The Age of the Maccabees (Illustrated) (6 page)

THE reign of John
Hyrcanus, who now succeeded to the priestly and princely dignities of his
father, has been compared to that of Solomon. They both began under troublous
circumstances. Both extended the bounds of their country's dominion and its
influence over neighboring states, and both, after a period of much prosperity,
declined in glory and at length ended with gloom and party strife.

Hyrcanus’s first duty
he considered to be to avenge the deaths of his father and brothers. Ptolemy
took refuge in Dok, near Jericho, where his main defence against capture by
siege seems to have been his possession of the person of the mother of
Hyrcanus, whom he threatened to hurl from the walls, if extreme measures were
resorted to by the besiegers. After a considerable time the approach of the
Sabbatical year compelled Hyrcanus to withdraw his forces, whereupon Ptolemy
slew his mother-in-law, and fled to the wilderness east of Jordan. We hear of
him no more. That Hyrcanus took no further measures against him is sufficiently
explained by the need which befell that he should himself sustain a siege from
Antiochus  III (Sidetes), who approached Jerusalem, laying waste the
neighboring country. After carefully investing the city for more than a year,
without much progress being made, and both sides apparently suffering from lack
of food while the besieged were still sufficiently supplied with water,
Hyrcanus turned out all who were incapable of bearing arms, and as they were
refused succor from the outside forces many of them perished. At length
Hyrcanus asked for seven days’ cessation of hostilities in order to keep the
feast of Tabernacles. Antiochus’s favorable response was accompanied by a
present, including offerings of animals prepared for sacrifice. Negotiations
for peace commenced, and it was concluded, the Jews agreeing “to deliver up
their arms, to demolish the fortifications of Jerusalem, to pay tribute for the
towns they had seized outside the narrower limits of Judea, and to give
hostages for their good behavior!”

That the towns here
referred to (Joppa, Gazara, and others) were not taken from the Jews at this
time, when Syria was able to reassert her supremacy, is doubtless to be
ascribed to the interference of the Romans, with whom Hyrcanus was in
communication, and who, from motives of self-interest, sided, as heretofore,
and as usual, with the weaker state.

Hyrcanus soon rebuilt
the walls, and we are told that he proceeded also to hire mercenary troops, a
novel step which, however little approved by the straiter sect of his
countrymen, would at least afford a welcome relief from military service to
many of the nation. The money needed for their pay or for the tribute to
Antiochus, is said to have been obtained from the tomb of David.

Hyrcanus now
accompanied his late foe in the expedition of the latter to Parthia to   rescue
his brother Demetrius Nicator, who had been forcibly detained there for the
last ten years. The Parthian general was defeated, and the king set Nicator
free, that Sidetes might be drawn homewards by the need of protecting himself
against his rival. Antiochus was soon afterwards slain in an attack of the
enemy on his camp. Hyrcanus, who had been treated with much consideration by
Antiochus, now escaped, and on reaching Jerusalem proceeded to take advantage
of the strife which followed among claimants for the crown of the Seleucids, to
render his country once more independent and to extend its limits.

Nicator, who had
designs upon Egypt, was soon defeated, captured, and put to death (circ. 125
BC) by Alexander, nick¬named by the Syrians Zabinas, “the purchased”, who was
said by some to be the son of Alexander Balas, by others an adopted son of
Sidetes. Antiochus VIII (Grvphus), son of Demetrius Nicator, soon asserted his
supremacy over Zabinas (122 BC), and for eight years reigned in peace over a
kingdom reduced in size. At the end of this period there followed three years
(114—111 BC) of civil war between him and his half-brother, Antiochus IX
(Cyzicenus), remarkable mainly for his love of pleasure and sensuality, and
apparent desire to pose as a second Antiochus Epiphanes in point of character.
Cyzicenus, unlike his two immediate predecessors, ventured to meddle with
Hyrcanus, who, however, on the one occasion on which their forces met,
inflicted on him a decisive defeat.

Hyrcanus, taking
advantage of the helplessness of Syria to check his schemes of extension,
obtained forcible possession of considerable districts east of Jordan, as well
as of Idumean and Samaritan territory. The Idumeans, who seem to have reaped
much advantage from the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar (580 BC) in
the way of extension of territorynorthward, now weakened in all probability by
the rising power of the Nabateans, who had spread from the south in their wake,
were unable to resist the Jewish attack. To them he gave the alternative of
exile or the embracing of Judaism. Many of them accepted the latter, and
thenceforward such were considered as Jews, but, as we see from Josephus, they
were liable to be looked on with some contempt by the Jewish aristocracy, who
considered Herod, for example, as only a “half Jew”. “For the first time the
Judeans under their leader, John Hyrcanus, practiced intolerance against other
faiths; but they soon found out, to their painful cost, how dangerous it is to
allow religious zeal to degenerate into the spirit of arbitrary conversion. The
enforced union of the sons of Edom with the sons of Jacob was fraught with
disaster to the latter. It was through the Idumeans and the Romans that the
Hasmonean dynasty was overthrown and the Judean nation destroyed!”.

In the Samaritan
territory, Shechem and the temple on Mount Gerizim had been already destroyed
by Hyrcanus. He now proceeded to plant Idumean settlers in the neighborhood of
Samaria. The colonists there received sorry handling. Hyrcanus besieged
Samaria, Cyzicenus, with some support from Egypt, vainly endeavoring to divert
his attention by ravaging the country around (An ineffective support only. It
came from Ptolemy Soter II (Lathyrus), who contributed a force of (6,000 men,
but did so in opposition to the policy of the powerful queen-mother, Cleopatra,
who had two distinguished Jews, Chelkias and Ananias, the sons of Onias of
Heliopolis, for her generals in Palestine, and these were doubtless acting in
the interest of the Jews against the Samaritans). After a year’s siege Samaria
fell (108 BC) and was completely demolished, the ground on which it stood being
cut up into ditches and canals. “When the sons of Hyrcanus [Aristobulus and
Antigonus] returned to Jerusalem, the boundary between their father’s kingdom
and that of the Syrians was substantially a line running from Mount Carmel on
the west to Scythopolis on the Jordan. The authority of the holy city extended
over a larger area than in any previous period since the Exile; and the country
was so administered that the people prospered, and the nations outside were
either jealous or respectful”.

A stage of advance in
the way of personal claims on the part of Hyrcanus was marked by the occurrence
of his own name on coins of this time: “Jochanan, high priest, and the
commonwealth of the Judeans”; in some even “Jochanan, high priest, and head of
the commonwealth of the Judeans”. Thus, while still claiming the priestly
character of the government of which he appeared as ecclesiastical head, a
distinct step forward was taken in the prominence given to his civil
prerogatives.

We now come face to
face with two parties destined to take an important position in Judaism.
Neither the Pharisees nor the Sadducees are wholly out of relationship to views
which we have already noticed as held by important factors of the community.
But while they may thus remind us respectively of the Assideans and the
Hellenists of the earlier period, the distinctions are also obvious. Those who
from their natural bent of mind or from training took the narrowestview as to
the duty of exclusiveness, were henceforward known as Essenes. Practicing
strict asceticism, and in some cases at least forbidding marriage, these
exercised a comparatively slight influence upon the community, with which they
generally renounced all connection. The Pharisees, on the other hand, although
their rise is not clearly marked, had evidently in Hyrcanus’s day acquired the
position of the popular party. They were, however, a religions rather than a
political body. To the close study of the Law they added that of the
superim¬posed and elaborated traditions as to its meaning and extent of
application. Thus while inheriting the essential ideas of the Assideans, they
gave a much more unqualified support to the policy of exclusiveness and
national self-assertion which arose naturally out of the success of the
Maccabean movement, and they had a real interest in their country’s welfare and
prestige. Although closely connected with the scribes, the two were not, at
least in later times, coincident. The relation between the scribes and
Pharisees “was practically the same as that which exists between teachers and
taught. The Pharisees were the men who endeavored to reduce the teachings and
theories of the scribes to practice, and all those scribes, who in addition to
the written Law also believed in the binding authority of tradition, were
Pharisees as well as scribes”.

The Sadducees, on the
other hand, may be considered as akin to, or even a branch of the Hellenistic
party. They were distinguished, however, by accepting with the utmost loyalty
the Pentateuch, although declining to be bound by the traditions which had grown
up around it. It may well be, as Ewald says, that the disappearance of the
early literature of this school is to be attributed to the disrepute into which
it fell politically in Maccabean times. For as the Pharisees were primarily a
religious, so the Sadducees were rather a political, party. They included the
aristocratic families, the generals and others who were disposed to take a
laxer view on the subject of exclusiveness, as having mixed more with the outer
world, and acquired a knowledge of, and respect for, customs outside those
proper to the Jewish race. “The main principle of the Sadducees was that ...
good and evil, human weal or woe, depended solely on man’s own choice, and on
his knowledge or ignorance. This almost Stoic-sounding principle, which they
could easily set themselves to prove by detached passages of the Pentateuch,
involved the sharpest contrast with the rigid system which had prevailed from
the time of Ezra; but not less so with all true religion. At the same time, it
quickens the impulse of human freedom and activity, places the whole world of
sense within its reach, and, while it flatters able minds, seems free from
danger so long as the conception of God derived from ancient faith remains
unimpaired, and the hereditary morality of the mass of the people is but little
shaken. From this point it was but one step further to the denial of the
immortality of the soul and eternal retribution, and therefore of the actual
existence of angels and spirits; so that in this the Sadducees consciously
repudiated what was by no means disclaimed in the Book of the Law, even if it
was not sufficiently clearly asserted; and fell into the very doubts from which
Koheleth had with difficulty escaped. Moreover, though they accepted the
authority of the Law, yet they would only maintain a very independent position
with respect to it, and they rejected all the further extensions and statutes
of which the dominant school was so fond. This was the natural result of
placing their fundamental principle in the merely human resolve to allow no
power to determine or hinder their conduct save the civil laws”.

Their repudiation of
the doctrine of the resurrection of the body may be closely connected with the
Hellenic influence, to which they so readily lent themselves. We are reminded
of the Greek view of the matter by St. Paul’s experience at Athens.
“Associating continually with those who thus regarded the very notion of the
resurrection as incredible, it was but natural that the Sadducees should not
believe in it themselves”.

It would be an error to
suppose that in all matters where religion or administration was concerned the
Sadducees leaned to milder measures than their rivals. “The Sadducees thought
that the punishment ordered by the Pentateuch for the infliction of any bodily
injury—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth—should be literally interpreted
and followed out, and obtained in consequence the reputation of being cruel
administrators of justice; whilst the Pharisees, appealing to traditional
interpretations of the Scriptures, allowed mercy to preponderate, and only
required a pecuniary compensation from the offender. The Sadducees, on the
other hand, were more lenient in their judgment of those false witnesses whose
evidence might have occasioned a judicial murder, as they only inflicted
punishment if the execution of the defendant actually took place”.