates for epispasm might be found in those Jewish athletes who would be seen naked by the athletes from all of the other communities in the region. These Jewish athletes might have been held to the greatest ridicule not at a gymnasium in Judaea but in another country where all of the other athletes would have hated the very idea of circumcision. Goldstein seems to concur with this view but uses this thought to restrict epispasm to those athletes who did go to Tyre and that "we may suppose that those few had in mind participation in Greek games outside Judaea. " 5 Now only a few Jews had epispasm performed on them. I assume, on the other hand, that only the finest athletes among the Antiochians in Jerusalem were sent to Tyre, and that there were others who had also had epispasm performed on them. Doran's statement that Roman athletes were not naked is quite beside the point; it simply means that the Romans did not follow the Greeks in this matter. Although Romans obviously took over much of the Greek culture, they had a somewhat different appreciation of nakedness. To appear nude in public was considered disgusting except in appropriate places and context. As Arieti says about the response to Greek nakedness, "The nudity shocked and offended the Romans to the west, and never became the practice of the Asians to the east. " 54 This statement, like that of Thucydides, must be understood to mean that those who considered themselves Greeks, or who were would-be Greeks, did practice in nudity in the gymnasium. Goldstein thinks that the Judaeans should be included with the Asians in this regard and Doran thinks they should be grouped with the Romans. But we are speaking about the Antiochene Greek community in Jerusalem which .was striving to become one Hellenistic community among all the others in the region. Since symbolism is so important, naked Antiochene Judaean athletes from the Antioch of Jerusalem would proudly display their uncircumcised nakedness to the representatives of the other cities at the games inTyre. To summarize: The Jewish athletes participated in the nude in the gymnasium because Greek athletics were performed in a state of nakedness. Even if sources such as 2Maccabees do not mention epispasm, we may assume that at least some

53. Goldstein II Maccabees 230. 54. James A. Arieti "Nudity in Greek Athletics" 432. Ennius, quoted by Cicero (Tusc. Disp. 4.70), says that turpitude begins in public nakedness. Cicero praises Ennius for this opinion. Tacitus relates the Roman condemnation of Nero's imitation of the Greek contests, a condemnation based on the insipidity of sporting combat compared to military combat and on the nakedness of the contestants (Annales 14.20.5-6).

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athletes who participated in the gymnasium in Jerusalem and who were sent in the delegation to Tyre (and perhaps other regional games) had undergone this operation. If we step back from this statement, we realize that these athletes, who now represented Judaea to the outside world, would have been famous or notorious in Judaea. For the author of lMaccabees, a source linked to the Hasmonaeans, their decircumcisions certainly were worthy of mention and condemnation. For Mattathias, father of the Hasmonaeans, the epispasm of these athletes was symbolic of everything that was wrong in a Hellenized Jerusalem, a Jerusalem he would leave for his hometown of Modein. When he would rise in power, he would counter the symbolism of epispasm with his own violent action of forcibly circumcising those Jewish babies who had not been brought into the covenant in this way. As we shall see, for Mattathias, epispasm was symbolic of the drastic actions that required a violent reaction.

ThePetasos For Doran and Gruen, the petasos may just be a metaphor. Even Millar, who comes to the topic from a very different perspective than that of the other scholars we have surveyed here, thinks that the petasos was just "an outrageous novelty." 55 I disagree, and think that while the petasos is being used symbolically, it also indicates nudity in the gymnasium. The petasos, a sun hat ofThessalian origin usually made of wool, felt, leather or straw, was a wide-brimmed floppy hat with a conical crown worn in ancient Greece (the petasos worn by men had a rather low crown). It was worn primarily by farmers and travelers in classical times, and was considered characteristic of rural people. The petasos was essentially a part of traveling dress, and, therefore, a usual attribute of Hermes, the messenger of the gods. 56 The petasos became the symbol of Hermes, and artistic representations of often portray him wearing his winged hat while otherwise naked. Hermes was the patron of the Greek gymnastic games. Athletic contestants wore the broad-brimmed petasos of Hermes as an emblem of their prowess. The images of Hermes were erected in the entrances to so many gymnasia, that he, like Heracles, was regarded as the protector of youths and gymnastic contests. 57 Both painted pottery and statuary depict him as a good-looking young man with an athletic body who wears winged sandals and holds a herald's staff. The Greek 55. Fergus Millar "The Background for the Maccabaean Revolution: Reflections on Martin Hengel's 'Judaism and Hellenism"' Journal ofJewish Studies 29 (1978) 10. 56. Hugo Blumner The Home Life of the Ancient Greeks trans. Alice Zimmem (London: Cassell, 1896) 56. 57. Pindar Nemean Odes x. 53.

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artists derived their ideal of the god from the gymnasium, representing him as a youth whose limbs were beautifully and harmoniously developed by exercise. 58 The petasos was worn often in combination with the chlamys cape as a distinguishing mark of the epheboi. 59 For instance, an Attic red-figure lekythos from the mid-5th century BCE found in the National Archaeological Museum of Spain in Madrid depicts a naked ephebos wearing a red fillet in his hair, a petasos around his neck and a himation 60 in the crook of his arm, holding two spears and a sword. Since naked epheboi wore the petasos in the gymnasium, and since Hermes wears a petasos and is otherwise naked, the petasos implies nudity. I will cite Goldstein's translation of2Macc. 4:12 again: Indeed, he took pleasure in founding a gymnasium beneath the very citadel and in making the education of the noblest adolescent boys consist of submission to the broad-brimmed Greek hat. In his own commentary, Goldstein admits that he might have been "oversubtle" in translating the word egagen as "educated" when the ''usual meaning of egagen, especially in a context involving epheboi, is "he led in procession" which would lead to this preferable translation: He took pleasure in subjecting the noblest adolescent boys to the wearing of the broad-brimmed Greek hat and in leading them in procession. While Goldstein thinks that there is not much difference between the two translations, I think there is. The picture of Jewish boys parading naked except for their petasos is very different from the general idea of educating the boys in Greek ways, symbolized by the Greek hat, which then would just be the metaphor Doran and Gruen think it is and the outrageous novelty Millar thinks it is. Exercising in the nude is not the issue, as Doran would make it; the image is of parading in the nude. And Goldstein may be correct in thinking that there is a parody, in an intentional parallel to Ps. 47:4 where God subjects the nations in procession in front of Israel

58. Athens seems to have been the first place in which he was worshipped in this capacity (Pindar Pythian Odes ii. 10; Isthmian Odes i. 60). 59. Stephen G. Miller Ancient Greek Athletics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004) 139. 60. Outer garments made out ofloosely woven thick wool.

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It is important to note that in the more literal translation, Jason, the high priest, in proper Greek style, leads the procession of naked young Jewish epheboi, just as we see Greek processions of athletes led by priests. Does 2Maccabees refer to a line of epheboi marching to their exercises? If it is a procession led by the high priest, probably not. We must be speaking of some formal procession that was seen by the public for it to be noted and then mentioned by the author of 2Maccabees. We are reminded of Greek processions such as that ofthe festival of Olympia, where at dawn a procession set out from the Prytaneion (the home of Hestia, goddess of the hearth), at the northwest comer of the Altis, the Sanctuary of Zeus, where the sacred flame burned. The priests of Zeus and the Hellanodikai, 61 clad in purple, carried switches used to punish athletes who committed fouls. The marchers passed sixty-three altars. 62 A even more radical speculation would be that Jason's epheboi are part of the euandria, a contest of "beautiful manliness" ("manly beauty"); a kind of beauty pageant. As Miller writes, "We should imagine all the young citizens-to-be passing in review ... with the most pleasing awarded the prize. " 63 This much is certain: The reference to the petasos shows that the Judaeans of Jason's gymnasium are immersed in even the trivial details of Greek athletic culture. Miller only mentions the petasos once or twice in his major work on Greek athletics and the term is not even found in the index. Is it possible that the Judaeans copied the use of this hat, a relatively important in the scheme of things, and not the whole culture of nudity? 2Maccabees, as Doran famously put it, is Temple propaganda. 64 The emphasis is on the priests; 2Macc. is concerned with priests who ignore their duties to participate in athletics and emphasizes that they neglected their sacrificial duties. How wretched, the author says, that Jason polluted the Temple with such Greek sins. The nudity of the gymnasium only seems implicit rather than explicit because of our lack of ready knowledge of Greek athletic culture. It is possible that if priests did not undergo epispasm, that procedure is not mentioned because it did not fit the important theme of this particular passage. Instead, the sins presented are those of the priests in the Temple who did not fulfill their duties at the correct time because they were busy participating in athletics. So the fact that 2Maccabees does not mention epispasm in this passage 61. Judges of the Ancient Olympic Games 62. Miller Ancient Greek Athletics 121, 124-25. 63. Miller Ancient Greek Athletics 140-41. 64. Robert Doran Temple Propaganda: The Purpose and Meaning of 2 Maccabees (Washington D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1981 ).

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may only indicate that 1Maccabees refers to other non--priestly Hellenizers who reversed their circumcisions.

Jubilees and the Issues of Nudity and Epispasm In the same vein, the scholars referred to above ask the legitimate question: If nudity and epispasm were important issues, why doesn't Jubilees, a contemporary witness/5 mention them? I disagree and will try to make the case that Jubilees does condemn nudity and certainly rails against violations of the commandment of circumcision. 66 It is important to remember that Jubilees purports to be a revelation by God to Moses that attempts to stay in character and maintain its literary pose. While the Jewish author of Jubilees saw Greek culture as evil, he is limited in what he can say about contemporary trends. First, here is Jub. 3: Adam and Eve were naked in the garden of Eden for seven years but they did not know that they were naked and were not ashamed .... But from all the beasts and all the cattle he granted to Adam alone that he might cover his shame. Therefore it is commanded in the heavenly tablets to all who will know the judgment of the Law that they should cover their shame and they should not be uncovered as the gentiles are uncovered. (3:15-16, 30-31)

To be nude is to be an animal like the Gentiles, against whom Jubilees rails. It is to return to a time before human beings had knowledge. Jubilees adds this statement to the re-telling of the Eden narrative in Genesis. Any addition to a simple review of the Torah indicates the intentionality of the author, who is obviously concerned about Jews who may display their nakedness in public. We can now add the fact that Jubilees connects the Garden of Eden to the Temple: We brought her into the garden of Eden because it was more holy than any land. (3: 12)

And he (Shem) knew that the garden of Eden was the holy of holies and the dwelling ofthe LORD. (8:19)

65. I will substantiate this statement at length below. 66. Gruen himself points us to Jub. 3:31 and 15.

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Jubilees is not alone in its identification of the Garden of Eden with the Temple, as has been studied in the scholarly literature. 67 But it is particularly significant here because the gymnasium was built "beneath the very citadel" (2Macc. 4:12), referring to the Temple mount or the Akra nearby. 68 So in Jubilees, we have Adam and Eve dressed in the Temple, as opposed to those who went undressed near the Temple in the time of Jason. Nudity in the Garden of Eden obviously became an issue after Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but it would be difficult to re-imagine the Garden in Eden with a gymnasium. So the additions to the story of Adam and Eve's nudity is a polemic against the nudity of Jason's gymnasium, right near the citadel, and indicates the anger of the author against Jason's Hellenization policies. We now turn to the scholarly claim that Jubilees does not attack or mention epispasm. Epispasm must be seen as the most extreme form of anticircumcision. Circumcision is one of the main emphases of Jubilees. Already in the first chapter of the work, we find this statement: And I shall cut off the foreskin of their heart and the foreskin of the heart of their descendants. (Jub. 1:23) As familiar as this Biblical metaphor might be, it would be particularly poignant in an age when foreskins were very much an issue. Those with foreskins, original or re-built, are those who are impure and unconnected to God. In the most important passage about circumcision in the book, a review and adumbration of Gen. 17, we find the following: And now I shall announce to you that the sons of Israel will deny this ordinance and they will not circumcise their sons according to all of this law because some of the flesh of their circumcision they will leave in the circumcision of their sons. And all of the sons of the Beliar will leave their sons without circumcising just as they were born. And great wrath from the LORD will be upon the sons of Israel because they have left his covenant and have turned aside from his words. And they have provoked and blasphemed inasmuch as they have not done the ordinance of this law because they have made

67. Lea Mazor "The Correlation between the Garden of Eden and the Temple" Shnaton 13 (2002) 5-42 in Hebrew and the references there and in Michael Segal The Book of Jubilees: Rewritten Bible, Redaction, Ideology and Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2007) 49. 68. Goldstein II Maccabees 229.

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themselves like the gentiles to be removed and be uprooted from the land. (Jub. 15:33-34) While circumcision saves the Jewish people and maintains the covenant with God, staying in character means that there obviously cannot be a reference to Greek athletics in the Canaan of Abraham's time. Even so, we might have expected some reference to epispasm in Jubilees along with its condemnation of partial circumcision and uncircumcision. To say that Jubilees does not give us evidence of epispasm is true, as far as it goes, and it is a fair point. And yet the emphasis on circumcision requires explanation. While there is no reference to epispasm, it is clear that Jubilees is written in a time that circumcision is under attack. We have mentioned some of the key Biblical texts on circumcision above. It is interesting to see how Jubilees tells these tales. In Jub. 48, where Ex. 4:24-26 is retold, the evil angel/force Mastema (and not God) attacks Moses, solving, as Segal writes persuasively, three problems for the traditional Jewish interpreter: 69 1. 2.

3.

Why does God want to kill Moses? Now it is not God but Mastema. What was God's motive? If He did not have a valid, explicit motive, did He act unjustly and arbitrarily? Now it is Mastema who wants to prevent Moses from obeying the word of God and fulfilling the Israelites from Egyptian bondage. If God wants to kill Moses, how does He fail to do so? In Jubilees, it is Mastema who fails because Moses is the faithful servant of God.

.

For our purpose, and I have not seen this point elsewhere, what is interesting here is that Jubilees avoids saying what most Jewish interpreters understand, that Moses failed to circumcise his son and that this is the motivation for God's attack in Ex. 4:24. The author of Jubilees would find it extremely difficult to imagine that Moses himself failed to circumcise his son. For a text that adamantly insists on the primary importance of circumcision, how could Moses have neglected this rite? Better to rewrite the story so that circumcision is not an issue. Better not to even mention that Moses was saved by Zipporah 's salvific act of circumcising her son. While the text could have served to show the apotropaic powers of circumcision, the negative implications exceeded the positive ones and the author of Jubilees made his interpretative decision based on his position on this major issue of his time.

69. Michael Segal The Book of Jubilees: Rewritten Bible, Redaction, Ideology and Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2007) 203-207.

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In the same manner, the Jubilees version of another key Biblical text on circumcision, the Shechem story of Gen. 34, is rewritten so that while Dinah does not marry the "uncircumcised" Shechem, there is nothing about the ruse of inducing the Shechemites to circumcise themselves and thereby placing them in a vulnerable position to be massacred. My point is that the author of Jubilees shows his keen sensitivity to anything about circumcision, rewriting the three key Pentateuchal texts on the subject, Gen. 17, Gen. 34 and Ex. 4:24-26 in order to present them in a light that made circumcision as positive and essential as possible. To say, then, that Jubilees is "good evidence" against the nexus of nudity/uncircumcision/epispasm may not be correct. 70 When we have a conflict between our main sources, as we do here between lMacc. and Josephus on one hand and 2Macc. and Jubilees on the other, how do we choose which side to accept as true? We can deny the conflict; it is not as if 2Macc. and Jubilees state that there was no epispasm or uncircumcision among the Jews. We must be suspicious of each source and ask if there is not some discernible reason for which an author would change the facts to suit his purpose. If one accepts the logic of the scholars discussed here, one must wonder why !Maccabees, the source that glosses over the years under Jason to create a paradigm of revolution against outsiders rather than conflict between Judaeans, would mention that some Jews practiced epispasm in those years. Since !Maccabees was written in the znd century BCE, and we know of no case of or reference to epispasm anywhere or at any time before this, one would need to say that the author of l Maccabees created the idea of this operation out of whole cloth. One would have expected !Maccabees to present a Jewish community united in its opposition to Antiochus IV's decree, which is exactly what we find in Josephus's re-writing in The Jewish War:

70. Goldstein (/Maccabees 200) states that another contemporary source, Testament of Moses 5:1-6 does not refer to the reversal of circumcision but then admits that 8:3 does. The problematic 8:3 has been translated: "And their wives will be given to the gods of the nations and their young sons will be cut by physicians to bring forward their foreskins" (J. Priest "Testament of Moses" in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments ed. by James H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1983) 931). Ifthis passage is from the !60's B.CE (see below), it is evidence for epispasm, not against it. Daniel 11 :32 is also interesting in this regard, and again, if anything, is evidence for epispasm: "He will flatter with smooth words those who act wickedly towards the covenant, but the people devoted to their God will stand firm."

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Not content with his unlooked for success in capturing the city and with the plunder and wholesale carnage, Antiochus, carried away by his ungovernable passions and with the rankling memory of what he had suffered in the siege, put pressure upon the Jews to violate the code of their country by leaving their country by leaving their infants uncircumcised and sacrificing swine upon the altar. These orders were disobeyed by all, and the most eminent defaulters were massacred. Bacchides, who was sent by Antiochus to command the garrison, with these impious injunctions to back his innate brutality, was guilty of every excess of iniquity, torturing distinguished individuals one after another, and daily parading before the eyes of all the appearance of a captured city, until by the extravagance of his crimes he provoked his victims to venture on reprisals. This began with Mattathias .... (BJ 1.1-2 34-36) The fact that Josephus, writing with !Maccabees as his main if not only source, would feel the need to change the story in this way is interesting. Josephus decided to describe the premeditated evil passions of Antiochus IV and the unity of the Jews in their insistence on performing circumcisions. There is nothing here about Jews who out of Hellenistic conviction or even fear of execution refrained from circumcising their sons. Now it is not a few women who were executed for their rare courage; they were only the most prominent victims of a cohesively re.bellious populace. Contrast this approach with Josephus's account of Antiochus's decree and the Jewish reaction in Antiquities: He also ordered them not to circumcise their children, threatening to punish anyone who might be found acting contrary to these orders. He also appointed overseers who should assist in compelling them to carry out his instructions. And so, many of the Jews, some willingly, others through fear of the punishment which had been prescribed, followed the practices ordained by the king, but the worthiest people and those of noble soul disregarded him, and held their country's customs of greater account than the punishment with which he threatened them if they disobeyed ... (AJ xii 5.4.254-55 71 ) In The Jewish War, we have good, innocent victims versus evil, irrational persecutors. This makes for a better story than that of Antiquities and 71. Josephus Jewish Antiquities Books Xll-Xl/1 trans. by Ralph Marcus (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998) 131.

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2Maccabees with its divided Jewish community and even !Maccabees with Jews who performed epispasm to be considered good Greeks. If Josephus wrote BJ first and AJ some sixteen years later in 94 CE, why would he move away from this more positive story? Perhaps it was just that AJ has the more complete and detailed account. So it would be surprising if 1Maccabees created the idea of epispasm if it were not true. Why would any Jewish source make up bad Jews? Thus this common sense argument is a strong one in asserting that Jews did participate in nude athletics in the gymnasium, did refrain from circumcision, and that some performed the radical act of epispasm. None of this caused a rebellion among the Jews. But when the Jews were prevented from circumcising their sons, this became an important motivation for the rebellion of Mattathias. On the other hand, if one rejects the logic of the scholars who deny the fact of epispasm, one is still left with their question, which I would ask in this way: Why didn't 2Maccabees, the source most likely to tell us about internal conflict between Jews and the sins of the assimilationists between 175 and 168/67, severely condemn or at least mention the camouflage of circumcision? While circumcision was not forced, of course, on those who had done epispasm, epispasm could have been seen as the symmetrical antithesis of Mattathias 's forced circumcision. As Isaac Newton said, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. 2Maccabees does not want to emphasize actions but martyrdom and so does not present epispasm and its reaction, forced circumcision. If Mattathias is the reaction, the action, of either uncircumcision or epispasm or both, requires emphasis. 2Maccabees, in its rejection of Mattathias, about which we will have a great deal to say, may have omitted reference to epispasm in order to avoid needing to mention its opposite pole. Thus we see that while 2Maccabees does not mention uncircumcision or epispasm, lMacc. and Josephus state that the first step in the prohibition against circumcision began within the Jewish community itself around 175 BCE, through social pressure but not legal decree. Circumcision was controversial for the Jews of that time and we should assume that some Jews during this period did not practice circumcision because of political and societal pressures. How did this social pressure turn into a legal prohibition and a persecution that included execution of those who practice circumcision?

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When and Why Did Antioch us IV Prohibit Circumcision in 168/67 BCE? The second stage in the history of circumcision in the Maccabaean period came some seven or eight years later when Antiochus compelled the Jews to give up the practice of circumcision by force of law. Since the Judaeans were split, with some circumcising, some not circumcising, and some going so far as to reverse their circumcisions, why did it become necessary for Antiochus to decree a prohibition at this point? In a previous study, 72 I made a case for the following chronology: • •

November 170 BCE - 1st Antiochus invasion of Egypt; 73 168 BCE - Second invasion of Egypt by Antiochus; Roman response; Jason's revolt; Antiochus leaves Egypt at the end of July 168 BCE; 74 Antiochus's political response to Jason's revolt and then the religious persecution (the Temple is desecrated in December).

Jason's rebellion brought the wrath of Antiochus IV on Jerusalem. Menelaus, with the full support of a very alive Antiochus, punished the city and was reconfirmed in his authority. 75 The pious Jews continued to attack and resist Menelaus. Sympathetic to the entreaties of the beleaguered Antiochenes led by Menelaus, Antiochus sent Apollonius the Mysarch on an expedition to punish the pious Jews of Jerusalem, who were massacred in Nisan 168 BCE 76 New punitive taxes were imposed. Troops manned the Akra north of the Temple. Shortly thereafter, Antiochus IV decreed that all Jews in Judaea should stop observing the laws of the Torah. Instead, they were to follow a new "purified" Judaism with a polytheistic cult. 77 This decree was sporadically and then gradually enforced until on 15 Kislev 168 BCE the "Abomination of Desolation" representing three gods of the imposed cult was placed on the altar for sacrifice in the Temple. 78 The religious persecution was now in full swing throughout Judaea and the Antiochene republic (!Mace. 1:54-64; 2Macc.6-7; 72. Benjamin Scolnic Thy Brothers Blood (Lanham, Md.: UPA, 2008). The decree is 168, according to calculations with which I agree, or 167 according to Goldstein (Goldstein I Maccabees 163) and most others. 73 .T. C. Skeat "Notes on Ptolemaic Chronology: II. 'The Twelfth Year Which is Also the First': The Invasion of Egypt by Antiochus Epiphanes" JEA 41 (1961) 107-12. 74. J.D. Ray The Archives of Hor (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1976) 14-20, 124-30. 75. I Mace. 1:20-28; 2 Mace. 5:1-23. 76. lMacc. 1:29-40; 2 Mace. 5:23-27. 77. lMacc. 1:44-51. 78 l Mace I :54.

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Josephus Ant. xii 5.5.257-64). 2Macc 6:7, which speaks of the worship of Dionysus that takes place on his feast day, would seem to be concrete evidence against Goldstein's theory that Antiochus IV borrowed his persecution from the Roman persecution of Dionysus. If Antiochus IV learned from the Roman antiDionysian persecution, why, of all things, would he institute worship of Dionysus? Gruen says that the Roman persecution itself was not really like that, that it did not really care about Greek religion one way or another; that it was for political purposes in the development and creation of political and religious power for the Senate. 79 As part of the political response to Jason's revolt, the religious persecution of Antiochus IV included the prohibition of circumcision, no doubt with the aiding and abetting of Menelaus and company. It was not just circumcision as such that was forbidden; it was anything that served as a confessional of traditional Jewishness, but circumcision was a hot-button issue, emotional on both sides, and it was discoverable, as opposed to other rites or beliefs. One could prove that circumcision had been done. This is how, in response to its prohibition, circumcision became an expression of Jewishness that was stronger than ever. As long as one who wanted to circumcise could do so, there was no need to revolt. Circumcision always had been assumed, and even when some Jews chose not to do it, there was no major crisis. Jason's revolt was more political than religious and the response was political but was expressed through religious decrees. In the resistance that followed, circumcision became a rallying cry. In that resistance, martyrs were made. It is to these martyrs and a generally unexplored reason for their martyrdom, that we will now tum. After we have dealt at great length on the reason for that martyrdom, we will explore circumcision as a focal point ofMattathias's revolt.

Circumcision and Immortality in 1 and 2Maccabees Scholarship has described the resistance to the Antiochene prohibition of circumclSlon as a religious/nationalistic response: "For the Maccabees circumcision was ... an essential component of Jewish identity." 80 Yet the

79 Erich S. Gruen "The Bacchanalian Affair" in Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990) 34-78. One thinks about the

famous case of Marbury vs. Madison that was less about the matter at hand than the establishment ofthe power of the Supreme Court of the United States. 80. Shaye J.D. Cohen From the Maccabees to the Mishnah (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987) 55.

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passages in I and 2Maccabees 81 involving martyrdom for circumcision are so striking in their zealousness that one wonders if there might not be another dimension involved. It is one thing for a Jewish mother to bring her child into her people's covenant but quite another to act in a way that might cause the death of that child. In an era when many Jewish people neglected circumcision and still considered themselves members of their people and their religion, why did these women take this risk? 82 Most scholars accept the historicity of these executions of mothers and babies for circumcision, as in Nickelsburg's cautious assessment: "Some such event, of which there must have been many in the Antiochan persecution, could well have become the historical nucleus for (such) a story."83 The question here is why the mothers would endanger their children's lives (as well as their own) for this particular commandment. For many Jews, nothing could be more abhorrent, or terrifying, than to reverse or refrain from circumcision. My goal is to present the case that there was a theological/eschatological reason for their attitude. My concern is the relationship between circumcision, un-circumcision and one's place in the afterlife. If there is a fear of spending eternity in the company of the uncircumcised, how much the more so is there a fear of dying uncircumcised. Could this be what motivates the mothers in I and 2Macc. to circumcise their sons at the risk of death? Does circumcision, like the later Christian ritual of baptism, bring one salvation or at least the promise of a better afterlife? Before we study the texts involved concerning the controversy over circumcision in the Maccabaean period, we need to pose a basic question about the meaning of the rite: If circumcision was originally a rite associated with puberty or marriage, as we know from comparative evidence 84 and from the phrase "bridegroom of blood" in Ex. 4:24-26 and the connection to marriage in 81. As well as those in the Testament of Moses and Josephus (see below). 82. The circumcision of babies seems to have been the mother's responsibility (even if she did not actually perform the procedure); cf. Jonathan A. Goldstein I Maccabees (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976) 139; Kaufmann Kohler "Circumcision" JE IV (1903) 95. 83. George W.E. Nickelsburg Resurrection, Immortality and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism and Early Christianity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006) 137. On the point that the martyrs here are women, see Kraemer's useful remark: "Whether or not these specific incidents occurred, their recounting... tells us much about what ancient authors and audiences took as plausible, unremarkable and the givens of ordinary social life .... " Ross S. Kraemer, "Jewish Women and Christian Origins: Some Caveats" in Women and Christian Origins eds. Ross S. Kraemer and Mary Rose D'Angelo (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) 42. 84. Julius Wellhausen Reste arabischen Heidentums (Berlin: George Reimer, 1897) 175.

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Gen. 34 and 1 Sam. 18:17-27, why did it become a rite for infants in Israelite culture? 85 Perhaps to separate it from that type of ritual and to emphasize that circumcision had become a covenant rite. 86 But the emphasis on covenant does not exclude the possibility that circumcision was practiced on infants at the age of eight days (after they were deemed able to withstand the operation) in an age of high infant mortality in order to ensure the immortality of those infants. 87 In discussing another theory that the rite of circumcision moved from a primitive initiatory rite of neophyte warriors to one performed on an infant, Robertson Smith states that "the natural tendency of pious parents will be to dedicate their child as early as possible to the god who is to be his protector through life. " 88 It may be that for a Jewish believer in the afterlife during the Antiochene persecution, there was a result that would have been worse than the death of one's child and that was the fate of oblivion or perpetual horrific punishment for that child. I will suggest that the mothers in 1 and 2Maccabees were willing to risk anything for the eternal lives of their sons and that they were representative of at least some Jews in the Maccabaean period who believed that circumcision would determine the destiny of a person in the afterlife. I will then compare and contrast this zeal and belief to Mattathias 's forcible circumcision of male babies during this same period.

The Texts Concerning Martyrdom for Circumcision Two women were brought to trial for having circumcised their children. Their babies were hanged from their breasts, and the women were paraded publicly through the city and hurled down from the walls. (2Macc. 6:10) 2Macc. is not as explicit as the parallel text in 4Maccabees in stating that the women fully knew that they might very well be executed for their act of circumcising their sons: " ... women who knew in advance what was in store for them were hurled headlong from the walls with their infants because they had

85. W. H. Propp "The Origins of Infant Circumcision in Israel" Hebrew Annual Review ll (1987) 355-70. 86. Scolnic "From Bloody Bridegroom to Covenant Rite; Brit Milah - the Perspective of Modem Biblical Scholarship" 12-20. 87. Propp "Origins oflnfant Circumcision" 363. 88. W. Robertson Smith The Religion of the Semites: The Fundamental Institutions (New York: Schocken, 1972) 328.

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their children circumcised (4Maccabees 4:25). 89 Still, the description of the persecution that precedes the account in 2Macc. implies that the two women are fully aware that their actions could result in their deaths. They are tried, examined and punished for their crime by being publicly paraded through the city and executed. The authorities intend the public spectacle to act as a deterrent to others. This example of mothers who are executed with their circumcised babies has its parallel in lMacc.: The women who had had their sons circumcised they put to death according to the decree, hanging the babes from their mother's necks and executing also their husbands and the men who had performed the circumcisions. (\Mace. 1:60-61) This is an important passage because it shows that circumcision was not just a male issue; women were willing to die to have the ritual performed on their sons. The passage in \Mace. differs from its counterpart in 2Macc. in that it does not just speak of two women who are examples and does not explicitly say that this happened in the city (of Jerusalem) though this may be inferred from the context. In addition, The Testament of Moses 8, a chapter most scholars would agree was written during the period of the Maccabaean revolt, 90 seems to refer to these events when it speaks of "a king of the kings of the earth, who, having supreme authority, will crucii)r those who confess their circumcision" (8: 1). 91 Josephus also states that Antiochus made crucifixion a punishment for circumcision: He also ordered them not to circumcise their children, threatening to punish anyone who might be found acting contrary to these orders.

89. H. Anderson "4 Maccabees" in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Vol. 2 ed. by James H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1985) 549. 90. I cannot discuss the debate on the dating of Testament of Moses here; suffice it to say that most scholars agree that this chapter is from the Maccabaean era, even if they think that other parts were from the Herodian period; see J. Licht "Taxo, or the Apocalyptic Doctrine of Vengeance" JJS 12 (1961) 95-103; G. Nickelsburg "An Antiochan Date for the Testament of Moses" in Studies on the Testament of Moses G. Nickelsburg ed. (Cambridge: SCS, 1973) 33-37. 91. J. Priest "Testament of Moses" in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments ed. by James H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1983) 931.

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He also appointed overseers who should assist in compelling them to carry out his instructions. And so, many of the Jews, some willingly, others through fear of the punishment which had been prescribed, followed the practices ordained by the king, but the worthiest people and those of noble soul disregarded him, and held their country's customs of greater account than the punishment with which he threatened them if they disobeyed; and being on that account maltreated daily, and enduring bitter torments, they met their death. Indeed, they were whipped, their bodies were mutilated, and while still alive and breathing, they were crucified, while their wives and the sons whom they had circumcised in despite of the king 's wishes were strangled, the children being made to hang from the necks of their crucified parents. (AJ xii 5.4.254-5692 ) In Josephus's elaboration, based on !Mace. (and perhaps 2Macc. as well), we see his lavish praise for the virtue of following one's country's customs, something he often promotes as a noble Jewish quality to his Roman audience. 93 Josephus adds graphic details about the tortures inflicted on the Jews. Goldstein surmises that Josephus saw that there was no verb in lMacc. l :6lb: "and ... also their husbands and the men who had performed the circumcisions." Josephus may have learned that the missing verb was "crucified" from the Testament of Moses or simply superimposed a common Roman method of execution. Again, my question at this point is why these mothers would be willing to suffer such terrible punishments and to state that for them, nothing could be worse than to refrain from circumcising their sons. Circumcision, for them, meant eternal salvation.

Jubilees and the Eschatology of Circumcision The statement that the martyrs risked life itself because they believed that circumcision leads to a positive afterlife requires contemporary evidence of this ideology within the Maccabaean era, preferably during the persecution itself. We

92. Josephus Jewish Antiquities Books XII-XIII trans. by Ralph Marcus (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998) 131. Josephus states that the fathers were tortured and crucified for circumcising their sons, while the wives and children were strangled (Susan Haber "Living and Dying for the Law " in "They Shall Purify Themselves": Essays on Purity in Early Judaism (Early Judaism and Its Literature) ed. by Adele Reinhartz (Atlanta: SBL, 2008) 81 n. 24. 93. Isaac Gafni "Josephus and I Maccabees" in Josephus, the Bible, and History ed. Louis H. Feldman and Gohei Hata (Detroit: Wayne State, 1989) 116-31.

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can find this belief in Jubilees, written during these very years, in its seemingly remarkable re-interpretation of the most important Biblical text on circumcision, Gen. 17.94 In establishing that Jubilees or parts of the work was/were written at 94. Jubilees claims to be a revelation by God to Moses but its polemical and sectarian nature reveal it to be the work of an author who presented strong opinions on the issues of his own day. While scholars vary in their exact range of dates, all would agree that Jubilees was written in the 2"d century. For a review of the scholarly positions, see G. W. E. Nickelsburg "Jubilees" in Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period ed. by Michael E. Stone (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) 97-104. A fragment of a Hebrew manuscript of Jubilees, dated before l 00 BCE through palaeographic evidence, was found at Qumran, so we have a terminus ad quem; the work had to have been written and in popular circulation by the end of the 2"d century (J. T. Milik "Fragment d'une source du Psautier (4Q Ps 89) et fragments des Jubiles ... " Revue biblique 73 (1966) 102-4). Charles thinks that Jubilees was written during the time of John Hyrcanus I (134-104 BCE) cf. Robert H. Charles The Book ofJubilees (London: A. and C. Black, 1902) lviii-lxiii. VanderKam argues for an upper date of c. 160 BCE, claiming that some of the place-names in the wars of Jacob's sons with the seven Amorite kings in Jub. 34:2-9 are based on placenames in Judas Maccabaeus's victory over Nicanor in 161 BCE and that 37-38:14 alludes to the Maccabaean victories over the Idumaeans and other enemies (James C. VanderKam Textual and Historical Studies in the Book ofJubilees HSM 14 (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1977) 217-29). On the other end, VanderKam says, the author seems to live in Jerusalem (49:21) though being close in theology to the Qumran community, implying that the break had not yet happened; there is no reference to a "wicked" high priest or a retreat to Qumran; in fact the high priesthood is still described in glorious terms, so a date before Jonathan's rise in 152 is indicated (VanderKam Textual and Historical Studies 283-85). Among the scholars who argue for a date before the Antiochene persecution is George W. E. Nickelsburg Resurrection, Immortality and Eternal Life in lntertestamental Judaism and Early Christianity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006) 46-47; idem "Review of James VanderKam Textual and Historical Studies in the Book of Jubilees" JAOS 100 (1980) 83-84. Goldstein presents the case for 176-167, and even more exactly 169-167, as the years when Jubilees was written (Jonathan A. Goldstein "The Date of the Book of Jubilees" PAAJR 50 ( 1983) 63-86). The author of Jubilees takes great pains to claim that it is an ancient revelation in order to substantiate its quite controversial and innovative statements. Earlier authors and texts had felt no need to say that Gentiles should be shunned since this stance could be taken for granted. Jub. 22:16-22 is a striking passage that reflects the situation that only existed after late 175 BCE, after Jason usurped the high priesthood from his brother Onias III and Antiochus IV had repealed the decrees enforcing separation of Jews and Gentiles (2 Mace. 4:7-ll). Jub. 23:11-31 speaks of the defiling of the Holy of Holies and of civil strife and bloody clashes between Jews. We have no other examples of such events until the period beginning with the autumn of 170 BCE, after which we see a riot against Menelaus and his brother Lysimachus for their robbery of Temple property (2 Mace. 4:39-50), the defiling of the Holy of Holies by Menelaus and Antiochus IV (2 Mace. 5:15) and the armed resistance by pious Jews, among whom the author of Jubilees would certainly count himself, all of which surrounded the near-coup by a resurgent Jason (2 Mace. 5:5-7). On the other hand, the

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this time, our topic of circumcision is quite relevant. Again, until the Greeks came to Judaea, circumcision was not an issue. If the author of Jubilees speaks of a time, in reality, his own, when Jews will fail to circumcise their sons, the era could only be that of Antiochus IV and the resistance to his decrees. On the other end of the range of suggested dates for Jubilees is the rise of Jonathan in 152 BCE, with the established Hasmonaean emphasis on circumcision even to the point of forcibly acting on non-circumcised Jewish babies (lMacc. 2:46, AJ 13.257-58, 318). There would be no need for the author of Jubilees to rail against non-circumcision after the Maccabees were firmly in control. "Surely, such loud propaganda for circumcision as that in Jubilees became unnecessary from the time that Jonathan became high priest in 152 BCE"95 Again, the point here is that Jubilees is a contemporary witness to the idea that circumcision has a direct effect on a person's eternal destiny, which may have been a motivation of the martyrs described in lMacc., 2Macc., the Testament of Moses and Josephus. Before we see how Jubilees presents what we might call the 'eschatology of circumcision,' we must review the Biblical background. In Genesis 17, as we discussed above, God makes a covenant with the first Hebrew, Abram, who receives a new name, Abraham, and the eternal promise of fertility for his descendants. Abraham will now be able to father a child through his wife Sarah (who also receives a new name). The male reproductive organ will be changed in order to symbolize this covenant of fertility. The people will be defined by this symbolic act. 96 God establishes circumcision as a covenant, He says,

author of Jubilees would certainly have responded in some way to Antiochus IV's decrees of 167 BCE, and there is no allusion to these edicts. But what of VanderKam's presentation that there are allusions to Maccabaean battles in Jubilees? Goldstein thinks that the differences between the names of the enemy neighbors fought by Jacob in Jubilees and those fought by the Maccabees in actual historical events are more significant than the similarities to which VanderKam points. Goldstein concludes: "Most of the names in the narrative have no significance in Hasmonaean history" (Goldstein "Date of Jubilees" 83). Goldstein concludes about the author of Jubilees: "He knows of the events of 170 and 169 BCE, but he knows nothing of Antiochus's decrees forbidding obedience to the Torah, which came in spring 167 BCE He must therefore have written between 169 and 167 BCE" (Goldstein "The Date of Jubilees" 72). My position here is that both VanderKarn and Goldstein could be correct if we allow for development of the text, either by one author or an original text with expansions. Our passage of interest, Jub. 15, could have been written before the persecution (169-67) while the passages that do seem to allude to the Maccabaean battles could have been written a few years later ( 16160). 95. Goldstein "The Date of the Book ofJubilees" 73 n. 38. 96. M. Fox "Sign of the Covenant: Circumcision in the Light of the Priestly 'ot Etiologies" RB 81 (1974) 537-96.

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"between Me and you and your offspring to follow" (Genesis 17: 10).97 If circumcision brings one into the covenant with God, failing to circumcise places one outside of that covenant: "And if any male who is uncircumcised fails to circumcise the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his kin; he has broken My covenant" (Gen. 17: 14). If one is not circumcised, one cannot be a part of the people. 98 Important modern scholarly commentaries such as those by von Rad99 and Westermann 100 pay little attention to this last point about the consequences of failing to circumcise, because they assume that the punishment is social; the violator is cut off from remaining a member of the Israelites. Still, Westermann's formulation will be suggestive for our purposes: circumcision means that the people wish "to institute a sign that they belong to their God. " 101 I would ask: Is circumcision a sign to God during one's life, or afterwards? I will now cite the interpretation of Gen. 17 in Jubilees: This law is for all the eternal generations ... because it is an eternal ordinance ordained and written in the heavenly tablets. And anyone who is born whose own flesh is not circumcised on the eighth day is not from the sons of the covenant which the LORD made for Abraham since (he is) from the children of destruction. And there is therefore no sign upon him so that he might belong to the LORD because (he is destined) to be destroyed and annihilated from the earth and to be uprooted from the earth because he has broken the covenant of the LORD our God. Because the nature of all the angels of the presence and all of the angels of sanctification was thus from the day of their creation. And in the presence of the angels of the

97. All translations from the Hebrew Bible are those of Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures (Phil.: JPS, 1988). 98. It is possible that this part of Gen. 17 is a late Priestly addition (Shaye J.D. Cohen Why Aren ~ Jewish Women Circumcised: Gender and Covenant in Judaism (Berkeley: University of California, 2005) 9. That the text is priestly will prove to be interesting here, and the fact that the punishment for circumcision may be late may show how circumcision became more important as the religion evolved. At any rate, for centuries before Jubilees, Gen. 17 in this form existed and was sacred and canonical. 99. Gerhard von Rad Genesis trans. John H. Marks (Phil: Westminster Press, 1961)

196. 100. Claus Westermann Genesis 12-36 trans. John J. Scullion (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1981)265. 101. Westermann Genesis 12-36266.

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presence and the angels of sanctification he sanctified Israel so that they might be with him and with his holy angels. 102 (Jub. 15:25-27) The angels are circumcised (as was Moses, according to Jewish tradition 103 ); if a person is going to dwell with the angels in eternal life, he must be circumcised, too. The circumcision of angels is, in a way, a logical deduction. If angels are male, a traditional Jewish mind would think, they cannot be uncircumcised. If they are eternal, they were not born, did not reach the age of eight days old, and so on, so they must have been created already circumcised. This means that circumcision predates creation itself; it is part of the natural fabric of the universe. As Segal points out, Jubilees relates three commandments, circumcision, the Sabbath and the holiday of Shavuot, to the concept of the covenant between God and the Jewish people. 104 Despite the incentive of immortality, Jubilees predicts that in the future, some Jews will not circumcise their sons. I will cite the passage again in this context: And now I shall announce to you that the sons of Israel will deny this ordinance and they will not circumcise their sons according to all of this law because some of the flesh of their circumcision they will leave in the circumcision of their sons. And all of the sons of Be liar will leave their sons without circumcising just as they were born. And great wrath from the LORD will be upon the sons of Israel because they have left the covenant and have turned aside from his words. And they have provoked and blasphemed inasmuch as they have not done the ordinance of this law because they have made themselves like the gentiles to be removed and uprooted from the land. And there is therefore for them no forgiveness or pardon so that they might be pardoned and forgiven from all of the sins of this eternal error. (Jub. 15:33-34)

I 02. All translations of Jubilees are from 0. S. Wintermute "Jubilees: A New Translation and Introduction" in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Vol. 2, ed. J. H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1985). 103. The case of Moses is more complicated; stating that he was born circumcised may not only be an effort to make him close to angelic but also a defensive position against the dark passage Ex. 4:24-26, where Moses seems to be attacked because he has not circumcised his son. I04. Michael Segal The Book of Jubilees: Rewritten Bible, Redaction, Ideology and Theology (Leiden: Brill, 2007) 240.

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The sinners commit an "eternal error;" their sin of omission will affect them forever, that is, in the afterlife. In this life, the wrath of God will descend on Israel because Jews have failed to practice circumcision. The author of Jubilees would have witnessed the events of the Antiochene persecution and understood them as the fulfillment of this prophecy. Even VanderKam who, as we have seen above, posits a range of dates for the authorship of Jubilees, states that this rcassage can "easily be read against the background of Antiochus's decrees." 05 In the next stage of history, the Maccabees, in the spirit of this passage, will literally fight those who do not practice proper circumcision. If Jubilees had been written decades after the 160's, during the era when Hasmonaean kings forced circumcision on neighboring peoples, there would have been no need to make this prediction of epispasm and uncircumcision. Jubilees emphasizes the rigid nature of the commandment; there is no flexibility on the completeness or the timing of circumcision: This law is for all the eternal generations and there is no circumcising of days and there is no passing a single day beyond eight days because it is an eternal ordinance ordained and written in the heavenly tablets. And anyone who is born whose own flesh is not circumcised on the eighth day is not from the sons of the covenant which the LORD made for Abraham since (he is) from the children of destruction. . . . And now I shall announce to you that the sons of Israel will deny this ordinance and they will not circumcise their sons according to all of this law because some of the flesh of their circumcision they will leave in the circumcision of their sons. And all of the sons of Beliar will leave their sons without circumcising just as they were born. The interesting points here concern the unusual phrase "circumcising of days" and the statement that "some of the flesh of their circumcision" will be left on the body. Segal's explanation is that Jubilees here attacks proto-Pharisaic customs about circumcision reflected in Rabbinic literature. The Talmudic tractate Shabbat says that if there are threads left after the procedure or if because of extenuating circumstances the circumcision is not done until after the eighth day, the circumcision is still valid. Segal infers these to be early Pharisaic norms against which Jubilees polemicizes. 106 While Jubilees argues against

I05 VanderKam Textual and Historical Studies 243. I 06. Se~al The Book of Jubilees 242. Yet Segal brings no evidence of such practices from the 2° century BCE, the period of 1 and 2 Maccabees and Jubilees; the rabbinic

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incomplete circumcision and circumcision after the eighth day, no Talmudic sage would disagree with these policies; in fact, Shabbat 19:6, as Segal cites, creates laws against incomplete circumcision: These are the shreds [of the foreskin, if there remain] which render the circumcision invalid: flesh which covers the greater part of the corona - and such a one does not eat heave offering. [If] one circumcised but did not tear the inner lining [the cut did not uncover the corona, since the membrane was not slit and pulled down], it is as if he did not perform the act of circumcision. 107 Segal attempts to make the case that Jubilees takes a strict halakhic position on circumcision, and from there would have us see Jubilees as a proto-Qumran, anti-proto-Pharisaic tract. 108 Yet the Talmud discusses unusual situations and by no means contradicts the spirit or the letter of the Biblical stand on circumcision or its strong re-affirmation in Jubilees. The question that is important here is why Jubilees would emphasize such unusual cases. My contention is that some Jews delayed circumcision during a time when the procedure had become controversial, or only did partial circumcision to hide the fact that it had been done, as a kind of personal compromise between tradition and a current trend. The author of Jubilees waxes polemical against anything but complete circumcision on the eighth day of life. Jubilees not only responds to a popular practice but also goes much further in (apparently) reinterpreting Gen. 17 to mean that uncircumcision is an error of devastating eternal consequences, and that circumcision is an act that leads to immortality of the highest kind. Scholarship has demonstrated that Jubilees bears a manifestly priestly view on many subjects. 109 Like the J source as posited by modem Biblical criticism material is from the Mishnah, c. 200 CE, and the Gemara, written and compiled centuries two to three centuries after that. 107. This translation is from Jacob Neusner The Mishnah: A New Translation (New Haven: Yale, 1988) 203. The baraitha in BT Shabbat 133b says that these extra threads should not be cut off on a Sabbath, not that they should not be cut off at all. 108. Scholars who argue that the author of Jubilees was a spiritual antecedent or proto-sectarian of the Qumran community include Otto Eissfeldt The Old Testament: An Introduction (New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1965) 606-8 and George W.E. Nickelsburg Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah (Phil.: Fortress, 1981) 73-80. I am not arguing against this position; I do not agree, however, that this passage is anti-proto-Pharisaic. 109. R.H. Charles The Book of Jubilees or the Little Genesis (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1902) 73; 0. S. Wintermute "Jubilees: A New Translation and

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which has the antediluvian patriarchs anachronistically (at least according to the other sources; cf. Ex. 3-4 and 6) using the sacred name of God, Jubilees assumes that if Adam (Jub. 3:27), Enoch (4:25), Noah (6:1-4), and Abraham (21:7-16) offered sacrifices, they must have been priests. 110 These patriarchs passed down the sacred books and legislation through Jacob and then to Levi, ancestor of the priests and Levites, in order to preserve and renew them (Jub. 45:16). The cult and its sacrifices are emphasized in many passages (e.g. Jub. 7:30-32, 21:5-8). Laws concerning the Sabbath form a frame on the entire work (Jub. 2: 1, 17-33 and 50:6-13). The author, like the priestly authors in the Pentateuch, is very concerned with the sacred calendar and all of its major holidays (Shavu'ot 6:1722; Sukkot 16:20-31; 32:4-7, 27-29; Pesach 18:18-19, 49:1-22a; Yom Kippur 34:18-19). All Israelites are priests 111 (cf. Ex. 19:5-6) in the sense that they must be pure and resist the sins of sexual immorality (cf. Jub. 33:20 and compare Lev. 21 :9 about the prohibition of immorality for a griest 's daughter and Jub. 20:4 where this is extended to all Judaean women). 1 2 The evidence that a priest or priests wrote Jubilees allows us to draw a line between the Priestly code of the Pentateuch and its punishment of karet and the Maccabaean priests who led the resistance to the profanation of the Temple and the ban on circumcision. One begins to wonder: Is Jubilees simply a later interpretation of the priestly text Gen. 17 or, as bizarre as this may sound, a literal and contextual reading of the Biblically-ordained punishment for failure to practice circumcision? Perhaps Jubilees does not merely present a sectarian point-of-view but a time-honored opinion concerning the impact of circumcision on one's eternal fate. Let us imagine this scenario: a contemporary reader of Jubilees, say, a Maccabee in the 160s BCE, wants to understand the import of Jubilees 15. Is it God alone Who will punish those do not circumcise their sons, Who should do the "uprooting?" Does the passage predict Divine extirpation, that is, the destruction of the sinners' descendants, or a Divine punishment in the afterlife for them? Or does Jubilees mandate human actions? Should the community of believers take Introduction" in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha ed. J.H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1985) 45; John Endres Biblical Interpretation in the Book of Jubilees CBQMS 18 (Washington D.C.: CBAA, 1987) 238-49; James. C. VanderKam "The Origins and Purposes of the Book of Jubilees" in Studies in the Book of Jubilees ed. M. Albani; J. Frey, and A. Lange TSAJ 65 (Thbingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1997) 19; idem "Book of Jubilees" in ABD III I 030-31; Michael Segal The Book ofJubilees I 0-11. 110. James L. Kugel "Levi's Election to the Priesthood in Second Temple Writings" HTR 86 (1993) 17-19. Ill. Daniel R. Schwartz "Kingdom of Priests: A Pharisaic Slogan?" in idem Studies in the Jewish Background of Christianity (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1992) 59-60. 112. Louis Finkelstein "The Book of Jubilees and the Rabbinic Halakha" HTR 16 (1923) 56-57.

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action against the antagonists of the Divine commandment? In order to answer these questions, we will need to understand the Biblical background of the punishment prescribed for uncircumcision.

The Biblical Punishment for Failing to Circumcise: Karet 113 Gen. 17:14, in its use of the Hebrew root krt ('cut off') as punishment for failure to circumcise, follows the consistent terminology of the Priestly document (P). Karet means "to sever," "to cut off." 114 The root of the word karet is used in the sense of cutting or creating a covenant (kritut brit). Therefore, the punishment for failing to cut a covenant in the flesh in circumcision is karet. The question here is what this means. Many commentators and scholars think that karet means exclusion from the community or excommunication or as death by human hands. 115 But at least in many cases karet means much more than simply being excluded from the community in this lifetime; one will be cut off from the people for eternity. By studying the offences for which karet is imposed, Milgrom makes the case that it is the Biblical penalty for certain religious (as opposed to civil) transgressions. Karel is imposed on religious offenses such as: if one works or does not fast on Yom Kippur (Lev. 23:29-30); if one misuses sacred substances (Lev. 7:18-21, 25, 27; 17:10, 14; 19:8); if one misuses sacred items for the sanctuary (Ex. 30:33, 38); if one participates in illicit worship (Lev. 17:4, 9; 20:2-5; Ezek. 14:5); if one fails to purifY oneself after contact with the dead (Num. 19:13-20); if one consults with the dead (Lev. 20:6), or if a Levite trespasses in the holy area of the Tabernacle (Num. 18:3). In Malachi 1:6-8, the priests offer defiled food on the altar. It will be God, and not human beings or community officials, who will punish them: "May God cut off to the man that does this, who calls and answers out of the tents of Jacob, and him that offers an offering unto the God of hosts.(Malachi 2: 12). 116 While it may be difficult for a modem reader to think that the community would execute anyone for such 113. Jacob Milgrom Leviticus 1-16 (New York: Doubleday, 1991) 457-60. 114. Shaye J.D. Cohen Why Aren ~ Jewish Women Circumcised: Gender and Covenant in Judaism (Berkeley: University of California, 2005) 11. 115. E.g. Gerhard von Rad Old Testament Theology 1 (New York: Harper and Row, 1962) 264 n. 182. These modem scholars are preceded by ancient commentators such as Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews 3.12:1) who remarks: "To those who were guilty of such insolent behavior, he [Moses] ordered death for his punishment," implying that karet is identical with other death penalties in the Pentateuch. 116. Other Biblical references are Num. 4:18; Josh. 9:23; 1 Sam. 2:33, 24:22; 2 Sam. 3:29; 1 Kings 2:4, 8:25, 9:5, 14:10, 14; 21:21; 2 Kings 9:8; Isaiah 14:22, 48:19; Jer. 9:20, 33:17-18, 35:19; 44:7; Ps. 109:13-15; Ruth4:10; 2 Chr. 6:16; 7:18; 22:7.

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infractions, we must not assume that ancient sensibilities would preclude such a punishment. We will pause briefly to establish whether this assumption is correct by examining a few cases where karet seems to be exacted by humans and Milgrom's assumption that karet is an exclusively divine punishment seems to be incorrect. If one works on the Sabbath, "he who profanes it shall be put to death; whoever does work on it, that person shall be cut off among his kin" (Ex. 31:14). Noth thinks that Ex. 31: 14 is clumsy and repetitious, telling us twice that the person will be put to death. 117 Levine says that the twofold proscription in Ex. 31: 14 means that anyone that is not killed by the community will be dealt with by God. 118 But Ex. 31:14 says that the Sabbath-transgressor "shall surely die," that the community must execute him, and in addition to his execution will be "cut off from his kin." This position, of human execution for transgression of the Sabbath in this Priestly text, would seem to have a parallel in another text from this tradition, Num. 15:32-36, where we read of the stoning to death by the whole congregation of a man picking up sticks on the Sabbath. Sarna states: "Certainly the general idea is that one who deliberately excludes himself from the religious community of Israel cannot be a beneficiary of the covenantal blessings and thereby dooms himself and his line to extinction." 119 This careful formulation does not address our question here as to whether karet means an eternal punishment in the afterlife. There is another possibility for the apparent repetitiousness of Ex. 31 :4, that the second clause has a different meaning from the first and indicates that a person will be cut off from his kin after death for eternity. If so, a verse that would seem to mean that karet is a human punishment does indeed indicate a divine penalty that occurs in the afterlife where one is excluded from one's community forever. A second case is that karet is imposed if one eats leaven during the Feast of Unleavened Bread: " ... for whoever eats leavened bread ... that person shall be cut off from Israel. ... For whoever eats what is leavened, that person shall be cut off from the community of Israel, whether he is a stranger or a citizen of the country" (Ex. 12:15, 19). This case seems to state that one is cut off from the human community. Hyatt says that this means excommunication "accompanied by the expressed or implied threat of divine punishment. " 120 That is, it is possible that one can commit certain transgressions that are gunishable by execution and that in addition one will receive divine punishment. 21 117. Martin Noth Exodus (Phil.: Westminster, 1962) 241. 118. Baruch A. Levine Leviticus (Phil.: JPS, 1989) Excursus 1, 242. 119. Nahum Sarna Exodus (Phil.: JPS, 1991) 60. 120. J.P. Hyatt Exodus (London: Eerdmans, 1971) 135. 121. Other examples do at least imply a Divine punishment. "If one neglects the

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Thus Milgrom is correct and karet does mean that God is involved in the punishment of the transgressor. If we are speaking of karet as God's punishment, what are the possibilities? A rabbinic view in the Talmud is that God will cause the sinner to suffer a premature death; BT Mo 'ed Qatan 28a states that karet means that one will pass away before sixty years of age. 122 The medieval philosopher Maimonides identifies karet as total annihilation of the soul in the Hereafter for the worst sinners. 123 A more prevalent view is that while the human community can only punish the sinner and not his family, God can indeed bring collective punishment on his family. Karet is not necessarily imposed on the sinner; it can be brought on his descendants through the process of "extirpation" in which the offender's line is terminated. 124 As Levenson puts it, continuation through one's descendants is an "essential mode of divine favor." 125 The term karet can mean not just "cut off" in life but cut off in death through the total elimination of a family, leaving the deceased without the descendants who can observe practices in this world necessary for one's well being in the next world. 126 For example, Lev. 20 discusses the punishment for child-sacrifice to Moloch (Lev. 20:2-5). The community is to stone the perpetrator. For His part, God "will cut him off from among his people." After the man is stoned to death, what does it mean for God, not the community but God, to cut off a man and his family? How can the executed still be subject to karet? Perhaps it means that whether or not the community kills him, God will cut off both him and his kin. Karet can mean both "no descendants in this world and no life in the next." 127

Passover sacrifice "that person shall be cut off from his kin . . . that man shall bear his guilt" (Num. 9: 13). This seems to mean that the man will bear his guilt during his lifetime and be punished by God at a later point. "And if any person turns to ghosts and familiar spirits and goes astray after them, I will set My face against that person and cut him off from among his people" (Lev. 20:6). "Indeed, any person who does not practice self-denial throughout that day shall be cut off from his kin; and whoever does any work throughout that day, I will cause that person to perish from among his people" (Lev. 23:29). 122. In the Mishnah (Keritot I :1), karet is the penalty for a list of thirty-six offences. 123. Maimonides Mishneh Torah Hilchot Teshuvah 8:5. 124. Milgrom Leviticus 1-16 459; cf. Ibn Ezra on Gen. 17:14; Tosafot on BT Shabbat 25a. Karel is imposed if one engages in illicit sexual behavior with relatives (Lev. 18:2729). Perhaps the transgressor affects the future of his family by having sex with a family member. 125. Jon D. Levenson Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory ofthe God ofLife (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006) 73. 126. If Boaz does not marry Ruth, her late husband's line will be "cut oft" forever (Ruth4:10). 127. So Abravanel; cf. Milgrom Leviticus 460.

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In the hereafter, God punishes the transgressor with the fate of being excluded from dwelling with his ancestors and his people for eternity. If, as we shall see, a positive fate is to sleep with one's ancestors, a negative fate is to spend eternity outside the circle of one's people. The concept of karet therefore reflects great concern in Biblical times about one's place in the afterlife. We can now consider the idea of karet from the point of view of a Jewish person living in Judaea in the 160s BCE 128 Some of the offenses listed above such as those committed in or related to the sanctuary to the Tabernacle/Temple, have nothing to do with the average person, especially not a woman. If one believes in an omniscient God, one might be concerned that He would know if one commits a sin such as eating on Yom Kippur or working on the Sabbath but one would be convinced that He would know if one were not circumcised; a male wears the evidence, one way or the other, on his body. Uncircumcision is, ironically, the only obvious sin on the list. Circumcision was an issue of great concern to the Jews of Judaea in the 160s BCE For those who believed in the importance of circumcision, one either made a covenant with God and the Jewish people in life and eternity through the "cutting" of circumcision or one was "cut off' from his people in life and eternity. As I shall discuss below, the priest Mattathias may have been motivated not only by the Divine but also perhaps the human aspect of karet. Certainly !Maccabees a pro-Hasmonaean tract, can be read in this light. At present, it is my contention that for some Judaeans in that era, the threat of karet for failure to circumcise, found in Gen. 17 and adumbrated in Jubilees, trumped the threat of execution for circumcising one's son.

128. Interestingly, the Dead Sea Sect seems to have viewed /caret as exclusion from the community (JQS 8:22-24). This is not necessarily a contradiction with the position we have seen above in Jubilees, a text that the Qumran community held dear. Karel, as we have seen, can mean exclusion from the human as well as from the eternal community of the afterlife. If Jubilees is from the hand of a Dead Sea sect author, as Segal (Segal The Book of Jubilees 244) would have it, why do we find this discrepancy? I thus disagree with Segal and agree again with the consensus of scholarship led by VanderKam (James C. VanderKam The Book of Jubilees (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001) 21) and Wintermute (0. S. Wintermute "Jubilees: A New Translation and Introduction" in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha ed. J.H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1985) 44) who see Jubilees as being written before the sectarian split.

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Positive Eternity: To Be Gathered to One's Kin 129 If karet can mean "to be cut off from one's kin in eternity," then its antonym is the phrase ne 'esap 'e/ "to be gathered to one's kin" (e.g. Gen. 15:15, 25:8 (Abraham), 25:17 (Ishmael), 35:29 {Isaac), 49:33 (Jacob); Num. 20:24 (Aaron), 27:13 (Aaron and Moses), 31:2 (Moses); Judg. 2:10 (the generation ofJoshua)). Alfrink states that the formula occurs ten times, all of them in the Priestly source of the Pentateuch. While the expression probably began as a reflex of the fact that individuals were buried with their ancestors, it can be shown that ne'esafo 'e/ evolved into the meaning "to be gathered to one's kin (in eternity)." 1 0 Abraham is buried in the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron, far from his father Terah who lay buried in Haran (modern Syria) and his earlier ancestors in Mesopotamia: "And Abraham breathed his last, dying at a good ripe age, old and contented, and was gathered to his kin. His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave ofMachpelah ... "(Gen. 25:8-9). One can say that these verses are anachronistic in presenting a formula that will only make sense later in time; Abraham is not gathered to his kin because no one except Sarah is buried there, but his descendants eventually will be buried there. It is also possible, however, that Abraham was, theologically speaking, gathered to his dead ancestors among whom he would reside in Sheol. 131 What does "gathered to one's kin" mean, if not something that happens after death, a reunion with one's ancestors? As Alfrink states, "It (the term "gathered") designates something which succeeds death and precedes sepulture, the kind of thing which may hardly be considered as other than reunion with the ancestors in Sheol." 132 If one looks again at the sequence in Gen. 25:8-9 with this explanation in mind, the verses are given new meaning: " ... breathed his last ... was gathered to his kin ... buried .... " The sequence is death-gathered-buried. Notice the same sequence for Isaac: "Isaac was a hundred and eighty years old when he breathed his last and died. He was gathered to his kin in ripe old age; and he was buried by his sons Esau and Jacob" (Gen. 35:28-29). Jacob dies and is "gathered to his people" in Gen. 49:33, well before Joseph takes his body back to Canaan in Gen. 50: 13. So to be 'gathered to kin' cannot simply mean being buried in the family sepulcher.

129. B. Alft·ink "L'expression ne'esap 'el- "ammayw" OTS 5 (1948) 118-31 (as cited in Milgrom Leviticus 460). 130. Nicholas S. Tromp Primitive Conception of Death and the Netherworld in the Old Testament BO 21 (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1969) 168-69. 131. Although not well defined in the Bible, Sheol was some kind of subterranean underworld where the souls of the dead journeyed after the body died; cf. Gen. 42:38; Is. 14:11; Ps.l41:7; Pr. 7:27; Job 10:21,22, 17:16; Dan. 12:2; etc. 132. B. Alfrink "L'expression ne'esap'el- 'ammayw" 128 (as cited in Milgrom Leviticus 460).

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Aaron is buried all alone on Mt. Hor (Num. 20:24) and Moses is buried in an unknown spot on Mt. Nebo (Deut. 34: l-6; cf. Num. 31 :2). God says to Moses, "You shall die on the mountain that you are about to ascend, and shall be gathered to your kin, as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his kin ... " (Deut. 32:50; cf. Num. 27: 13). Each is buried alone, not in a family sepulcher; how can 'gathered to his kin' mean that they are together with their family in some physical way? As we have seen, karet means that one will be cut off and will not be gathered to one's kin in this way. Karet is imposed on those who are uncircumcised.

Negative Eternity: Ezekiel on Pharaoh in the Netherworld A perfect illustration of God's severe judgment against uncircumcision is Ezek. 32:17-32, the text that Moshe Greenberg calls "Pharaoh in the Netherworld." 133 In this remarkable poetic passage that reminds the student of the Bible of Isaiah 14:9-11 and the general reader of Dante's Inferno, we find the culmination of oracles against the nations. Three sections with the refrain "lie down with/amidst the uncircumcised, with/among those slain by the sword" constitute a "panorama of Sheol's inhabitants." 134 The prophet condemns Egypt's horde to the underworld with the cry, "Descend and be laid to rest with the uncircumcised." Pharaoh will be greeted in Sheol by mighty heroes of nations such as Assyria, Elam and Meshech-Tubal who had spread dread of themselves in the land of the living and are now subject to eternal humiliation. Pharaoh will join the uncircumcised rulers of Edom and the Phoenicians in the lower circle of Hell. 135 Pharaoh will be like Assyria, Elam and Meshech-Tubal: They do not lie with the mighty, those fallen of the uncircumcised, who descended into Sheol with their weapons, and had their swords set under their heads; whose iniquities were on their bones, for dread of the mighty was in the land of the living. But you amidst the uncircumcised shall be broken and shall lie, with those slain by the sword .... And he shall be laid down amidst the uncircumcised, With those slain by the sword, pharaoh and all his horde ... (Ez. 32:27-32 136) 133. Moshe Greenberg Ezekiel 2/-3 7 (New York: Doubleday, 1997) 659. 134. Greenberg Ezekie/668. 135. Ezek. 28:10; 31:18, 28; 44:7,9. 136. Greenberg Ezekie/660.

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Lods suggests that Israelite funerary customs excluded those who were uncircumcised from religious rites and ancestral graves and that Israelites believed that they would be sent to lowest level of the underworld. 137 Propp 138 and Greenberg 139 state that while there is no evidence for these burial customs, there was a belief in some sort of separation in the netherworld between those who are circumcised and those who are not. Greenberg, referring to Ez. 26:20 and 32:19,23, concludes that "there do appear to be levels in the netherworld" 140 and that "some sort of separation, in the grave and the netherworld, between those who died circumcised and those who died not so seems implicit in Ezekiel's evidently degrading placement amidst the latter." 141 Levenson says that the soldiers in Ezek. 32:17-32 are "isolated and abandoned," "far from parents, wives and children." They are not gathered to their ancestors. 14 This is true as far as it goes, but it does not emphasize our point about the horrible degradation of lying with those who are uncircumcised in Sheol. There is no question that this is a terrible humiliation. The Egyptians practiced circumcision: the examination of Egyptian mummies indicates that in earlier periods, royalty, nobility and priests, and in later periods, most Egyptian males were circumcised. "Foreigners who were not circumcised were looked down upon by the Egyptians and were regarded as unclean. " 143 The Egyptians felt disdain, Ezekiel implies, for those who were not circumcised; to be placed with the latter group will degrade Pharaoh. Ezekiel clearly draws on Is. 14 to portray Sheol as containing levels, one or more for the good, the lower level(s) for the evil and uncircumcised. In Is. 14, all of the chieftains and kings of the world, some of whom, presumably, were good in their lifetimes, rise from their thrones to greet the evil king of Babylon when he descends to Sheol. The king had thought he was a god who would ascend at his death to Zaphon, the abode of the gods (a spatial antipode to Sheol, contra Levenson? See below). Instead, he is not buried after death and descends

137. A. Lods "La 'mort de incirconcis'" CRAIBL 27 (1943) 271-83. 138. W. H. Propp "The Origins of Infant Circumcision in Israel" Hebrew Annual Review II (1987) 363-65. 139. Greenberg Ezekie/21-37 662. 140. Greenberg Ezekie/539. 141. Greenberg Ezekie/662. 142. Levenson Resurrection and the Restoration of/srae/74. 143. Joyce M. Filer "Hygiene" in Oxford Encyclopedia ofAncient Egypt ed. Donald Redford (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) 135; H. Bonnet Reallexikon der A'gyptischen Religiongeschichte (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971) 110; Jack Sasson "Circumcision in the Ancient Near East" JBL 85 (1966) 473-76.

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to the very bottom of the Pit (Is. 14:19), lower than the other kings to whom he thought he was superior. Johnston resists the idea that there are different levels in the Biblical Sheol. 144 Martin-Achard is closer when he looks at texts such as Is. 14:9ff. and Ezek. 32:21 and finds disparate views of the underworld, 145 some of which indicate levels, some which do not. It would make perfect sense that one can find different views of the underworld. The Bible is, of course, an anthology and beliefs about the afterlife were vague and non-dogmatic. Systematic statements cannot and should not be made. My question at this point is not how the whole Biblical corpus describes Sheol, a subject worthy of full-length studies, but what Ezekiel's vision of Sheol reflects about the implications of circumcision or uncircumcision for one's place in the afterlife. What Cohen calls the development of circumcision from "protection to salvation" includes Ezekiel's vision of Sheol "thus suggesting an association between foreskin and a spectral hereafter. " 146 Cohen seems to assume that one will have a better fate than being a specter in Sheol if one is circumcised, and if this is true, it serves my larger point quite well. Still, I would modify the latter part of his statement because Ezekiel seems to think that everyone will go to Sheol (as does, for example, the author of Job 3:13-19); the question is where in Sheol and with whom. In Levenson's recent treatment, a place in Sheol is the punishment of or for an unfulfilled life, and there is no spatial "antipode", no Heaven as opposed to Hell. Levenson criticizes the scholars who anachronistically superimpose their later Jewish and Christian beliefs onto the Biblical corpus. 147 He argues, instead, that the antipode of Sheol is a fulfilled life, exemplified by the contentment with which Job dies (Job 42: 17). 148 Levenson does not accept the idea that the Biblical sense of God's justice would allow the good to spend eternity with the condemned tyrants ofls. 14 and Ezek. 32. How could Abraham, Isaac and Jacob go to the same place as the evil Egyptian and Babylonian oppressors of the 144. Even though later texts such as I Enoch 22 have four different compartments (four does seem to be that work's own unique formulation); cf PhilipS. Johnston Shades of Sheo/: Death and Afterlife in the Old Testament (Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity, 2002) 77. 145. R. Martin-Achard From Death to Life (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1960) 39. 146. Shaye J.D. Cohen Why Aren~ Jewish Women Circumcised: Gender and Covenant in Judaism (Berkeley: University of California, 2005), 53 and see 17. 147. Levenson Resurrection 77. 148. Levenson Resurrection 81.

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Israelites? 149 Levenson is correct to assert that over the centuries, there was a theological reaching for different fates for different kinds of people; justice dictates that the evil should suffer a worse fate than the good. My emphasis here is that the circumcised are gathered to their ancestors either in a better place within Sheol, as I would insist is found in Ezekiel 32, in fulfilled rest, as in Levenson's understanding of passages such as Job 42, or in Heaven, as later doctrine developed, while the uncircumcised face a degrading eternity in Sheol. We cannot be sure where we are in this evolution during the time of the Maccabees. !Maccabees seems to be closer to the older version of Sheol, while 2Maccabees seems to have the evolving sense of Heaven. 2Maccabees believed in immortality and resurrection but I Maccabees and thus Mattathias did not hold these beliefs. I do not think Ezekiel believed in Heaven as such either. While Levenson and others have made us doubt that everyone believed in Sheol for everyone, no one wanted to occupy the bottom rung of the underworld for time without end. I would differentiate between eternal rewards in eternal bliss, as predicted for the righteous by 2Maccabees, and a shadowy existence in Sheol, as predicted for both the good and the evil by most Biblical literature and !Maccabees (and the Sadducees). Still, in the latter formulation, there were degrees, levels of existence. And it was the horror of the worst fate, to lie as or with the uncircumcised that might have motivated the Jewish mothers to endanger their children in order to save them.

Circumcision and Immortality in Rabbinic Literature Our argument is that the mothers who circumcised their sons at risk of death and Mattathias in his forced circumcision of Jewish infants may have held the belief that circumcision or uncircumcision would affect one's eternal reward or punishment. While one runs the risk of anachronism in exploring rabbinic literature for the meaning of circumcision in the Maccabaean period, we do find several interesting passages there that are suggestive for our purposes. If we can find that there was a popular concept held by many Jews in rabbinic times that circumcision would bring them to Heaven, this evidence may point back to this belief in the earlier period. According to one such rabbinic passage, Abraham, who received the commandment of circumcision from God and performed the rite on himself and his two sons, will save all circumcised Jews from damnation:

149. Levenson Resurrection 71-72.

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R. Levi said: In the hereafter Abraham will sit at the entrance of Gehinnom [Hell] and will not allow any circumcised Israelite to descend into it. Genesis Rabba 48:8 150 Abraham, the primary circumciser, now becomes the protector in the afterlife for all Jews who are circumcised. "To be in Abraham's bosom," a phrase used in sources such as BT Kiddushin 72b and 4Maccabees 12.17 and then in Christian scriptures lSI, is shorthand, as Ginzberg points out, for saying that the pious are gathered to their fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; 152 this "gathering" follows the Biblical concept we have seen at length above, thus indicating the continuity of this idea. Indeed, we see this concept in one of the blessings found in the circumcision ceremony itself 53 as presented in the Talmud and which is still recited in this ceremony to this day: Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, Who hast sanctified the beloved one from the womb. 154 He set a statute in his flesh, and his offspring he sealed with the sign of the holy Covenant. Therefore as a reward for this, 0 living God Who art our portion, give 150. See the list of parallels in Louis Ginzberg The Legends of the Jews V (Phil.: JPS, 1968) 267, n. 318; cf. Cohen WhyAren ~Women Circumcised 17 and 230 n. 35. 151. The expression "the Bosom of Abraham" is found in Luke in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (16:22-23). The imagery of the passage is drawn from the popular representations of the netherworld of the dead that were current in rabbinic times. As we have seen, the souls of the dead were gathered into a general place, Sheol, but a local discrimination existed among them according to their deeds during their mortal life; the souls of the righteous occupied a compartment of their own which was distinctly separated by a walJ or a chasm from the compartment to which the souls of the wicked were consigned. The latter was Gehenna, a place of torments (cf. Matthew 5:29, 30; 18:9); the former was a place of bliss and security known under the names of "Paradise" (cf. Luke 23:43) and "the Bosom of Abraham" (Luke 16:22-23). And it is in harmony with these Jewish conceptions that Jesus pictures the terrible fate ofthe selfish Rich Man, and on the contrary, the glorious reward of the patient Lazarus. In the next life the rich man finds himself in Gehenna, condemned to the most excruciating torments, whereas Lazarus is carried by the angels into "the Bosom of Abraham", where the righteous dead shared in the repose and felicity of Abraham "the father of the faithful." 152. Ginzberg The Legends of the Jews V 268, n. 318. 153. For circumcision in Jewish tradition, see Ivan G. Marcus The Jewish Life Cycle: Rites of Passage from Biblical to Modern Times (Seattle: University ofWashington Press, 2004) 42fT. 154. I assume folJowing Rashi that the reference here seems to be to Isaac, whom Abraham was commanded to circumcise in Gen. 17 before he was even conceived.

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command to save the beloved of our flesh from the pit, for the sake of Thy Covenant which Thou hast set in our flesh. Blessed are Thou, 0 Lord, Who makest the covenant. (BT Shabbat 137b) 155 The English word "pit" here is translated from the Hebrew shachat, which, as Cohen points out, is a commonly used word in rabbinic literature for Hell or Gehenna. 156 In Biblical texts, shachat means "pit" as in the underworld; cf. Ps. 16:10, 49:10; Job 16:10, 17:14, 33:18, 22, 55:24. It is interesting that Ps. 55:24 has been translated as the "lowest pit," which would be intriguing for the idea of levels of the netherworld, or the "pit of dissolution" as in a well of liquid where one melts into nothingness. Shachat also means pit" and "corruption" in texts from Qumran. 157 The popular conception that circumcision brings eternal reward embodied in this blessing is, however, opposed by other rabbinic texts. 158 Some caution that circumcision should not be seen as so salvific that it would avert damnation if one is evil: To stop the heretics and the wicked ones of Israel saying [i.e. who say]: "we will not descend to Gehinnom because we are circumcised," what doth the Holy One, blessed be He, do? He sends an angel who stretches their foreskin and then they descend to Gehinnom .... When the Gehinnom sees their hanging foreskins, she opens her mouth and devours them. Ex. Rabbah 19:4 159 This text is an attempt to deal with a moral problem: what if these circumcised Israelites are evil and deserving of punishment? The passage continues: 155 .The Babylonian Talmud Mo'ed Shabbath Vol. I (London: Soncino, 1938) 692; cf. Tosefta Berachot 6.13. 156. Cohen Why Aren ~Jewish Women Circumcised? 17 and esp. 230 n. 34. 157. See the discussion in Tromp Primitive Conceptions ofDeath 69-71. 158. In Yerusha1mi Megillah 1:12:72b (= Y. Megillah 3:2 74a), Antoninus asks Rabbi Judah the Patriarch if he will be able to eat of Leviathan in the world to come, and Rabbi says that he will. Antoninus says that it does not make sense that he will be able to eat of Leviathan when he cannot eat of the paschal lamb on Passover. Rabbi replies that there is a specific commandment that the uncircumcised cannot eat of the paschal lamb. What is striking for me is that Antoninus can eat of Leviathan in the world to come despite his uncircumcision. I wonder if this is not a response to those who say that circumcision is a requirement for a good afterlife. 159. Midrash Rabbah: Exodus trans. S.M. Lehrman (London: Soncino, 1961) 23435. cf. Tanhuma on Gen. 17, Lekh Lekha 20; Cohen Why Aren ~ Women Circumcised 17 and 230 n. 36.

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As for those who sinned unduly, what does he do to them? He removes the foreskin from children who died before circumcision, places it upon them and sends them down to Gehinnom. To justify expelling the sinner from the group in Heaven, he must first be transformed into the other, and before consigning the sinful Jewish person to Hell he must be restored to his uncircumcised state. 160 So either God's angel (in the Ex. Rabbah passage) or Abraham (in the Gen. Rabbah text) has to uncircumcise a Jewish sinner so that he can receive his just punishment. 161 We have seen Propp's theory that circumcision was moved to infancy in order to save a baby's soul in case of death. But a problem for those who believe in salvation through circumcision is that, in waiting until the eighth day or even later because he was sick or infirm, the baby may die without being circumcised. Should the baby now be circumcised in order to get to Heaven? The text cited here from Ex. Rabbah subtly answers this question by stating that God Himself removes the foreskin from these infants. The implication is that if God does this, humans need not practice the rite on the babies that died before it was performed on them. 162 Early Christian texts also demonstrate that many in the rabbinic period believed that circumcision was necessary for eternal salvation. In the first stage of Christian history, the nascent religion was neutral about circumcision:

160. To be uncircumcised is to be compared to a dog. In Ruth Rabba, Orpah, who does not go to Bethlehem with Naomi and Ruth, goes back to Moab and is raped by a hundred "foreskins" and one dog; cf Freedman and Simon Midrash Rabbah Ruth 38-39. 161. I do not take BT Sanhedrin 11 Ob as evidence that circumcision was seen as a key to immortality. The question in this text is how old babies have to be to be eligible to enter the world to come. Various possibilities are presented, one of which is that it is from birth; another is from conception, another circumcision, another from when one is old enough to say "amen." The proof-text for circumcision is Ps. 88:16: "I am affiicted and ready to die from my youth up; while I suffer thy terrors I am distracted." The verse is taken to mean that the baby is ready to die like the wicked and not attain the future world but that when the baby is circumcised (suffering God's terrors) he is whirled around into life in the world to come. This is homiletical exegesis; the verse has nothing to do with circumcision, and the idea that circumcision is required for the world to come in a sense is negated by the other possibilities that one can reach Heaven if one dies before being circumcised, at conception or birth, or that circumcision is not enough and one needs to be old enough to affirm God oneself(Epstein Sanhedrin 761). 162. As Cohen develops at length (Why Aren ~Jewish Women Circumcised? 40-43), later Jewish texts develop the idea that circumcision is such a prerequisite to Heaven that they mandate circumcision of infant corpses (e.g. Shu/chan Arukh Yoreh Deah 353.6).

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Was a man already circumcised when he was called? He should not become uncircumcised. Was a man uncircumcised when he was called? He should not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God's commands is what counts. (Acts 15:20; RSV) 163 Paul's response is that circumcision is not necessary: I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. (Galatians 5:2-4; NIV) But the need for Paul's response shows how prevalent the belief was in rabbinic times. As Hoffman states about the Jewish/Christian debate over circumcision, "the issue did not go away." 164 The debate is about eternal salvation, not simply about whether to circumcise or not. In Christianity, baptism replaces circumcision in its power to save one's soul in the afterlife. We cannot follow circumcision into the sustained Jewish-Christian debate nor its rich history as salvific in Pirqei de Rabbi Eliezer and the Zohar. One passage from Pirqei de Rabbi Eliezer, however, is irresistible here. We learn that Abraham's slaves were circumcised: Because of purity, so that they should not defile their masters with their food and with their drink, for whosoever eateth with an uncircumcised person is as though he were eating flesh of abomination. All who bathe with the uncircumcised are as though they bathed with carrion, and all who touch an uncircumcised person are as though they touched the dead, for in their lifetime they are like 163. First Corinthians 7 makes it clear that if an uncircumcised man becomes a Christian, he is not to have himself circumcised, at least not for religious reasons (First Corinthians 7:18). To do so would be a testimony that the person believes that circumcision is a requirement of Christianity. Salvation is by grace, not by works (Ephesians 2:8-9). Circumcision means nothing to God since Jesus's death (see Acts 6:15; 1 Corinthians 7:19). 164. Lawrence A. Hoffman Covenant of Blood: Circumcision and Gender in Rabbinic Judaism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996) 115. See the extensive treatment ofthe debate in Cohen Why Arent Jewish Women Circumcised? 67-82.

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(the) dead; and in their death they are like the carrion of the beast, and their prayer does not come before the Holy One, blessed be He, as it is said, "The dead praise not the LORD" (Psalms 115:17). But Israel who are circumcised, their prayer comes before the Holy One, blessed be He, like a sweet savor. It is interesting to note that the verse (Ps. 115: 17) that originally meant that no dead persons could praise God is now taken to mean that the circumcised dead can praise God but the uncircumcised dead cannot. This admittedly later text seems very much in keeping with the spirit of Ezekiel 32. Each social group distinguishes between persons who are members of the group and those who are outsiders. In the Maccabaean period, conservative Jews based their distinction on circumcision, symbolizing their covenant with God. The ritual assured them that, among other things, when they died, they would continue to be members of the Chosen People. We can now turn to Mattathias and his remarkable action of forced circumcision, with the hypothesis that he believed in all of the above, and that his actions, in a very real sense, won the day for the importance of circumcision in a time when it was one of the most controversial issues of his day. We have followed the belief in the eternal power of circumcision from the priestly text Gen. 17, to the priestly texts about the punishment of karet tor uncircumcision, to the priest/prophet Ezekiel who condemned the uncircumcised to the lower reaches of Sheol and then to the priestly text Jubilees that polemicized against uncircumcision in the Maccabaean period and the priest Mattathias who led a revolution against those who opposed and forbade the rite. Antiochus IV and assimilationist Jews lost this battle to a man who believed, like the martyred mothers, that this ancient rite was necessary not only for nationalistic and religious identity but also for eternal salvation.

Forced Circumcision Mattathias saw the persecution of Antiochus IV as a direct threat to the future of the religion of Judaism and the Jewish people's ancestral covenant with God. In this "time of calamity and of fierce anger (IMacc. 2:49), how could he stop the assimilation of the people into the Hellenistic world and the dilution of Judaism into just another syncretistic faith? Even if Antiochus IV's persecution was a political reaction to Jason's revolt, and even if Menelaus the Hellenized high priest helped tum the persecution into one that was more religious in nature than it might have been, the persecution did indeed threaten the future of the Jewish people as a distinct unity. As we study Mattathias 's actions, we find that while there is a precedent to the destruction of pagan altars in the centralization

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program of Josiah in the 61h century BCE (II Kings 22-23, II Chronicles 34-35), and there are precedents to defending oneself on the Sabbath, as we will see at length, there was no precedent for forced circumcision. Mattathias 's action in this regard constitutes a first in Israelite and Jewish history; we do not know of forced circumcision of anyone, Jewish or Gentile, before this period. There seems to be nothing in the Bible or ancient Israelite history to suggest that the forced conversion of Gentiles pre-dates the Maccabaean period. How is it possible, then, to account for the sudden rise of this practice? The answer can be found in the thoughts and actions of Mattathias himself. During the early stage of the revolt that followed the persecution, Mattathias and his men "forcibly circumcised all the uncircumcised boys that they found within the borders of Israel" (1 Mace. 2:46). The statement seems to mean that Mattathias, in a sense, perpetrated a persecution in reverse; just as Jews were killed for practicing circumcision, now a violent act is done on the bodies of male children whose families had chosen not to follow the practice or who were afraid to rebel against the prohibition. And yet this would make Mattathias into as much a tyrant as his enemies. Weitzman responds that forced circumcision is Mattathias 's violent response to the violent acts of Antiochus IV in burning and mutilating Jews who resisted him (2Macc. 7; 8:12-13): "What is significant here is that the verse 165 represents circumcision "with force" not as a tyrannical mutilation, but as heroic resistance to a tyrant's efforts to prohibit circumcision." 166 In this view, even God gets into the act of violent bodily retribution when He punishes Antiochus with "sharp internal tortures" and scourges "like a brand" precisely because "he had tortured the bowels of others with many and strange afflictions" (2Macc. 9:5-11). The problem with this theory, which might undermine the historicity of Mattathias 's actions by claiming them to be part of a literary topos, is that Mattathias does not punish the persecutors but those who were afraid to risk the wrath of those enemies. That is, to state the obvious, no one forcibly circumcises Antioch us's soldiers; the acts are perpetrated on all those who submitted to the persecution. As we have seen above, many Jews had moved away from circumcision years before the persecution of Antiochus IV. There had been no violent reaction by more conservative circles then, presumably because the conservative Jews could still perform circumcisions on their own sons. But once circumcision, certainly not one of Antiochus IV's usual concerns, became an issue in the persecution because it was identified as a symbol of Jewish identification, and once women and their babies were executed for performing it, the ancient rite became the 165. !Mace. 2:46. 166. Steven Weitzman "Forced Circumcision and the Shifting Role of Gentiles in Hasmonaean Ideology" HTR Vol. 92, No. l (Jan., 1999) 37-59.

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symbol of Jewishness. By forcibly circumcising babies, Mattathias was attempting to regain Judaea for Jews and to define what a Jew was. The statement was: 'A male Jew is circumcised.' There was no longer any patience with or understanding for those who disagreed. But more, forced circumcision may be seen not only as an act of identification or retribution but also as an act of almost primal power and mastery that can be seen in anthropological terms, as I will attempt to demonstrate. It is my contention that: l. Mattathias invented the idea of forced circumcision in order to restore a practice first abandoned by many Hellenized Jews (l Mace 1:15) and then legally prohibited by the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV ( 1Mace 1:48, 60-61 ); 2. This action was historical and not a legendary reflection of later events; 3. Instead, Mattathias's descendants, the Hasmonaean kings, used their forerunner's actions as a foundation for their expansionist program; 4. Circumcision for Mattathias may have been a path to immortality as it was for the martyrs we have studied but it was first and foremost the symbol of the covenant, a covenant that must be obeyed at any price; 5. As such, the doctrine of zealous violence fits with the other actions taken by Mattathias, including the killing of the Jewish man at Modein, violent revolution, the destruction of illicit altars, and allowing warfare on the Sabbath; 6. Defense of the Torah is one thing, but as Mattathias and his men succeeded in their revolution, they went far beyond defense; 7. There is a difference between necessary violence, such as defensive warfare on the Sabbath, and zealous violence, such as not waiting for Jews to come back to performing circumcisions on their own and circumcising those babies themselves; 8. The doctrine of karet, which we have studied as Divine punishment for violation of the covenant, also had its human dimension, and Mattathias in effect channeled his zeal into the destruction of those among the Judaeans who were not willing participants in the covenant; 9. As a priest, Mattathias understood the significance of circumcision as a rite of descent and peoplehood and not only saved it from extinction but made it more important than ever before. !Mace. 2:46 in context: As they gained strength, they smote sinners in their anger and lawless men in their wrath, so that the survivors fled to the gentiles for their lives. Mattathias and his friends went around destroying the illicit altars and forcibly circumcising all the uncircumcised babies they found within the boundaries of Israel. They drive out the men of arrogance, and their enterprise prospered. They saved the Torah from

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the hand of the gentiles and from the hand of the kings and prevented the triumph of the wicked. (I Mace. 2:44-48) In this passage, Mattathias 's enemies are both the foreign gentiles and those Jews who had followed the Hellenization to the extreme. The only internal enemies that !Mace. has told us about before this point, with the exception of the Jewish man at Modern who wanted to make a pagan sacrifice, were those who had ''joined themselves to the gentiles" by building a gymnasium and reversing their circumcisions (1 Mace. 1: 11-15), that is, some of the very people we have been referring to in this study of circumcision among Jews in this period. If uncircumcision was the symbol for those Gentile-joining Jews, it was also the issue for Mattathias, who now took matters into his own hands. In this context, forcibly circumcising babies, rather than killing them and their families, looks almost moderate. The pro-Hasmonaean author of !Maccabees certainly approves of Mattathias's actions. To say that the author of !Mace. disapproves would be to say that he also disapproved of the destruction of illicit altars, the first of the two policies described in lMacc 2:46:"Mattathias and his friends went around destroying the illicit altars and forcibly circumcising all the uncircumcised babies they found within the boundaries oflsrael." If Mattathias did not destroy illicit altars, when such altars and the pagan worship practiced thereon were the very impetus and basis for his revolt, then he did nothing at all. That is, circumcision was at the heart ofMattathias's revolution. While 2:46 may seem clear enough, scholars have pointed out that we are not certain whose sons were circumcised. 167 Wilk thinks that the Maccabees only circumcised the group we have identified as those who would have circumcised their sons if it were not for fear of punishment, not those who had willingly chosen not to circumcise. 168 This is a mild interpretation of the verse in !Maccabees. I cannot agree, because it takes out the whole idea of force. Those who had been afraid would not have needed Mattathias at all; with the persecution over, they would now have readily circumcised their sons. What is most important is not that scholars have theories but that textual criticism yields two versions of !Mace 2:4 from two differet).t manuscripts of the Greek Bible, the Codex Alexandrinus (51h-century CE) and Codex Sinaiticus 167. Roman Wilk "Forced Circumcision at the hands ofMattathias" Sinai 115 (1995) 292-94 [Hebrew]; Adalberto Sisti "II valore della circoncisione al tempo dei Maccabei" Liber Annuus Studii Biblici Franciscani 42 (1992) 33-48. 168. Wilk "Forced Circumcision" 283.

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{41h-century CE). Absent any Hebrew manuscript, these uncials are our evidence. Lucian, who was executed in 311/312 CE, had an early text but seems to have often made changes that influenced the Codex Sinaiticus, 169 a fact that may be very relevant for our concerns here. Thus it is interesting to find that Codex Alexandrinus states that Mattathias performed circumcisions on all the uncircumcised babies "in the borders of Israel" and Codex Sinaiticus yields "among the sons oflsrael." The latter reading of Codex Sinaiticus (S), where the children involved are Jewish babies who had not been circumcised during Antiochus's persecution, fits with one of the principal themes of !Maccabees, the separation of Jews from Gentiles. 170 That it would be only Jews who were circumcised is more consistent with the attitude of the book. While Weitzman uses S 's less well-attested reading, 171 the Stuttgart Septuagint's editor A. Rahlfs chose the reading ([in the] 'boundaries), found in the main mss. Band A, over the Codex Sinaiticus's (S) 'sons', which is only found in this one minuscule manuscript. This is the text which Goldstein and other translators (such as NAB "in the territory of Israel" and NRSV "within the borders of Israel") follow. It states that Mattathias and his men circumcised all of the uncircumcised children whom they found in the borders of Israel, not just the children of Jews, but those of any gentiles as well. If this is correct, it means that Mattathias and his men circumcised first and never even asked questions later. It is true that to circumcise non-Jewish babies would be against the whole Jewish /Gentile divide that is so important in !Maccabees. But if we speak of a violent raid on a village, rather than the inspection of babies and checking identities in an orderly and in a sense more civilized manner, this would seem more fitting in the situation. Yet one reason to believe in the version of Codex Alexandrinus is that it is so very difficult; I appeal to a main principle of textual criticism, Lectio difficilior potior (Latin for "the more difficult reading is the stronger"). Where different manuscripts conflict on a particular word, the principle suggests that the more unusual one is more likely the original. The presupposition is that scribes, or a tendentious and intelligent scholar such as Lucian, would more often replace odd words and hard sayings with more familiar and less controversial ones, than vice versa. In this case, the fact that the Alexandrinus reading is so unusual for !Maccabees is what makes it all the more believable as the correct reading. 169. Goldstein I Maccabees 176-77. 170. Weitzman "Forced Circumcision" 45; Seth Schwartz "Israel and the Nations Roundabout: I Maccabees and the Hasmonaean Expansion" JJS42 (1991) 16-38. 171. Weitzman "Forced Circumcision" 45.

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In order to choose between the two versions of the verse, and to understand what each would mean, we need to take a close look at the meaning of the word Israel in 1Maccabees.

Israel in !Maccabees Israel can mean a geographical place or the nation of the Judaeans and sometimes seems to convey both senses at the same time. Our discussion of the meaning of Judaean and Jew above, where we discussed Cohen's theory that the use of the term "Jew/Jewish" as a religious and not ethnic designation only began in the period of the writing of both 1 and 2Maccabees, can be supplemented by a systematic investigation of the term IsraeVIsraelites in the same works. For now, I want to know whether Mattathias circumcised any uncircumcised Jewish male babies, or any uncircumcised male babies within the borders oflsrael. Here, only the evidence from I Maccabees is relevant. The preponderance of references in !Maccabees to the land calls it Judah or Judaea; there are only a few cases where it is called Israel. We find over fifty cases of Judah/Judaea as a place-name: lMacc. 1:29,44, 51, 54; 2:6,18; 3:8, 34; 3:39; 4:35; 5:8, 18, 23, 45, 53, 60, 68; 6:5, 12, 48, 53; 7:10, 22, 24, 46, 50; 9:1, 60, 63; 10:30, 37, 38 (twice), 45; 11:20, 28, 34; 12:34, 35, 46, 52; 13:1, 33; 14:33; 15:30, 40, 41 and 16:10. There are also over thirty references to Judaeans/Jews in this book: 2:23, 36; 4:20, 28; 5:13, 16, 17, 23, 27; 6:6, 7; 8:20, 22, 23, 25, 27, 29, 31; 9:11,18, 40; 10:22,26, 29, 33, 34, 36; 11:30, 33, 47, 49, 51; 12:6. There are over fifty references to the people "IsraeVIsraelites" in 1Maccabees. 172 If "Israel" is an ambiguous term, the ambiguity itself is interesting because it is conceptual in nature: The people and the land are intertwined. The possibilities are that Israel means: 1. 2. 3. 4.

All Jews by birth; A favored subset of the Jewish people, those faithful to the Jewish God and Judaism; The land, as in 2:46; A poetic, non-repetitive parallel to Judaeans/Judaea.

Since the argument of context has been used to say that lMacc. 2:46 must indicate the forced circumcision of Jewish male children because the author of 172. 1:11,25, 30, 36, 43, 53, 58, 62, 64; 2:16,42,55, '64 70; 3:2, 8, 10, 15, 35, 41; 4:11, 25;, 27, 30, 31, 59; 5:3,45, 60;, 62, 63; 6:21; 7:5, 9, 22, 23, 26; 8:18; 9:20,21,27, 51; 10:46,61; 11:23,41,53; 13:4,26,31,41.

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!Maccabees would not approve of the circumcision of non-Jewish babies, I can use an examination of the immediate literary context to ask how Israel is used in the passages surrounding the verse. The very first case is an example of the possible ambiguity involved. 1: 11 states: At that time, lawless men arose in Israel and seduced many with their plea, "Come, let us make a covenant with the gentiles around us ... " Israel here can mean "among the Jewish people" or the geographical place. Thematically, this verse does support the argument that !Maccabees would never favor the blurring oflines between Jews and non-Jews. The second case in 1:20 would seem to speak of Israel as a geographical place: While returning from his conquest of Egypt in the year 143, Antiochus marched against (Israel) and Jerusalem with a strong army. Goldstein's careful translation uses parentheses to indicate the complicated transmission of this verse, something one would never know from NAB's "he returned and went up to Israel and to Jerusalem," where Israel is a place, or NRSV's "He went up against Israel and came to Jerusalem," where Israel could be the place or the people. When Goldstein's translations tilt a usage towards Israel as people, as opposed to other translations that push the meaning toward Israel as the land, one wonders if the translator's pre-conception does not inform his translation, rather than letting each usage speak for itself. Goldstein explains that Josephus's paraphrase (AJ xii 5.3.246) does not have "Israel" here and that we have a doublet in I Mace. caused by a scribe moving the marginal reading Israel into the text. 173 "Israel and Jerusalem" is a very unusual usage for the Bible (though there are cases in Ps. 147:2; Isa. 8:14; Zeph. 3:14; Zech. 2:2). The common phrase is "Judah and Jerusalem" as in I Mace. 3:34 (the towns of Judah also can be found in a phrase with Jerusalem in IMacc. 1:29, 44, 2:6, 18). Goldstein's general conclusion is that "for our author, "Israel" means the people, not the land." 174 But Goldstein then admits that !Mace. 3:35, the verse that follows his primary example of the "normal" usage of "Judah and Jerusalem," does have "Israel and Jerusalem" and that there is no evidence to make us question this reading. We cite the two verses together: Antiochus handed over to him (Lysias) half of his forces, and the elephants and gave him orders concerning all his designs. As for the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem, he was to send against them a force to wipe out and destroy the strength of Israel and the remnant of Jerusalem and erase their memory from the

173. E.Z. Melamed "Josephus and Maccabees 1: A Comparison" EJ 1 (1951) 123. 174. Goldstein I Maccabees 208.

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area, settling foreigners throughout their territory and giving out their land in allotments. The use of Israel here may be what I call a non-repetitive parallel, used only to make the verse sound less redundant. If so, "Israel" here may be parallel to the place Judah. On the other hand, "the strength of Israel" is found in 3:35 with "the remnant of Jerusalem" and thus may refer to the power of the people as it does to those Jews who remained alive in Jerusalem. God is the Savior oflsrael in 4:11 and 4:30 while Judas is its savior in 9:21. This means that God and Judas save the people, not the land. A different kind of example is: "Joshua by fulfilling the Word became a Judge in Israel" (2:55). He is not a Judge "over" Israel or "of' Israel. This would seem to be over the land. We see not only the ambiguity but also the inexactitude in the use of these terms in l Maccabees. Thus we have Israel as the people and Judah as the land in certain cases: Judah assembled all the Israelites of Gilead, from the humble to the great. .. for the march back to the land of Judah (5:45) Joseph and Azariah were routed and were pursued as far as the borders of Judaea. No fewer than two thousand men of the people of Israel fell on that day. (5:60) But then we have "the territory oflsrael" as an exact parallel to our verse 2:46 in 9:23 and perhaps Israel as a place in 9:72 as well: After the death of Judas, "the wicked sprouted" throughout the territory of Israel, "and the evildoers flourished." (9:23)175 He (Bacchides) swore to Jonathan that for the rest of his life he would never seek to harm him, and he returned to Jonathan the prisoners he had previously taken from the land of Judah. Then he returned to his own land and no longer marched across their borders. Israel ceased to be at war. (9:72) Goldstein refers us to Ps. 46: l 0, but that is not as interesting as his insight that !Maccabees treats Jonathan as a latter-day Judge, 176 and thus 9:72 is a reference 175. Goldstein points out that the verse refers toPs. 92:8: "Though the wicked sprout like grass/ though all evildoers blossom/it is only that they may be destroyed forever."

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to passages such as Judg. 3:30: "And the land was tranquil for eighty years" and Judg. 5:31: "And the land was tranquil forty years." If so, then "Israel" here is the land. The ambiguity remains. We also must look at the issue of whether "Israel/Israelites" means those who were seen as faithful to the covenant by the author of 1Maccabees or all Judaeans. An interesting case is 7:22: Alcimus then faced a struggle for the high priesthood, in which, however, all the troublers of their people rallied to him, overran the land of Judah, and inflicted a great defeat upon Israel. Israel here could be seen as a parallel to Judah but I think it must mean those Jews who are faithful to the covenant, unlike, in the estimation of the author of 1Maccabees, Alcimus. A similar example is: "Many from among the people gathered around the officers, every forsaker of the Torah, and they committed wicked acts in the land and drove Israel into hiding places in all their places of refuge" (1 :52-53). Here "Israel" is clearly the conservative Jews. 177 But 7:5 shows that Israel is not necessarily the subset of the Maccabees and their supporters: "Then all the sinful and wicked men of Israel came before him (Demetrius I) led by Alcimus, who wanted to be high priest." And 1:43 gives us a related example: ''Many Israelites, too, accepted his religion and sacrificed to idols and violated the Sabbath." Israel means the place or the people, and it can mean a subset of that people or its entirety, and that leaves us with the distinct possibility that Codex Alexandrinus is correct in rendering our verse to say that Mattathias forcibly circumcised "all the uncircumcised babies they found within the boundaries of Israel." If we return to our grid for the different attitudes toward circumcision among Judaeans in the period between Jason and Mattathias, we will understand why circumcision had to be forced even on many Jews. Some Jews did not want to practice circumcision under any circumstances and others did not practice the 176. Goldstein I Maccabees 10, 76,240,377,393,395. I 77. We find a formula for mourning, either because of a catastrophe or for a famous person, in !Mace. 1:25, 2:70, 9:20, 12:53 and 13:26. When "great sorrow came upon Israel" (l :25) or all Israel mourned (2:70, 9:20, 12:53 and 13:26), Israel means the Israelites. If the Israel of lMacc. 2:70 mourns Mattathias, one has to think that his Jewish

enemies did not wail with sorrow. So Israel would mean the Maccabees and their supporters. Judas is also mourned by "all Israel" in 9:20, in an echo of David's lament in 2 Samuel 1:19, 27, and again, one sees this as formulaic, that all Israelites mourned for their hero, even though this would not have been true in reality, where only the adherents of the Maccabees would have grieved.

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rite out of fear of the persecution. The former group would not begin to circumcise simply because Mattathias was leading a revolution against the Greeks. The latter group might still be reluctant because of their uncertainty at best and severe doubts at most about the chances of Mattathias 's success. These are the people who had not resisted the persecution; they were afraid, and would still have been afraid even though Mattathias was doing well. Centuries of living under Persians and Greeks would indicate that following Mattathias in what was a criminal act against the Seleucid state was a bad bet. My position is simple: Mattathias and his supporters reacted to the uncircumctston and decircumcision by forcibly circumctsmg every uncircumcised baby within the borders of the land. They did not stop in every situation and examine the identity of the baby. Their mission was reactive, violent and radical and they sought to create a new zone of purity through a kind of ancient ethnic cleansing, just as they would later re-dedicate the Temple and re-create its zone of purity. But for Sievers and others, the reading that Mattathias circumcised all those babies within "the borders of Israel" reflects an effort by the pro-Hasmonaean author of 1Maccabees to justify the later Hasmonaean kings' circumcision of the Idumaeans and Ituraeans, an interesting theory to which I will now tum. 178

Josephus Ben Mattathias on Forced Circumcisions Josephus follows lMacc. in describing Mattathias's action: So Mattathias gathered a large force around him, and pulled down the pagan altars, and killed as many of those who had sinned as he could lay his hands on-for many of them in fear of him had scattered among the neighboring nations; and as for the boys who had not been circumcised, he ordered them to be circumcised, and drove out the officers who had been appointed to prevent this. (AJ 12.278) Josephus says that Mattathias "drove out" the officers who had prevented the Jews from practicing circumcision. Weitzman thinks that Josephus "concocted this detail to avoid creating the impression that Mattathias compelled the circumcision itself, a use of force of which Josephus disapproved." 179 And yet driving away the officers of the persecution is not the relevant point from this citation; to say that Mattathias ordered the boys to be circumcised is only a 178. Joseph Sievers The Hasmonaeans and Their Supporters (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990) 35. 179. Weitzman "Forced Circumcision" 42.

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minor modification of forcing them to be circumcised as in 1Maccabees. Perhaps Josephus ben Mattathias is thinking of a general who does not execute actions himself but orders them to be fulfilled by others. I do not see how Josephus is backing away from forced circumcisions in this passage. In Jewish War (BJ 1.63) Josephus mentions the conquest of ldumaean areas (in 128 BCE) by John Hyrcanus (135-104 BCE) without discussing how he converted many ldumaeans to Judaism. In Jewish Antiquities, Josephus discusses this conquest with more detail: Hyrcanus also captured the Idumaean cities of Adora and Marisa, and after subduing all the ldumaeans, permitted them to remain in their country so long as they had themselves circumcised and were willing to obey the laws of the Joudaioi. And so, out of attachment to their ancestral land, they submitted to circumcision and to having their manner of life in all other respects made the same as that of the Joudaioi. And from that time on they have continued to be Joudaioi. (AJ 13.257-58) The historicity of this action seems to be corroborated by Ptolemy (1 "' cen. BCE) who states that the ldumaeans were "subjugated by the Jews and ... forced to undergo circumcision." 180 It would seem that this was not a one-time event but part of a larger program. Josephus also tells us that Judas Aristobulus I (104-103 BCE) practiced forced circumcision on the Arab tribe of the lturaeans. This practice of the Hasmonaean kings was well known in the ancient world, for Josephus bases this statement on Strabo (who himself quotes Timagenes 181 ): In the reigu of one year with the title of Philhellene he conferred many benefits on his country, for he made war on the lturaeans and acquired a good part of their territory for Judaea and compelled the inhabitants, if they wished to remain in their country, to be circumcised and to live in accordance with the laws of the loudaioi. (AJ 13.318) It may be that the actions of a third king in succession, Alexander Jannaeus (103-76 BCE) fit this ideology (Josephus AJ 13.318). Alexander destroyed the city of Pella because its inhabitants "would not bear to change their religious rites for those peculiar to the Jews" (AJ 13.397). These religious rites may very 180. Menahem Stern Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism Vol. I (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Science, 1974-84) no. 146. 181. Timagenes was a Greek historian who was captured by the Romans in 55 B.C.E. and taken to Rome.

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well have included circumcision. Josephus lists other cities such as Thona and Zoara that were conquered but not destroyed, presumably because the people there submitted to Jewish rites. 182 While the evidence of Josephus would seem to be that these kings forcibly circumcised the neighboring peoples, and that therefore, as Sievers thinks, the notice in 1Mace. 2:46 about Mattathias may have been written at a later time to serve as a justification for their actions, the current trend in scholarship is to say that these circumcisions were not forced, that the peoples involved were already circumcised, and that Josephus was against forced circumcisions in his own career. 183 Scholars deny that forced circumcision ever took place and suggest instead that these peoples agreed to circumcision over the course of time in order to be fully accepted into the Hasmonaean state. They point out that neither Timagenes nor Strabo speak of forced circumcision as such. In referring to Aristobulus I, Timagenes states: "This man ... brought over a portion of the Ituraean nation whom he joined to them by the bond of circumcision" (AJ 13.319). And Strabo implies that the ldumaeans had been banished by the Nabateans and thus wanted to join the Jews: "The Idumaeans are Nabateans, but owing to a sedition they were banished from there, joined the Judeans and shared in the same customs with them." 184 Some or all of the peoples involved may already have been circumcised before any incorporation into the Judaean state. The evidence is indeed mixed, and a historical reconstruction could make room for everything that we know. Perhaps there was some forcible circumcision, but the picture should not be of soldiers coming and circumcising babies or male children or adults. After the Maccabees rose to power, they decreed that if one wants to become a full citizen of the Judaean state, circumcision was a requirement. This would have been the final reversal of the decree of Antiochus

IV.

182. Weitzman "Forced Circumcision" 38; cf. Aryeh Kasher "Josephus on King Jannaeus's War against the Hellenistic Cities" Cathedra 41 (1986) ll-36 (Hebrew). 183. Shaye Cohen The Beginnings of Jewishness 115-18; Samuel Klein The Land of Judaea (Tel Aviv: Sinai, 1939) 74-75 (Hebrew); Uriel Rappaport "Hellenistic Cities and the Judaization of Palestine in the Hasmonaean Age," in Samuel Perlman and B. Shimron, eds. Doran: Studies in Classical Culture Presented to Professor B. z. Katz Ben Shalom (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1967) 219-30 (Hebrew); Aryeh Kasher Jews, Idumeans and Ancient Arabs (Tubingen: Mohr, 1988) 45-85; Seth Schwartz "The Judaism of Samaria and Galilee in Josephus's Version of the Letter of Demetrius I to Jonathan (Antiquities 13.48- 57)" HTR 82 (1989) 377-91. 184. Strabo Geo. 16.2.34.

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In his Life, Josephus states that when he commanded the Judean forces in Galilee, he rejected coerced circumcision as a way of incorporating new participants in the effort against the Romans: About this time there came to me from the region ofTrachonitis two nobles, subjects of the king (Agrippa II), bringing their horses, arms, and money which they had smuggled out of their country. The Jews would have compelled them to be circumcised as a condition of residence among them. I, however, would not allow any compulsion to be put upon them, declaring that every one should worship God in accordance with the dictates of his own conscience and not under constraint, and that these men, having fled to us for refuge, ought not to be made to regret that they had done so. Having brought over the people to my way of thinking, I liberally supplied our guests with all things necessary to their customary manner of life. (Josephus Life 112-113) So here is Josephus himself insisting to his Roman audience that he was against coerced circumcision of foreigners who wanted to become part of a Jewish community. That forced circumcision was a very real issue in this period can be seen in the fact that other Jewish rebels did compel circumcision of foreigners can be seen in Josephus's War 2.454 where Metilius, the Roman garrison commander in Jerusalem, "promised to behave as a Jew even to the point of circumcision," after seeing his soldiers executed despite swearing oaths. I am not sure that a Roman prisoner of war offering to be circumcised is the same thing as forcing one to be circumcised as part of a political or religious policy, but it is close enough to believe Josephus when he says that such situations arose during the revolt against Rome. If the scholarly theory were true, if the Hasmonaean kings did not forcibly circumcise the neighboring peoples, one would then have to explain why Josephus would make up or report something that was not true. Scholars are thus confused as to an apparent contradiction between what Josephus tells his readers about Mattathias and the Hasmonaean kings and his own refusal to take part in a similar action. Goodman writes, "It is hard to explain why Josephus, who was proud of his own Hasmonaean lineage (Joseph. Life, 2-4), would have included such propaganda in his history, and I am unable to perceive any condemnation ofthe Hasmonaeans' actions in the historian's dry account." 185 I can imagine the report as an anti-Jewish polemic: "Those Jews were so obsessed with

185. Martin Goodman Mission and Conversion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994) 76.

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circumcision that when given power they went around circumcising others." But why would Josephus, a Jewish apologist, write or report that Mattathias and Hasmonaean kings did this? Kasher says it is to call the Hasmonaean kings tyrants, Josephus, who proudly called himself a descendant of these kings, honored John Hyrcanus who had commanded such circumcisions in Antiquities and even named his son Hyrcanus, would not seek to harm their historical reputation. 186 Josephus ben Mattathias may reject mandatory circumcision, but in writing the history of Judaean nationalism and expansionism in the 2nd and l st centuries BCE, he did need to explain what must have been a fact, that Hasmonaean kings did use forced circumcision in their program of incorporating neighboring peoples into their kingdom. While scholars such as Cohen lean more toward Strabo than Josephus, one may counter that Josephus may quote foreign historians but still is closer to the scene; for instance, in speaking of the Ituraeans he says, "And from that time on they have continued to be Joudaioi." If refusal to forcibly circumcise is Josephus's position in his own life, he does not necessarily condemn the Hasmonaeans for their forced circumcisions. He just states historical facts about those kings and is careful to separate himself from those in his generation who did similar things. But much of this is subtle, teased out by modem historians. Josephus does not mark a line in the sand to say, "They did it; I dido 't." Josephus was not concerned what Romans thought about historical events but about, as Cohen points out, Roman "fears about the dangers of conversion" to Judaism. 187 Not all later texts were against forced circumcision. Somewhat later than Josephus (between 70 and the l30's CE), 2 Baruch 66.5 invents or transmits a tradition that the great king Josiah did not leave any male baby in the kingdom uncircumcised, a praiseworthy act of righteousness and zeal. 188 Gen. 34, which I discussed above, received a great deal of attention in the literature of the period.

186. Clemens Thoma "John Hyrcanus I as Seen by Josephus and Other Early Jewish Sources," in Fausto Parente and Joseph Sievers, eds. Josephus and the History of the Greco-Roman Period: Essays in Memory of Morton Smith (Leiden: Brill, 1994) 127-40; G. Fuks "Josephus and the Hasmonaeans" JJS 41 (1990) 166-176. 187. Shaye Cohen "Respect for Judaism by Gentiles in the Writings of Josephus" HTR 80 ( 1987) 423. 188. This may have been in support of Bar Kokhba's resistance to the prohibition of circumcision by the Romans in the l30's CE, cf. Gwendolyn B. Sayler Have the Promises Failed: a Literary Analysis of 2 Baruch (Chico, Cal.: SBL, 1985) 104-18. But this is assuming that such a prohibition ever took place, something we have questioned above on the basis of Abusch's analysis.

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Cohen judiciously says that it is background; 189 we can put this differently and say that even though Gen. 34, read by a modem, is a terrible story of cynicism and ruse, an ancient Jew might see it as clever or with moral blinders might not see the diabolic nature of Jacob's sons' plot and might then see it as justification for their contemporary heroes' or benefactors' actions. It matters less to me whether it was about the Samaritans or other peoples; the fact that there was so much discussion about this story means that later texts celebrated the morally complex story of Gen. 34 is another question. 190 So what can we conclude from these sources about forced circumcision? Even if Josephus and/or his sources disapproved of forced circumcision, this does not mean that l Mace. does so in its treatment of Mattathias. Weitzman makes the important point that if 1Maccabees were written near the beginning of the reign of John Hyrcanus I, as suggested by Schwartz, 191 Sievers's proposition that the passage about Mattathias is a reflection of what the later kings did now would be anachronistic; they would not look for support from their ancestor and create !Mace. 2:46 if they had not yet begun this practice themselves. 192 That is, if Hyrcanus 's conquest of the Idumaeans did not occur until c.ll2 BCE (according to archaeological evidence), after 1Maccabees was written, there would be no reason to create a legend about Mattathias 's forced circumcisions. At any rate, !Maccabees, a clearly pro-Hasmonaean work, would see Mattathias's forced circumcisions in a favorable light. Even if Josephus and 189. Cohen The Beginning ofJewishness 123. 190. John Collins "The Epic of Theodotus and the Hellenism of the Hasmonaeans" HTR 73 ( 1980) 91-104 argues that Genesis 34 may have been used by authors like Theodotus to justifY the Hasmonaeans' violent treatment of the Samaritans. Not everyone accepts Collins's reading; see Reinhard Plummer "Genesis 34 in the Jewish Writings of the Hellenistic and Roman Periods" HTR 75 (1982) 177-88. Even if Collins is right, however, Genesis 34 forms a strange precedent for the mass conversion of local Gentiles. Jacob's sons do propose circumcision, but their offer is not meant sincerely, and they proceed to slay the Shechemites despite the fact they had been circumcised. Compare Shaye Cohen "Religion, Ethnicity and Hellenism in the Emergence of Jewish Identity in Maccabaean Palestine," in Per Bilde et al., eds., Religion and Religious Practice in the Seleucid Kingdom (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1990) 204-23. For further discussion of Genesis 34 in early Jewish exegesis, see James Kugel "The Story of Dinah in the Testament of Levi" HTR 85 (1992) 1-34; Menahem Mor "Theodotus, the Epos of Shechem and the Samaritans: A New Interpretation" in Aaron Openhaimer, Isaiah Gafni, and Daniel Schwartz, eds., The Jews in the Hellenistic-Roman World Studies in Memory ofMenahem Stem (Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1996) 345-59 [Hebrew]. 191. Schwartz "Israel and the Nations Roundabout" 37. 192. Weitzman "Forced Circumcision" 50.

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· Ptolemy later saw forced circumcision as tyranny or zealous excess, this does not tell us anything about the attitude of lMacc., the basic source of our information on the subject, and does not undermine the historicity of its statement on the subject. It is assumed that circumcision was mandatory for Jews or would-be Jews in Josephus's time, something that was not assumed during the revolt of Mattathias, but that, because of his actions, became assumed by his desce~dants the Hasmonaean kings who could well have gained inspiration by their famous progenitor's forced circumcision of all who lived within the borders of Israel. If Israel as a geographic and national identity were to grow into neighboring lands, Mattathias had given them the paradigm; circumcision would be the symbol of Jewishness. I can now return to Weitzman's point that part of the agenda of the author of lMaccabees was to separate Jews from Gentiles and that therefore he would not have presented Mattathias as a circumciser of non-Jewish babies. But making Jews of people in the holy land is not necessarily contrary to this spirit. Again, we are speaking of a wartime context; I picture Mattathias and his followers coming to a village, circumcising baby boys that were not circumcised, and leaving. Circumcision is both religious and political in a nationalistic way. I take Mattathias's actions to mean that he absolutely did have nationalistic goals from the beginning. It is interesting that even though scholarship generally ignores the role of Mattathias, in the case of forced circumcision some are quite ready to say that this action was artificially attributed to him by the author of !Maccabees to lay a foundation for the actions of his descendants. That is, since Mattathias did it, it is fine that the later kings did it. This assumes that Mattathias 's name had that kind of power, that he was famous and his actions were revered and so circumcision, a later program, was attached to his name in order to justify his descendants' actions. Would the name of Mattathias be so revered if he were a minor character in the struggle for independence, a mere figurehead? Mattathias's historical importance must have been real.

Mattathias the priest, in the tradition of karet and priestly genealogy, wanted to purify the land, to fulfill the vision oflsrael. In looking for the justification in Biblical legal precedents for the novel and radical action of forced circumcision, Urbach has made a comparison between the forced circumcision of the Idumaeans and the Ituraeans by Mattathias 's descendants, and the commandment in Gen. 17: 13 concerning the circumcision

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of "the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money. " 193 The easy response, given by Weitzman, is that the command to circumcise one's slave is not the same thing as the circumcision of the peoples of neighboring lands, that Urbach makes a connection between text and practice that no one in the period did since the Idumaeans and lturaeans were not called or considered to be slaves. Weitzman is literally correct but perhaps Urbach is not wrong; enforcing circumcision on anyone in the land can be seen within the vision of Genesis 17 and karet. I am a kind of maximalist about these matters: I believe that Mattathias forcibly circumcised babies within the borders of Judaea and that his descendants also forcibly circumcised neighboring peoples. I am taking a different position, I think, from any of the scholars I have read on the topic. Mattathias 's actions should be seen as the foundation for, not the reflex of, the policies of his royal descendants. "Judaea for Jews" was a paraphrase of his policy, and Jews, he demanded, should be circumcised. If in the process, some Gentile babies were made Jewish, that was incidental. Mattathias forcibly circumcised babies in order to purify the land of a persecution that had forbidden the rite; the kings circumcised as a means of converting formerly non-Jewish babies in order to expand the power of the Jewish people into new territory. In both cases, forced circumcision is to be considered "a rite of domination" by "which ancient rulers proclaimed their power over war captives and slaves" by inscribing "their bodies with a distinctive mark of ownership." 194 These were both religious and nationalistic acts of proclaiming identity through this ancient and distinctive mark. But we can probe even more deeply by exploring the meaning of Mattathias the priest's actions from an anthropological rather than a historical perspective.

Mattathias's Forced Circumcisions from a Perspective of Social Anthropology Paige and Paige provide a useful political interpretation of circumcision. 195 They study the function of circumcision in tribal societies throughout the world, finding the practice in twenty-three of one hundred and fourteen cultures. These societies are "all advanced horticulturalists or nomadic pastoralists . . . that share a common political structure. They are composed of what we call strong 193. Ephraim E. Urbach "Halakhot Regarding Slavery as a Source for the Social History of the Second Temple and Talmudic Periods" Zion 25 (1960) 141-89, esp. 162. 194. Weitzman "Forced Circumcision" 37. 195. Karen Erickson Paige and Jeffrey M. Paige The Politics of Reproductive Ritual (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981) 48; Karen Ericksen Paige "The Ritual of Circumcision" Human Nature (May 1978) 40-48.

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fraternal-interest groups, related males who are united to pursue common political objectives." 196 Kinsmen protect their property and distribute resources. Studying Genesis, Paige concludes that "the ancient Hebrews had the exact form of economic and political organization in which male circumcision .. .is most likely to occur today." Paige and Paige state that the circumcision ceremony sometimes is not performed for the child or even the father: The most common pattern is for a village elder or chief to command a reluctant father to have his sons circumcised. Among the Thonga the chief orders the ceremony for all boys between I 0 and I6, and if necessary he will use force to carry out the command. Victor Turner, who studied the Ndembu of Zambia, observed one wily old chief revive his flagging power over factions within his tribe. He called for a circumcision of the warring factions' sons - and he presided. The Turner article speaks in neutral terms, terms very different from those of our primary documents I and 2Maccabees. 197 In the latter texts, the historical events of the early Maccabaean period are described in strongly positive ideological terms. The Judaeans must live in covenant with God; those who sin against his covenant and God are wicked. Turner does not assume "the functional necessity to protect the unity of the fraternal interest group in order to keep the society together." Instead, he assumes that groups will divide; fission is a fundamental political issue. Some Jews became radically Hellenized, some less so. Circumcision in the Ndembu example is not about the unity of the tribal villages; it is about the power of an aging chief who wanted to maintain his dominance in the face of the shifting tides of fraternal group politics. Can we make the analogy to Mattathias's forced circumcisions? We think of Mattathias, standing as his men circumcise the baby boys. The fathers are irrelevant; the babies, in a sense, props. Mattathias's power is absolute. 198

196. Paige "The Ritual of Circumcision" 40. 197. Victor W. Turner "Ritual Aspects of Conflict Control in African Metropolitics" in Political Anthropology ed. Marc. J. Swartz, Victor W. Turner, and Arthur Tuden (Chicago: Aldine, 1966) 239-46. 198. This would fit with the Maccabees as social-climbers hypothesis of Schwartz, but goes against the Mattathias I have re-constructed here, a radical believer and zealous priest. The challenge here is to find a middle ground between Turner and Schwartz and the hypothesis of Mattathias as ambitious chief and the Mattathias who is only thinking about the covenant and not about power or fame.

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The fathers may be seen as irrelevant in some cases, but in a more normal situation, circumcision is a statement of the father's loyalty: "Male circumcisions are a public demonstration by fathers to elder kinsmen of their loyalty to the fraternal-interest group." 199 This loyalty is in entrusting one's child's ability to reproduce to another person "and it is precisely because the ritual involves this risk that it is such a powerful emotional symbol." The penis is the organ of power. To show obedience, the father gives his son's power to the tribe?00 A father, such as those among the Hellenized Jews of 175-165 in Judaea, who leaves the fraternal-interest group, taking with him the reproductive power of his sons, represents an immense threat to the continuing ability of the group to defend itself and its valuable resources. It is important to see that as different as what we might call 'primitive' African tribes are from the Jews of the Seleucid province of Judaea in certain ways, we are speaking of groups and the pressures of cohesiveness and fission. Among tribes that lack fraternal-interest groups, individuals break off from their kin groups frequently. Only when military and political power depends on continual expansion of males in the father's line does the departure of a son and his reproductive assets represent a major political crisis. As Paige and Paige see, the story of Genesis is one of fissions and feuds, of a growing tribe that needs unity and the strength of its male defenders to survive in a hostile environment. Genesis 17 describes the bargain between God and Abraham: "This is my covenant which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee: Every man child among you shall be circumcised .... And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant." Perhaps we should see the move away from circumcision in the time of Jason and Menelaus in this light. Circumcision may not just have been a symbol of the political crisis; it may have been the crisis. Paige and Paige explain that circumcision is a public ceremony that re-affirms the fraternal order especially in the face of natural fission between groups. Mattathias could have been acting right out of this anthropological insight: By forcibly circumcising those who were resistant, he preserved the fraternal order of the Jewish people.

199. Paige "Ritual of Circumcision" 41. 200. As a side note, circumcision is practiced in various cultures at different points in the life-cycle from infancy to adolescence, and sometimes the timing is an issue between kinsmen who continually fight over who should do the operation and when. We have seen above how the author of Jubilees rails against those who do not practice circumcision at the proper time.

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Eilberg-Schwartz on the Priesthood and Circumcision One of the finest treatments of the meaning of circumcision in biblical Israel from an anthropological perspective is by Eilberg-Schwartz who makes a convincing case that what mattered most to the Israelite priests who promoted the practice are the themes of "fertility, procreation, and intergenerational continuity between males. " 201 Circumcision is about fertility. In Lev. 19:23-25, we find the priestly proscription on the fruit of a juvenile, "uncircumcised" fruit tree. Just as one prunes a fruit tree in order to ensure growth, to maximize its yield when mature, one removes the foreskin of the penis in order to ensure fertility. Gen. 17, as we have seen, "cuts" a covenant between God, who will ensure fertility, and the Hebrews, who will scar the organ of fertility. Circumcision is also a mechanism for making kinship bonds visible. Reproduction means the continuity of the line of descent. Circumcision increases "solidarity among male cohorts and solidify individual commitment to lines of descent" to create "a kind of blood brotherhood," as Gluckman put it, 202 but also a "blood brotherhood across generations. 203 Circumcision is a symbol of kinship between men, making the links tangible. It is as if to say: "We all belong to the same people, and we wear this evidence on our bodies." As Mary Douglas has explained in response to Bettelheim's psychoanalytic interpretation of circumcision and initiation rites: "The body is a model which can stand for any bounded system .... What is being carved in human flesh is an image of society. " 204 The historical interpretation is that circumcision increased in importance during the Babylonian exile (587-533 BCE), when it became a way of preventing assimilation with the host culture. This assumes the correctness of the Documentary Hypothesis of the Graf-Wellhausen school which states that the Priestly source was written during or soon after the Exile. Earlier texts that taught circumcision sought to make a distinction between the Israelites and the neighbors who were uncircumcised (e.g. the J text of Gen. 34:14). For those 201. Howard Eilberg-Schwartz "The Fruitful Cut: Circumcision and Israel's Symbolic Language of Fertility, Descent and Gender" in The Savage in Judaism: An Anthropology of Israelite Religion.and Ancient Judaism (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1990) 141-76, esp. 172-73. 202. Max Gluckman "The Role of the Sexes in Wiko Circumcision Ceremonies" in Social Structure ed. Meyer Fortes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949) 145-67. 203. Eilberg-Schwartz The Savage in Judaism 162. 204. Mary Douglas Purity and Danger (London: Routledge, 1966) 115-16.

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scholars who hold that at least some of the P texts are pre-Exilic, a position which I think has been validated by the work of Kaufmann, Milgrom and others, this does not explain why circumcision would have been so crucial for priests in particular in the monarchical period, especially since the priests of those centuries seem to have been quite compliant with syncretism in the Temple itself. Like many symbols, circumcision, Eilberg-Schwartz insists, is "polysemous," and it had meaning not only in terms of fertility and in reference to external neighbors but also for the "internal politics" of the Israelite community. How does circumcision relate to the issues of the priests in terms of their social organization, interests and power, that it should be such a focus of their writings? Why did priests emphasize circumcision as a central symbol of the covenant? How did it fit with the structure they were creating? The priests, more than any other Israelite faction, were concerned with descent as a way of determining membership in their community. The priests, the officiants of the sacrificial cult first in every cultic center and then after centralization in Jerusalem, 205 claimed descent from Aaron, older brother of Moses. That is, unlike prophets and sages, who attained their status through charisma or learning, priests became priests from father to son in hereditary succession. Their authority came through their special genealogy. This descent was already established at least by the seventh century, as we learn from Deuteronomy, who already speaks of the sons of Zadok, a subset of the Aaronides, as opposed to the other Levites who had other lesser roles. So we have the Priestly source that goes through Genesis and frames early Israelite history with genealogy. Pis vitally concerned with the theme of fertility (Gen. 1:22; 9:1,7; 17:2,3, 10; 28:3-4; 35:11-12; 48:4; Ex. 1:7). Obviously, genealogy cannot be perpetuated without fertility. Circumcision symbolized fertility and made a demarcation in the genealogy between Abraham and the others descended from his ancestor Noah and his father Terah. If Abraham was to establish a new lineage, he needed something that distinguished him from all others and would connect him to all of his descendants. Circumcision "solved both of these problems simultaneously."206 "The male or§an is itself a symbol of kinship in general; and patrilineal descent in particular." 07 "Circumcision symbolizes and helps create

205. One wonders: Since there were priests from different cult centers before centralization, could the origin of the rotation of the priestly orders be pre-Exilic, reflecting priestly families from the different centers once they all served in Jerusalem? 206. Eilberg-Schwartz Savage in Judaism 167. 207. Eilberg-Schwartz Savage in Judaism 169

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intergenerational continuity between men. It graphically represents patrilineal descent by giving men of this line a distinctive mark that bonds them together." 208 Men, that is, and not women, who are excluded from priestly genealogies; 209 the circumcision ceremony makes the father the begetter of the child instead of the mother. The day after the baby boy leaves the impurity of the blood of his mother (Lev. 12:1-4), his own blood is spilled; now his mother's blood cannot contaminate the other males. Just as a baby is born into the priesthood, an Israelite male baby cannot decide whether to enter into the covenantal community. This is as opposed to other cultures where one is circumcised at puberty and thus, as Philo says, might not want to do it. "For the priests, reproductive success and intergenerational continuity among males is crucial.. .. The themes of fertility, procreation, and intergenerational continuity between males are central to this Israelite practice."210 The priests wanted to define the covenantal community as "a group of men who had descended from the same ancestor." Circumcision was the sign of this covenant, and their articulation of it "sprang from the self-definition and organization of their community. " 211 The priestly concern over their lineage expanded to concern for the lineage of the whole people, a kind of democratization of their organizing principles. I think that Eilberg-Schwartz's insights are brilliant, a real advance on how we think about the Biblical priesthood's relationship to the rite of circumcision. What I would like to bring to this discussion is that it was Mattathias and his sons, a fraternal order, who preserved the fraternal order of priests and indeed of the Jewish people through revolution, with the violent act of forced circumcision as a dramatic symbol of everything they believed in.

The Fraternal Orders of the Maccabees, the Priestly Class and the Jewish People One thinks about Mattathias and his five sons, a fraternal order if there ever was one. Is it just a coincidence that the leadership of the Jewish fraternal-interest group was composed of the five brothers, who in themselves were related males united to pursue common political objectives?

208. Eilberg-Schwartz Savage in Judaism 171. 209. Nancy Jay "Sacrifice as Remedy for Having Been Born of Woman" in Immaculate and PowerfUl ed. C. W. Atkinson et al (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985) 283309; idem "Sacrifice, Descent, and the Patriarchs" Vetus Testamentum 38 (I) 52-70. 210. Eilberg-Schwartz Savage in Judaism 173. 211. Eilberg-Schwartz Savage in Judaism 176.

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The Hasmonaean dynasty rose to power for many reasons, including: the vacuum in the high priesthood created by the end of the Zadokite line with Jason, the weakness of the Seleucid Empire created by its internal conflicts and the constant external pressures from its enemies; and the strength of the Hasmonaean dynasty itself. It was the fraternal bonds of the Hasmonaean dynasty that enabled it to rise to power and retain its control over Judaea for generations, until its descendants lost their sense of the importance of such bonds and destroyed the dynasty forever. 212 In !Maccabees, Mattathias comes onto the stage with his five sons: Judas, Simon, Eleazar, John and Jonathan (lMacc. 2:lff.); they are mentioned immediately. Though this point is missed by all of the commentaries, there is no reason why the sons should be referred to at all at this point. Mattathias will be the main actor in the revolution and none of the sons will be mentioned again by name until Mattathias dies. The author of 1Mace. sees the sons as part and parcel of the very first stage of the revolution. They are not only present at the inception; they participate in everything from the very beginning. Thus it is "Mattathias and his sons" who mourn what has happened in Jerusalem: "Mattathias and his sons rent their garments and put on sackcloth and were overcome by grief' (lMacc. 2:14). "Mattathias and his sons" are brought together to the gathering held by the king's officials in Modein to enforce apostasy and make the Judaeans offer pagan sacrifices (!Mace. 2:15-16). The king's officials address Mattathias as follows: "You are a leader, a prominent and great man in this town. You are firmly supported with sons and brothers" (2:17). It is Mattathias and his sons who are implausibly offered the rank of Friends of the King, along with honor and money, if they will participate in the pagan sacrifice at Modein: "You and your sons will be raised to the rank of the Friends of the King, and you and your sons will be honored by grants of silver and gold and many gifts" (2: 18). Mattathias 's sons are mentioned twice in the offer and this is besides the reference to his sons as being supportive of him in the previous verse. The story may be told to show that Mattathias and his sons could not be bought. Mattathias claims that unlike those who are cooperating with the persecution, he and his sons will follow the covenant (2:20). After killing the Seleucid official and a Jewish apostate before the pagan sacrifice could be offered, Mattathias and his sons flee together into the mountains (2:28). Again, it is Mattathias who does the killing, and yet his sons are mentioned no less than six times. In !Mace. 2:49-70, Mattathias speaks to his sons about the leadership of the family and the movement after his death. The birth order of the sons is John, Simon, Judas, Eleazar and Jonathan. Thus John, it would seem, is 212. Benjamin Edidin Scolnic Thy Brothers Blood: The Maccabees and Dynastic Morality in the Hellenistic World (Lanham, Md.: UPA, 2008).

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passed over to elevate the next two in line. This apparently did not cause any problem or tension. Eleazar, Judas and John will die in battle, leaving Simon and Jonathan. And yet it will be Jonathan who will assume the mantle of leadership after Judas's death. After Mattathias dies (2:69-70), expressions that can be translated "Judas and his brothers" are found often in I Mace. (3:1-2, 25, 42; 4:36, 59; 5:10, 17, 24, 55, 61, 63, 65; 7:6, 10, 11, 27; 9:19, 29, 31; 13:8; 14:18; 16:2). It is Judas and his brothers who are feared in 3:25. Judas and his brothers evaluate the situation together in 3:42. They decide to restore the Temple in 4:36 and decree the institution of Hanukkah in 4:59. It is very significant that Judas and his brothers are directly involved with the restoration of the Temple and the creation of the holiday of Hanukkah. It is interesting that the institution of the holiday, a controversial measure, is based on the popular will. There is no need as such to mention that the brothers were involved, yet the author is clearly invested to demonstrating their role at every important juncture. Alcimus comes before Demetrius and charges "Judas and his brothers" with killing the king's men (7:6) and Bacchides uses this formulation to appeal to his enemies to make peace, an appeal that they disregard (7:10-11). Judas and his brothers receive great admiration from both Jews and Gentiles (5:63-64). One gets the impression that for as many times as the formulation "Judas and his brothers" is used, it is implied throughout. Judas is clearly the leader but his brothers are important, respected and known leaders. Still, these brothers are usually mentioned as a group. The exceptions occur when the text refers to their different military successes and defeats. The writer of I Maccabees is a pro-Hasmonaean propagandist who does not want to overly-aggrandize Judas. He is concerned with portraying the glories of the Maccabaean movement which includes all of the brothers. 213 When Judas dies, the dynasty continues without him because of the strong fraternal bonds that he had fostered in his lifetime. In the transition from Jonathan to Simon, we have a case of a strong fraternal bond that allows the nation not only to survive an immediate crisis but also to continue with stability and strength. All the brothers are buried together in a pyramid tomb (lMacc. 13:25-30). The Maccabee brothers symbolized the fraternal order of the Jews. Mattathias taught them exactly what circumcision was: a loyalty oath, a political deal. Any

213. It is instructive to contrast what the author of I Maccabees does with what Josephus does with this topic. Josephus takes most of the references to Judas and his brothers and omits the brothers, even though he had all those references in his main source, in order to aggrandize Judas all the more.

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Jew who did not circumcise his sons announced the limitations of his loyalty to the tribe. This would not be permitted. Hoffman summarizes the work of Paige and Paige as follows: "Circumcision is a "surveillance ritual" whereby large cohesive kin groups, who are nonetheless potential rivals, monitor the status quo in defense of developments that would disrupt the uneasy truce that holds the social structure in stasis. " 214 The situation faced by Mattathias is quite different than this, but we can modify the insight in a useful way. Mattathias and his followers wanted desperately to restore the status quo of the fraternal order of the Jews that had been tom asunder by Jewish Hellenization and then religious persecution.

Did the Fraternal Order of the Jewish Priesthood Rise Up to Save Their Property? The fraternal order of the priests was more than threatened by Hellenization and the persecution of Antiochus IV; it was torn asunder by the ascendancy of the non-priest Menelaus to the high priesthood. And it may be that the socioeconomic structure of the priesthood that had existed for centuries was also under direct attack. I am intrigued by a suggestion made by Hyldahl that with the persecution and rebellion also came confiscation of some of the land of the Judaean priests. Hyldahl bases this thought on Daniel 11 :39, which refers to Antiochus IV: "He will heap honor on those who acknowledge him, and will make them master over many; he will distribute land for a price." It seems that those loyal to the king were given property taken from those who were disloyal. Hyldahl states "that the confiscation first and foremost hit the Jerusalem priests and their land properties cannot be doubted. " 215 Hyldahl also brings as evidence two passages from I Maccabees where the Jewish loyalists and the men of the Akra complain to the young king Antiochus V about the actions of the Maccabees: We were willing to serve your father and follow his instructions and obey his commands. As a result, our own countrymen have become our enemies. Indeed, they have killed as many of us as they could find and have been plundering our property. (lMacc. 6:23-24) 214. Lawrence A. Hoffman Covenant of Blood: Circumcision and Gender in Rabbinic Judaism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996) 39. 215. Niels Hy1dah1 "The Maccabaean Rebellion and the Question of"Hellenization" Religion and Religious Practice in the Seleucid Kingdom 200.

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Judas and his brothers have killed all your friends, and he has driven us from our land. Now, therefore, send a man whom you trust and have him go view all the havoc Judas has wreaked upon us and upon the king's domains .... (lMacc. 7:6-7) Hyldahl concludes that the upper class of Judaea, including the priests, had lost their holdings during the persecution. According to Goldstein, Antiochus IV rewarded new military settlers in the Akra with "allotments from the land confiscated from the pious rebels."216 Collins also thinks that the Syrian colonists were given land confiscated from the Jews. 217 Bar-Kochva states that the land was confiscated from the rebels and then distributed to the Hellenist Jews. While Bar-Kochva admits that neither 1 or 2Maccabees speak of this confiscation, he believes that 1Macc. 6:24 and 7:7 "should be understood against this background." He states that one should see this as an example of the policy "of confiscating the lands of rebels and turning them over to supporters of the regime," a custom well known from the Seleucid empire." 218 Both hypotheses could be true, and land could have been given to both Jewish supporters of the regime and Greek settlers. I am impressed with the evidence of Dan. 11 :39 but I am puzzled by this reading of the passages from 1Mace. To say that the Maccabees have taken the Hellenists' lands does not necessarily mean that they were taking their own lands back. Still, if we put Dan. ll :39 together with the citations from lMacc., there does seem to be a cycle of confiscation. If so, Hyldahl 's hypothesis is at least plausible, and Mattathias rebels because of confiscation of his priestly property. The problem is that Mattathias initiates the rebellion not because he lost his property; if anything, his status is duly noted and respected and he is offered more (1Macc. 2:17-18). Am I missing a veiled threat that if he does not comply with the officer's demands, his property will be taken away? If so, no one, as far as I know, has ever suggested this reading of 1Macc. 2. It is true that when Mattathias flees with his sons after assassinating the officer and the renegade Jew, they leave "behind all their possessions in the town" (1Macc. 2:28). The rebellion did not happen because of confiscation, at least in the case of the man who started the revolution; instead, the confiscation happened because of the rebellion. Nevertheless, all of this does seem to reflect a cycle of confiscation. 216. Goldstein I Maccabees 124. 217. John J. Collins Daniel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993) 388. 218. Bezalel Bar-Kochva Judas Maccabaeus: The Jewish struggle against the Se/eucids (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) 441.

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But I would prefer to go another route, to say that there was a deeper threat to the fraternal order than the confiscation of some of their property if they rebelled. Why did Mattathias leave Jerusalem? As I have speculated above, Mattathias served as a priest in Jerusalem as part of his order in the regular rotation of clans and that he saw first-hand the greater threat to the future of the priesthood. It was not just about property but also about the very status of the /cohen, the structure that had lasted for centuries. And more, for it was not just that one caste was no longer in exclusive control of the Temple. It was the worship in the Temple, the god that was being worshipped. In anthropological terms, the Temple was the hearth, and non-priestly lackeys of foreigners had confiscated that hearth. From a priest's point of view, there was nothing to lose except his property. Everything else was already lost, and the basis for his livelihood was in jeopardy. And so Mattathias and his sons, a fraternal order, went to war to defend the fraternal order of priests who represented the fraternal order of the Jews. And by forcibly circumcising all male babies, he was a priest acting in the spirit of Gen. 17, the violent character of karet, and the Priestly code's emphasis on this ancient rite as a primary element in the perpetuation of the Jewish people.

Chapter Seven Mattathias and Defensive Warfare on the Sabbath According to !Maccabees, Mattathias instituted the policy of defensive fighting on the Sabbath. It is often assumed that from Mattathias on, the Maccabees and their spiritual descendants believed that such fighting was permitted. I will discuss the effect of Mattathias 's Sabbath proclamation on the rise of the Maccabees. I will examine whether warfare on the Sabbath was actually an innovation at all and whether even Mattathias 's own sons followed this policy. In the process of discussing this topic, we will learn something about the practice of the Sabbath in Israelite religion and the flexibility of Jewish law in pre-rabbinic times. In I Maccabees 2:27-29, Mattathias and his sons, fleeing from the judgment of the authorities after the violent and radical act of assassinating a Seleucid commander and a willing participant in pagan rites, escape to the mountains without their possessions. Others do not join Mattathias in the heights but instead go, with their families and their flocks, into hiding places in the desert. The Seleucids take cruel advantage of the Jewish abstention from activity on the seventh day. At that time many went down to dwell in the desert, seeking Justice and Vindication, they and their children and their wives and then: cattle, hard pressed by the persecutions. A report came to the king 's men and to the forces in Jerusalem, the City of David, that men who had violated the command of the king had gone down to the hiding places in the desert. With a large force they pursued them and, on coming upon them, they encamped and formed in battle line against them on the Sabbath day, saying to them, "Come out to us and obey the word of the king, and we shall let you live." They, however, replied, "We shall neither come out nor obey the word of the king to profane the Sabbath day."' Accordingly, they advanced quickly upon them in battle line. But the Jews neither replied to them nor hurled a stone at them nor blocked the entrances to their hiding places, saying, "Let us all die in our innocence. Heaven and earth bear witness over us, that you condemn us unjustly." They attacked them in battle line on the Sabbath. They were killed with their wives, their children, and their cattle, to the number of one thousand human beings. There is a brief echo of this incident in 2Maccabees 6: 11 : Other Jews hastily assembled nearby in the caves to observe the Sabbath in secret. On being denounced to Philip they were all burned to death because they refrained from defending themselves, out of respect for the holiest of days.

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2Macc. 6:11 is a reference to the same group as 1Mace. 2:29-38. We shall return to the meaning of this event in 2Maccabees. In 1Maccabees, the Sabbath massacre brings an important reaction from Mattathias and his men: When the news reached Mattathias and his friends, they were deeply grieved over the victims' fate. They said to one another, "If we all do as our brothers have done and do not fight against the gentiles for our lives and our laws, they will now quickly wipe us off the face of the earth." On that day they came to a decision: "If any man comes against us in battle on the Sabbath day, we shall fight against him and not all die as our brothers died in their hiding places." (!Maccabees 2:39-43) This innovation seems to have been crucial in winning the support of many to the cause: Thereupon a company of Pietists (Asidaioi) joined them, mighty warriors of Israel, all who volunteered in defense of the Torah. 1 Was Mattathias indeed an innovator of halakhah? Was it this innovation that brought strength to the Maccabaean uprising? What can we learn from earlier texts about the history of defensive warfare on the Sabbath in order to understand whether defensive warfare on the Sabbath was an innovation?

Biblical Texts The historical background to the subject of defensive war on the Sabbath in Maccabaean times is the history of war on the Sabbath in Biblical times. While the subject of the development ofthe Sabbath is a much-discussed and important topic in modern Biblical research, we need to at least summarize the state of that research for our purposes here. The statement that allowing defensive war on the Sabbath is an innovation in the laws of that era assumes a great deal about the 1. While the translation here is "Pietists," I have put the Greek term Asidaioi in parentheses. The modem reader should not think of the Asidaioi as a sect as in the related well-known Hebrew term Hasidim. The Asidaioi should not be considered a sect at all but a group of persons who shared a common identity. The term Asidaioi also should not be limited to a military definition. The study of the references to the Asidaioi in 1 and 2 Maccabees leads to the conclusion that they were leading citizens of Judaea who supported Mattathias and his sons in their resistance to the measures taken by Antiochus IV against the Judaeans and their religion. That !Maccabees 2:42 describes the Asidaioi as "devoted to the law" supports the conclusion that they were leading citizens who supported the Maccabees because they opposed those who were acting against the traditions and the sanctity of the Temple. For discussion and bibliography, see my Alcimus, Enemy of the Maccabees (Lanham, Md.: UPA, 2005) 161-65.

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laws of the Sabbath before that time. The Biblical period is a long one, spanning many centuries. Are we supposed to assume that all Israelites and Judaeans always observed the Sabbath in the same strict ways throughout that whole period? Innovations are often a return to older practices that have gone out of favor; could it have been that Mattathias was not so much an innovator as a policy-maker who had reverence for a different concept of the Sabbath, a more ancient way of observing that sacred day? While scholars often compare Mattathias's statement about the Sabbath to many Rabbinic statements found in the Talmud and Midrash, those are obviously later laws and sayings made by later sages. It is anachronistic to read their beliefs back into the Maccabaean era. We need to have a better sense of what the Sabbath was and how it was practiced before the era of Mattathias in order to understand the significance of his action.

Biblical Texts on the Sabbath2 The history of the Sabbath day is not entirely clear, but scholarship has determined that there was development over the centuries of the Biblical period. Scholars such as Roland de Vaux claim that the day became more restrictive, with the Babylonian Exile as the turning point, perhaps because the ritual became more central during a time when so many other rituals involving the Temple were unavailable. 3 This scheme is far too neat to be true and reflects the circular logic of the Documentary Hypothesis and a Christian bias. The one hundred and eleven references to the Sabbath in the Hebrew Bible defy such easy grids. The Sabbath is a symbol and thus many different meanings may be attached to it. If it is a reminder of God's creation of the world, as some of the texts indicate, it would it not be sufficient to have a New Year's Festival celebrating the birthday of the world. Was the Sabbath made for humans, or, as Tsevat has theorized, do Israelites demonstrate their humility and submission to God by 2. Neils-Erik Andreasen The Old Testament Sabbath SBLDS 7 (Missoula, MT.: SBL, 1972); M. Gruber "The Source of the Biblical Sabbath" JANES 1 (1969) 14-20; G. F. Hasel "The Sabbath in the Pentateuch" and "The Sabbath in the Prophets and Historical Literature of the Old Testament" in The Sabbath in Scripture and History ed. K. A. Strand (Washington D.C.: Review and Herald, 1982) 21-43 and 44-50; idem "New Moon and Sabbath" in Eighth Century Israelite Prophetic Writings (I sa 1: 13; Hos 2: 13; Amos 8:5)" in "Wiinschet Jerusalem Frieden": Collected Communications to the Xllth Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, Jerusalem, 1986 ed. M. Augustin and K.-D. Schunck (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1988) 37-64. 3. Roland de Vaux Ancient Israel translated by John McHugh (New York: McGrawHiii, 1961) 479-83.

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giving up their autonomy over their time for this day? 4 The very fact that the Sabbath does not follow the periods of the moon means that it is not dependent on nature, as a reflection of the fact that God is beyond nature. It could be all of the above: a reminder of God's creation of the world, a way to get people to stop and be refreshed, and a reminder that God is outside of time. Modern scholarship has attempted to find the pre-history of the Israelite Sabbath in ancient Babylonia. Earlier scholars such as Meinhold 5 connected the Babylonian shabattulshapattu and the Hebrew shabbat. The Babylonians observed the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first and the twenty-eighth day of every month as umu limnu or evil days. In addition, they also observed the fifteenth and nineteenth days of the month. The fifteenth day, designated as shabattu/shapattu, was the full moon festival. If one counts seven times seven days from the first day of the previous month, a week of weeks, one comes to the nineteenth day, which was called umu uggati, "a day of anger." On these two days, it was forbidden to make a wish, and the leaders of the kingdom, including the high priest and the king, were required to suspend some of their normal activities. The high priest was forbidden to wear white or change his clothing; he could not offer sacrifices or even eat salted meat cooked over embers. The king could not ride in his chariot or even boast of his exploits. The seer could not make announcements; the physician could not treat his patients. The shabattulshapattu was defined in an ancient syllabary as um nuh libbi, "the day when the heart [of the gods] is propitiated." Work and business, however, do not seem to have stopped on any of these "unlucky days." If the basic contours of early Israelite history are correct, and the Hebrew or proto-Israelites lived in Mesopotamia before they lived in Canaan and Egypt, they would have been exposed to the term shabattulshapattu. If that outline is not correct, and the early Israelites did not have contact with Babylonia until centuries later, then the connection between the terms would be impossible. The more important consideration is that the Hebrew Shabbat could not be more different from the Babylonian day. It comes every week, not once a month like its Babylonian counterpart; it is not related to the cycles of the moon, as the festival of the full moon is; it is a time of cessation from work, unlike the Babylonian day when work went on; it is a positive day connected to the 4. Matitiahu Tsevat The Meaning of the Book of Job and Other Biblical Studies: Essays on the Literature and Religion of the Hebrew Bible (New York: Ktav, 1989) 3952. 5. J. Meinhold Sabbat und Woche im A/ten Testament FRLANT 5 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht 1905); idem "Zur Sabbathfrage" ZAW 48 (1930) 121-38; cf. more recently, Gnana Robinson The Origin and Development of the Old Testament Sabbath BBET 21 (Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, 1988).

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wonders of God's creation, unlike the seventh and fifteenth days in Babylonia that were considered evil. As far as I can tell, the Hebrew Shabbat presents only one element that resembles the Babylonia shabattu, and that is its name. As Greenberg says, there may be some relationship between the Babllonian shabattu/shapattu and the Hebrew shabbat, but no one knows what it is. Tsevat states: " ... shapattu ... formerly excited speculation as to its relation to Hebrew shabbat, but this speculation led nowhere." 7 The quest to make the connection between the Hebrew day and the Babylonian one may be fruitless, but for my purpose here may still be useful below when I discuss Babylonian attacks against the Judaeans on the Sabbath. Any modem examination of the history of the Biblical Sabbath must forego the canonical order of the relevant texts and think in the critical categories of the Documentary Hypothesis. The J passages which many scholars refer to as "the Ritual Decalogue" (Exodus 23:12 and 34:21) state that the Sabbath is to be held on the seventh day after a six-day workweek. Even during times of planting and harvest, no labor is to be performed in either the field or the house; slaves and beasts must be allowed to rest. There are significant differences between the two versions in Exodus and Deuteronomy: Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the LORD your God; you shall not do any work-you, your son or daughter, your male of female slave, or your cattle, or the stranger who is within your settlements. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth and sea, and all that is in them, and He rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. (Exodus 20:8-11) Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath for the LORD your God; you shall do any work-you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your ox or your ass, or any of your cattle, or the stranger in your settlements, so that your male and female slave may rest as you do. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the LORD your God freed you from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. (Deuteronomy 5:12-15) 6. Moshe Greenberg "Sabbath" Encyclopedia Judaica Vol. 14 (New York: Macmillan, 1971) 562. 7. Tsevat The Meaning of the Book ofJob 43.

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On the Sabbath, everyone in the community must refrain from labor in reenactment of God's cessation from labor on the seventh day of creation (Ex. 20: 10) and in remembrance of God's liberation of the Israelites from the labor of Egyptian enslavement (Deut. 5: 15). In both of the Ethical Decalogue of Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, the Sabbath is the only holy day mentioned: "Remember/observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy" (Ex. 20:8-11 and Deut. 5:13-15). This is different from the Ritual Decalogue that also speaks of the pilgrimage festivals. The Sabbath thus gains in importance in the Ethical Decalogue, a list that is historically secondary to the Ritual Decalogue. Following critical orthodoxy, the Priestly texts beginning with Genesis l: 1-2:3 should be later than these passages. But one wonders how the Ethical Decalogue in Exodus 20, which clearly refers to the Priestly Creation story in v. 11, can be earlier than the text on which it is based. Look at the relevant verses from the two passages: The heaven and the earth were finished, and all their array. On the seventh day God finished the work that he had been doing, and he ceased on the seventh day from all the work that He had done. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because on it God ceased from all the work of creation that He had done. (Genesis 2: 1-3) For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth and sea, and all that is in them, and He rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. (Exodus 20: 11) I am suggesting that, at least in this case, P must precede J; the Priestly story must be earlier than the J law. But notice what we have not encountered so far: Ritual laws about observance on the Sabbath. Rest is one thing; weekly rituals are another. Does "keeping the Sabbath" or "hallowing it" mean 'observe its particular rituals? I ask this question to attempt to detennine what is primary to the concept of the Sabbath. The answer is that rest, as opposed to specific ritual observances, is primary. To rest, as God did, to let one's slaves and beasts rest, was the Sabbath commandment long before anyone prescribed rituals. Even when they did, those observances may have been priestly in design and practice. That is, Jewish people today who are familiar with special Sabbath blessings such as those for candle lighting and drinking wine may find it surprising that these rabbinic rituals did not exist in Biblical times.

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With the exception of the story of the man who gathers wood for a fire on the Sabbath (Numbers 15:32ff.), we do not have any Pentateucha1 text that indicates that the Israelites broke the Sabbath in the wilderness. Even the manna from Heaven does not fall on the Sabbath so that people will not have to work for their sustenance on that day (Ex. 16:21ff.). Ex. 23:12 and 34:21 also speak of cessation from labor, with the latter insisting that this even applies to "plowing time and harvest time"; i.e. without exceptions. Ex. 31: 12-17 is quite adamant in this regard: You shall keep the Sabbath, for it is holy for you. He who profanes it shall be put to death; whoever does work on it, that person shall be cut off from his kin .... Whoever does work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. (Ex. 31:14-15) This ultimate punishment is prescribed in a number of texts, including Ex. 35:2ff. (v. 3 prohibits the kindling of fire) and Num. 15:32-6 (the prohibition against gathering wood). These two passages are especially significant because they describe two acts of "work" that are explicitly prohibited. While Rabbinic tradition uses the acts of work performed in the construction of the Tabernacle as those that are prohibited on the Sabbath, and while Ex. 31: 12ff., at the conclusion of the instructions for the Tabernacle, does forbid work (v. 14) and commands that "on the seventh day there shall be a sabbath of complete rest" (v. 15), it is at least technically correct to say that the acts that constitute work are not enumerated as such. As Finkelstein puts it, "But nothing is said about buying, selling, writing, weaving, building, sewing and all the industrial arts and crafts." 8 Finkelstein cautions us against assuming too much about actual Sabbath practice in the Biblical period. For example, the Sabbath prohibition probably did not extend to short trips to visit a man of God. When the Shunammite woman's son dies suddenly and she asks her husband to send her one of their servants and one of their riding beasts so that she can hurry to get Elisha's help, he replies, "Why are you going to him today? It is neither new moon nor Sabbath" (2 Kings 4:23). This verse certainly implies that such journeys were common on New Moons and Sabbaths. Thus it is interesting to note that travel might not have been considered work. This text is also evidence of Sabbath observance in the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the ninth century.

8. Louis Finkelstein "Some Examples of the Maccabaean Halakah" JBL XLIX (1930) 26.

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As Israelite society became less agricultural and more mercantile, the Sabbath prohibition against commercial activity became more central. Amos rails at those who would commit both social injustices and ritual sins: Listen to this, you who devour the needy, annihilating the poor of the land, saying, "If only the new moon were over, so that we could sell grain; the Sabbath, so that we could offer the wheat for sale ... (Amos 8:4-5) Amos does not say that anyone is actually breaking the Sabbath, only that some are so anxious to rob the poor that they cannot wait for the Sabbath to be over so that they can do so. If they had broken the Sabbath restriction, Amos would have been more than ready to say so. Hosea, in warning the people of the Northern Kingdom that they will be punished for their sins, states: And I will end her rejoicing; Her festivals, new moons, and sabbaths-All her festive seasons. (Hosea 2:13) Greenberg says beautifully that ''this is a precious attestation of the joyous character of the day" in the Northern Kingdom during the ninth and eighth centuries. 9 Isaiah 1: 13 is another early reference to the Sabbath: Bringing oblation is futile, incense is offensive to Me. New moon and Sabbath, proclaiming of solemnities, assemblies with iniquity, I cannot abide. While this is only a passing reference to the Sabbath, it does show that the Sabbath was being observed with ritual sacrifices in the 700s BCE Those scholars who want to deny the pre-exilic history of the Sabbath have to contend with this kind of evidence. On the other hand, there is nothing in these passages from Amos, Hosea or Isaiah that reflects the priority of the Sabbath. It appears that this developed in the late pre-Exilic period, perhaps connected with the Deuteronomic reformation, and can be seen in the fact that the Deuteronomic "Ethical Decalogue" found in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 contains the Sabbath but not the pilgrimage festivals and that the prophet Jeremiah makes the observance of the Sabbath the basic commandment. Jeremiah warns the people that if they

9. Greenberg "Sabbath" 558.

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do not keep the Sabbath, specifically if they continue to allow the buying and selling of goods on that day, they will face terrible disaster: Thus said the LORD: Guard yourselves for your own sake against carrying burdens on the Sabbath day, and bringing them through the gates of Jerusalem. Nor shall you carry out burdens from your houses on the Sabbath day, or do any work, but you shall hallow the Sabbath day, as I commanded your fathers. (But they would not listen or tum their ear; they stiffened their necks and would not pay heed or accept discipline.) If you obey Me-declares the LORD-and do not bring in burdens through the gates of this city on the sabbath day, but hallow the sabbath day and do no work on it, then thro.ugh the gates of this city shall enter kings who sit upon the throne of David, with their officers--riding on chariots and horses, they and their officersand the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And people shall come from the towns of Judah and from the environs of Jerusalem, and from the land of Benjamin, and from the Shephelah, and from the hill country, and from the Negeb, bringing burnt offerings and sacrifices, meal offerings and frankincense, and bringing offerings of thanksgiving to the House of the LORD. But if you do not obey My command to hallow the Sabbath day and to carry in no burdens through the gates of Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, then I will set fire to its gates; it shall consume the fortresses of Jerusalem and it shall not be extinguished. (Jeremiah 17:19-27) While most scholars view this passage as possibly non-Jeremian and artificial, others see it as nothing less than a landmark in the history of the Sabbath. Bright, representing the first group here, thinks that for Jeremiah to make the keeping of the Sabbath the very condition of the nation's survival is "strange" coming from this prophet whom, Bright insists, does not think that "diligent prosecution of the cult" can secure the kingdom's well-being. 10 This is the usual Christian antinomian understanding of how the prophets viewed the cult and is not an accurate description of the prophetic position on ritual. The prophets may insist that ritual without social justice is hypocritical and that the cult cannot save the people if they are wicked. In fact, Jeremiah's demand that the people must be obedient to God or suffer doom is completely characteristic of this prophet.

10. John Bright Jeremiah Anchor Bible Commentary (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965) 120.

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What is very unusual here, and quite surprising and innovative, is Jeremiah's focus on the Sabbath in particular. As opposed to Bright, Greenberg sees the passage as completely genuine and integral to Jeremiah's message. Greenberg thinks that Jeremiah's focus on the Sabbath may have been a response to the years of Manasseh 's reign when paganism was the official state cult, perhaps because, unlike other rituals such as sacrifices, the Sabbath is distinct and particular to Israelite religion. I would add that one learns about a later writer's intentionality not through what they simply bring down from the past but by what they change. When Jeremiah says " ... but you shall hallow the Sabbath day, as I commanded your fathers," he does seem to elevate the Sabbath to what is at least a higher level for his era. It may be that there is archaeological evidence to support the contention of the respect for the Sabbath during this period. The Mesad Hashavyahu/Yavneh-Yam Ostracon contains the phrase lpny sbt, or "before the Sabbath." 11 The text is dated to about 625 BCE, the reign of Josiah of Judah: Let my lord commander hear the case of his servant! As for thy servant, thy servant was harvesting at Hazar-susim (?). And thy servant was still harvesting as they finished the storage of grain, as usual before the Sabbath. What I find most interesting is the phrase "as usual." That there are some Sabbath-breakers in Jeremiah's time does not mean that everyone broke it. We also notice that Jeremiah focuses on the Sabbath in .Jerusalem. There seems to be a concept of Jerusalem as a Temple where the ritual must be observed correctly. This may be important below where we will see attacks on Jerusalem on the Sabbath. It seems that a people who are not used to war in general, and are not used to being able to make decisions about war, will have the added disadvantage of not being used to carrying weapons of the Sabbath. Our issue concerning defensive warfare on the Sabbath may really be an issue, at least in some cases, of whether one may carry in Jerusalem on the Sabbath. Another important passage here is Ezekiel 20: 10-16: I brought them out of the land of Egypt and I led them into the wilderness. I gave them My laws and taught them My rules, by the pursuit of which a man shall live. Moreover, I gave them My Sabbaths to serve as a sign between Me and them, that they might know that it is I the LORD who sanctify them. But the House of Israel rebelled against Me in the wilderness; they did not follow My 11. William Foxwell Albright "Palestinian Inscriptions" in ANET 568.

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laws and they rejected My rules-by the pursuit of which a man shall live-and they grossly desecrated My Sabbaths. Then I thought to pour out My fury upon them in the wilderness and to make an end of them; but I acted for the sake of My name, that it might not be profaned in the sight of the nations before whose eyes I had led them out . . . for they had rejected My rules, disobeyed My laws, and desecrated My Sabbaths; their hearts followed after them fetishes .... The prophet also emphasizes the profanation of God's Sabbaths in 20:20, 21, and 24. As II Isaiah states, the people in the post-exilic era have not learned from their ancestors; the leaders need to cope with common violations of the Sabbath laws: If you refrain from trampling the Sabbath, From pursuing your affairs on My holy day; If you call the Sabbath "delight," The LORD's holy day "honored"; And if you honor it and go not your ways Nor look to your affairs, nor strike bargainsThen you can seek the favor of the LORD. I will set you astride the heights of the earth. And let you enjoy the heritage of your father JacobFor the mouth of the LORD has spoken. (Isaiah 58:13-14) The anonymous prophet tells the people that they should desist from conducting their business affairs on the Sabbath and holds out great rewards if they will change in this way. He clearly thinks ofbuying and selling as "work." In the same age, Nehemiah speaks of his attempt to stop his contemporaries from their violation of the Sabbath: At that time I saw men in Judah treading winepresses on the Sabbath, and others bringing heaps of grain and loading them onto asses, also wine, grapes, figs, and all sorts of goods, and bringing them into Jerusalem on the Sabbath. I admonished them there and then for selling provisions. Tyrians who lived there brought fish and all sorts of wares and sold them to the Judahites in Jerusalem. I censured the nobles of Judah, saying to them, "What evil thing is this that you are doing, profaning the Sabbath day! This is just what your ancestors did, and for it God brought all this misfortune on this city, and now you give cause for further wrath against Israel by profaning the Sabbath!" (Neb. 13:15-18)

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Nehemiah witnesses several acts that he defines as "work" on the Sabbath: treading winepresses, carrying grain and other crops and goods, loading the grain onto beasts of burden, traveling to bring the provisions into Jerusalem, selling these provisions, and buying fish and other goods from the Tyrians. 12 Directly borrowing from the passage in Jeremiah cited above, 13 Nehemiah states that the cause of the destruction on the Sabbath was just such a profanation of the Sabbath. As we have seen, we have strong evidence from both Jeremiah and Ezekiel of earlier prophets admonishing the Judaeans of the era preceding 586 BCE for their violation of the Sabbath. Nehemiah took Jeremiah's concern, highlighted it and brought it down to his own time. Nehemiah is not creating this idea to suit his present purpose of warning his generation; he is reflecting on and applying a well-known tradition that seems to have been very well known to his constituents. Is there some connection between the Sabbath and the destruction of the Temple in 586 BCE? We shall consider this possibility below. Here, what is significant is that Nehemiah feels that he must take drastic action to preserve the sanctity of the Sabbath in Jerusalem: When shadows filled the gateways of Jerusalem at the approach of the Sabbath, I gave orders that the doors be closed, and ordered them not to be opened until after the Sabbath. I stationed some of my servants at the gates, so that no goods should enter on the Sabbath. Once or twice the merchants and the vendors of all sorts spent the night outside Jerusalem, but I warned them, saying, "What do you mean by spending the night alongside the wall? If you do so again, I will lay hands upon you!" From then on they did not come on the Sabbath. I gave orders to the Levites to purify themselves and come and guard the gates, to preserve the sanctity of the Sabbath. (Nehemiah 13 14 : 19-22) Is it possible that Nehemiah's measures took hold and that the nature of the Sabbath day changed for the next few centuries, all the way down to the era of Mattathias? Could it be, at least, that from Nehemiah on, the Sabbath in Jerusalem was held very strictly?

12. B. Z. Luria "Men ofTyre also, who lived in the city, brought in fish and all kinds ofwares (Nehemiah 13:16)" (Heb.) Beth Mikra 15 (1970) 363-67. 13. Moshe Greenberg "The Sabbath Pericope in Jeremiah" lyyunim beSefer Yirmeyahu (Jerusalem: Israel Society for Biblical Research, 1971) 23-51 (Heb.). 14. Finkelstein mistakenly refers to Nehemiah 12 instead of 13, which is correct.

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Biblical Texts on Sabbath Warfare Joshua Marching and (Conquering?) on the Sabbath

Turning to our subject of warfare on the Sabbath, the most famous Biblical text is the description of the battle of Jericho in Joshua 6. God commands the troops to march in battle array around the city for six days and then encircle it seven times on the seventh day, blowing on rams' horns and then giving a mighty shout so that the walls come tumbling down (Joshua 6:2-5). While we cannot claim that the seventh day here is the Sabbath, we obviously can be certain that one of the days of marching is. There is no exception for the Sabbath; this military activity on the Sabbath is based on a direct command from God. And so they marched around the city once on the second day and returned to the camp. They did this six days. On the seventh day, they rose at daybreak and marched around the city, in the same manner, seven times; that was the only day that they marched around the city seven times. (Joshua 6:14-15) "The seventh day" seems to mean, quite simply, the seventh day of marching. In terms of the traditional Jewish concept of the Sabbath, it would be easier to say that one of the days aside from the seventh was the Sabbath so that the only prohibited activity on the Sabbath day was the marching itself. It is interesting that Jewish tradition not only accepted the fact that one of the days was the Sabbath, 15 but also went so far as to say that the day of the conquest itself was the Sabbath, which was not a necessary inference. Midrash Bereshit Rabba 14 interprets the phrase "the seventh day" to mean the Sabbath, opening up new issues such as the killing of the enemy in offensive war, kindling of fires, etc. The medieval commentator Radak 16 even claims that God temporarily suspended the Sabbath laws for this special event. Jewish tradition, so consumed with superimposing its standards onto the Bible, moves away from its usual position of developing strictness on the Sabbath to support war, and not just defensive war, on the Sabbath.

15 .Commentators could have said that the seven days were not actually consecutive and that the anny did not march on the Sabbath; traditional exegesis does not refrain from such departures from the plain meaning of the text when a basic religious principle is involved. 16. Rabbi David Kimhi (1160-1235), also known by the Hebrew acronym as RaDaK, was a medieval rabbi, biblical commentator, philosopher, and grammarian.

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The Sabbath Revolution

The High Priest Jehoiada 's coup against Athaliah, queen of Judah in 2 Kings 11 (and the revision to include details about the Levites and rituals in 2 Chronicles 23) is another example of military activity on the Sabbath. 17 Aside from the details that he adds about personnel, the Chronicler changes a clandestine coup into a popular uprising. Jehoiada, with the help of his wife Jehoshabeath (the dead king Ahaziah's sister) has protected the child and heir to the throne, Joash son of Ahaziah, from the clutches of his grandmother Athaliah, who has massacred all the other members of the royal family of Judah. After six years of hiding Joash in the Temple, Jehoiada decides it is time to rebel. In 2 Kings 11, he tells those guards who are on duty on the Sabbath to maintain guard over the palace, another third of the guards to be stationed at the Gate of the foundation, and the last third to be at the gate behind the guards. The two thirds that are off duty will guard the Temple in order to protect the king. In 2 Chronicles 23, those who are conducting the coup are now not parts of the King's guard but priests and Levites. Jehoiada's detailed plans for the execution of the rebellion include instructions to these Temple personnel: This is the thing that you shall do: of you priests and Levites who come off duty on the Sabbath 18, one third shall be gatekeepers, and one third shall be at the king's house and one third at the Gate of the Foundation, and all the people shall be in the courts of the house of the Lord .... The Levites and all Judah did according to all that Jehoiada the priest commanded. They each brought his men, who were to go off duty on the Sabbath, with those who were to come on duty on the Sabbath; for Jehoiada the priest did not dismiss the divisions. (2 Chronicles 23:4-5, 8) The high priest himself uses the changes in personnel for the Sabbath and the crowds in assembly for the sacred day for his revolutionary purpose. It is not by chance that all of this happens on the Sabbath. It is the later and much more ritualistic and ecclesiastical Chronicles that changes the text in order to have Temple personnel involved rather than the secular guards. In so doing, Chronicles, without embarrassment or defensiveness, places a violent, military coup on the Sabbath. This action is not, again, defensive in nature. The high

17. See Joseph Sievers The Hasmonaeans and Their Supporters: From Mattathias to the Death ofJohn Hyrcanus I (Atlanta: Scholars, 1990) 33. 18. Since I have as a rule used the NN translation of the Bible, I must note that that translation of II Chronicles does not have any reference to the Sabbath. I follow Sara Japhet I and II Chronicles (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993) here.

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priest uses the Sabbath for a tactical purpose. It is also interesting to note that in both II Kings and II Chronicles, the Sabbath is the day for the changing of the guard at the Palace and the Temple. 19 Extra-Biblical Synchronizations of the Conquest of Jerusalem on the Sabbath

There are extra-Biblical references that may be significant for our purpose here. In Sennacherib 's letter about his campaign to Judaea in 701 BCE, the Assyrian king refers to his capture of Lachish on Hezekiah's "seventh time" (ina 7-su).Z 0 It is possible, following Shea who calls this "the earliest extra-biblical reference to the Sabbath," that Sennacherib took Lachish on the Jewish Sabbath when the defenders were resting. 21 If so, we would have a fascinating precedent for the beliefs and actions of those in the !60s who interpreted the Sabbath restrictions to mean that even defensive warfare was not acceptable on the seventh day. The Chronicles of the Chaldean Kings 22 puts the date of Jerusalem's capture by the Chaldeans on the second day of the month of Adar in Nebuchadnezzar's seventh regnal year, or, in the Julian system, March 16, 597 BCE. 23 Johns, following the calculations of Parker and Dobberstein, 24 calculates that this day was a Saturday. 25 Johns does this by utilizing the astronomical tables to ascertain that the Julian day number of May 16, 597 BCE is 1503444, a Saturday. 26 Zedekiah, placed on the throne by Nebuchadnezzar to succeed the exiled Jehoiachin, also rebelled against the Chaldean king. Synchronizing the Biblical 19. DeVaux Ancient Israel482. There is also an interesting feature in 2 Kings 16:18 where Ahaz extends "to the House of the LORD the Sabbath passage that had been built in the palace and the king's outer entrance." 20. N. Na'aman "Sennacherib's "Letter to God" on His Campaign to Judah" BASOR 214 (1974) 25-39; W. H. Shea "Sennacherib's Description of Lachish and of Its Conquest" Andrews University Seminary Studies 26 ( 1988) 171-80; idem "The Sabbath in Extra-Biblical Sources" Adventist Perspectives 312 (1989) 17-25. 21. Shea "Sennacherib 's Description" 179; idem "The Sabbath in Extra-Biblical Sources" 22-23. 22. D. J. Wiseman Chronicles of the Chaldean Kings (626-556 B.C.) in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1956) 72-3. 23. A. F. Johns "The Military Strategy of Sabbath Attacks on the Jews" VT 13 (1963) 482-86. 24. R. A. Parker and W. H. Dubberstein Babylonian Chronology: 626 B.C.- A.D. 75, 25. 25. Johns "The Military Strategy of Sabbath Attacks" 483-4. 26. Johns's computations are based on the tables found in the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac for 1962 (published by the United States Government Printing Office, Washington D.C., 1960), esp. Table I, 437.

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material (2 Kings 25:1; Jer. 52:4; Ezek. 24:1-2) with the Babylonian data, the date of the first assault on Jerusalem was on the tenth day of the tenth month of Zedekiah's ninth year, or January 15, 588 BCE, which was Julian day number 1506671, also a Saturday. In Zedekiah's eleventh year, the fall of Jerusalem occurred on the ninth day of the fourth month (Jer. 52:5-8), or July 29, 587, Julian day number 1507231, which again, has been calculated to be a Saturday. 27 It is logical to think that Nebuchadnezzar, who had conquered Jerusalem so successfully on a Jewish Sabbath in 597, would select another Saturday for his final attack on the Jewish city and that he did indeed breach the walls and capture Jerusalem on the 91h of Av, a day which has remained so fateful and significant for Jewish people until this day. 28 Hasel concludes, "Based on these calculations, it appears that the military strategy of the Assyrians and NeoBabylonians utilized the seventh-day Sabbath rest of the Israelites to accomplish their military-political goals." 29 To be fair, it is not entirely clear what this data tells us. It is possible that there are some erroneous calculations here, or that it is a coincidence that all of these events seem to have happened on a Saturday. Perhaps the foreign kings chose the Jewish Sabbath as an auspicious or lucky day to wage significant battles. It is improbable to think that the Jews of Lachish and Jerusalem would not fight at all on a Saturday; if so, no prolonged siege would have been necessary in any of these cases. It is plausible, however, to think that foreign kings were under the impression that the defenses of a Jewish city were at least somewhat weaker (not fully-manned) on their Sabbath, and that there may have been something to this. If the fall of Jerusalem occurred on the Sabbath, it is hard to believe that the Biblical sources would not have mentioned it. Still, it may be that this is exactly what Jeremiah 17:27 and Neb. 13:18 imply; the former in a prediction and the latter in recalling the reason for the catastrophe of the destruction of the Temple. To summarize so far: While the evidence about the Biblical period gleaned from extra-Biblical evidence is that the enemy attacked the Israelites/Judaeans on the Sabbath because it was an advantageous strategy, the evidence from the Biblical texts themselves is that warfare on the Sabbath was permitted. These two lines of evidence are not contradictory. The lsraelites/Judaeans could have defended themselves on the Sabbath, only to be attacked, with different measures of success, by enemies who thought the day to be a propitious one to attain victory over a people who believed the day to be sacred.

27. Johns "The Military Strategy" 484. 28 .It is interesting to note that the Jewish calendar today will not allow the fast day of the Ninth of Av, Tisha B'Av, to occur on a Saturday. 29. Hasel "Sabbath" ABD V, 833.

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The Conquest of Jerusalem on the Sabbath in 312 BCE According to the account in Josephus's Antiquities, Ptolemy Soter of Egypt, Alexander's general who became the founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty, took Jerusalem in 312 BCE on the Sabbath without resistance. Since this is a fact that has been called into question, I cite this account that includes its source: And this king seized Jerusalem by resorting to cunning and deceit. For he entered the city on the Sabbath as if to sacrifice, and, as the Jews did not oppose him-for they did not suspect any hostile actand because of their lack of suspicion and the nature of the day, were enjoying idleness and ease, he became master of the city without difficulty and ruled it harshly. This account is attested by Agatharchides of Cnidus, the historian of the Diadochi, who reproaches us for our superstition, on account of which we lost our liberty, in these words, "There is a nation called Jews, who have a strong and great city called Jerusalem, which they allowed to fall into the hands of Ptolemy by refusing to take up arms and, instead, through their untimely superstition submitted to having a hard master." This, then, was the opinion which Agatharchides expressed about our nation. (Ant. XII.6) We need to separate the two versions of the event inside this passage. In the first, by Josephus himself (as I shall explain below), it is not at all clear that the Jewish observance of the Sabbath precluded defensive warfare. The fall of Jerusalem happened because the Jews did not suspect anything. Ptolemy accomplished this feat knowing that the Sabbath ensured him a smooth and swift conquest. To give a relatively recent parallel, the Jews of the modem State of Israel believed that they could defend themselves on Yom Kippur. It is true, however, that the Israelis suffered losses because their vigilance was not at a high level on Yom Kippur, 1973, when several Arab nations conducted a major surprise attack. Josephus says that the Jews did not oppose Ptolemy because they did not suspect his treachery; he does not say that they did not oppose him because it was the Sabbath. On the contrary, Ptolemy had to use "cunning and deceit" even though it was the Sabbath; he used the sacredness of the day by pretending to be participating in the rituals. He would not have needed to use such trickery if there were a prohibition against self-defense on the Sabbath. Since it was the Sabbath and the Jews were involved in their leisure and were

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not carrying weapons, 30 Ptolemy had an easier time of the conquest even when his intentions became clear. The statement by Agatharchides that makes up part of the cited passage is also found in a fuller version in Josephus's Contra Apionem I 205 tf. There it is part of an attack on "superstitions:"31 Those (people) called Jews, inhabiting the most strongly fortified city of all, called by the locals Jerusalem, are accustomed to abstain from work every seventh day, neither to bear arms nor to engage in agricultural work, nor in any (other) form of public service, but to pray with outstretched hands in the temple until the evening; when Ptolemy, son of Lagus, entered the city with his force, the people, instead of guarding the city, kept to their folly, the fatherland received a cruel master, and the (defect of the) law which contains a thoughtless custom was exposed. (Contra Apionem 1.205-12) We see how Josephus abridges Agatharchides in the shorter Antiquities passage, partly because he has provided a context himself. Here, in the longer and thus more complete citation, we reach a different understanding. Jerusalem, a city that is strong and therefore eminently defensible, fell to Ptolemy because the Jews had a defective and ridiculous law that one should neither bear arms nor even defend one's city on the Sabbath. Thus we have three versions: Josephus's own summary, his abridgment of Agatharchides, and a fuller citation of Agatharchides. While Bar-Kochva32 assumes that Josephus had an internal, Jewish source for this event, it is quite possible, considering his emphasis on Agatharchides as a source, that Josephus only had Agatharchides 's testimony concerning this event and thus needed to frame it and respond to it before he referred to it. Why even refer to Agatharchides's terrible reproach of the Jews and one of their central rituals unless he had to, either because it was the most famous account of the fall of Jerusalem in 312 or the only such account? As we move from the first version (Josephus's own description) to the third (Agatharchides's full narrative), we find a growing rebuke of the Jews

30. M. D. Herr "The Problem of War on the Sabbath in the Second Temple and the Talmudic Periods" Tarbiz 30 (1961) 248-9, 354-6 (Hebrew). See also Bezalel BarKochva Judas Maccabaeus: The Jewish Struggle against the Seleucids (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) 478. 31. The context is the tragedy brought on by the beliefs of Antiochus I's daughter Stratonice, who would not leave Seleucia despite the fact that she was in harm's way. 32. Bar-Kochva Judas Maccabaeus 777ff.

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corresponding to an increasingly stronger statement that the Jews did not practice self-defense on the Sabbath. 33 Agatharchides's blatant anti-Judaism can be seen in the cited passages such as: "... the people, instead of guarding the city, kept to their folly, the fatherland received a cruel master, and the (defect of the) law which contains a thoughtless custom was exposed." How much more negative can one be about Jews and Judaism than this? The Sabbath was a "thoughtless custom" to begin with and the Jews were better off without it! Indeed, Tcherikover describes such stories as anti-Semitic jokes. 34 Still, from the Ptolemaic point-of-view of an 33. Who was Agatharchides and how seriously should we take him? Agatharchides of Cnidus was a Greek historian and geographer who lived in the 2nd century B.CE. He was the author of a number of works that now only survive in quotation. Photius describes him first as an assistant to Cineas, a counselor to Ptolemy VI, and later as a secretary to Heraclides Lembrus, who negotiated the treaty that ended Antiochus IV's invasion of Egypt in 169 B.CE. There are a few other clues about his life. At the conclusion of his On the Erythraean Sea, he apologizes that "as a result of the disturbances in Egypt" he no could longer access the official records and so could not finish the work. These disturbances are a reference either to 145 B.CE, when Ptolemy VIII purged Alexandria of the intellectuals who supported his rivals for the throne; or to 132 B.CE after Ptolemy, who having been driven from his kingdom by a rebellion, returned and exacted reprisals on that city. Almost the entire fifth (and last) book of Agatharchides's On the Erythraean Sea ("Peri ten Erythras thalasses"), a geographical treatise on the Hom of Africa and the lands around the Red Sea, has survived intact. According to Burstein, "the comparative soberness of Agatharchides's treatment compared to previous accounts and the wealth of information contained in it led to a quick recognition ... [that it was] a valuable summary of the results of Ptolemaic exploration." See Agatharchides ofCnidus On the Erythraean Sea trans. and ed. by Stanley M. Burstein, Second series, no. 172 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1989). And yet soberness of treatment in the study of geography does not necessarily make Agatharchides a sober analyst of Jewish history. Was Agatharchides anti-Jewish? Josephus himself says that Agatharchides "mentions us only to ridicule our folly" (Contra Apionem 1.205). Still, there are those along with BarKochva who do not think that Agatharchides was anti-Semitic. He uses the evidence mentioned above to note that Agatharchides was a courtier in Egypt during the reign of a patron of the Jews, Ptolemy Philopator, and either left or was forced to leave that court upon the rise of Ptolemy Phsycon, a persecutor of the Jews in Egypt (Bar-Kochva Judas Maccabaeus 480). Bar-Kochva does not want to admit that Agatharchides had antiJewish sentiments because he is trying to make a case against conventional scholarly wisdom. He claims that the Jews did not refrain from defensive warfare on the Sabbath in 312 or any period before Mattathias, that Mattathias did not declare an innovation and that 2 Maccabees was also accepting of such actions. Why Bar-Kochva, who bases so much of his work on 1Maccabees, should seek to undermine an important pillar of the Hasmonaean legacy is unclear to me. 34. Tcherikover Hellenistic Civilization 364-S.

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Agatharchides, it is a much better story to say, 'We conquered Jerusalem because the Jews have a bizarre superstition which prevents them from defending themselves than to admit, 'We conquered Jerusalem by pretending to respect a neighboring people's rituals.' Now, however, we face the real question for our purpose here: What did the Jewish concept ofthe Sabbath mean for defensive war on that day in 312 BCE? Just because Agatharchides was anti-Jewish does not mean that he is wrong in asserting that Jerusalem fell to Ptolemy because the Jews did not practice selfdefense on their Sabbath. Josephus is in a defensive posture, as he was so often in his work, protecting the good name of Judaism and the Jewish people. It may very well be that Josephus adds to Ptolemy's subterfuge in order to protect his people from ridicule, for it is, indeed, impossible to imagine how any people in the brutal and militaristic ancient world could have had a day on which they were not willing to fight. Still, that may have been the case in Jerusalem in 312 BCE. The following proposal may take all of the above information into account: Offensive and defensive warfare on the Sabbath was permitted in the pre-Exilic period when the Israelites and Judaeans had their own state(s); there was no controversy attached to these matters. The post-Exilic period, one of general quietude and submission to foreign rulers, was a time when there was a common assumption that Jewish people did not bear amts or fight on the Sabbath. In 312 BCE, the Jewish people had not had the need to defend themselves for 274 years. They did not adjust to their new situation and Ptolemy used the Sabbath as a convenient time to conquer Jerusalem. People who are used to being ruled are not used to thinking as free people. On the other hand, Mattathias, almost a century and a half later, was able to make the adjustment sooner than many of his contemporaries. Through his two key acts, the assassination of a Seleucid officer and the modification of Sabbath observance, Mattathias demonstrated that it was time to end the submission and to think in new ways as free and independent people. For all of the modem scholarly discussion about those who were "hellenized" and "assimilated," there were many Judaeans who observed the Sabbath and remained submissive to foreign rulers. Mattathias's two famous acts erected two pillars of the same new structure: an independent Jewish people that could do what it needed to do to gain its religious and political freedom. Many of those who joined his effort only wanted the former and did not even fantasize about the latter. But Mattathias, and his sons after him, did not dream of anything less than both. Thus when Mattathias declared that defensive war was acceptable on the holy day, it may indeed have been a radical innovation. When Mattathias, who was

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not the high priest or a significant religious authority, did this unilaterally, he made himself an authority by asserting authority. As Bickerman says, When Mattathias, a previous unknown, one priest among ten thousand 35 , resolved to interpret the traditional law, to impose his interpretation upon the people, he raised himself, perhaps without intending to do so, to the position of an opposition government .... Those who had abandoned their homes in order not to depart from the law 'either to the right hand or to the left" were united by that very measure which infringed the Torah for the Torah's sake. 36 This is an important statement about both Jewish law and the rise of Mattathias. I would argue that Mattathias knew exactly what he was doing and that he indeed wanted to lead his people in a great revolution. Mattathias knew that the rebels' effort could not succeed unless the law allowed them to protect themselves at all times, including the Sabbath. Just as David knew that Jerusalem would be the true capital of his kingdom if it were both the political and religious center, Mattathias knew that the people must be united through central leadership that was not only political but religious in its nature. The Sabbath in the Diaspora

Jason of Cyrene, author of the five-volume unabridged work on which 2Maccabees is based, was a Diaspora Jew. While some scholars have suggested that the work exhibits such knowledge of the land of Judaea that Jason must have at least visited, if not settled there, others think that it is indeed the work of someone who is not a native of the land of his subject. What about Jewish garrisons in the Diaspora? Did they carry weapons on the Sabbath? Were Jews available for military duty on the sacred day? The valuable evidence from Elephantine is instructive here. 37 Four Aramaic ostraca indicate that the Sabbath was important to the Jews of that community in Upper Egypt. An interesting example that refers to the Sabbath is TAD 07.16: Now behold, legumes I shall dispatch tomorrow, Meet the boat tomorrow on Sabbath, Lest, if they get lost, by the life ofYHH, if not

35. As we have seen, this may be an exaggeration at best. 36. Elias Bickerman The Maccabees 20. 37. Bezalel Porten "The Religion of the Jews of Elephantine in Light of the Hermopolis Papyri" JNES 28 (1969) 116-21.

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your soul I shall take. Do not rely on Meshullemeth or on Shemaiah. 38 Porten explains that the writer, whose name is unknown to us, is sending legumes on the Sabbath. The legumes are to be exchanged for barley. The recipient of the letter is instructed to receive the legumes himself; he should not rely on others to do so. While it may seem that this is a violation of the Sabbath, Porten points out that the boatman is an Egyptian. Perhaps the writer of the letter is Jewish and a Sabbath observer and the recipient is his non-Jewish agent. We are reminded of why Nehemiah needed to ban the Tyrian merchants from Jerusalem (Nehemiah 13:14-22) in order to stop commerce on the Sabbath. That a Jewish merchant in the Diaspora did not do business on the Sabbath does not tell us anything about the military activities of Jews on their sacred day, but it is nonetheless a precious real-life indication of the importance of the Sabbath. We will discuss Jews as soldiers in the Diaspora below.

War on the Sabbath in the Book of Jubilees 39 While Mattathias's actions may have galvanized support for his revolution, there were certainly others who disagreed with his position on Sabbath warfare. For our purpose here, it is fascinating to see that scholars, for quite independent reasons, date the Book of Jubilees to 168 BCE. The historical apocalypse of Jubilees 23:16-32 gives detailed predictions about a crisis that will lead to Divine intervention and a new age. The crisis is that of the persecution of the Judaeans by Antiochus IV (see at length above). If we accept the date of 168 BCE for at least this passage of Jubilees, the question becomes whether Jubilees is a purely sectarian work or reflects general Jewish practice of the Sabbath. It may indeed be purely sectarian, as may be indicated by the idea that husband and wife cannot have relations on the Sabbath. After quoting the prohibition against work from Exodus 20:9f., the author of Jubilees goes on to elaborate: And let the man who does anything on it die. Every man who will profane this day, who will lie with his wife, and whoever will discuss a matter that he will do on it so that he might make a journey for any buying or selling, and whoever draws water on it, which was not prepared for him on the sixth day, and whoever lifts up anything that he will carry to take out of his tent or from his house, let him die. (50:8) 38. Bezalel Porten "Instructions Regarding Legumes and Barley, Etc." in The Context of Scripture Ill: Archival Documents from the Biblical World eds. William W. Rallo and K. Lawson Younger, Jr. (Leiden: Brill, 2003) 214. 39. James C. VanderKam Textual and Historical Studies in the Book ofJubilees HSM 14 (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977).

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In the very last verses of this last chapter of the work, the Book of Jubilees expressly forbids war on the Sabbath (my italics on the key clause): And (as for) any man who does work on it, or who goes on a journey, or who plows a field either at home or any (other) place, or who kindles a fire, or who rides on any animal, or who travels the sea in a boat, and any man who slaughters or kills anything, or who slashes the throat of cattle or bird, or who snares any beast or bird or fish, or who fasts or makes war on the day of the Sabbath, let the man who does any of these on the day of the Sabbath die so that the children of Israel might keep the Sabbath according to the commands of the Sabbaths of the land just as it was written on the tablets which he placed in my hands so that I might write for you the law of each time and according to each division of its days. The account of the division of days is finished here. (50:12-13) In order to understand the importance (or lack thereof) of this passage for our purpose here, we need to understand this passage in its context. First, it cannot be incidental that the entire book, filled with what the author purports to be the revelations from God to Moses during the forty days that Moses spent on top of Mt. Sinai (Exodus 24:18), ends with this pronouncement. The Sabbath is a central concern ofthe book, which can be seen in its interesting formulation of a revelation to the angels on the seventh day of creation (2: 17-22). The Angel of the Presence tells Moses how God told them (the angels of the presence and the angels of sanctification) about the Sabbath so that they would observe the Sabbath with Him in heaven and on earth. God would separate a people from all the nations who would keep the Sabbath on earth. He created a sign by which this people would keep the Sabbath together with God and the angels on the seventh day, "to eat and drink and bless the one who created all things ... " (Jubilees 2:21). If Jubilees is a sectarian work written exactly at the time of the persecution of Antiochus IV and Mattathias 's famous response about fighting necessary warfare on the Sabbath, Jubilees or at least parts of it might have been written in opposition to Mattathias's ruling. Mattathias's Ruling and 1 and 2Maccabees

The belief that war was forbidden on the Sabbath, however, did not end with Mattathias's ruling and was not only relegated to the kind of sectarian thinking reflected in Jubilees. In fact, 2Maccabees seems to stand in complete opposition to Mattathias and his ruling. This opposition to Mattathias would seem to be

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clear in 2Maccabees from the complete omission of his name. It is fascinating to see how 2Maccabees not only condemns Mattathias to oblivion in this way but also takes pains to demonstrate that, on the contrary, Judas Maccabaeus observed the Sabbath in a strict manner. The Victory over Nicanor and Gorgias in 1 and 2Maccabees

In 2Maccabees's description of Judas's victory over Nicanor and Gorgias, we read: After pursuing the enemy for a considerable distance, they left off when the hour compelled them, for it was the eve of the Sabbath. Accordingly, they did not prolong the pursuit. Rather, they collected the arms of the enemy and stripped off the spoils and then turned to observe the Sabbath. They went to great lengths in blessing and thanking the LORD, Who had preserved them alive until this day, when drops of mercy had begun to fall upon them. After the Sabbath, they allotted to the victims of torture and to the widows and to the orphans a share of the spoils and divided the rest among themselves. With that done, the entire community turned in supplication to the merciful LORD, praying that He would be completely reconciled with His servants. (2Macc. 8:25-29) In order to fully appreciate what Jason of Cyrene is doing here, one must go back to the long parallel account in lMacc. 3:38-4:27. There we learn that Judas and his men pursued the fleeing enemy "as far as Gazera and the plains of ldumaea, Azotus, and Jamnia" (lMacc. 4:15). With this specific geography in mind, we see that they could not have stopped shortly before the Sabbath, collected the spoils and returned to their camp before the holy day began. On the contrary, !Maccabees states that after they complete the pursuit, Judas commands his men to desist from taking the spoils because Gorgias and his men were still nearby and the battle was not over. It is only after Gorgias 's army also flees that Judas's army collects the spoil (details are given about the rich treasures found) and returns to their base. While they sing psalms of thanksgiving to God, there is no reference to the Sabbath. 2Maccabees, on the other hand, does state that the Jewish army stopped the pursuit, collected the spoils and observed the Sabbath. This text says that they pursued the enemy "for a considerable distance" but without providing the geographical details (it also does not mention the fact that Gorgias's force was still in the area). Did the author of 2Maccabees artificially make the battle occur on Friday so that he could attest to the rigorous observance of the Sabbath by

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Judas and his men even in the midst of a day of battle? That is one possibility. Another, following Goldstein, 40 is that both texts may have derived their information from a postulated Common Source and that this work may have indicated that the battle was on a Friday. If so, the author of 2Maccabees built on the Friday battle by assuming, perhaps naively and incorrectly, that Judas would have stopped his military activities before the Sabbath. The existence of a Common Source is merely theoretical. What we do have are two extent texts, 1 and 2Maccabees. Following !Maccabees, it is better to conclude that even if the battle was on a Friday, the impending Sabbath would not have been a problem for Judas since his father had cleared the way for an all-out struggle against the enemy where military and not religious considerations were primary. For the author of 2Maccabees, however, Judas's Sabbath piety is a major point of the story. lMacc. 3-4 is a passage remarkable for its piety; it is full of prayer, Torahreading and references to the saving acts of God in the people's history. It would be a mistake to suggest that lMacc. 3:38-4:27 is a straightforward historical account and 2Macc. 8 a religious-didactic re-telling of the same event. It would indeed seem, in agreement with Goldstein's theory about the omission of Mattathias's name in 2Macc., that its author went to great lengths to make this point and that this was part of an ongoing attempt to take a position against war on the Sabbath. But we will add to this evidence to reach a very different view. 2Maccabees and Sabbath Desecration as the Cause of the Revolt Another key passage about the Sabbath in 2Maccabees is its account of the massacre of the Jews of Jerusalem by the Mysarch Apollonius. The account in 1Maccabees does not have anything about the Sabbath: Two years later, the king sent a Mysarch against the towns of Judah, and he came against Jerusalem with a strong army. Treacherously he addressed the people in peaceful terms, so that they trusted him, and then hit the city hard with a surprise attack, killing many Israelites. (lMacc.l :29-30) But in 2Maccabees, the massacre is on the Sabbath: Disposed to hate the Jews, he sent the Mysarch Apollonius with an army of twenty-two thousand, under orders to butcher all men who were of age and to sell the women and children as slaves. On his arrival at Jerusalem, Apollonius pretended to have peaceful intentions. He waited until the sacred Sabbath day. Sure that the Jews were resting, he ordered his troops to fall into armed formation and 40. Goldstein// Maccabees 335-36.

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had them stab all who had gone out to see the spectacle. Then, dashing into the city with his soldiers, he laid a considerable multitude low. Judas, also known as Maccabaeus, in a group of about ten, withdrew to the mountains, where he and his men eked out a living like beasts. There they stayed, eating herbs for food, in order to keep clear of defilement. (2Macc. 5:23-26) As we have seen, the Maccabaean revolution begins in 2Maccabees without Mattathias and his dramatic actions of assassination and legal innovation. Ironically for 2Macc. 's position against warfare on the Sabbath, Judas is terribly affected by this Sabbath massacre; he would not have missed the point that these terrible events occurred because the Jews did not protect themselves on the Sabbath. The two very different accounts both state that the massacre of Sabbath-worshippers was an important issue from the very beginning of the Maccabaean revolt. In !Maccabees, Mattathias gains strength because he states that defensive warfare is permitted on the Sabbath after Sabbath-pacifists are massacred. In 2Maccabees, Judas is equally horrified by the massacre of Sabbath-observers and runs off to start the revolution. In 2Maccabees, however, no one states that defensive warfare on the Sabbath is permissible. The Purification at Odollam

In another important passage for our purpose here, Judas and his men go to Odollam (Biblical Adullam) where they purify themselves and observe the Sabbath: After reassembling the army, Judas came to the town of Odollam. The Seventh Day was almost upon them, so they purified themselves according to the established custom and observed the Sabbath there. On the next day, at the time when work became permissible, Judas and his men went to recover the bodies of the fallen in order to lay them to rest with their kin in their ancestral tombs. (2Macc. 12:38-39) But since when does one need to become ritually clean for the observance of the Sabbath? Judas and his men are nowhere near the Temple where such ritual purity would be necessary. Note that the text does not say "according to the law" but "according to the established custom." Were they ritually unclean because of their contact with corpses? In Num.l9:10-22, such a process, which does include immersion, takes an entire week: "This shall be a permanent law for the Israelites and the strangers who reside among you. He who touches the corpse of any human being shall be unclean for seven days." Num. 31:19-24 is more

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relevant because it gives instructions for purification after a battle with the Midianites; again, the process of cleansing takes a full week. The idea in 2Maccabees 12 may be that they immersed themselves not because of the impending Sabbath but because of the battle that they had just completed. If so, it is interesting to see that an important text from Qumran requires soldiers to wash their garments and purify themselves on the morning after the battle (lQM 14:2). They are thereby to cleanse themselves of the blood of the "ungodly."41 If 2Maccabees has Judas and his soldiers follow this custom immediately after the battle, it is probably because it is Friday and the Sabbath is approaching; the bathing must be completed before the Sabbath begins. The soldiers do not bathe to prepare for the Sabbath but to purify themselves from the battle; they could not bathe on the Sabbath itself. This is another example of 2Macc. 's emphasis on Sabbath observance.

The Battle at Adasa41 The other text concerning the Sabbath and defensive warfare in 2Maccabees is 15:1-5: Nicanor, on learning that Judas and his men were in the region of Samaria, plotted to take advantage of the day of rest to attack them when he could do so in perfect safety. However, the Jews who were being forced to accompany him said, "Do not perpetrate so savage and barbarous a massacre, but give due respect to the day which has been preeminently honored with sanctification by Him Who sees all." The heinous sinner asked in reply, "Is He Who gave the command to keep the Sabbath day master in heaven?" When they answered, "It is the living LORD Himself, the master in heaven, Who has given the order to observe the Seventh Day." Nicanor said, "I too, who give the command to take up arms and carry out the king 's orders, am master, on earth!" Even so, he did not succeed in carrying out his cruel intention. There seems to be something missing here, namely, what happens next and why Nicanor does not succeed in his plan. Goldstein 43 thinks that this may be the fault of the abridger who omits what happens next, but it may be that the rest of the passage, which includes the defeat and death of Nicanor, is the simple answer to the problem. That is, Nicanor does go forward and attacks on the Sabbath. This, I would suggest, is the simple reading of the story that makes 41. Doran 2 Maccabees 271 n. 97. 42. See Bar-Kochva Judas Maccabaeus 364. 43. Goldstein II Maccabees 491.

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perfect sense as it is. The account of the Battle of Adasa according to 2Macc. has the following elements: 1.

15:1-5- Nicanor learns that Judas and his army are in Samaria and plans a Sabbath attack. The Jews in Nicanor's force, obviously no friends of Judas, are horrified by the prospect of a massacre of their brethren. They know that Judas will not fight on the Sabbath, again demonstrating that 2Maccabees knows nothing about Mattathias's decree. Nicanor ignores their pleas and arrogantly and blasphemously proceeds with his strategy. It would be tempting for any commander of any army to attack when the victory would be certain.

2.

"Even so, he did not succeed in carrying out his true intention" is not the end of a paragraph as it is in Goldstein's translation, with the next paragraph a new subject and an omission in between. Instead, it is a pious anticipation of what will happen in the rest of the story. The very next verse (15:6) shows Nicanor so confident of victory because of the Sabbath advantage that he is already planning to use the weapons of Judas's men as a monument to his triumph. That Judas is described as being in Samaria, and Nicanor in Jerusalem, does not help Goldstein's case, for Judas will come south toward Jerusalem; the battle will take place in Adasa, which is five miles north of the capital. Why then, does Goldstein make this separation and claim that there is an omission? To buttress his point that 2Maccabees is against defensive warfare on the Sabbath. Goldstein does not have to deal with an approved defensive battle on the Sabbath in 2Maccabees if he simply separates the discussion of warfare on the Sabbath from Judas's response to the challenge involved.

3.

Judas rouses his men to battle, but it seems that they need special encouragement in this case and Judas provides it in vv. 7-16; this is distinct from Judas's prayer to God in vv. 22-24. Goldstein is correct in saying "every feature in the speech ascribed to Judas in our verses seems designed to reply to theological objections which pious Jews could have raised against Judas and his men."44 But he should go further and say, " ... in particular, their objection to defensive warfare on the Sabbath." What other theological objections would they have? We are told of the reaction of Judas's soldiers in vv. 17-19:

The altogether eloquent words of Judas had the power to stimulate the hearer to virtue and to fill the minds of the young with manly valor. Encouraged by them, his men resolved, not merely to march, but bravely to charge and with all manly

44. Goldstein II Maccabees 497.

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valor close with the enemy and decide the issue, because the city and the sanctuary were at stake. Indeed, their fear for wives and children and for brothers and kinsmen was of less concern to them; their greatest and foremost fear was for the hallowed temple. Deep, too, was the anguish, which perturbed those shut up in the city, over the battle in the open country. The phrase translated here as "not merely to march" is translated by NAB as "not to delay" and by NRSV as "not to carry on a campaign" or "not to remain in camp." The kind of distinctions found in these different interpretations applies best to questions about activity on the Sabbath. What exactly is one allowed to do concerning fighting on the Sabbath? Can one march? Must one remain in camp? Can one campaign (whatever that means)? Can one charge the enemy? It is as if the different translations carry out the debate about Sabbath warfare, and this cannot just be a coincidence. Is the emphasis on the Temple in Jerusalem an indication of what Doran calls 2Maccabees, ''Temple propaganda"? Probably, but the account in 1Maccabees 7 could be taken as such propaganda as well. Doran chooses to emphasize two other aspects of Judas's speech, the language of holy war replete with Biblical references and the promise of Divine help in the form of a sword that is promised to the hero Judas in a dream. 45 Curiously, Doran misses the fact that it is Jeremiah's golden sword that is given. We are in the middle of a war. How shall we explain the soldiers' reluctance to fight? Is it simple cowardice in the face of great odds? Perhaps. But to read the story as a story, their reluctance to fight must be because it is the Sabbath. The victors cut off Nicanor 's tongue, the very tongue that mocked God and his Sabbath day. We do not have to take Nicanor's blasphemous posturing as the words that literally came from his mouth. Instead, we can take the fact of the Sabbath attack as that which appealed to the author's imagination as he wrote his work. Scholars, including some modern Israeli historians and military experts who know the geography and the terrain involved extremely well, have carefully studied the battles and military strategy of Judas Maccabaeus. They have led us to recognize that Judas was a brilliant tactician who fought with one basic principle: Attack. Judas attacked "on every occasion and in every circumstance."46 He believed in keeping the initiative for himself; his approach was that only a military policy of an offensive nature could bring victory against 45. Doran Temple Propaganda 71-2. 46. Chaim Herzog and Mordechai Gihon Battles of the Bible: A Modern Military Evaluation of the Old Testament (New York: Random House, 1978) 224-25.

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the Seleucids and their system of inflexible phalanxes and a set piece type of warfare. Knowing the terrain better than his opponents, he chose the field of battle and did not allow others to draw him into a situation that would work against him and his forces. In this understanding of 2Maccabees15, 2Maccabees is not against defensive warfare on the Sabbath. Its omission of Mattathias must have a different basis. We are thus in opposition to Goldstein's theory that 2Maccabees omits Mattathias 's name because of his innovation about Sabbath warfare because this passage is indeed about warfare on the Sabbath. If so, what does 2Maccabees have, if anything, against Mattathias? We will need to think about other possibilities for the omission ofMattathias's name and deeds in 2Maccabees. There is another possibility, that 2Maccabees 15 is the parallel to !Maccabees 2 in that it narrates extraordinary circumstances that required defensive warfare on the Sabbath. This does not mean that 2Maccabees states that Judas instituted a policy, but that the special epiphanies involved informed him that this was acceptable under the circumstances. The account of the battle of Adasa in 1Maccabees 7 is the parallel to the story in 2Maccabees 15. After his defeat at Chapharsalama, Nicanor returns to Jerusalem and threatens the destruction of the temple if Judas is not turned over to him. The horrified priests pray to God: "You have chosen this house to bear Your name, to be a house of prayer and entreaty for Your people. Take vengeance upon this man and upon his army, and make them fall by the sword. Remember their blasphemies, and let none ofthem survive." What do the two accounts share? • • • •

Blasphemous ravings by Nicanor matched by reverence by Jews for God and the Jerusalem Temple. A. pre-battle prayer by Judas including reference to God's triumph over Sennacherib in that very famous Biblical conflict. The defeat ofNicanor by Judas on the thirteenth of Adar. The mutilation and triumphant display of Nicanor 's body parts m Jerusalem. 47

47. A striking difference between the two accounts, however, is that there is no reference to the Sabbath in 1Mace. 7. We can thus ask a factual question: If the battle of Adasa occurred on the thirteenth of Adar I, March 8, 161, was that date a Saturday? Purim was not mentioned because, following Zeitlin (Tedesche First Book of Maccabees 143 n. 43), the year 161 BCE was intercalated, so the battle did not take place on the day

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We have discussed Goldstein's theory that Mattathias is not mentioned in 2Maccabees because he allowed defensive warfare on the Sabbath. Since 2Macc.l5 contradicts Goldstein's theory by positing a situation requiring warfare on the Sabbath and then permitting such warfare, he structures the passage so that the battle is no longer fought on the Sabbath. We have interpreted 2Macc.l5 according to the simple meaning of the text and have seen that this great battle was indeed fought on the Sabbath. 2Macc., which tells a story of warfare on the Sabbath, may still be seen as consistent with Goldstein's theory. It is only specific Divine guidance that permits Sabbath warfare. Mattathias did not receive such an epiphany and thus acted against God. Jonathan against Bacchides on the Sabbath An important incident involving Jonathan and fighting on the Sabbath can be found in 1Mace.:

Bacchides received the news and came on the Sabbath day to the banks of the Jordan with a large force. Jonathan said to his men, "Up! Let us fight for our lives! Our plight today is like none before! Facing us is battle, behind us the water of the Jordan, and on both sides swamp and the thicket! There is no room to draw back! Now, therefore, cry out to Heaven that you may be saved from the hands of our enemies!" Battle was joined. Jonathan stretched forth his hand to strike · down Bacchides, but Bacchides drew back to escape him. Thereupon, Jonathan and his men leaped into the Jordan and plunged across to the other side. The enemy did not cross the Jordan to pursue them. Indeed, Bacchides lost that day about a thousand men. (lMacc. 9:43-49) Clearly, the author of !Maccabees approves of Jonathan's action. It is at least confusing, if not completely contradictory, that Jonathan says, "Our plight today is like none before" if his late father had instituted defensive warfare on the Sabbath at the beginning of the revolt. Sievers says that, "it is possible that a decision made by Jonathan on the spot ... was later justified by attributing a pertinent ruling to 'Mattathias and his friends' ."48

before the Day ofMordechai because Purim was in Adar II and this day, Nicanor's day, would be the l3 1h of Adar 1. 48. Sievers Hasmonaeans and their Supporters 32. While I disagree, this is a plausible theory to explain everything we are examining here. "Mattathias" may be, as Sievers puts it, "an authority figure" for the other claims of the Hasmonaean right to the high priesthood (lMacc. 2:54) and the policy of John Hyrcanus of forced circumcision (I Mace. 2:46). I have demonstrated my opposition to these claims at length above.

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The account in Antiquities would seem to substantiate the idea that Jonathan initiated war on the Sabbath. Josephus states that Bacchides fully expects to defeat Jonathan without any resistance because it is the Jewish Sabbath: Now when Bacchides learned that Jonathan had encamped in the marshes of the Jordan, he waited for the day of the Sabbath49 and then came against him, thinking that he would not fight on that day because of the Law. But Jonathan exhorted his companions, telling them that their lives were in danger, since they were hemmed in between the river and the enemy and so were unable to escape-for the enemy was attacking them in front, and the river was behind them -and after praying to God to grant them the victory, he joined battlewith the enemy. Ant. 13.1250 Josephus makes explicit the idea that the Jews will not fight "because of the Law," an idea only implicit in his source, the passage cited from lMacc. 9. 51 Josephus seems to indicate that "the Law," that is, the Torah and halakhah (practical law) at this time, did forbid warfare on the Sabbath. This would mean that Josephus contradicts his earlier statement in Book XII that Mattathias had instituted defensive warfare on the Sabbath: And he instructed them to fight even on the Sabbath, saying that if for the sake of observing the law they failed to do so, they would be their own enemies, for their foes would attack them on that own enemies, for their foes would attack them on that day, and unless they resisted, nothing would prevent them from all perishing without striking a blow. These words persuaded them, and to this day we continue the practice of fighting even on a Sabbath whenever it becomes necessary. (Ant. XII, 276-77) 49. As commentators such as Goldstein(/ Maccabees 380-1) and Marcus (Marcus Jewish Antiquities Books XII-XIII, 232) have noted, it is not Bacchides who would have waited for the Sabbath to end before attacking. 50. See Abel Les Livres des Maccabees 170. 51.. Goldstein (/ Maccabees 381) states that the author of 1Mace. is deliberately drawing comparisons between Jonathan and the Biblical military heroes, Joshua (Joshua 3 :4) and Joab (1 Chronicles 19:1 0-15). This may be, but I think that Goldstein overstates his case. Certainly, no later writers or readers ofthe Bible will fail to think of the crossing of the Jordan by Joshua whenever they hear of any battle or crossing at the Jordan. But Joshua does not fight a battle at the Jordan River and is not hemmed in as Jonathan is. And Joab does see that he and his army are surrounded and rallies his men with a dramatic speech. But any resemblance between the passage in 1Maccabees and these Biblical passages merely reflects an author using the basic tools at his disposal.

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Reinach 52 explains that in this passage about Jonathan's initiation of Sabbath warfare, Josephus is justifying what the Jews of his own generation did (see below). Marcus disagrees because Josephus himself gives the initiative to Mattathias and there is thus a contradiction within Josephus as to who exactly instituted this policy. Still, Reinach may have a point in thinking that Josephus was emphasizing defensive war on the Sabbath in this passage about Jonathan in order to explain the acts of his generation. After all, Josephus was writing great works covering huge spans of times and many events; even if he remembered emphasizing Mattathias's institution of the policy, would this important issue not be worth mentioning again? Or perhaps Josephus understood something very important here, that fighting on the Sabbath was always an ad hoc measure, not so much halakhah or policy as something that was done only when there was no choice. While Mattathias may have stated that it was acceptable, he never created a policy as such; he never meant that one should fight indiscriminately on the Sabbath. Perhaps we can take all of our evidence at face value, and rather than seeing contradictions, understand that the Sabbath was always a revered institution that was kept by its ancient Jewish adherents. It was only broken under the most severe circumstances and then only broken for those brief occasions. Sabbath Warfare in Other Examples from Josephus and Rabbinic Texts

53

While Albeck says that references in Josephus and Rabbinic law agree with Mattathias's ruling that war is permitted on the sacred day, 54 the evidence is contradictory. Finkelstein states that Jubilees in general does provide examples of pre-Maccabaean law but that the prohibition against war is not in accordance with other Jewish texts. 55 Still, lMacc., 2Macc., Josephus, Jubilees and even the anti-Semitic writers all point to Jews who would not fight on the Sabbath. To show further examples from Josephus, when Pompey besieged Jerusalem in the year 63 BCE, the Jews refrained from attacking the Romans on the Sabbath: 52. Theodore Reinach Oeuvres de Flavius Jositphe Joe. cit. 53. G. E. Moore Judaism 2 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1929) 63; H. Albeck Six Mishnah Orders vol. 1 Seder Mo'ed (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1954) 1.9-10; idem Introduction to the Mishnah (Tel Aviv 1959) 19-20 (Hebrew); J. N. Epstein Introduction to Tannaitic Literature (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1957) 278; Herr "The Problem of War on the Sabbath" 242-56; S. Helfgott The Sabbath in the Classical Writers dissertation, Yeshiva University (New York, 1974) 47-70; A. Oppenheimer "Oral Law in the Books of Maccabees" Immanuel (1976) 34-42. 54. C. A1beck "Das Buch der JubiHien und die Halacha" BHJW 4 7 ( 1930) 11. 55. Louis Finkelstein "Some Examples of the Maccabaean Halakah" JBL XLIX ( 1930) 20-42.

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Indeed, the labours of the Romans would have been endless, had not Pompey taken advantage of the seventh day of the week, on which the Jews, from religious scruples, refrain from all manual work, and then proceeded to raise the earthworks, while forbidding his troops to engage in hostilities; for on the Sabbaths the Jews fight only in selfdefense. (BJ 1:146; Ant. XIV 6314:63-64, 226) But later, during the Great War against Rome, the Jews did fight on the Sabbath: The Jews, seeing the war now approaching the capital, abandoned the feast and rushed to arms: and, with great confidence in their numbers, sprang in disorder and with loud cries into the fray, with no thought for the seventh day of rest, for it was the very Sabbath which they regarded with special reverence. But the same passion which shook them out of their piety brought them victory in the battle .... (BJ ll:517) Many scholars assume that since rabbinic policy sanctioned defensive warfare on the Sabbath, this was true in centuries before the rabbis. Those who use rabbinic texts in this way are guilty of anachronistic superimposition. 56 One could go to the other extreme and say that the rabbis needed to make their statements in favor of Sabbath warfare precisely because others rejected it. Clearly, based on the other evidence, there was an issue. An interesting passage is found in the BT Eruvin: Rab Judah stated in the name of Rab: If foreigners besieged Israelite towns it is not permitted to sally forth against them or to desecrate the Sabbath in any other way on their account. So it was also taught: If foreigners besieged etc. This, however, applies only where they came for the sake of money matters, but if they came with the intention of taking lives the people are permitted to sally forth against them with their weapons and to desecrate the Sabbath on their account. (BT Eruvin 45a) Where the attack, however, was made on a town that was close to a frontier, 57even though they did not come with any intention of taking lives but merely to plunder straw or stubble, the people are permitted to sally forth against them with their weapons and to desecrate the Sabbath on their account. 56. In his Mishneh Torah Hilchot Melachim 6: II, Maimonides allows warfare against the gentiles even on the Sabbath; in 6: 13 he lists the times when the usual Sabbath regulations can be superseded. 57. Of strategic importance to the rest of the country.

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The passage goes on to turn a Biblical passage that does not have any reference to Sabbath warfare into a proof-text for this type of battle. I Samuel 23:1-2 tells the story that when the Philistines rob the threshing-floors at Ke'ilah, David asks God if he should fight. God replies, "Go and smite the Philistines, and save Ke'ilah." Why, the rabbis ask, should David need to ask God, considering the fact that the Bet Din of Samuel was in existence at the time? It would have been enough to say, "Go and smite the Philistines" if the question was about Sabbath warfare. This anachronism notwithstanding, the Scriptural text, in its addition of the otherwise unnecessary phrase "and save Ke'ilah" is taken to be an assurance of David's victory. Again, there is no reason, on a literal level, to think that any of this happened on the Sabbath. The very artificiality ofthe Sabbath connection is based on David's inquiry. So God himself not only condones Sabbath warfare that is only to repulse a monetary raid, not an absolutely necessary war of selfdefense, but also assures the fighters of absolute victory. Strikingly, the rabbis push here to create a Biblical precedent out of a passage that has nothing to do with warfare on the Sabbath. That they feel the need to do this would seem to indicate how hard they were working to make the case that such warfare was acceptable according to Jewish law. Was Mattathias a Halakhic Innovator? Kampen writes, "Never is there a halakic (sic) controversy over the absolute prohibition of warfare on the Sabbath. The only places where we find such a viewpoint expressed are in lMacc. 2:29-38, 2Macc. 6:11, an apparent allusion to the same event, and Jub. 50:12." If Kampen means halakhic in a general way, that is, that there never was a Jewish legal controversy on this issue, he must explain the various pieces of evidence that he has reviewed just as we have done above. There must have been an ongoing discussion about this issue because it did not go away. A different support for the contention that defensive warfare was considered acceptable before Mattathias (and therefore long before rabbinical pronouncements) is Bar-Kochva's statement that Jews who participated in any kind of war or defensive operation in a Jewish or non-Jewish army would be required to bear arms and be prepared to fight on the Sabbath. 58 Certainly, we have substantial evidence that Jews fought as mercenaries in foreign armies from at least the time of Alexander the Great (Contra Apionem I, 192ft). In Egypt, there were Jewish military settlements in Persian times; Ptolemy I and his successors also had Jewish garrisons. While there is substantial evidence for

58. Bar-Kochva Judas Maccabaeus 476.

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Jews serving in armies all over the Mediterranean world, 59 we do not know anything about the Sabbath observance of such troops. Bar-Kochva states that Mattathias could not have instituted defensive warfare on the Sabbath because it was never prohibited in the first place. Why does Bar-Kochva insist on this position? To show that Jewish troops were experienced fighters in his debunking of the conventional and traditional understanding that the war was between a few inexperienced Jewish guerrillas and many trained Seleucid troops. While the evidence from Elephantine and other related hints does lead to the position that there were Jewish soldiers serving in foreign armies, Bar-Kochva has no evidence to demonstrate that such experienced Jewish soldiers had anything to do with the Maccabaean revolt. His supposition that some of them may have come tO Judaea is possible on an individual level, but the huge majority of the men in Judas's army were inexperienced soldiers who had not fought wars and had not served in foreign armies where they may or may not have broken the Sabbath. The point is that Bar-Kochva, who uses lMacc. as his primary source, who sees this source as wonderfully reliable in its details about the war and its battles, rejects one of the most important statements in that book, that Mattathias's rebellion gained viability when he asserted religious authority concerning defensive warfare on the Sabbath because it does not suit his overarching theory. He picks and chooses what to accept in lMacc.; if the numbers of soldiers given do not fit his scheme, they are considered unreliable. Through this arbitrary and selective process, lMacc. is still consistent with his theory. In fact, we have very little information on the topic of Jewish soldiers in foreign armies. Is it possible that there were Jewish units in foreign armies that were given special considerations on their Sabbath? The Jewish soldiers in the Seleucid army in 2Maccabees 15 feel the right to raise the issue; would it be a familiar one to foreign commanders of Jewish troops? Indeed, Jason of Cyrene, author of the unabridged work of which 2Macc. is the digest, may have been vitally concerned with just this issue. In working with his sources, he may have wanted to omit Mattathias's ruling that went against the request of Jewish soldiers in the Diaspora to refrain from fighting on the Sabbath. A ruling allowing such fighting would completely undermine their request. He emphasized the Sabbath, and tried to teach that if one followed the rituals of Judaism, one would succeed. In ignoring and disagreeing with Mattathias 's ruling or in choosing to ignore that it was ever issued, this author says that Judas would not fight on the Sabbath, even though he did. Only the kind of special epiphany found in 2Macc.l5 could temporarily suspend the Sabbath prohibitions. Thus the abridger of 2Macc. ends his work, satisfied that he had 59. Hengel Judaism and Hellenism 15-17.

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made the point that the Sabbath and the rituals of Judaism are sacrosanct and only to be set to one side on an emergency basis. The laws can bend for Divine intervention but not for human convenience. Yet in a sense, that is exactly what Mattathias meant: A temporary lifting of the permanent rules about the Sabbath. It might have lasted as long as the particular situation of persecution. Once there was an army that could be part of the process of selecting the day of a battle, Mattathias never had any intention of making halakhah as such. He had a particular situation and he dealt with it. And if and when Judas and Jonathan had similar situations, they dealt with them on an ad hoc basis. Mattathias knew, to use a familiar modem image, that laws can be like dominoes, that to change a law may be to destroy it. It may never have occurred to him to do so. If halakhah as a principle was not yet a concept, Mattathias 's pronouncement could have been taken as an ad hoc statement for the period of the Antiochene persecution. My explanation is that Mattathias 's ruling did not constitute a precedent. Not even Judas or Jonathan, Mattathias 's sons, took the pronouncement as a new law. Judas, unlike Mattathias, at least partly refrained from defensive warfare on the Sabbath, thus drawing many who disagreed with Sabbath warfare to his side. 60 After Mattathias's point was made in his particular situation, Judas and Jonathan drew back and tried not to fight on the Sabbath at all. Mattathias would not have disagreed with his sons. He never wanted to fight on the Sabbath; he felt that he needed to be able to fight only if the situation required it. The innovation was really a modification made out of necessity in order to save Jewish lives from slaughter. The Maccabees were religious keepers of the Sabbath who believed that while Jewish law sometimes needed to be bent, it should never be broken

60. Goldstein// Maccabees 495.

Chapter Eight The Nature and Provenance of I Maccabees The Primary Source Concerning Mattathias I Maccabees is our most important source for any discussion of the historical events of the early Maccabaean period from the plunder of the Temple and the controversial religious edicts in Jerusalem in 169 BCE to the assassination of Simon, son ofMattathias in 135 BCE and the reign of John Hyrcanus. 1 If we are to investigate the significance of the life of Mattathias, we have to establish the validity of I Maccabees as a historical source. While all divisions of a text are arbitrary by their very nature, this rough outline ofthe main sections/topics may be helpful:

I.

2.

3.

4.

Introduction - The Rise and Evil Deeds of Antiochus IV (1: 1-64). I Maccabees quickly traces the history from Alexander to the Seleucid king Antiochus IV, whose Jewish supporters aid and abet his religious reforms. When many Jews are defiant, Antiochus IV severely punishes them. Mattathias (2:1-70) - The priest Mattathias rises up in violent rebellion against Antiochus IV, waging a holy war conducted as a growing guerilla campaign against the enemy. He dies, leaving as his last testament words of inspiration for his sons who are to work towards the future Jewish kingdom to come. Judas (3: 1-9:22)- Judas Maccabaeus wins a series of victories against everlarger and more important enemy forces, including those of Nicanor and Gorgias. He restores the Temple to proper Jewish worship. He fights many battles against groups in the areas surrounding Judaea. He defeats Nicanor in a major battle. In increasing rivalry with the High Priest Alcimus, Judas strives to continue the struggle, now not for religious autonomy but for political independence. He makes an alliance with Rome, the ever-growing power in the region. Judas finally heroically dies in battle. Jonathan (9:23-12:53) - Jonathan Apphus, youngest brother of Judas, assumes the mantle of leadership after the latter's death but only begins to have a major impact when events in the Seleucid empire give him the opportunity to rise. At first like a Biblical chieftain or Judge, then like a petty Hellenistic prince, Jonathan eventually becomes the High Priest of Judaea. He maintains the alliance with Rome and creates one with Sparta.

I. 1Macc.l6:23-24 seems to refer to the latter's reign as if it is over; much more on this below.

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Playing one Seleucid rival for the throne against the other, Jonathan even protects a Seleucid king m his own city from his enemies. Simon 12:53-16:22- The last chapters of the book concern Simon, the last of the sons of Mattathias. While two rivals for the Seleucid throne are consumed with each other, Simon rules Judaea. After all of the decades of struggle, Simon finally conquers the Akra. He also conquers Joppa, providing a much-desired port on the Mediterranean. Rome sends its regrets about the treacherous assassination of Simon's brother and predecessor Jonathan and reaffirms its alliance with Simon at High Priest and Ethnarch ofJudaea.

This brief outline indicates that the book is concerned with Mattathias and his sons, "that family of men to whom it had been granted to be the agents of Israel's deliverance" (5:62).

The Authorship of !Maccabees We do not know the name of the author(s) of lMaccabees, but it is unlikely that we would know. When we look at the other apocryphal books, the only author's name we know is Ben Sira. Often, in the cases of the Psalms of Solomon or the Book of Enoch, the authors are supposed to be famous ancient figures so the real writers necessarily subsume their own identities in seeking the authority emanating from those figures. There is, however, a great deal of scholarly agreement about the general background of l Maccabees? The author was a native of Judaea who was well informed about the institutions of the Seleucid Empire. Most scholars would agree that unlike 2Maccabees, which is an abridgement of a five-volume work by Jason of Cyrene, !Maccabees was written by a single author who displays continuity and consistency. Some have tried to develop a hypothesis in which the author is really a redactor who wove different documents such as the "Mattathias," "Judas," "Jonathan" and "Simon" traditions together; this position is not well regarded or considered well-founded by most scholars who reject this notion of different sources. 3 The author did, however, use various documents 2. Jonathan A. Goldstein I Maccabees The Anchor Bible (Garden City: Doubleday, 1976); J. J. Collins Daniel, First Maccabees, Second Maccabees (Wilmington: 1981); J. C. Dancy I Maccabees. A Commentary (Oxford, 1954); Robert Domn "The First Book of Maccabees" in The New Interpreters Bible Vol. IV (Nashville, 1996) 3-178. 3. For example, Klaus-Dietrich Schunck Die Que/len des I. Und II. Makkbiierbuches (Halle: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1954) discusses an independent Mattathias tradition, a life of Judas, the high priestly annals from the archives of the Jerusalem temple for Jonathan and Simon and non-Jewish sources such as the Seleucid Chronicle. Scholars such as Hengel and Neuhaus have rejected this source theory (Martin Hengel Judaism and

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available to him, weaving them into the narrative with some editing and rewording. Scholarship has found these documents to be basically authentic. 4 !Maccabees was originally written in Hebrew 5 and then translated into Greek. This is not only a scholarly theory but attested by Origen and Jerome. 6

The Date of !Maccabees Some scholars espouse what Martola7 calls the "addendum theory" and think that, with certain later modifications, one author wrote chapters 1-13 and a later author wrote chapters 14-16. They base this opinion on the fact that Josephus uses chapters 1-13 quite extensively but does not seem to use chapters 14-16 at all. Josephus bases himself on another source when he discusses the rise of Tryphon. What is at stake in considering why Josephus does not use !Maccabees for this period is that it could provide us with an earlier date for the writing of the work. That is, if Josephus, living in the last decades of the first century CE, had a scroll without 1Macc.l4-16, this would mean that the original work did not contain these chapters. This could then lead to the conclusion that the original only included events up to the end of Jonathan's life in 143 BCE and that the two sections were only combined in the late 1st century CE 8 Ettelson counters that the entire original work was written in Hebrew and then translated into Greek by the same hand. 9 So even if the last three chapters are an addendum, they were included before the book was translated. Since Josephus uses the Greek translation, he must have had the entire work as it has come down to us. Ettelson does not explain, however, why, if he had the last three chapters, Josephus did not use them. Another possibility is that Josephus had a partial Greek edition of the book that only extended to the burial of Jonathan in 13 :30; this theory would not preclude and indeed assumes a fuller Hebrew edition that was the original complete work. 10

Hellenism 96f.; G. 0. Neuhaus "Quellen im 1. Makkablierbuch? Eine Entgegnung auf die Analyse von K.-D. Schunck" JSJV (1974) 162-75). 4. Joshua Efron Studies on the Hasmonaean Period 14-15 n. 50. 5. An interesting attempt to reconstruct the original Hebrew text has been made by Abraham Kahana Ha-Sefarim ha-Hitzonim vol. 2 (Tel Aviv, 1937). 6. Abel and Starcky Les Livres des Maccabees 7; Goldstein I Maccabees 14-16; W. Dommershausen I Makkabaerr 2 Makkabaeer Fasc. 12 in Die Neue Echter Bibel ed. J. G. Ploger et al (Wurzburg: Echter, 1985) 6. 7. N. Martola Capture and Liberation: A Study in the Composition of the First Book of Maccabees (Abo, 1984) I 0. 8. Zeitlin The First Book of Maccabees 32. 9. H. W. Ettelson The Integrity ofI Maccabees 307. I 0. Thomas Fischer "Books of Maccabees" !DB IV 440.

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In attempting to determine the date of 1Maccabees, scholarship has focused on the end of !Maccabees, a summation of the reign of John Hyrcanus: As for the remainder of the history of John, his wars and his valorous deeds and his wall building and his other accomplishments, all these are recorded in the chronicle of the high priesthood, from the time he succeeded his father as high priest. (lMacc. 16:23-24) If this were the end of the original work, it would seem to be clear that this book was written after the death of John Hyrcanus in 104 BCE Some scholars maintain, however, that these verses are a later, editorial addition that was itself an adaptation from a well-known Biblical formula found at the end of accounts about Judaean and Israelian rulers in 1 and 2 Kings. 11 In stronger fashion, BarKochva attempts to undermine the assumption that this ending necessarily implies that John Hyrcanus died before the writing of these verses. He points to the emphasis on John's "wall building" as the only act that is specifically mentioned. 12 The walls referred to are those of Jerusalem after their demolition by Antiochus VII Sidetes at the beginning of the reign of John Hyrcanus. Josephus (Ant. 13.247) states that Antiochus "destroyed the crown of the city," an ambiguous phrase without the statement in Diodorus Siculus that the walls were destroyed. 13 What is interesting here is that John Hyrcanus certainly had other, greater accomplishments such as his conquest of Samaria, Idumaea (and his conversion of the people there to Judaism), Galilee (and his settlement program there), the Plain of Esdraelon and some cities of the Transjordan. One could reply that the verse "his wars and his valorous deeds and his wall building and his other accomplishments" refer indeed to all of these wars and activities and that this is still a summation written after the end of John Hyrcanus 's life. Bar-Kochva maintains, however, that these words refer to the first round of John's accomplishments between 129 and 126, including his conflict with Kendebaeus (!Mace. 16:1-10) and his response to Ptolemy son of Abubus, the treacherous governor of Jericho who assassinated John's father Simon and brothers Judah and Mattathias (l Mace. 16: 11-22). 14 If John Hyrcanus 's reign II. I Kings 15:23, at the end of the reign of King Asa of Judah; 16:5-6 (Baasha of Israel), 17:27: (Omri oflsrael); II Kings I 0:34 (Jehu oflsrael); 12:20-22 (Joash oflsrael); 13:8 (Jehoahaz oflsrael), 14:28 (Jeroboam II oflsrael) and 20:20 (Hezekiah ofJudah}. 12. Bezalel Bar-KochvaJudas Maccabaeus 162. 13. Diodorus Siculus. Library of History ed. by C. Bradford Welles (Loeb edition) 34-35.1.5. 14. Fischer claims that these verses refer to a Chronicle of John Hyrcanus I ("Books of Maccabees" /DB IV 440), which could only have been completed at the end of the leader's life. The text would indicate, however, that the chronicle involved was a

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were over, the author of !Maccabees could have narrated the events of the time as a fulfillment of the promises going back to Mattathias. That is, if !Maccabees had been finished in 104 BCE, the author would have been pleased to present details to demonstrate that John Hyrcanus was the successful scion of the dynasty. Since the text does not develop this theme or present anything but a cursory notice, it is plausible that !Maccabees in its present length was written around 126 BCE 15 It is interesting to speculate with Arenhoevel 16 that the last event mentioned, John Hyrcanus's suppression of the rebellion by Ptolemy son of Abubus, was very close to the position in time of the author and that this notice reflects his intention to justify John Hyrcanus in this and other actions he would take in defense of Judaea. The other possibility is that l Maccabees is about the Maccabees, that is, about the original generation of the sons of Mattathias. As Ettelson puts it, "Herein is set forth the story of the Jewish Revolt from the Greek-Syrians, begun under Mattathias and carried through by his sons." 17 Once the account tells us about the death of Simon, its job is finished, and concludes with the revenge on Simon's killers by, and a brief notice about John Hyrcanus. If this is correct, where the work ends does not tell us anything about the date of authorship. One could respond that even so, the notice about John Hyrcanus is wanting and would, as Bar-Kochva insists, refer to more of his accomplishments if it had been written later. Also, and this point has not been sufficiently emphasized, if John Hyrcanus I had died, the text would speak of the succession of Alexander Jannaeus. 18 Some scholars think that the author was an eyewitness to and a participant in the events recorded in this book. They show that the geographical details are almost always precise, with exact names for the sites of important events and battles. The author displays expert knowledge about the terrain of the battlefields, the tactical deployment and movement of the troops on both sides. For example, the description of the battle of Ammaus (lMacc. 3-4) provides many details about the timetable, topography and military movements. The author combined his Chronicle of the High Priesthood that could have received records on an ongoing basis, as they happened. 15. The question about the end of !Maccabees is answered in a different way by those who suggest that the author seems to have run out of steam at the end of the writing of the work. Others such as Dancy say that the author may have died before he could finish it and thus the last chapters are "less evenly finished" than the main body of the work (Dancy, 7). 16. D. Arenhoevel Die Theokratie nach dem I. und 2. Makkabiierbuch (Mainz, 1967) 94-96. 17. H. W. Ette1son The Integrity of I Maccabees The Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences 27 ( 1925) 292. 18. Collins Daniel, 1-2 Maccabees 150.

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own personal memories and impressions with official archives and at least one Seleucid chronicle. If this is so, then we learn something about the date of the work; an author who was an eyewitness to the events of the 160s BCE would have been an older man by the 120s BCE; a date later than this decade therefore is probably excluded. 19 Some have attempted to determine the date of authorship from the work's attitude towards Rome, the rising power in the region. 20 While the author's attitude toward the Seleucids and the Ptolemies is that they are unworthy of trust, his attitude toward Rome is very favorable (8, 12:1-4, 14:24,40 and 15:1524). If, as Neuhaus has discussed, Chapter 8, concerning the famous treaty that Judas made with Rome, plays a key role in the center of the work, 21 and if this demonstrates, as Fischer states, an important aspect of Hasmonaean foreign policy was "continuing reliance upon substantial diplomatic relations with Rome," 22 we have a valid test for the date of the work. Since the Romans conquered Judaea in 63 BCE, this positive attitude must reflect a time of authorship well before that date. This leads to the theory that it was written in the time of Alexander Jannaeus (103-76). Yet even Alexander Jannaeus did not renew the pact of predecessors with Rome because he felt that he no longer needed their support or patronage. 23 This again points back to the time of John Hyrcanus as the correct political context for this pro-Roman work. Schwartz has taken a strong position for a relatively early date for the authorship of 1Maccabees?4 Those who would posit the date of c. 100 BCE must deal, Schwartz says, with the contradiction between anti-Gentile hostility in 1Maccabees (e.g. 1Mace. 13 :6) and the Hasmonaean expansion and judaizing of 19. Another position is to say that the author of lMaccabees lived in the time of Alexander Jannaeus (103 B.CE ff.}, based his book on a written work by an eyewitness and combined this with official Seleucid and Hasmonaean chronicles. Again, the common sense argument that Alexander Jannaeus would have been mentioned at this date is worth repeating. 20. E. S. Gruen The Hellenistic World and the Coming ofRome (Berkeley: University of California, 1984) 16 n. 14; 42-46; 51 n. 189; 125; 316; 338-39; 428 n. 168; 668; 748. 21. G. 0. Neuhaus Studien zu den poetischen Stiichen im I. Makkabaeerbuch (Wurzburg, 1974) 113. 22. Thomas Fischer "Books of Maccabees" /DB IV 440; cf. idem "Rom und die Hasrnonaeer" Gymnasium 88 ( 1981) 139-50. 23. Bar-Kochva, 164; Uriel Rappaport "La Judee et Rome pendant le regne d'Alexandre Jannee" REJ 127 (1968) 329-45; M. Stern "Judaea and her neighbors in the days of Alexander Jannaeus" The Jerusalem Cathedra: Studies in the History, Archaeology, Geography and Ethnography of the Land oflsrael I (1981) 28-9. 24. Seth Schwartz, "Israel and the Nations Roundabout: lMaccabees and the Hasmonaean Expansion," JJS42 (1991) 16-38.

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Gentiles in the time of John Hyrcanus. Schwartz says that if the book were written in 100 ·BCE we would have the "odd spectacle" of a book that "expresses hostility to the nations now being patronized by them. " 25 There are clear examples of towns that are put under the ban and whole towns and their inhabitants are destroyed (5:28, 35, 44). Judas acts towards Ephron in 1Macc. 5:45-51 according to the regulations ofDeut. 20:10-15. Simon's ethnic cleansing ofGazara!Gezer in 1Macc.l3:47-48 reminds us ofDeut. 7:1-6 and Judg. 2:1-2. Mattathias would have approved. If the author was a pro-Hasmonaean writer, there would be a discrepancy between the anti-assimilationist stance of the author and the actions of John Hyrcanus of incorporating foreign groups and areas into the kingdom. A date of 130, however, would give us a context well before the Hasmonaean expansion.

The Author as Pro-Hasmonaean Scholarship has made a strong case for the pro-Hasmonaean stance of the author. 26 !Maccabees certainly approves of the fight not only against religious persecution but also for political independence. Goldstein describes the author as the "Hasmonaean propagandist"27 following Bickerman who states: "It is possible to say that I Maccabees presents a semi-official account of the rise of the Hasmonaeans. " 28 The author describes the Maccabees as heroes who parallel those of the Bible. Mattathias is the new Phinehas, Jonathan a Judge, etc. Doran wonders why a pro-Hasmonaean writer would describe the terrible scene of Simon drunk at a banquet and why he would praise both the Roman system of government in !Mace. 8 and Simon's one-man rule in 14:41-45. Doran thinks that !Maccabees is "a critique" of the changes that had been made by John Hyrcanus and his successors. These are two very different issues that we will treat respectively. The son of Abubus treacherously received them in the castle called Dok, which he had built; there he concealed men while he set a sumptuous banquet before his guests. When Simon and his sons became drunk, Ptolemy and his men emerged from hiding, seized their arms, and rushed into the banquet hall upon Simon and killed him and his two sons and some of their servants. Thus Ptolemy committed high treason and returned evil for good. (1Macc.16: 15-17) 25. 26. 27. 28.

Schwartz, 53. Fischer "Books of Maccabees" /DB V 441; Nickelsburg 114-17, etc. Goldstein I Maccabees 64. E. Bickermann Der Gott der Makkabiier 145.

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One wonders if Doran is not superimposing his own feelings about drinking onto this text. There is a banquet; Simon, as the leader of his country, the fatherin-law, the patron and benefactor of his host, is a guest who trusts the hospitality because the host is a son-in-law who has been given great responsibility and honor. Simon is not criticized here for falling victim to treachery. As for Doran's other question, the stability and democratic nature of the Roman republic must have seemed immensely preferable to the chaotic and violent succession and the despotic nature of the Seleucid dynasty. It is not a contradiction for Simon to be the High Priest of Judaea according to the laws of his people. If Doran's point is that Simon help both political and ecclesiastical power, this is still in keeping with Biblical tradition. Later, Josephus would speak with pride to the Roman world about the Jewish system of government. There is nothing here that dilutes the pro-Hasmonaean bias of the author of 1Maccabees. 29

The Historical Accuracy of !Maccabees An interesting anachronism is found at 1Mace. 8 where Judas, who died in 160 BCE, hears, plausibly, about the great conquests of the Romans against Gaul (222-180s BCE), Spain (218-201 BCE), Philip V (197 BCE) and Perseus (168 BCE) of Macedonia, and Antiochus III ( 190 BCE). What is strange is what comes next: The Greeks of mainland Greece, too, had planned an expedition to destroy the Romans, but when their plot became known to the Romans, they sent a single general against the Greeks and waged war on them, so that many of the Greeks fell slain, and the Romans took captive their wives and children, plundered their property, conquered their land, destroyed their fortresses, and reduced them to servitude down to the present day. This is a reference to the Roman war with the Achaean league. Sparta had a dispute with the league; when Rome supported Sparta, the leaders of the league convinced the Achaeans to take on the Romans, a foolhardy move against a much stronger opponent (Polybius xxxviii 9-13; Pausanias vii. 12.4-14.6). Rome sent a consul, Lucius Mummius who soundly defeated the league and destroyed the major city of Corinth and the walls of all of the cities involved. Much of Greece became a part of the Roman province of Macedonia (Pausanias 29. If it was Hasmonaean propaganda, was it directed against the opponents of that dynasty? Some scholars think that those opponents include the Pharisees and the Essenes cf. George W. E. Nickelsburg Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah 12223). But see the caution of other scholars, e.g. Peter Schafer "The Hellenistic and Maccabaean Periods" in Israelite and Judaean History 543.

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vii 15-16). The problem is that this war occurred in 146 BCE, fourteen years after Judas died in 160 BCE. There is no way that Judas's informants could have brought him this information. This accidental anachronism tells us that the work cannot be earlier than 146 BCE. Some commentators conclude that only an author writing decades later "could commit so flagrant an anachronism. " 30 Of great interest for our study of the validity of !Maccabees on Mattathias is the question of the trustworthiness of the historical facts in the book. Scholars are generally impressed with its historical accuracy and unity. 31 The author, a native of Judaea, seems to be well informed about the institutions of the Seleucid Empire. The geographical details are almost always precise, with exact names for the sites of important events and battles. The documents that have been interwoven into the narrative may be edited and reworded but scholarship has found them to be basically authentic. 32 The author makes an earnest attempt to provide a chronological framework for his narrative. The nature of !Maccabees is very much like the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, including documents and letters within the framework, exhibiting a reverence for the glorious past and future of the people. Having said this, scholars have been quick to state that there clearly are historical mistakes.

The Division of Alexander's Empire I Mace. 1:6-9 states that after all of his international conquests, Alexander of Macedon summoned his high officers, men who had been raised by him from early childhood, and divided his kingdom among them while he was still alive ... His officers then took power, each in his own territory. They all assumed royal diadems after his death. This statement contradicts what we consider to be historical fact. Arrian (Anabasis of Alexander) and Diodorus (17.12) state that when his commanders asked him to designate to whom the kingdom would be passed, he said, "To the best." One assumes that this means that he who would emerge as the emperor would be the one most deserving of this power. It certainly does not seem to be a division of the empire at all, which would no doubt be the last thing Alexander would want. Justin (12.14) writes that Alexander gave his emperor's ring to

30. Goldstein I Maccabees 62. 31. Ettelson The Integrity of I Maccabees 249-384; Schunck Die que/len des l und Il Makkbiierbuches 7. 32. Joshua Efron Studies on the Hasmonaean Period (Leiden, 1987) 14-15 n. 50.

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Perdiccas, Captain of the Bodyguard; again, the designation of one successor, not three or five. Since we assume that the author of 1Maccabees did not have a different source of firsthand information, the question becomes: Why would he alter the facts in this way? That is, this may not so much be a historical mistake as a tendentious revision of history. We see that Berossus, the Babylonian historian, also considers the Seleucids as both direct and legitimate heirs of Alexander. As Bickerman33 suggests, the Seleucids themselves traced their claims of kingship directly to Alexander. Zeitlin34 adds that the Ptolemies may have had their own propaganda of a similar nature. Thus the author of !Maccabees, under the influence of common historical knowledge in his time and place, simply reviewed what he thought were the facts.

How Many Elephants Did Antiochus III Have at the Battle of Magnesia and Did the Romans Capture Him? In discussing Judas's alliance with Rome, 1Mace. 8 relates how the Romans defeated Antiochus III despite the fact that he had one hundred and twenty elephants. lMacc. 8.7 states: "The Romans captured him alive and decreed that he and his successors on the throne should pay the Romans a heavy tribute and give hostages ... " Some scholars have criticized !Maccabees's historicity because, according to Livy, Antiochus III only had fifty-four elephants at the Battle of Magnesia in 190 BCE (Livy xxxvii 39.13) and was never captured by the Romans (Livy xxxvii 44-45; xxxviii 45.1-2). The author of I Maccabees does not seem to be making up the figure of one hundred and twenty because that is the number of elephants, according to Polybius xi 34.12, that Antiochus III brought back with him from his march toward India. The same king had one hundred and two elephants at the Battle of Raphia in 217 BCE (Polybius v 79.13). The fact that Polybius tells us that Antiochus III had one hundred and twenty elephants at another point is close enough to the 1Maccabees account to prevent us from criticizing his account with any severity. As for the issue of the capture of the king, there may have been a Roman story to that effect. We do know that the Romans took King Perseus of the Macedonians as a prisoner (Livy xlv 6.6) and it is certainly a fact that important hostages were sent to the Romans. Most important for our consideration is that the future Antiochus IV would be a hostage and that his years in Rome would inspire him to try to create a republic based on the Roman model. In a sense, the story of the Maccabees and their fight against the persecution of Antiochus IV is a result of the Treaty of

33. Bickerman Institutions 5. 34. Zeitlin The First Book of the Maccabees 26.

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Apamea in 188 BCE and that one of the terms was the sending of important hostages. Another argument in favor of the historicity of at least elements of l Mace. can be found from archaeology that has uncovered evidence consistent with some of the claims of l Maccabees. The excavation of Gezer seems to confirm· elements of the description of Simon's conquest of that city and its resettlement with observant Jews (lMacc 13:43-48).35 We conclude, then, that lMaccabees earnestly attempts to be historical and factual and that allowing for mistakes based on the information available concerning the earlier periods of Alexander and Antiochus III and the tendencies of the author, is a generally trustworthy account concerning its time and place of focus and expertise, Judaea in the period 170-130 BCE. What is at stake in the debate over the date and historicity of !Maccabees is whether the author could have been a contemporary witness to the events, perhaps even someone associated with Simon. 36 In our study of Mattathias, we consider the fact that Simon was the son and John Hyrcanus the grandson of this figure. Mattathias was not Hasmonaeus, an artificial eponymous ancestor. He was not far removed from the lifetime of the author who wrote 1Maccabees.

35. Ronny Reich "Archaeological Evidence of the Jewish Population ofHasmonaean Gezer" /EJ3l (1981)48-52. 36. As Howard Fast's popular modern novel My Glorious Brothers posited, with Simon as the first-person narrator.

Chapter Nine Mattathias and the Definition of Judaism Any critical reading of an ancient text must include a careful sifting of all evidence we have concerning the historicity of its statements. Still, we are often left to examine the inner logic of the text and make subjective judgments about its plausibility and motives. I did not start this inquiry into the life of Mattathias with the assumption that the description of his actions in l Maccabees is necessarily factual, but in separating the elements of the narrative and studying each in its own textual and historical context, I have increasingly gained confidence in its plausibility. Scholars have questioned every aspect of the story ofMattathias in !Maccabees, including his very existence. The revisionist narrative turns Mattathias and his Maccabees from idealistic fighters for religious freedom into merely ambitious men who through ruthless and relentless striving for power, and even genealogical falsification usurped the high priesthood of Judaea. I have studied the different aspects of the Mattathias narrative in 1Maccabees: the incident at Modein, Mattathias's priestly credentials and their implications for his education, beliefs and motivations, the meaning of ambition and the greater ambition to create the Jewish kingdom promised by the sacred biblical texts, the meaning of circumcision in Mattathias 's time and what it may have meant to him, and the decision to fight on the Sabbath. In each case, I have found reason to accept the validity of the text's claims about this important figure. Mattathias saw the Antiochene persecution as a crisis of epic proportions and was quite prepared to start a war. After hundreds of years of submission to the political authorities of foreign empires, Mattathias 's act of rebellion was nothing short of a radical, epoch-making event. When he kills the Jewish man ofModein who is willing to participate in a pagan sacrifice, the symbolism is that he is willing to kill all Jewish people who forsake their religion. He quite intentionally starts a war against those that he considers the internal and external enemies of his people. Mattathias and Judas were not just a part of a conservative group, and they were not really that anti-Hellenistic. The Modein event was not only a signal to the Seleucids that a rebellion was beginning; it was meant as a signal to the Jews that the time of the fifth kingdom, the Jewish empire was finally at hand. Mattathias was the true heir of Jeremiah's golden sword, the truly Jewish interpreter of tradition.

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In 1Macc. 2:49-68, Mattathias speaks to his sons about the leadership of the family and the movement after his death. The speech reflects a synthesis of the Biblical and Greek perspectives on ambition. Mattathias attempts to inspire his sons to great deeds not only for their faith but also for the sake of gaining eternal fame and reputation. The motivations and actions of Mattathias 's Hasmonaean descendants must be separated from the original purpose of the revolution that brought the dynasty to power. Mattathias was ambitious, surely, as all great people of history are. But that ambition was not merely self-serving; it primarily was a by-product of his very strong beliefs. Mattathias was what the Greeks called a megalopsuchos, a "great-souled" man who achieved worthy fame and glory through deeds that literally change history. While some scholars have challenged Mattathias 's priestly credentials, he was indeed first and foremost a priest, educated in the sacred texts that inspired his actions. The clan of J(eh)oiarib was an ancient Zadokite clan that had existed for centuries by Mattathias's time. J(eh)oiarib was an ancient and well-known course of priests that had once been close to the high priestly lineage. By the time of Mattathias, centuries had passed since its members were close kinsmen of the high priest. Now it was no more important than any other priestly course in terms of rank or the duties it performed in the Temple. The lottery system was used every year; otherwise, if the order were permanent, it would render the idea of equality moot. Saying that the name J(eh)oiarib was interpolated in 1 Chr. 24 to become the first course, when all courses were equal, ignored that it only happened to be first in certain lists. Mattathias may have been a rosh ma'amad, the administrative head of his clan; this is a possible solution to the problem of whether Mattathias lived in Jerusalem or Modein. Mattathias would do anything and everything to perpetuate the covenant as he understood it from his priestly training. Mattathias and his sons, a fraternal order, went to war to defend the fraternal order of priests who represented the fraternal order of the Jews. Mattathias emphasized values and practices dear to the priesthood, especially Temple worship, circumcision and the Sabbath. As a priest, Mattathias understood the significance of circumcision as a rite of descent and peoplehood and not only saved it from extinction but made it more important than ever before. Circumcision for Mattathias may have been a path to immortality but it was first and foremost the symbol of the covenant, a covenant that must be obeyed at any price. By forcibly circumcising all male babies, Mattathias was a priest acting in the spirit of Gen. 17, the violent character of karet, and the Priestly code's emphasis on this ancient rite as a primary element in the perpetuation of the Jewish people. The doctrine of karet, Divine punishment for violation of the covenant, also had its human dimension, and Mattathias channeled his zeal into the

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destruction of those among the Judaeans who were not willing participants in the covenant. Mattathias invented the idea of forced circumcision in order to restore a practice first abandoned by many Hellenized Jews and then legally prohibited by the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV. This action was historical and not a legendary reflection of later events. Instead, Mattathias 's descendants, the Hasmonaean kings, used their forerunner's actions as a foundation for their expansionist program. Mattathias forcibly circumcised babies within the borders of Judaea and his descendants also forcibly circumcised neighboring peoples. Mattathias's actions should be seen as the foundation for, not the reflex of, the policies of his royal descendants. "Judaea for Jews" was a paraphrase of his policy, and he demanded that Jews be circumcised. Mattathias forcibly circumcised babies in order to purify the land of a persecution that had forbidden the rite; the kings circumcised as a means of converting formerly non-Jewish babies in order to expand the power of the Jewish people into new territory. These were both religious and nationalistic acts of proclaiming identity through this ancient and distinctive mark. According to 1Maccabees, Mattathias instituted the policy of defensive fighting on the Sabbath. He is willing even to fight on the Sabbath when necessary, placing the priority on the success of the movement rather than the religious commandment. Mattathias did not intend to change Sabbath laws; instead, his pronouncement should be taken as an ad hoc statement for the period of the Antiochene persecution and did not constitute a precedent. Not even Judas or Jonathan, Mattathias's sons, took the pronouncement as a new law. Judas at least partly refrained from defensive warfare on the Sabbath, thus drawing many who disagreed with Sabbath warfare to his side. After Mattathias ~s point was made in his particular situation, Judas and Jonathan drew back and tried not to fight on the Sabbath at all. Mattathias would not have disagreed with his sons. He never wanted to fight on the Sabbath; he felt that he needed to be able to fight only if the situation required it. The innovation was really a modification made out of necessity in order to save Jewish lives from slaughter. The Maccabees were religious keepers of the Sabbath who believed that while Jewish law sometimes needed to be bent, it should never be broken. !Maccabees earnestly attempts to be historical and factual and is a generally trustworthy account concerning its time and place of focus and expertise, Judaea in the period c. 170- c. 130 BCE The author could have been a contemporary witness to the events, perhaps even someone associated with Simon, the son and John Hyrcanus, the grandson of this figure. Mattathias was not Hasmonaeus, an artificial eponymous ancestor. He was not far removed from the lifetime of the author who wrote l Maccabees.

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If the Hasmonaeans were falsifying the past, they would have made their clan connected to the high priestly clan of Jedaiah, J(eh)oiarib. If the Hasmonaeans were falsifying the past, they would not have made up warfare on the Sabbath, a doctrine they did not follow themselves. If the Hasmonaeans were creating a symbolic past, they would have made up an initial incident in Jerusalem and not in the relatively insignificant Mode1n. The Book of 1Maccabees shows how in their zeal, Mattathias and the Maccabees who followed him were prepared to use violence. Mattathias 's actions were very different from his contemporaries, emphasized in 2Maccabees, who were martyred in passive resistance to the persecution. It may be useful to describe Mattathias as pursuing a policy of zealous violence which would encompass his actions of killing the Jewish man at Modein, violent revolution, the destruction of illicit altars and forced circumcision. Saving the Torah is one thing, but as Mattathias and his men succeeded in their revolution, they went far beyond defense. There is a difference between necessary violence, such as defensive warfare on the Sabbath, and zealous violence, such as not waiting for Jewish parents to return to the performance of circumcision and circumcising those babies themselves. Mattathias 's actions of zealous violence, as controversial as they were in his day and as controversial as they would be seen today, primarily were for the preservation of his religion and people as he defined it. In fact, it was Mattathias who saved the Torah and defined Judaism and Jewishness for his time. The Maccabees win and their traditional Judaism, not a paganized or Hellenized version, would be Judaism. While I have discussed Mattathias's reaction to the Antiochene persecution at great length, I have spent very little space explaining why this persecution happened. This is one of the most vexing but also most interesting questions in the history of this period of Jewish history. I hope in the future to build on Gruen's theory of honor as the motivation for Antiochus's actions, but in the meantime, I can offer this formulation: In response to Jason's rebellion and in pursuit of internal Judaean anti-Jewish and external Hellenistic goals, Antiochus IV decreed the persecution of Judaeans who observed Judaism in Judaea. Mattathias is the first leader of the Judaeans who fights against this persecution. When Mattathias kills a Jewish man of Modein, a village in Judaea, he says, in effect: 'If you are a Jewish Judaean faithful to monotheism, join our battle against paganism from the outside and the inside. I am at war with Judaeans who are not Jewish. I will forcibly circumcise their sons when they decided not to do so out of fear or willing complicity. I will bring an ad hoc solution to the problem of warfare on our Sabbath. I will rededicate the Temple and purify it from the very pagan defilement that the Samaritans accepted. I will define what Judaism is.' Since the heirs of Mattathias and the other "Jewish" Judaeans not

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only survive the crisis of the persecution but go on to win and achieve power over the future of the people and the religion, they become the 'Jews.' They write the history in 1Maccabees according to their understanding of who was truly Jewish in the era of the persecution. And in portraying the founder of the Maccabees, they presented Mattathias as a zealot who was willing to fight and die for what he believed to be the essentials of religion. They did not shy away or modify this picture. If we are going to understand the history of this period, neither should we.

Selected Bibliography Abel, F.-M. Geographie de Ia Palestine 113rd ed. Paris: Gabalda, 1967. Abel. and J. Starcky. Les Livres des Maccabees. Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1961. Abrahams, I. "Niese on the Two Books of the Maccabees" The Jewish Quarterly Review Vol. 13, No.3 (Apr., 1901) 508-519; review ofBenedictus Niese Kritik der heiden Makkaberbcher, nebst Beitrgen zur Geschichte der makkabischen Erhebung. Berlin: Weidmann, 1900. Abusch, Ra'anan. "Circumcision and Castration under Roman Law in the Early Empire" in The Covenant of Circumcision: New Perspectives on an Ancient Jewish Rite. Ed. by Elizabeth Wyner Mark, 75-86. Hanover and London: Brandeis University Press, 2003. Agatharchides of Cnidus. On the Erythraean Sea trans. and ed. by Stanley M. Burstein, Second series, no. 172. London: Hakluyt Society, 1989. · Aguilar, Mario I. "Rethinking the Judaean past: questions of history and a social archaeology of memory in the first book of the Maccabees" Biblical Theology Bulletin (Summer, 2000). Alfrink, B. "L'expression ne"esap'el- 'ammayw" OTS 5 (1948) 118-31. Anderson, H. "4 Maccabees" in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Vol. 2 ed. by James H. Charlesworth. New York: Doubleday, 1985. Andreasen, Neils-Erik. The Old Testament Sabbath SBLDS 7 Missoula, MT: SBL, 1972. Arieti, James. "Nudity in Greek Athletics" The Classical World Vol. 68 No. 7 (Apr.-May, 1975) 431-36. Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics Loeb Classical Library XIX. Trans. H. Rackham, Cambridge: Harvard, 2003. Bar-Kochva, Bezalel. Judas Maccabaeus: The Jewish Struggle against the Seleucids Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Bartlett, J. R. The First and Second Books of the Maccabees The Cambridge Bible Commentary on the New English Bible. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973. Bevan, Edwyn R. The House of Ptolemy. Chicago: Ares, 1968. -The House ofSeleucus London: E. Arnold, 1902. Bickerman, Elias. "Un document relatif a Ia persecution d'Antiochus IV Epiphane" RHR 115 (1937) 188 ff. =Studies in Jewish and Christian History II, 105-35. -Der Gott der Makkabiier. Berlin: Schocken, 1937. -Studies in Jewish and Christian History II. Leiden: Brill, 1980. -From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees: Foundations of Post- Biblical Judaism. New York: Schocken, 1962. -Institutions des Seleucides. Paris: Geuthner, 1938. -The God of the Maccabees. Studies on the Meaning and Origin of the Maccabaean Revolt Studies in Judaism and Late Antiquity 32. Leiden: Brill, 1979. Bloch, Heinrich. Die Que/len des Flavius Josephus in seiner Archiiologie. 1879; reprint Weisbaden: Sandig, 1968. Bliimner, Hugo. The Home Life of the Ancient Greeks trans. Alice Zimmem. London: Cassell, 1896. Bonfante, Larissa. Etruscan Dress. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975. Box, G. H. and W. 0. E. Oesterley in R. H. Charles Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament. Oxford: Clarendon, 1912. Breasted J. H. Ancient Records of Egypt III. New York: Russell and Russell, 1962. Bright, John. Jeremiah. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965. Bringmann, Klaus. Hellenistische Reform und Religionsveifolgung in Judea. Eine Untersuchng zur judisch-hel/enistische Geschichte ( 175-163 v.Chr. ). Abhandlungen

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Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Philologisch-Historisch Klasse, Dritte Folge 132 Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983. Buss, M. J. "An Anthropological Perspective Upon Prophetic Call Narratives" Semeia 2 (1982) 9-30. Charles, R. H. The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament. Oxford: Clarendon, 1984. - The Book ofJubilees or the Little Genesis. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1902. Cohen, Shaye J.D. From the Maccabees to the Mishnah. Library of Early Christianity 7. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1987. -Josephus in Galilee and Rome: His Vita and Development as a Historian. Leiden: Brill, 1979. -"Religion, Ethnicity and Hellenism in the Emergence of Jewish Identity in Maccabaean Palestine," in Per Bilde et al., eds., Religion and Religious Practice in the Seleucid Kingdom 204-23. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1990. -"Respect for Judaism by Gentiles in the Writings of Josephus", HTR 80 ( 1987) 409-430. - The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties Hellenistic Culture and Society 31. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. - Why Aren't Jewish Women Circumcised? Gender and Covenant in Judaism. Berkeley: University of California, 2005. Collins, J. J. Between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000. -Daniel, with an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984. -Daniel. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993. -Daniel, First Maccabees, Second Maccabees with an Excursus on the Apocalyptic Genre. Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1981. - "Jewish Apocalyptic against its Hellenistic Near Eastern Environment" BASOR 220 (1975) 27-36. -Jewish Wisdom in the Hellenistic Age. Louisville: Westminster, 1997. - The Apocalyptic Vision of the Book of Daniel. Missoula: HSM, 1977. -"The Epic ofTheodotus and the Hellenism of the Hasmonaeans" HTR 73 (1980) 91-104. Collins, John J. and Sterling, Gregory E. eds. Hellenism in the Land of Israel. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001. Cross, Frank Moore. "A Reconstruction of the Judean Restoration," JBL 94 (1975) 4-18 =Int. 29 (1975) 187-203. Dancy J. C. A Commentary on I Maccabees. Oxford: Blackwell, 1964. De Vaux, Roland. Ancient Israel translated by John McHugh. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961. Dommershausen, W. I Makkabaerr 2 Makkabaeer Fasc. 12 in Die Neue Echter Bibel ed. J. G. Ploger et al. Wurzburg: Echter, 1985. Doran, Robert. "Jason's Gymnasium" in Of Scribes and Scrolls: Studies on the Hebrew Bible, Intertestamental Judaism, and Christian Origins presented to John Strugnel/ ed. by Harold W. Attridge, John J. Collins, and Thomas H. Tobin 106-08. Lanham, Md.: UPA, 1990. -Temple Propaganda: The Purpose and Meaning of 2Maccabees. Washington D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1981.

Selected Bibliography

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-"The First Book of Maccabees" in The New Interpreter's Bible Vol. IV. Nashville: Abingdon, 1996. 3-178. -"The High Cost of a Good Education" in Hellenism in the Land of Israel. Edited by John J. Collins and Gregory E. Sterling 94-115. Notre Dame: University ofNotre Dame Press, 2001. -"The Second Book of Maccabees" in The New Interpreter's Bible 181-299 Nashville: Abingdon, 1996. Eckstein, Arthur M. Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome. Berkeley: University of California, 2006. Eddy, Samuel K. The King is Dead: Studies in the Near Eastern Resistance to Hellenism, 334-31 B.C. Lincoln, Nebraska: University ofNebraska Press, 1961. Efron, Joshua. Studies on the Hasmonaean Period. SJLA 39. Leiden: Brill, 1987. Eilberg-Schwartz, Howard. "The Fruitful Cut: Circumcision and Israel's Symbolic Language of Fertility, Descent and Gender" in The Savage in Judaism: An Anthropology of Israelite Religion and Ancient Judaism 141-76. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1990. Eissfeldt, Otto. The Old Testament: An Introduction. New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1965. Endres, John Biblical Interpretation in the Book of Jubilees CBQMS 18. Washington D.C.: CBAA, 1987. Epstein, I. The Babylonian Talmud. London: Soncino, 1938. Ettelson, H. W. The Integrity of I Maccabees. The Transaction of the Connecticut Academy ofArts and Sciences 27 (1925). Fairweather, William and Black, J. Sutherland. The First Book of Maccabees. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1897 Faulkner, Robert. The Case for Greatness: Honorable Ambition and Its Critics New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. Feldman, Louis H. "Josephus's Portrayal of the Hasmonaeans Compared with !Maccabees" in Fausto Parente and Joseph Sievers eds. Josephus and the History of the Greco-Roman Period: Essays in Memory of Morton Smith 41-68. Leiden: Brill, 1994. -"The Portrayal of Phinehas by Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Josephus" JQR XCII No. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 315-45. Flusser, C. "The Four Empires in the Fourth Sibyl and in the Book of Daniel" Israel Oriental Studies 2 (1972) 148-75. Filer· Joyce M. "Hygiene" in Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt ed. Donald Redford (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) 135. Finkelstein, Louis. "The Book of Jubilees and the Rabbinic Halakha" HTR 16 ( 1923) 56-57. -"Some Examples ofthe Maccabaean Halakah" JBL XLIX (1930) 20-42. Fischer, Thomas. "Books of Maccabees" !DB IV 440. -"Rom und die Hasmonaeer" Gymnasium 88 (1981) 139-50. Fox M. "Sign of the Covenant: Circumcision in the Light of the Priestly 'ot Etiologies" RB 81 (1974) 537-96. Fuks, G. "Josephus and the Hasmonaeans" JJS41 (1990) 166-176. Gafni, Isaiah M. "Josephus and I Maccabees" in Josephus, the Bible and History ed. Louis H. Feldman and Gohei Hata 116-31. Detroit: Wayne State University, 1988. -"On the Use of !Maccabees by Josephus Flavius," (Hebrew) Zion 45 (1980) 81-95.

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Gammie, J. G. "The Classification, Stages of Growth and Changing Intentions in the Book ofDaniel" JBL 93 (1976) 356-85. Geiger, Abraham. Urschrift und Ubersetzungen der Bibel 2nd ed. Frankfurt/Main: Madda, 1928. Gibson, Shimon. "Landscape Archaeology and Salvage Excavations in Modi'in" ASOR Newsletter 49-1 (1999) 16-17. Gilbert, M. "Wisdom Literature" in Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period Section Two Apocrypha, Pseudepigapha, Qumran Sectarian Writings, Philo, Josephus Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum: The Literature of the Jewish People in the Period of the Second Temple and the Talmud ed. Michael E. Stone 283320. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1984. Ginsberg, Harold Louis. "Daniel, Book of' Encyclopedia Judaica 5:1283. -Studies in Daniel. New York, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1948. Gluckman, Max. "The Role of the Sexes in Wiko Circumcision Ceremonies" in Social Structure ed. Meyer Fortes, 145-67. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949. Goldstein, Jonathan A. "How the Authors of I and 2 Maccabees Treated the "Messianic" Promises" in Judaism and its Messiahs at the Turn of the Christian Era ed. by Jacob Neusner, William S. Green and Ernest Frerichs, 69-86. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. -"Jewish Acceptance and Rejection of Hellenism" in E. P. Sanders with I. Baumgarten and Alan Mendelsohn eds. Jewish and Christian Self-Definition II. 64-87. Philadelphia: Fortress, 19 81. - I Maccabees. The Anchor Bible. Garden City: Doubleday, 1976. -II Maccabees. The Anchor Bible. Garden City, Doubleday, 1983. Goodman, Martin. Mission and Conversion. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. Grabbe, Lester L. Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian Volume One: The Persian and Greek Periods. London: SCM, 1992. Grainger, John D. A Seleukid Prosopography and Gazeteer. Leiden: Brill, 1997. Green, Peter. Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Greenberg Moshe Ezekiel21-37. New York: Doubleday, 1997. -"Sabbath" Encyclopedia Judaica Vol. 14, 562. New York: Macmillan, 1971. -"The Sabbath Pericope in Jeremiah" lyyunim beSe(er Yirmeyahu, 23-51 Jerusalem: Israel Society for Biblical Research, 1971 (Heb.). Grimm, C. L. W. Das erste Buch der Maccabiier (Kurzgefasstes exegetisches Handbuch zu den Apokryphen des Alten Testamentes 3. Leipzig: Hirzel, 1853. Grintz, J. M. "From Zerubbabel to Nehemiah" Zion 37 (1972) 155-56 (in Hebrew). Gruber, M. "The Source of the Biblical Sabbath" JANES 1 (1969) 14-20. Gruen, Erich S. "The Bacchanalian Affair" in Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy 34-78. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. -Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. -"Review of Cohen's "The Beginnings of Jewishness"" JQR XCII Nos. 3-4 (January-April, 2002) 596. Haber, Susan "Living and dying for the law: the mother-martyrs of 2Maccabees" Women in Judaism Vol4, No 1 (2006).

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Habicht, C. 2 Makkabaerbuch JSHRZ 113. Gutersloh: Mohn, 1976. Hall Robert G. "Circumcision" ABD I 1029. - "Epispasm and the Dating of Ancient Jewish Writings" JSP 2 ( 1988) 71-86. Halpern, Baruch and Jon. D. Levenson "The Political Import of David's Marriages" JBL 99/4 (1980) 507-18. Hamilton, Susan. "The Passion for Honor and Justice: Aristotle's Account of Political Ambition;" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association, 2008-10-14. http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p 143281 index.html. Harrington, Daniel J. The Maccabaean Revolt: Anatomy of a Biblical Revolution. Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1988. Harris, H. A. Greek Athletics and the Jews. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1976. Hartman, Louis E. and Alexander A. Dilella The Book of Daniel Anchor Bible Series 23. New York: Doubleday, 1977. Hasel, G.F. "New Moon and Sabbath" in Eighth Century Israelite Prophetic Writings (lsa 1:13; Hos 2:13; Amos 8:5)" in "Wiinschet Jerusalem Frieden": Collected Communications to the Xllth Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, Jerusalem, 1986 ed. M. Augustin and K.-D. Schunck 37-64. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1988. -"Sabbath" ABD V, 833. -"The Sabbath in the Pentateuch" and "The Sabbath in the Prophets and Historical Literature of the Old Testament" in The Sabbath in Scripture and History ed. K. A. Strand. Washington D.C.: Review and Herald, 1982), 21-43 and44-50. Helfgott, S. The Sabbath in the Classical Writers dissertation, Yeshiva University New York, 1974. Hengel, Martin Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period trans. by John Bowden. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 1947. -Jews, Greeks and Barbarians trans. by John Bowden. Stuttgart, 1976. Herman, Gabriel. "The 'Friends of the Early Hellenistic Rulers: Servants or Officials?" Talanta 12/13 (1980-81) 103-49. Herr, M. D. "The Problem of War on the Sabbath in the Second Temple and the Talmudic Periods" Tarbiz 30 (1961) 248-9, 354-6 (Hebrew). Herzog, Chaim and Gihon, Mordechai. Battles of the Bible: A Modern Military Evaluation of the Old Testament. New York: Random House, 1978. Hilbis, A. L. "The Hasmonaeans According to the Talmudic and Midrashic Sources" Sinai 8, 6-22. Himmelfarb, Martha. A Kingdom of Priests. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. Hodges, Frederic M. "The Ideal Prepuce in Ancient Greece and Rome: Male Genital Aesthetics and their Relation to Lipodermos, Circumcision, Foreskin Restoration, and the Kynodesme" Bulletin of the History of Medicine 15 (2001) 376. Hoffman, Lawrence A. Covenant of Blood: Circumcision and Gender in Rabbinic Judaism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. -"Circumcision" in The Encyclopedia of Judaism Vol. I, ed. by Neusner, Jacob, Alan J. Avery-Peck and William Scott Green. New York: Continuum, 1999. Humphreys, W. Lee. "A Life-Style for the Diaspora: A Study of the Tales of Esther and Daniel" JBL 92 (1973) 217-23. Hyatt, J. P. Exodus. London: Eerdmans, 1971.

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Hyldahl, Niels "The Maccabaean Rebellion and the Question of "Hellenization" Religion and Religious Practice in the Seleucid Kingdom 200. Japhet, Sara. I and II Chronicles. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993. Jay, Nancy. "Sacrifice as Remedy for Having Been Born of Woman" in Immaculate and Powerful ed. C. W. Atkinson et al, 283-309. Boston: Beacon Press, 1985. -"Sacrifice, Descent, and the Patriarchs" Vetus Testamentum 38 (1) 52-70. Johns, A. F. "The Military Strategy of Sabbath Attacks on the Jews" VT 13 (1963) 482-86. Johnson, J. "The Demotic Chronicle as an Historical Source" Enchoria 4 (1974) 1-17. Johnston, Philip S. Shades of Sheol: Death and Afterlife in the Old Testament Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity, 2002. Josephus Jewish Antiquities Books XII-XIII trans. by Ralph Marcus. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998. Josephus Life ofJosephus Translation and commentary by Steve Mason. Lei den: Brill, 200 I) Vol. 9 12-14 Flavius Josephus Translation and Commentary edited by Steve Mason. Kahana, Abraham. Ha-Sefarim ha-Hitzonim vol. 2. Tel Aviv, 1937. Kaiser, Otto. "Our forefathers never triumphed by arms ... ": the interpretation of biblical history in the addresses of Flavius Josephus to the besieged Jerusalernites in Beli.Jud. V.356-426" Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature Yearbook (2006) 239-264. Kasher, Aryeh. "Josephus on King Jannaeus's War against the Hellenistic Cities" Cathedra 41 (1986) 11-36 (Hebrew). -Jews, Idumeans and Ancient Arabs. Tubingen: Mohr, 1988. Kippenberg H. G. Garizim und Synagoge. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1971) 79. Klein, Samuel. The Land ofJudaea. Tel Aviv: Sinai, 1939. Koenen, L. "The Prophecies of a Potter: A Prophecy of World Renewal Become an Apocalypse" in Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of Papyrology ed. D.H. Samuel 249-54. Toronto: Hackert, 1970. Koets, Peter J. Deisdaimonia: A Contribution to the Knowledge of Religious Terminology in Greek. Diss. Utrecht; Purmerend, 1929. Kohler, Kaufmann "Circumcision" JE IV (1903) 95. Kraemer, Ross S. "Jewish Women and Christian Origins: Some Caveats" in Women and Christian Origins eds. Ross S. Kraemer and Mary Rose D'Angelo 35-49. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Krentz, Edgar. "The Honorary Decree for Simon the Maccabee" in Collins and Sterling Hellenism in the Landoflsraell46-53. Kugel, James "The Story ofDinah in the Testament of Levi" HTR 85 (1992) 1-34. -"Levi's Election to the Priesthood in Second Temple Writings" HTR 86 (1993) 17-19. Lee, T. R. Studies in the Form ofSirach 44-50 SBLDS 75. Atlanta: Scholars, 1986. Lehrman, S.M., trans. Midrash Rabbah: Exodus. London: Soncino, 1961. Levenson, Jon D. Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Levine, Baruch A. Leviticus. Phil.: JPS, 1989. Licht, Hans. Sexual Life in Ancient Greece (London: Routledge, 1956) 88-89. Licht, J. "Taxo, or the Apocalyptic Doctrine of Vengeance" JJS 12 (1961) 95-103 Lichtheim, M. Ancient Egyptian Literature Volume I. Berkeley: University of California 1973.

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Liver, Jacob. Chapters in the History of the Priests and Levites. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1968 (in Hebrew). Lods, A. "La 'mort de incirconcis" CRAIBL 27 (1943) 271-83. Loewenstamm S.E. "The Death ofMoses" Tarbiz (1958) 142-57. Longstaff, Thomas R. W. "Modern" ABD IV 894-95. Lowe, Malcolm. "Who were the Joudaioi?" Novus Testamentum Vol. XVIII fasc. 2, 107. Lundbom, Jack R. "Book of Jeremiah" ABD III 715. Luria· B. Z. "Men ofTyre also, who lived in the city, brought in fish and all kinds of wares (Nehemiah 13:16)" Beth Milcra 15 (1970) 363-67 (Heb.). Mack, B. L. Wisdom and the Hebrew Epic: Ben Sira 's Hymn in Praise of the Fathers Chicago: University of Chicago, 1985. Marcus, Ivan G. The Jewish Life Cycle: Rites of Passage from Biblical to Modern Times Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004. Martin-Achard, R. From Death to Life. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1960. Martola, N. Capture and Liberation: A Study in the Composition of the First Book of Maccabees. Abo: Akademie, 1984). Mason, Steve. "Josephus and Judaism" in Jacob Neusner, Alan J. Avery-Peck and William Scott Green, eds. The Encyclopedia of Judaism Vol. II. 554-55. New York: Continuum, 1999. -"Josephus, Daniel and the Flavian House" in Josephus and the History of the GrecoRoman Period: Essays in Memory of Morton Smith ed. by Fausto Parente and Joseph Sievers 161-191. Leiden: Brill, 1994. -"Priesthood in Josephus and the "Pharisaic Revolution""Journal ofBiblical Literature Vol. 107, No.4 (Dec., 1988). McCarter Jr. P. Kyle I Samuel The Anchor Bible. New York: Doubleday, 1980. McCown, C. C. "Hebrew and Egyptian Apocalyptic Literature" HTR 18 (1925) 389. McNamara, M. "Nabonidus and the Book of Daniel" ITQ 37 (1970) 131-49; Melamed, E.Z. "Josephus and Maccabees 1: A Comparison" EI 1 (1951) 122-30. Meshorer, Ya'akov. Jewish Coins ofthe Second Temple Period. Chicago: Argonaut, 1967. Milgrom Jacob Leviticus 1-16. New York: Doubleday, 1991. -Numbers: The JPS Torah Commentary. Philadelphia: IPS, 1990. Milik, J. T. "Fragment d'une source du Psautier (4Q Ps 89) et fragments des Jubiles ... " Revue biblique 73 (1966) 102-4). -The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumran Cave 4 Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976. Millar, F. "The Background to the Maccabaean Revolution: Reflections on Martin Hengel's Judaism and Hellenism" JJS 29 (1978) 1-21. Miller Stephen G. Ancient Greek Athletics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Momigliano, Arnaldo. "The Second Book of Maccabees" in Arnaldo Momigliano Essays on Ancient and Modern Judaism ed. by Silvia Berti, trans. by Maura Masella-Gayley. Chicago, University of Chicago, 1994. Moore, George F. Judaism 2. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1929. Mor, Menahem. "Theodotus, the Epos of Shechem and the Samaritans: A Interpretation" in Aaron Openhaimer, Isaiah Gafni, and Daniel Schwartz, eds. The Jews in the HellenisticRoman World Studies in Memory ofMenahem Stern 345-59. Jerusalem: Merkaz Zalman Shazar, 1996 [Hebrew]. Morkholm, Otto. Antiochus IV of Syria. Classica et Mediaevalia, Dissertationes 8.

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Mouratidis, John. "The Origin of Nudity in Greek Athletics" Journal of Sport History Vol. 12 No.3 (Winter, 1985) 213-32. Murphy-O'Connor, J. "Demetrius I and the Teacher of Righteousness (I Mace., X, 25-45)" RB 83 ( 1976) 400-20. Na'aman, N. "Sennacherib's "Letter to God" on His Campaign to Judah" BASOR 214 (1974) 25-39. Negev, Abraham and Gibson, Shimon (eds.) Archaeological Encyclopedia of the Holy Land. New York: Continuum, 2003. Neuhaus, G. 0. "Quellen im 1. Makkabiierbuch? Eine Entgegnung auf die Analyse von K.D. Schunck" JSJV (1974) 162-75. Neusner, Jacob. Judaism: The Evidence of the Mishnah. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1981. -The Mishnah: A New Translation. New Haven: Yale, 1991. -The Rabbinic Traditions about the Pharisees Before 70. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971. -The Talmud of Babylonia: An Academic Commentary XXII Bavli Tractate Baba Batra B. Chapters VI/ through XI. University of South Florida, 1996. Nickels burg, George W. E. "An Antiochan Date for the Testament of Moses" in Studies on the Testament of Moses ed. G. Nickelsburg 33-37. Cambridge: SCS, 1973. -Jewish Literature between the Bible and the Mishnah. Phil.: Fortress, 1981. -Resurrection, Immortality and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism and Early Christianity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006. -Jubilees" in Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period ed. by Michael E. Stone 97-104. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984. -Review of James VanderKam Textual and Historical Studies in the Book of Jubilees" JAOS 100 (1980) 83-84. Niese, Benedictus. Kritik der beiden Makkabaerbucher nebst Beitrgen zur Geschichte der makkabischen Erhebung. Berlin: Weidmann, 1900. Nilsson M. Die He/lenistische Schute. Munchen: Beck, 1955. Nongbri, Brent. "The Motivations of the Maccabees and the Judean Rhetoric of Ancestral Traditions" in Ancient Judaism in its Hellenistic Context ed. by Carol Bakhos, Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 95, 5-111. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Noth, Martin. Exodus. Phil.: Westminster, 1962. Ogden, Dan, ed. The Hellenistic World: New Perspectives. London: Duckworth, 2002. Oppenheimer, A. "Oral Law in the Books of Maccabees" Immanuel (1976) 34-42. Paige, Karen Erickson and Paige, Jeffrey M. The Politics ofReproductive Ritual Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. Paige, Karen Ericksen. "The Ritual of Circumcision" Human Nature (May, 1978) 40-48. Parente, Fausto and Joseph Sievers, eds. Josephus and the History of the The GrecoRoman Period. Leiden: Brill, 1994. Parker, R. A. and Dobberstein ,W. H. Babylonian Chronology: 626 B.C.-A.D. 75, 25. Pedersen, Johs.Israe/: Its Life and Culture I. London: Humphrey Milford, 1954. Perrottet, Tony. The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games New York: Random House, 2004. Pfeiffer, Robert H. History of New Testament Times: With an Introduction to the Apocrypha. New York: Harper, 1949.

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Plummer, Reinhard. "Genesis 34 in the Jewish Writings of the Hellenistic and Roman Periods" HTR 15 (1982) 177-88. Porten, Bezalel. "Instructions Regarding Legumes and Barley, Etc." in The Context of Scripture III: Archival Documents/rom the Biblical World eds. William W. Ballo and K. Lawson Younger, Jr., 214. Leiden: Brill, 2003. -"The Religion of the Jews of Elephantine in Light of the Hermopolis Papyri" JNES 28 (1969) 116-21. Priest, J. "Testament of Moses" in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments ed. by James H. Charlesworth. New York: Doubleday, 1983. Propp, W. H. "The Origins of Infant Circumcision in Israel" Hebrew Annual Review II (1987) 355-70. Rajak, T. Josephus: The Historian and His Society. London: Duckworth, 1983. Rappaport, Uriel. "Hellenistic Cities and the Judaization of Palestine in the Hasmonaean Age," in Samuel Perlman and B. Shirnron, eds. Doron: Studies in Classical Culture Presented to Professor B. Z. Katz Ben Shalom, 219-30 Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1967 (Hebrew). -"La Judee et Rome pendant le regne d'Aiexandre Jannee" REJ 127 (1968) 329-45. -"Mattathias" inABD IV 615. Raschke, Wendy J. The Archaeology of the Olympics: The Olympics and Other Festivals in Antiquity Wisconsin Studies in Classics. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002. Ray, J.D. The Archives ofHor. London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1976. Reich, Ronny. "Archaeological Evidence of the Jewish Population of Hasmonaean Gezer" IEJ 31 (1981) 48-52. Rooke, Deborah W. Zadok's Heirs: The Role and Development of the High Priesthood in Ancient Israel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Rostovtzeff, M. The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World (first edition, Oxford, 1941; second edition, revised by P. M. Fraser) Oxford, Clarendon, 1952. Roth, C. "Star and Anchor: Coin Symbolism and the Early Days" Eretz Israel 6 (1960) 1316. Rowley, H. H. "The Unity of the Book of Daniel" in The Servant of the Lord and Other Essays 2nd ed. rev. 249-280. Oxford: Blackwell, 1965. Rubin, Nissan. "A Study of Change in Custom" in The Covenant of Circumcision: New Perspectives on an Ancient Jewish Rite ed. Elizabeth Wyner Mark 87-97. Hanover: Brandeis University Press, 2003. Sacchi, Paolo. The History of the Second Temple Period JSOTSup 285. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000. Sasson, Jack. "Circumcision in the Ancient Near East" JBL 85 (1966) 473-76. Sayler, Gwendolyn B. Have the Promises Failed? A Literary Analysis of 2 Baruch Chico, Cal.: SBL, 1985. Schifer, Peter. "The Hellenistic and Maccabaean Periods" in Israelite and Judaean History ed. by John H. Hayes and J. Maxwell Miller. London: SCM, 1977. Schofield, Alison and Vanderkam, James C. "Were the Hasmonaeans Zadokites?"Journal ofBiblical Literature Vol. 124, No. I (Spring, 2005) 73-87. Schunck, Klaus-Dietrich. Die Quel/en des I. Und II. Makkbiierbuches Halle: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1954.

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Schiirer, Emil. A History of the Jewish People in the Age ofJesus Christ revised and edited by G. Vermes and F. Millarvol.l. Edinburgh, T. and T. Clark, 1973. Schwartz, Daniel R. "Kingdom of Priests: A Pharisaic Slogan?" in idem Studies in the Jewish Background of Christianity, 59-60.Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1992. -"Priesthood and Priestly Descent" JThS 32 ( 1981) 129-35. Schwartz, Joshua and Spanier, Joseph. "On Mattathias and the Desert of Samaria" RB 98 (1991) 252-71. Schwartz, Joshua. Lod (Lydda), Israel: From its Origins through the Byzantine period, 5600 B. C,E. - 640 C. E. Oxford: BAR, 1991. Schwartz, Seth. "A Note on the Social Type and Political Ideology of the Hasmonaean Family" JBL 112/2 (1993) 305-17. -Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 200 l ). -"Israel and the Nations Roundabout: I Maccabees and the Hasmonaean Expansion" JJS 42 (1991) 16-38. -Josephus and Judaean Politics. Lei den: Brill, 1990. -"The "Judaism" of Samaria and Galilee in Josephus's Version ofthe Letter of Demetrius I to Jonathan" (Antiquities" 13.48-57)" HTR Vol. 82, No.4 (Oct., 1989) 377-91. Scolnic, Benjamin E. Alcimus, Enemy of the Maccabees. Lanham, Md.: UPA, 2005. - Chronology and Papponymy: A List of the Judean High Priests of the Persian Period. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999. -Thy Brother's Blood: The Maccabees and the Dynastic Morality in the Hellenistic World. Lanham, Md.: UPA, 2007. Scott, R. B.Y. The Relevance of the Prophets: An introduction to the Old Testament prophets and their message. New York: Macmillan, 1968. Segal, Michael. The Book of Jubilees: Rewritten Bible, Redaction, Ideology and Theology. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Shapira, Ran. "The Hasmoneans were here- maybe" Haaretz 26/12/2005. Shatzman, Israel. "Jews and Gentiles from Judas Maccabaeus to John Hyrcanus according to Contemporary Jewish Sources" in Studies in Josephus and the Varieties of Ancient Judaism Louis H. Feldman Jubilee Volume ed. by Shaye J.D. Cohen and Joshua J. Schwartz, 237-70. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Shea, W. H. "Sennacherib's Description of Lachish and of Its Conquest." Andrews University Seminary Studies 26 (1988) 171-80. -"The Sabbath in Extra-Biblical Sources" Adventist Perspectives 3/2 (1989) 17-25. Sievers, Joseph. The Hasmonaeans and Their Supporters: From Mattathias to the Death of John Hyrcanus I. Atlanta: Scholar's Press, 1990. -"The High Priesthood of Simon Maccabeus: An Analysis of lMacc 14:25-49," SBLSP (1981) 309-18. Sisti, Adalberto. "II valore della circoncisione al tempo dei Maccabei" Liber Annuus Studii Biblici Franciscani 42 (1992) 33-48. Skeat, T. C. "Notes on Ptolemaic Chronology: II. 'The Twelfth Year Which is Also the First': The Invasion ofEgypt by Antiochus Epiphanes" JEA 47 (1961) 107-12. Smallwood, E. M. "The Legislation of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius against Circumcision" Latomus 18 (1959) 308-19.

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Smith, Morton. Palestinian Parties and Politics That Shaped the Old Testament New York: Columbia University Press, 1971. Spiro, Abram. "Samaritans, Tobiads, and Judaites in Pseudo-Philo" PAAJR 20 (1951) 279355. Stern, M. "Judaea and her neighbors in the days of Alexander Jannaeus" The Jerusalem Cathedra: Studies in the History, Archaeology, Geography and Ethnography of the Land oflsrael I (1981) 28-9. -Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism Vol. I. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Science, 1974-84. Swain, J. W. "The Theory of the Four Monarchies: Opposition History under the Roman Empire" CP 35 (1940) 1-21. Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures. Philadelphia: JPS, 1985. Tcherikover Victor. Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews. trans S. Applebaum. New York: Atheneum, 1975. Thackeray, H. St., J., Marcus, Ralph Wilgren, A., Feldman, L.H., ed. Josephus 9 vols. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926-65. Thoma, Clemens. "John Hyrcanus I as Seen by Josephus and Other Early Jewish Sources," in Fausto Parente and Joseph Sievers, eds. Josephus and the History of the Greco-Roman Period: Essays in Memory of Morton Smith, 127-40. Leiden: Brill, 1994. Thompson, Dorothy J. "Census and Taxes in Ptolemaic Egypt" in Hellenistic Constructs edited by Paul Cartledge, Peter Garnsey and Erich Gruen, 247-48. Berkeley: University of California, 1997. Thucydides. The History of the Peloponnesian War translated by Richard Crawley, Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 2004. Torrey, C. C. "Notes on the Aramaic Part of Daniel" Transactions of the Connecticut Academy ofArts and Sciences 15 (1909) 247-48. Tromp, Nicholas S. Primitive Conception of Death and the Netherworld in the Old Testament BO 21. Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1969. Tsevat, Matitiahu. The Meaning of the Book of Job and Other Biblical Studies: Essays on the Literature and Religion ofthe Hebrew Bible New York: Ktav, 1989. Turner, Victor W. "Ritual Aspects of Conflict Control in African Metropolitics" in Political Anthropology ed. Marc. J. Swartz, Victor W. Turner, and Arthur Tuden 239-46. Chicago: Aldine, 1966. Urbach, Ephraim E. "Halakhot Regarding Slavery as a Source for the Social History of the Second Temple and Talmudic Periods" Zion 25 (1960) 141-89. Van Henten, Jan William. "The Honorary Decree for Simon the Maccabee (I Mace. 14:2549) in its Hellenistic Context" in John J. Collins and Gregory E. Sterling eds. Hellenism in the Land oflsrael!l6-145. Notre Dame: University ofNotre Dame Press, 2001. Van Nortwick, Thomas. "Aeneas, Tumus, and Achilles" Transactions of the American Philological Association Vol. ll 0 ( 1980) 303-14. VanderKam, James C. "Book ofJubilees" in ABD III 1030-31. -From Joshua to Caiaphas: High Priests after the Exile. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004. -Textual and Historical Studies in the Book of Jubilees HSM 14. Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1977. -The Book ofJubilees. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001. Vermes, Geza. An Introduction to the Complete Dead Sea Scrolls Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999.

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Von Rad, Gerhard. Genesis trans. John H. Marks (Phil: Westminster Press, 1961). Weitzman, Steven. "Forced Circumcision and the Shifting Role of Gentiles in Hasmonaean Ideology" HTR Vol. 92, No. 1 (Jan., 1999) 37-59. -"Plotting Antiochus's Persecution" Journal of Biblical Literature Vol. 123, No. 2 (Summer, 2004) 231-32. Westermann, Claus. Genesis 12-36 trans. John J. Scullion Minneapolis: Fortress, 1981. Whitman, C. Homer and the Heroic Tradition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958. Wilk, Roman. "Forced Circumcision at the Hands of Mattathias" Sinai 115 (1995) 292-94 [Hebrew]. Williams, DavidS. The Structure of I Maccabees. Washington, D.C., CBQ, 1999. Winter, Paul. "Twenty-Six Priestly Courses" Vetus Testamentum Vol. 6, Fasc. 2 (Apr., 1956) 215-17. Wintermute, 0. S. "Jubilees: A New Translation and Introduction" in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Vol. 2, ed. J. H. Charlesworth. New York: Doubleday, 1985. Wiseman, D. J. Chronicles of the Chaldean Kings (626-556 B.C.) in the British Museum London: British Museum, 1956. Yadin, Y. The Art of Warfare in the Lands of the Bible. Jerusalem and Ramat Gan: International, 1963. Zeitlin, Solomon and Sidney Tedesche. The First Book of Maccabees Dropsie College Edition. New York: Harper and Row, 1950. -The Second Book of Maccabees Dropsie College edition. New York: Eisenbrauns, 1954.

STUDIES IN JUDAISM TITLES IN THE SERIES PUBLISHED BY UNIVERSITYPRESS OF AMERICA Judith Z. Abrams The Babylonian Talmud: A Topical Guide, 2002. Roger David Aus The Death, Burial, and Resurrection of Jesus, and the Death, Burial, and Translation of Moses in Judaic Tradition, 2008.

Matthew I-2 and the Virginal Conception: In Light of Palestinian and HelletJ.istic Judaic Traditions on the Birth of Israel's First Redeemer, Moses, 2004. My Name Is "Legion": Palestinian Judaic Traditions in Mark 5: I-20 and Other Gospel Texts, 2003. Alan L. Berger, Harry James Cargas, and Susan E. Nowak The Continuing Agony: From the Carmelite Convent to the Crosses at Auschwitz, 2004. S. Daniel Breslauer Creating a Judaism without Religion: A Postmodem Jewish Possibility, 2001. Bruce Chilton Targumic Approaches to the Gospels: Essays in the Mutual Definition of Judaism and Christianity, 1986. David Ellenson Tradition in Transition: Orthodoxy, Halakhah, and the Boundaries of Modern Jewish Identity, 1989. Roberta Rosenberg Farber and Simcha Fishbane Jewish Studies in Violence: A Collection of Essays, 2007. Paul V. M. Flesher New Perspectives on Ancient Judaism, Volume 5: Society and Literature in Analysis, 1990. Marvin Fox Collected Essays on Philosophy and on Judaism, Volume One: Greek Philosophy, Maimonides, 2003.

Collected Essays on Philosophy and on Judaism, Volume Two: Some Philosophers, 2003.

Collected Essays on Philosophy and on Judaism, Volume Three: Ethics, Reflections, 2003. Zev Garber Methodology in the Academic Teaching of Judaism, 1986. Zev Garber, Alan L. Berger, and Richard Libowitz Methodology in the Academic Teaching of the Holocaust ,1988. Abraham Gross Spirituality and Law: Courting Martyrdom in Christianity and Judaism, 2005. Harold S. Himmelfarb and Sergio DellaPergola Jewish Education Worldwide: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, 1989. Raphael Jospe Jewish Philosophy: Foundations and Extensions (Volume One: General Questions and Considerations), 2008.

Jewish Philosophy: Foundations and Extensions (Volume Two: On Philosophers and Their Thought), 2008. William Kluback The Idea of Humanity: Hermann Cohen's Legacy to Philosophy and Theology, 1987. Samuel Morell Studies in the Judicial Methodology of Rabbi David ibn Abi Zimra, 2004. Jacob Neusner Amos in Talmud and Midrash, 2006.

Analytical Templates of the Yerushalmi, 2008. Ancient Israel, Judaism, and Christianity in Contemporary Perspective, 2006. The Aggadic Role in Halakhic Discourses: Volume/, 2001. The Aggadic Role in Halakhic Discourses: Volume II, 2001. The Aggadic Role in Halakhic Discourses: Volume III, 2001. Analysis and Argumentation in Rabbinic Judaism, 2003. Analytical Templates of the Bavli, 2006.

Ancient Judaism and Modern Category-Formation: "Judaism," "Midrash," "Messianism," and Canon in the Past Quarter Century, 1986. Bologna Addresses and Other Recent Papers, 2007. Building Blocks of Rabbinic Tradition: The Documentary Approach to the Study of Formative Judaism, 2007. Canon and Connection: Intertextuality in Judaism, 1987. Chapters in the Formative History of Judaism, 2006. Chapters in the Formative History of Judaism: Second Series: More Questions and Answers, 2008. Chapters in the Formative History of Judaism: Third Series: Historical Theology, the Canon, Constructive Theology and Other Problems, 2009 Chapters in the Formative History of Judaism: Fourth Series: From-Historical Studies and the Documentary Hypothesis, 2009 Comparative Midrash: Sifre to Numbers and Sifre Zutta to Numbers: Two Rabbinic Readings of the Book of Numbers, Volume One: Forms, 2009. Comparative Midrash: Sifre to Numbers and Sifre Zutta to Numbers: Two Rabbinic Readings of the Book of Numbers, Volume Two: Exegesis, 2009. The Documentary History of Judaism and Its Recent Interpreters, 2009 Dual Discourse, Single Judaism, 2001. The Emergence of Judaism: Jewish Religion in Response to the Critical Issues of the First Six Centuries, 2000. Ezekiel in Talmud and Midrash, 2007. First Principles of Systemic Analysis: The Case of Judaism within the History of Religion, 1988. Habakkuk, Jonah, Nahum, and Obadiah in Talmud and Midrash: A Source Book, 2007. The Halakhah and the Aggadah, 2001. Halakhic Hermeneutics, 2003.

Halakhic Theology: A Sourcebook, 2006. The Hermeneutics of Rabbinic Category Formations, 2001. Hosea in Talmud and Midrash, 2006. How Important Was the Destruction of the Second Temple in the Formation of Rabbinic Judaism? 2006. How Not to Study Judaism, Examples and Counter-Examples, Volume One: Parables, Rabbinic Narratives, Rabbis' Biographies, Rabbis' Disputes, 2004. How Not to Study Judaism, Examples and Counter-Examples, Volume Two: Ethnicity and Identity Versus Culture and Religion, How Not to Write a Book on Judaism, Point and Counterpoint, 2004. How the Bavli is Constructed: Identifying the Forests Comprised by the Talmud's Trees: The Cases of Bavli Moed Qatan and of Bavli Makkot, 2009. How the Halakhah Unfolds: Moed Qatan in the Mishnah, Tosefta, Yerushalmi, and Bavli, 2006. How the Halakhah Unfolds, Volume II, Part A: Nazir in the Mishnah, Tosefta, Yerushalmi, and Bavli, 2007. How the Halakhah Unfolds, Volume II, Part B: Nazir in the Mishnah, Tosefta, Yerushalmi, and Bavli, 2007. How the Halakhah Unfolds, Volume lll, Part A: Abodah Zarah in the Mishnah, Tosefta, Yerushalmi, and Bavli, 2007. How the Halakhah Unfolds, Volume Ill, Part B: Abodah Zarah in the Mishnah, Tosefta, Yerushalmi, and Bavli, 2007. How the Halakhah Unfolds, Volume IV, Hagigah in the Mishnah, Tosefta, Yerushalmi, and Bavli, 2009. The Implicit Norms of Rabbinic Judaism, 2006. Intellectual Templates of the Law of Judaism, 2006. Isaiah in Talmud and Midrash: A Source Book, Part A, 2007.

Isaiah in Talmud and Midrash: A Source Book, Part B, 2007. Is Scripture the Origin of the Halakhah? 2005 Israel and Iran in Talmudic Times: A Political History, 1986. Israel's Politics in Sasanian Iran: Self-Government in Talmudic Times, 1986. Jeremiah in Talmud and Midrash: A Source Book, 2006. Judaism in Monologue and Dialogue, 2005. Major Trends in Formative Judaism, Fourth Series, 2002. Major Trends in Formative Judaism, Fifth Series, 2002. Messiah in Context: Israel's History and Destiny in Formative Judaism, 1988. Micah and Joel in Talmud and Midrash, 2006. Narrative and Document in the Rabbinic Canon, Vol. 1.: From the Mishnah to the Talmuds, 2009. The Native Category- Formations of the Aggadah: The Later MidrashCompilations- Volume I, 2000. The Native Category- Formations of the Aggadah: The Earlier MidrashCompilations- Volume /1, 2000. Paradigms in Passage: Patterns of Change in the Contemporary Study of Judaism, 1988. Parsing the Torah, 2005. Persia and Rome in Classical Judaism, 2008 Praxis and Parable: The Divergent Discourses of Rabbinic Judaism, 2006. The Program of the Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan A, 2009. Rabbi Jeremiah, 2006. Rabbinic Theology and Israelite Prophecy: Primacy of the Torah, Narrative of the World to Come, Doctrine of Repentance and Atonement, and the Systematization ofTheology in the Rabbis' Reading of the Prophets, 2007.

The Rabbinic Utopia, 2007. The Rabbis, the Law, and the Prophets. 2007. Reading Scripture with the Rabbis: The Five Books of Moses, 2006. The Religious Study of Judaism: Description, Analysis, Interpretation, Volume I, 1986. The Religious Study of Judaism: Description, Analysis, Interpretation, Volume 2, 1986. The Religious Study of Judaism: Context, Text, Circumstance, Volume 3, 1987. The Religious Study of Judaism: Description, Analysis, Interpretation, Volume 4, 1988. Sifre Zutta to Numbers, 2008. Struggle for the Jewish Mind: Debates and Disputes on Judaism Then and Now, 1988. The Talmud Law, Theology, Narrative: A Sourcebook, 2005. Talmud Torah: Ways to God's Presence through Learning: An Exercise in Practical Theology, 2002. Texts Without Boundaries: Protocols of Non-Documentary Writing in the Rabbinic Canon: Volume 1: The Mishnah, Tractate Abot, and the Tosefta, 2002. Texts Without Boundaries: Protocols of Non-Documentary Writing in the Rabbinic Canon: Volume /1: Sifra and Sifre to Numbers, 2002. Texts Without Boundaries: Protocols of Non-Documentary Writing in the Rabbinic Canon: Volume Ill: Sifre to Deuteronomy and Mekhilta Attributed to Rabbi Ishmael, 2002. Texts Without Boundaries: Protocols of Non-Documentary Writing in the Rabbinic Canon: Volume IV: Leviticus Rabbah, 2002. A Theological Commentary to the Midrash- Volume I: Pesiqta deRab Kahana, 2001. A Theological Commentary to the Midrash- Volume /1: Genesis Raba, 2001.

A Theological Commentary to the Midrash- Volume 1/1: Song of Songs Rabbah, 2001. A Theological Commentary to the Midrash- Volume IV: Leviticus Rabbah, 2001. A Theological Commentary to the Midrash- Volume V: Lamentations Rabbati, 2001. A Theological Commentary to the Midrash- Volume VI: Ruth Rabbah and Esther Rabbah, 2001. A Theological Commentary to the Midrash- Volume VII: Sifra, 200 I. A Theological Commentary to the Midrash- Volume VIII: Sifre to Numbers and Sifre to Deuteronomy, 2001. A Theological Commentary to the Midrash- Volume IX: Mekhilta Attributed to Rabbi Ishmael, 200 l. Theological Dictionary of Rabbinic Judaism: Part One: Principal Theological Categories, 2005. Theological Dictionary of Rabbinic Judaism: Part Two: Making Connections and Building Constructions, 2005. Theological Dictionary of Rabbinic Judaism: Part Three: Models of Analysis, Explanation, and Anticipation, 2005. The Theological Foundations of Rabbinic Mid rash, 2006. Theology of Normative Judaism: A Source Book, 2005. Theology in Action: How the Rabbis of the Talmud Present Theology (Aggadah) in the Medium of the Law (Halakhah). An Anthology, 2006. The Torah and the Halakhah: The Four Relationships, 2003. The Treasury of Judaism: A New Collection and Translation of Essential Texts (Volume One: The Calendar), 2008. The Treasury of Judaism: A New Collection and Translation of Essential Texts (Volume Two: The Life Cycle), 2008. The Treasury of Judaism: A New Collection and Translation of Essential Texts (Volume Three: Theology), 2008.

The Unity of Rabbinic Discourse: Volume 1: Aggadah in the Halakhah, 2001. The Unity of Rabbinic Discourse: Volume 1/: Halakhah in the Aggadah, 2001. The Unity of Rabbinic Discourse: Volume Ill: Halakhah and Aggadah in Concert, 2001. The Vitality of Rabbinic Imagination: The Mishnah Against the Bible and Qumran, 2005. Who, Where and What is "Israel?": Zionist Perspectives on Israeli and American Judaism, 1989. The Wonder-Working Lawyers ofTalmudic Babylonia: The Theory and Practice of Judaism in its Formative Age, 1987. Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi in Talmud and Midrash: A Source Book, 2007. Jacob Neusner and Renest S. Frerichs New Perspectives on Ancient Judaism, Volume 2: Judaic and Christian Interpretation ofTexts: Contents and Contexts, 1987. New Perspectives on Ancient Judaism, Volume 3: Judaic and Christian Interpretation of Texts: Contents and Contexts, 1987 Jacob Neusner and James F. Strange Religious Texts and Material Contexts, 2001. David Novak and Norbert M. Samuelson Creation and the End of Days: Judaism and Scientific Cosmology, 1986. Proceedings of the Academy for Jewish Philosophy, 1990. Risto Nurmela The Mouth of the Lord Has Spoken: Inner-Biblical Allusions in Second and Third Isaiah, 2006. Aaron D. Panken The Rhetoric of Innovation: Self-Conscious Legal Change in Rabbinic Literature, 2005.

Norbert M. Samuelson Studies in Jewish Philosophy: Collected Essays of the Academy for Jewish Philosophy, 1980-1985, 1987. Benjamin Edidin Scolnic Alcimus, Enemy of the Maccabees, 2004.

If the Egyptians Drowned in the Red Sea, Where Are the Pharoah's Chariots?: Exploring the Historical Dimension of the Bible, 2005. Judaism Defined: Mattathias and the Destiny of His People. 2010. Thy Brother's Blood: The Maccabees and Dynastic Morality in the Hellenistic World, 2008. Rivka Ulmer Pesiqta Rabbati: A Synoptic Edition of Pesiqta Rabbati Based Upon All Extant Manuscripts and the Editio Preceps, Volume I, 2009.

Pesiqta Rabbati: A Synoptic Edition of Pesiqta Rabbati Based Upon All Extant Manuscripts and the Editio Preceps, Volume II, 2009. Pesiqta Rabbati: A Synoptic Edition of Pesiqta Rabbati Based Upon All Extant Manuscripts and the Editio Preceps, Volume Ill, 2009. Manfred Vogel A Quest for a Theology of Judaism: The Divine, the Human and the Ethical Dimensions in the Structure-of-Faith of Judaism Essays in Constructive Theology, 1987. Anita Weiner Renewal: Reconnecting Soviet Jewry to the Soviet People: A Decade of American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJJDC) Activities in the Former Soviet Union 1988-1998, 2003. Eugene Weiner and Anita Weiner Israel-A Precarious Sanctuary: War, Death and the Jewish People, 1989.

The Martyr's Conviction: A Sociological Analysis, 2002. Leslie S. Wilson The Serpent Symbol in the Ancient Near East: Nahash and Asherah: Death, Life, and Healing, 2001.

Tzvee Zahavy and Jacob Neusner How the Halakhah Unfolds, Volume V: Hullin in the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Bavli, Part One: Mishnah, Tosefta, and Bavli, Chapters One through Six, 2010. How the Halakhah Unfolds, Volume V: Hullin in the Mishnah, Tosefta and Bavli, Part Two: Mishnah, Tosefta, and Bavli, Chapters Seven through Twelve, 2010.