Prof: The chronological
end of the Old Testament,
Hebrew Bible,
takes place in the sixth
century BCE that is in the 500s
BCE.
I say the chronological end of
the text is that because that's
actually not the latest that our
literature comes from.
It's just that's the end of the
story.
What happens basically is that
the Jews are taken out of Judea,
they're taken into captivity,
or at least the upper class is,
in Babylon, and then they wait
70 years and then they're
brought--
they're allowed to come back
into Judea to rebuild the temple
and the walls of Jerusalem,
and it's the rebuilding of the
temple and the walls of
Jerusalem that are narrated in
the books Ezra and Nehemiah.
That's kind of where the story
of the Jews or the Israelites
ends, at the end of the sixth
century BCE.
That's not actually the latest
document because,
as we'll talk about a little
bit later today,
the book of Daniel,
which claims of course to be
written in Babylon,
Babylonian captivity,
but also by a guy named Daniel
who lived in the sixth century.
It's actually not written then,
it's written around the year of
164 BCE,
so that's the latest document
that we have that's in the
Hebrew Bible or the Old
Testament.
 
So there's a difference in the
actual timing of the documents
and the chronological end of the
story.
I'll remind you of what we
talked about last time with
Alexander the Great just very
briefly.
Alexander the Great,
remember, wanted to set up a
one world, a universal empire.
 
He taught a sort of syncretism
of religion,
he taught a common language,
Greek,
he set up these Greek cities
all around,
these things will all be very
important for us.
That process is what we call
Hellenization,
so the Hellenization of the
world in that time means that we
even call that period
Hellenistic Greek,
the Hellenistic Period.
 
To differentiate it from
classical Greek period,
say classical Athens in the
sixth and fifth century,
and then the Greco Roman Period
which will come later,
the period of Rome.
 
The reason Hellenism is so
important for us is because
Alexander--what happened to his
empire after he died.
After much confusion and
fighting among his major
generals, after his death,
Alexander's kingdom ended up
being divided up into four major
empires.
For our purposes only three of
those really matter,
and on your handout you'll see
the names Seleucus,
Antiochus, and the Seleucids.
 
Seleucus was one of the
Generals of Alexander and he
ended up getting the part of his
empire that had been Babylonia,
that is modern day Iraq,
and Syria.
What happens is,
you'll find over and over
again,
a man named Seleucus will have
a kid named maybe Antiochus,
who will have a kid named
Seleucus,
who will have a kid named
Antiochus.
 
The Seleucids is what we call
their dynasty,
their family name,
they tended to use those two
names Seleucus and Antiochus a
lot,
so you'll see just Seleucus I,
II, III;
Antiochus I, II, III, and IV.
 
Those two names were used
quite--in their family over and
over again,
so it gets very confusing in
historical literature when it's
hard to keep them straight but
that's the reason.
 
His general Ptolemy II got the
Kingdom of Egypt,
which was very,
very important because Egypt
was one of the wealthiest parts
of the ancient world.
Ptolemy II took Egypt and set
up his own sort of
Greco-Egyptian kingdom there,
so when we talk about these
things--
sometimes you'll hear us talk
about the Syrian Empire or the
Greco Syrian Empire,
or simply the Greek Empire.
 
That's because there was a
Greek sort of veneer over what
would have been local
differences.
You'd have Egyptians speaking
ancient Egyptian languages but
the elites in the cities would
be speaking Greek,
so the culture,
the elite culture would still
be Greek and the same way in
Syria.
The Ptolemies are easier to
keep straight because they
tended to all be named Ptolemy.
 
They might have a nickname,
like Ptolemy Philadelphus is a
very famous one,
but then they would give them
numbers.
 
Ptolemy II was the first
general who ruled Egypt,
and then his descendants would
be named II, III,
and IV and that sort of--and so
forth.
The other empire that was
important,
but we'll not talk about it too
much today,
is what was Macedonia and
Greece itself and the General
Antigonus Gonatas was the one
who took that.
That would be its own sort of
area until the Romans defeated
the different Greek rulers there
and took over Macedonia and
Greece.
 
What's important for us though
is really the Seleucids and the
Ptolemies because if you draw a
line separating Syria from
Egypt,
the line goes right through
Palestine.
 
The Jews were kind of caught,
therefore,
on the border,
so Judea at this time was on
the border between these two
empires and they were constantly
fighting trying to aggrandize
their own kingdoms.
The Jews were often,
therefore, caught right in the
middle.
 
Antiochus IV Epiphanes reigned
from 175 to 164 BCE.
He's called the IV obviously
because he's the fourth
Antiochus.
 
Epiphanes though is a sort of
nickname and it means
"manifest,"
it's just the Greek word for
"manifest."
 
What Antiochus was doing with
his name is saying he was
claiming divine honors for
himself,
because what he's saying is,
"I'm Antiochus,
God made manifest among
you."
This was not that unusual.
 
As I said last time,
Alexander had sort of claimed
divine honors for himself.
 
He was following the lead of a
lot of eastern monarchs and
rulers who would claim to be the
descendants of a god and claim
to be a god themselves,
and would receive cult and
worship.
 
Antiochus IV,
though, was ruling at that time
and he had control,
he had gained control of Judea.
At one point he almost
conquered Egypt,
as a matter of fact,
again they were always these
battles, but then Rome
intervened.
Rome was not in control of
eastern Mediterranean at this
time but they started getting
more and more powerful,
so Rome came to Egypt,
and a Roman general basically
said,
"You've got to
withdraw,"
and forced Antiochus IV to pull
out of Egypt.
 
Why did Rome do that?
 
Well Rome wanted--Rome didn't
want any other empire in the
Mediterranean to get too
powerful so they wanted small--
they didn't want to really
control all the eastern part of
the Mediterranean at this time,
they would have been stretched
too thin,
but they wanted these two
kingdoms to balance each other
out,
so they didn't--they weren't
particularly for Antiochus IV,
they just didn't want him to
destroy the Egyptian Ptolemies
and him to take over Egypt
because it would make him too
powerful.
 
Rome, though,
shows that they have enough
power that they kind of play the
referee between different
kingdoms even in the east at
this time.
While Judea,
though, was under Antiochus
control a lot of Jews tried to
figure out how do you deal with
this whole process of
Hellenization?
In other words,
if you want your own kids to
get ahead in the world,
in this time,
and you're going to have an
elite family yourself in a town,
in a city, it makes sense for
your kids to get a Greek
education.
 
You want your sons,
for example,
to be able to speak,
and read, and write Greek.
Why?
 
Because that's the lingra
franca of the elite--of
business, and of government,
and all that sort of thing.
It's precisely the way it is
now with English around the
world.
 
Elite families want their kids
to have English education,
they want them to be familiar
with American culture,
and, if possible,
they'll even send them to a
university in the States,
or to graduate school in the
States,
and this is partly because
there are good universities in
the States,
but it's also partly because
they know that to get ahead
their kids need to use English,
they need to become,
in some sense,
to some extent Americanized.
This is what's going on even in
places like Jerusalem at this
time.
 
Jerusalem wasn't a huge city
but it was important enough that
there were elites there
themselves,
and so they responded to this
urge of Hellenizing culture to
have their kids educated in the
gymnasium.
Remember?
 
So they would themselves get
this sort of Greek rhetorical
education.
 
In fact, what we'll call for
the purposes,
liberals and conservatives in
Jerusalem,
because there was conflict in
Jerusalem at this time over how
much Hellenization you should go
along with.
Apparently, a majority of the
priests and the lay nobility
supported the Hellenizing group,
that is the Jewish leaders who
wanted to bring more
Hellenization into the Jerusalem
itself.
 
The high priest at this time
was named Jason,
his name is on here,
and in 175 he built a gymnasium
in Jerusalem.
 
Why did he build a gymnasium in
Jerusalem?
Well if you're going to have
Greek education you have to have
a gymnasium.
 
This--he also founded a Greek
polis,
that is as Greek city structure
and Jason apparently paid
Antiochus for the privilege of
having Jerusalem recognized as a
Greek city.
 
This would have consolidated
the power of those Jewish
leaders who wanted to press
Greek culture more rather than
those Jewish leaders who wanted
to hold back on Greek culture.
If you control the gymnasium,
and you control the means of
education,
you actually control the
citizenry because you can't
become a citizen of a Greek
polis,
a Greek city,
unless you yourself have Greek
education,
so sons would--sons of people
would go to the
gymnasium.
 
Notice what this would do also,
it would disenfranchise those
leading families who didn't want
to have their sons Hellenized.
By holding the control of the
education, you disenfranchise
conservative Jews who are
resisting this Greek influence.
About this time,
apparently, Antiochus offered
citizenship status to the Jews,
but, like I said,
admission to the gymnasium
and the ephebate--
remember the ephebate we
talked about how the boys around
the years 18 to 22 or so,
around the age that you guys
are, you would be enrolled in
this sort of quasi education,
quasi military training club
sort of thing of the town.
That was the ephebate,
and you had to go through that
to be a citizen.
 
Jason and his party controlled
this, and in fact,
they renamed Jerusalem
"Antioch of
Jerusalem."
 
There are lots of different
cities named Antioch in the
ancient world,
and they were all done in honor
of some Antiochus,
so Jerusalem was renamed
Antioch of Jerusalem.
 
The high priesthood was the
main ruler of the Jews at this
time.
 
They didn't have a king,
and they didn't have a direct
governor,
so whoever controlled the high
priesthood was sort of the
political ruler also at this
time.
 
But Antiochus was the one who
had the privilege of appointing
the high priest.
 
Menelaus, another leading Jew,
his name is on your handout,
seems to have offered Antiochus
more money for the priesthood
trying to get it away from
Jason,
and he couldn't afford it.
 
In order to pay for his own
priesthood he took gold vessels
and instruments out of the
temple treasury,
and this seems to have caused a
riot.
Now notice, "Jason,"
is that a good Jewish name?
No, that's not a good Jewish
name.
"Menelaus"
is that a good Jewish name?
No, Jason and Menelaus are both
famous Greek names.
You have two guys fighting for
the high priesthood in
Jerusalem,
both with Greek names,
not traditional Hebrew names,
and both of them apparently
trying to get in with this
Hellenizing process.
They get into a big fight.
 
To settle things down in
Jerusalem,
Antiochus takes control of
Jerusalem and he stationed
Syrian troops,
that is the Greco-Syrian
troops, in Jerusalem in 167.
 
Now things are heating up.
 
Around this time changes were
made to the temple in Jerusalem.
It may have been basically to
accommodate the soldiers.
They may have had to house
soldiers from the Greco-Syrian
Empire, and they may have used
the temple mount apparently to
house some of them.
 
This caused changes to the
temple.
At this time Menelaus is in
charge,
and his Hellenizing party,
which we could call the radical
reformers,
they saw--this is the beginning
of the anti-Judaism laws.
 
About this time several laws
were passed that forbade
circumcision,
you can't circumcise your boys
anymore;
you're forbidden from observing
the Torah, the Jewish law;
it may have been that even a
pig was sacrificed on the altar
in Jerusalem in the Holy of
Holies,
and the temple was turned into
a syncretistic Jewish pagan
grove.
In traditional Greek religion
and other religions having a
grove of trees is sort of
considered the sacred area.
Like when you walk through a
forest now and you come upon a
nice open kind of grove of
trees,
and all of sudden you just kind
of feel like some nymph or
something is going to jump out
at you,
and God is there,
so the Greeks liked these sorts
of groves of trees,
so this is often what they
would use as a sacred area.
 
They did this to the temple,
and it was renamed as a shrine
to Zeus Olympus.
 
Now notice what's happening,
I talked about syncretism last
time.
 
If you're one of these liberal
Jews, you may not really believe
you're doing anything bad.
 
You're not forsaking Judaism,
you're just updating it,
you're just bringing it up to
the modern era.
You might say,
"Well what's wrong with
calling it Zeus Olympus?
 
We all know these are just
different names given to the
same god anyway,
there's just one supreme
God."
 
So they may well have
identified the Jewish god Yahweh
with this god Zeus Olympus and
said it's just two different
names,
one Greek name and one Jewish
name for the same Jewish god.
 
That may have been what they
were thinking about.
They could also have been
thinking about the Syrian god
Baal,
that Baal Shamin was a Syrian
god, so they're just saying
we'll have an altar here,
Antiochus will be happy because
we're worshipping this Syrian
god here,
the Greeks are happy we're
worshipping Zeus Olympus,
and the Jews will be happy
because it's identified as
Yahweh.
This whole process of
Hellenization,
therefore, I'm interpreting
this--in a lot of history books,
sometimes, you'll get the idea
that the Jews were all good
loyal Jews just trying to keep
the law,
trying to keep Torah,
and that Antiochus IV Epiphanes
is putting all this on them and
forcing Greek religion and Greek
culture on them.
 
That's not really the way it
happened.
I've told the story the way
I--I've proceeded--
if you read between the lines
of some of these ancient Jewish
texts,
it's more like it's a debate
that's going on within Judaism
itself.
How Greek should we be?
 
How much do you accommodate the
dominant culture?
Precisely the way you get a lot
of this kind of debate in the
modern world,
our time, of how much do you
want your kids,
your Jewish boys and girls to
assimilate to be just as
American as everybody else?
How much intermarriage do you
want to have or do you allow?
If you're a Muslim immigrant to
this country,
the first generation,
do you let them listen to hip
hop?
 
Do you let the women stop
covering their hair?
Where do you draw the line?
 
What I'm arguing is that this
is what was going on,
and it was an internal Jewish
conflict that was going on.
There were several responses to
Hellenization,
therefore, among Jews.
 
It wasn't just that the
Helleni--that Greeks are here
putting this onto Jews,
but there were responses within
Judaism itself.
 
As I've already said Menelaus
and the liberals accept it and
promote it.
 
Another priest that had been
dislocated from the high
priesthood earlier,
his family had originally been
the high priesthood family.
 
Onias, I think Onias IV is on
your hand out there.
Onias IV actually withdrew from
Jerusalem and went off and built
a new temple.
 
He says, well if you're going
to destroy the existing Jewish
temple we're going to have an
alternative temple elsewhere.
You also have these people that
come to be called the Hasidim,
it's on your hand out,
that's from a Hebrew word
meaning the holy ones or pious
ones or something like that.
It--and they're not to be
confused with the modern Hasidim
who live in Brooklyn and who
come from Eastern Europe.
That's a modern movement that
came about in the medieval
period and has come to--but it's
the same word used for these
people.
 
These weren't Jews who decided
to be very strict and they
seemed to reject a lot of Greek
culture.
They certainly rejected Greek
religion and Greek sacrifice.
They seemed to promote the
speaking of Hebrew,
the use of Hebrew text,
and particularly pious
observations of Jewish law.
 
You even have a group of high
priests,
former high priests,
who have been dislocated and
other priestly families
withdrawing from Jerusalem and
apparently going out in the
desert and maybe building a
community out there,
and we find out about them in
the twentieth century when the
Dead Sea scrolls were discovered
in the late 1940s.
 
A lot of the theories are these
Dead Sea scrolls were the
writings of a sect of Jews led
by people who had been priestly
families,
who moved out into the desert,
set up camp on the shores of
the Dead Sea,
and had their own little sort
of maybe quasi monastic
community there,
very strict in their
observation of the Law,
they keep their documents--they
have some documents in Greek,
some in Hebrew, some in Aramaic.
So that may have been another
way to respond to this
increasing Hellenization to just
pull away and form a different
community.
 
Then you have the reaction of
Mattathias.
Mattathias was a priest from
Jerusalem who had settled in a
village called Modein,
in the hill country of Judea.
Apparently, according to the
text that had come down to us,
some of which had to be sort of
legends and that sort of thing,
hero worship,
the story goes that Mattathias
was in his village and a priest
and a soldier come from
Jerusalem to the village,
and they're trying to force the
Jews to sacrifice on an altar.
 
Now what an altar is most of
the time is--do you all see this
little base over there in the
corner?
There's just a little pillar
that might be this high,
and to offer something--you
don't actually have to sacrifice
a chicken or anything like that,
you can obviously sacrifice
animals,
but you can just pour out some
wine or you can pour some grain
or something like that on the
altar,
burn it up, and that will
suffice as an offering to a god,
without killing an animal.
Something like this may have
been going on.
Mattathias, it is said,
took the sword away from the
soldier and killed this priest
and the soldier for encouraging
Jews in his village to sacrifice
to the gods.
This was, of course,
against the law,
so Mattathias runs off to the
hills,
taking his family with him,
his sons,
he had several sons,
and this is the beginning of
the war that comes to be called
the Maccabean Revolt.
It's called Maccabean because
after Mattathias died,
shortly thereafter,
he was the leader of the revolt
in the beginning,
his son Judas becomes the head
general of the bunch,
and Judas, early on earned the
nickname Maccabeus.
 
We're not really sure what the
nickname means or where it comes
from,
it could be something like
"the hammer,"
so he could be "Judah the
hammer,"
but it may have been an
attribute from him being a very
good general and winning a lot
of battles.
 
Against all odds,
this rag tag bunch of basically
guerilla fighters,
up against a far superior army
of Antiochus IV Epiphanes,
they beat them,
they retook Jerusalem,
they didn't actually beat them
in Syria,
they just beat them several
battles in Judea,
and Judas was able to recapture
Jerusalem and the temple.
 
In the year 164,
they cleansed the temple of the
profanation,
the pollution of having maybe
pigs and things like that
sacrificed,
it being polluted as a Greek
temple,
and so 164 is the beginning of
the celebration of the Jewish
holiday Hanukkah.
 
The Hanukkah song now--no we
won't sing the Hanukkah song.
So 164 in the cleansing of the
temple is what Jews celebrate
with Hanukkah.
 
Judas Maccabeus reigned as not
an official king at that point
but he reigned over Judea of
this time,
and there was still battles
that raged between him and his
family,
and his army,
and Antiochus IV Epiphanes,
and then other descendants.
After he died,
his brother--one of his
brothers became the leader,
and then another brother became
the leader,
gradually these different
people of this family came to
set up their own dynasty of
rulers themselves.
 
Their family name was not
Maccabeus,
that was just a nickname,
the family name was Hasmoneus
and so we call this the
Hasmonean Dynasty,
that's the descendants of
Mattathias.
Some of them actually were then
proclaimed king,
they were recognized as--with
the title king by the later
rulers of the neighboring areas
like the Syria-- Greco-Syrian
Empire.
 
The Hasmonean Dynasty was in
power from the year 165 to the
year 60 BCE.
 
Now, that's the way one people
responded to this,
they revolted against the
rulers.
Another way some Jews responded
was by believing that military
revolt wasn't the way to go,
that God would somehow
intervene miraculously that God
would send an angel or some kind
of heavenly figure down to earth
and an army of heavenly figures
would defeat Antiochus and usher
in the new Kingdom of Israel.
And that's where you get the
story of that from the book of
Daniel.
 
I asked you to read Daniel,
at least the last part of
Daniel for today,
if you've got your Bibles take
it out and turn with me first to
Daniel 8:20.
Now the book of Daniel is in
two halves.
The first half of it tells
about the adventures of this
young man Daniel who's very,
very wise and very smart and
very loyal,
and who refuses to worship the
Persian god.
 
Of course this--these are
morality stories written for
Jews who were living under Greek
domination encouraging them not
to worship Greek gods but its
past in the distant past.
Then the second half of Daniel
is a whole series of visions and
prophecies.
 
Daniel says,
"I was in a dream,
I was in a vision on a day,
and I saw this,
and this angel told me to do
this and this person told me
this," and so it's the
narration of the history of
humankind that's part of which
has already happened by the time
of Daniel,
but most of which is to happen
in the future for Daniel.
 
Some of this stuff actually
does happen.
So for example,
and he tells about different
beasts.
 
There's the ram that does this,
there's the beast that does
this,
but you know that these beasts
represent different kingdoms
because in Chapter 8:20 he says,
"As for the ram that you
saw [in your vision]
with the two horns,
these are the Kings of Mede and
Persia."
 
There was the kingdom of the
Medes and the kingdom of the
Persians who came together under
Cyrus.
"The male goat is the King
of Greece,
and the great horn between its
eyes is the first king,"
so that would be Phillip,
Alexander's father.
"As for the horn that was
broken in place of which four
others arose,
four kingdoms shall arise from
his nation but not with his
power."
This is Alexander,
he's broken,
and his kingdom is divided up
into four empires,
like I told you about earlier,
but none of those four empires
enjoys the same power that
Alexander the Great enjoyed with
his.
 
Notice how you're already given
a clue,
right here in Daniel,
that these different images,
these different beasts are to
refer to kingdoms that are going
to come in the future from
Daniel's perspective.
We know, actually,
that they already did.
Then what happens in Daniel is
each different chapter,
the last part of Daniel,
in a sense tells the story over
again.
 
He has another vision and
instead of reading it
chronologically,
as if Chapter 9 told about one
century,
and then Chapter 10 or Chapter
11 is the next century,
and the next century,
you actually have to read them
cycles because what Daniel is
doing he's giving you a prophecy
of what's going to happen
politically related to Judea,
but he's giving it to you in
several different visions that
all tell the same story,
just in different kind of
symbols.
Turn over now to Chapter 11.
 
Here again it's sort of like
the fourth--
Chapter 11:2,
"The four shall be far
richer then all of them when he
has become strong to his riches,
he shall stir up all against
the Kingdom of Greece,"
so this is actually talking
about the Persian ruler who will
attack Greece.
 
"Then a warrior king shall
arise who shall rule with great
dominion,"
that's Alexander,
"While still rising in
power,"--
Alexander remember was still
young and increasing his power
when he died--
"his kingdom shall be
broken and divided to the four
winds of heaven but not to his
posterity."
 
Alexander had a child but the
child dies, and Alexander's
kingdom did not go to any of his
own offspring,
they went to these other four
generals.
Then notice in verse 5,
"The King of the South
shall grow strong,"
and the next verse,
"The daughter of the King
of the South shall come to the
King of the North to ratify the
agreement."
What's the King of the South?
 
Who's the King of the South?
 
Ptolemy, some Ptolemy,
one of the Ptolemies.
So whenever you see King of the
South in Daniel it's always
referring to the Ptolemaic
Dynasty, one of the Ptolemies.
Who's the King of the North?
 
Seleucus or Antiochus,
so whenever you see the King of
the North it refers to one of
the Seleucids.
So over and over again in
Daniel, you're going to get the
King of the North,
the King of the South,
the King of the North,
and notice how it says,
"The daughter of the King
of the South shall come to the
King of the North to ratify the
agreement."
If you look down--if you have a
study bible and you look at your
footnotes it'll actually give
you the names of these different
people that historians can
identify.
This may be Berenice because we
know that she was a daughter of
Antiochus or Seleucus,
she was married to one of the
Ptolemies.
 
If you follow in your study
bible--now it has to be a good
critical study bible.
 
I mean if you--by real
scholars--if you use these
bibles that take all this as
prophecy that relates to the
Soviet Union or to Russia they
might tell you things like,
"Well the King of the
North here refers to the head of
Politburo or something like
this," and so if it's a
bible by a contemporary church
that takes all this is referring
to our time or the time
immediately to the future,
which of course a lot of
Christians do,
then their footnotes might be
different.
But the footnotes in any good
study bible will place these
people to the history of what's
going on in Judea as this time.
Now go over to 11:29 because
I'm not going to lead you
through all the stuff that
happens in Chapter 11 because if
you read it,
and you read it with the
footnotes,
it's basically telling you a
history of the battles and
alliances between the Seleucids
and the Ptolemies and where
Judea was caught in the middle
at different times.
 
"At the time appointed he
shall return and come into the
south," this is one of
the--
this is Antiochus,
not Antiochus IV,
"But this time it shall
not be as before for ships of
Kittim shall come against him
and he shall lose heart and
withdraw."
 
Who are the Kittim?
 
Romans, exactly.
 
"The Kittim"
is a term that's used in
Hebrew,
and in a lot of different
ancient Jewish texts,
and sometimes it seems to refer
to the Greeks,
and here it clearly refers to
the Romans because the Romans
come and they force the King of
the North back.
 
Notice what it says,
"Forces sent by him--he
shall turn back and pay heed to
those who forsake the holy
covenant."
 
Antiochus IV will pay attention
to the Jews who have forsaken
the Torah,
"Forces sent by him shall
occupy and profane the temple
and the fortress.
They shall abolish the regular
burnt offering and set up the
abomination that makes
desolate,"
or in some modern English
translations,
"the abomination of
desolation."
That term will be used also in
the New Testament in several
places.
 
"He shall seduce with
intrigue those who violate the
covenant."
 
That is, the bad Jews who have
violated the Torah will be in
cahoots with Antiochus.
 
"But the people who are
loyal to their God shall stand
firm and take action.
 
The wise among the people shall
give understanding to many;
for some days,
however, they shall by fall by
sword and flame and suffer
captivity and plunder."
Who are the wise?
 
The author of the book.
 
Remember he spent the whole
first part of the book setting
up Daniel as a wise man.
 
So this author writing under
the name of Daniel,
a wise man, identifies other
wise Jews of his own day and he
says they're going to oppose
Antiochus IV and some of them
will die because of it.
 
"When they fall victim
they shall receive a little help
and many shall join them
insincerely."
Some scholars believe that this
"little help"
may be this author's reference
to Judas Maccabeus.
It may be that he knows that
there is an armed resistance,
and it's a little bit of help,
but he doesn't believe,
himself, that the answer to
Antiochus IV is going to be an
armed revolt,
he believes it's not going to
ultimately succeed.
 
Why?
 
Because God's going to be the
one who will intervene,
not Judas Maccabeus.
 
"The king shall act as he
pleases.
He shall exalt himself
andconsider himself greater than
any god,"--remember
Antiochus Epiphanes?
"God
manifest"?--"and shall
speak horrendous things against
the God of gods.
He shall prosper until the
period of wrath is completed for
what is determined shall be
done.
He shall pay no respect to the
gods of his ancestors or to the
one beloved by women;
he shall pay no respect to any
other god, he shall consider
himself greater than all."
So it's all about setting
himself up.
Now look, "He shall come
into the beautiful land,"
obviously we're talking about
Judea,
"And tens of thousands
shall fall victim but Edom and
Moab,
and the main part of the
Ammonites shall escape from his
power,
he shall stretch forth his hand
against the countries and the
land of Egypt shall not
escape."
In other words,
Antiochus IV this time is
actually going to capture Egypt,
he's predicting.
"He shall become ruler of
the treasures of gold and silver
and all the riches of Egypt,
and the Libyans and the
Ethiopians shall follow in his
train."
Not only will he overrun Egypt
he's going to go west of Egypt
and take Libya and south of
Egypt and take Ethiopia.
"But reports from the east
and the north shall alarm him,
and he shall go out with great
fury to bring ruin and complete
destruction to many.
 
He shall pitch his palatial
tents between the
sea,"--what's the sea?
 
the Mediterranean,
thank you, somebody is
awake--"and the beautiful
holy mountain,"
what the holy mountain?
 
Say it, Zion,
Mount Zion which is where
Jerusalem is founded.
 
"Yet he shall come to his
end with no one to help
him."
 
"He shall come to his
end"--
wait a minute,
he conquers Egypt,
takes Libya,
takes Ethiopia,
comes back through Judea,
sets up camp,
somewhere in that coastal area
between Jerusalem and the
Mediterranean and there he dies.
 
That didn't happen.
 
Antiochus IV never took all of
Egypt, he never took Ethiopia,
he never took Libya,
and he did eventually die,
but he died way over in
Babylon.
He didn't die here.
 
How do we know that this
document was written around the
year 164?
 
Because this author doesn't
know the end of the story.
Notice how throughout the
history he's gotten everything
right--well not every
detail--but he gets a lot of it
right.
 
He knows when Antiochus the so
and so wins a battle,
he knows when one of the
Ptolemies wins a battle,
he knows when they tried to
have a treaty between them and
marry off one of their daughters
to each other to establish
peace.
 
He knows when they called
truces.
He knows when the Romans
intervened and stopped battles
between them.
 
He knows all--he knows that
Antiochus profaned the temple,
so this has got to be written
after 167 because he's telling
us all about this stuff that
happened with the temple.
He knows everything that
happens up to 167,
and there may be a little hint
that he even knows about Judas
Maccabeus,
but he doesn't know about
anything what happened to the
cleansing of the temple.
He doesn't know about the
victory of Judas which happened
in 164.
 
Notice how this is wonderfully
convenient for us modern
scholars.
 
He gets everything right up to
167 and everything wrong at 164,
because notice what happens
then, in Chapter 12,
right as Antiochus IV dies
according to his prophecy,
"At that time Michael the
Great Prince,
the protector of your
people,"--
Michael's an angel,
the greatest angel--
"shall arise.
 
There shall be a time of
anguish."
In other words,
this is when all hell breaks
loose,
the heavens come down,
Michael swoops in on a chariot
from the sky with angelic
armies,
and they are the ones who bring
the final victory.
 
God breaks into history and
brings the final victory.
Judas Maccabeus doesn't win the
battle.
This is how we date apocalyptic
literature.
Daniel is one of the earliest
cases of what we call
apocalyptic literature.
 
It gives--apocalypticism gives
you this vision of what's going
to happen in the very near
future,
and it answers the problems of
suffering and the answer is not
"arm yourselves and fight
the battle yourself,"
because the odds are
overwhelmingly against you.
You can't defeat all of Rome,
you can't defeat all of Greece,
you can't defeat Antiochus IV
Epiphanes by yourself,
but God can.
 
And so angelic armies
will break into history and
bring about the solution to the
problem.
The apocalyptic writer sets
himself up usually,
far in the distant past,
like this guy says he's Daniel
writing in the sixth century,
and they narrate history
through the age--
and you can tell he's got it
all right.
 
Daniel foresaw this stuff
writing way back in the year
580.
 
And yet he's--he knows about
the Persians,
he knows about the Medes,
he knows about the Greeks,
he knows about Alexander,
he knows about the splitting up
of Alexander's kingdom,
he knows about Berenice,
he knows about the Romans,
and so you think he knows all
this stuff,
he got it all right,
and you pick it up and you're
reading it in the year 164
yourself,
or 165, and you think well he
must be right about what's going
to happen next.
And you think God's going to
break in any day,
we're going to be saved,
we don't have to fight
ourselves, we're going to be
saved.
This is how we date apocalyptic
literature.
Where do they get the history
right, and then when does the
history go pfffffft.
 
When does the history just all
of a sudden go wrong?
That's when it's dated because
they're writing up to that
point.
 
That kind of apocalyptic
mentality,
that apocalyptic world view
will become very important for
early Christianity because what
I'll argue in the rest of this
course is,
who else was an apocalyptic
prophet?
 
Jesus.
 
Who else was an apocalyptic
prophet?
Paul.
 
All of the earliest followers
of Jesus seemed to have been
apocalyptic minded Jews,
and that's the beginning of
early Christianity.
 
Early Christianity starts off
as an apocalyptic Jewish sect.
They all were reading Daniel,
and when they read other
prophecies from the Hebrew Bible
they also read those
apocalyptically.
 
The apocalyptic response is
another one of these responses
to Hellenization.
 
In 63, about a hundred years
after the cleansing of the
temple--first are there any
questions about any of that so
far?
 
I'm giving you a lot of both
confusing history and confusing
terminology.
 
A hundred years after the
cleansing of the temple,
mas o menos,
in the year 63 BCE,
Pompey, the Roman general
Pompey, enters Jerusalem,
and this is when you have the
beginning of Roman control of
Judea.
 
Herod the Great gets himself
appointed as King of the Jews by
the Roman Senate.
 
Only the Senate at this time
can proclaim anybody a king,
so the Senate would sometimes
would have client kings on the
different--
the edge of frontiers of their
control.
 
They couldn't--they didn't want
to be bothered with controlling
everything themselves with their
own armies directly,
or their governors,
so they would appoint local
kings,
whether in Asia Minor,
Greece, different parts.
 
Herod the Great was appointed
king by the Roman Senate and he
ruled from the year 37 to year 4
BCE.
After Herod the Great died,
his kingdom was split up first
among his different sons,
but Judea itself eventually was
placed under direct Roman rule
under procurators that were
appointed by the Senate or
sometimes by the Emperor,
and this is what Pilate's job
was.
Pontius Pilate, who was
the governor of Judea,
his actual title wasn't
governor, he was a procurator,
but he was the one in control
of Judea during the life--
during the time that Jesus was
killed himself.
Pilate was one of these direct
Roman rulers of Judea.
Galilee was ruled by a son of
Herod the Great,
Herod Antipas,
and different descendants of
Herod would rule in different
parts of Palestine for many
years after that.
 
During the first century there
were sporadic uprisings among
the Jews,
some of them were apocalyptic,
that is,
they seem to have been Jews who
were expecting the end to come
but sometimes they seemed to
have expected that they were
supposed to start it.
So, for example,
you have Josephus tell us about
Jewish prophets who arise and
say,
follow me to Jerusalem,
follow me to Jerusalem,
and then stand on the Mount of
Olives,
which is this mountain that's
right opposite the main mountain
of Jerusalem,
and they'd say,
okay tomorrow we're going to go
out and we're going to march
around the walls of Jerusalem
and the walls are all going to
fall down.
 
Sound like anything you're
familiar with?
The walls of Jericho in the
Hebrew Bible falling down after
the Israelites marched around it
for seven days and then seven
times the last day.
 
Prophets were arising,
using inspiration from Jewish
prophets from the ancient past,
and they were setting
themselves up again as prophets,
and, again, expecting God to
break through.
 
Sometimes these prophets arose,
and they were themselves
apocalyptic prophets,
announcing the end of the known
world soon.
 
Sometimes, also,
they seem to have been setting
themselves up as king of the
Jews, and that would make them a
Messiah.
 
Because the word messiah
in Hebrew just means "the
anointed one,"
and what do you do when you
make someone a king in the
ancient world?
You put oil on their heads.
 
That's how you anoint a king.
 
If someone's called "the
anointed one,"
that's a kingly title.
 
Now this is very dangerous
because what did I just say
about how did you get to be a
king and run a controlled area?
The Senate had to appoint you.
 
Anybody who set himself up as
king, without being appointed
king by the Senate,
that was itself an act of
treason.
 
There were, though,
other Messianic figures who
would rise and try to provoke
some kind of revolt.
The most important revolt of
the Jewish people during this
time, started the year 66.
 
Now we're in the Common Era,
so this 66 CE.
It started in 66 with Jews in
both Judea and Galilee revolting
against Roman rule,
they drove the Roman squadron
out of Jerusalem,
and in the year 70 the Romans
finally,
after four years of warfare,
they had surrounded Jerusalem
for a full two years,
they finally took Jerusalem
itself.
They flattened--they destroyed
the temple.
So the destruction of the
temple is the year 70,
and that's probably the most
important date for this course
because a lot of important
things in Christianity,
the early Jesus movement,
happened either before 70,
and they're one kind of event,
some of them happened right
around the year 70,
and we'll talk about that when
we get to the gospel of Mark in
a couple of times,
and then some of them--most of
the things happened after the
year 70.
 
The destruction of the temple
in Jerusalem in the year 70 is
not only hugely important for
Jews, right?
because ever since then Jews
have not had a sacrificial cult.
If you are a Jew now where do
you go to sacrifice?
You can't go to the temple
there's--Dome of the Rock
sitting on where it's supposed
to be.
Jews substituted different
forms of piety,
reading the Torah,
studying, praying,
meeting in synagogues,
meeting in other places,
so Judaism changed radically
beginning in the year 70,
precisely because the place
where you sacrificed was
destroyed.
 
Every ethnic group around the
Mediterranean in the ancient
world had its religion as some
part of sacrifice.
They all did.
 
Sacrifice was just common among
different groups around the
Mediterranean.
 
The year 70 caused the Jews to
stop being primarily a
sacrificial people,
because they had nowhere to
sacrifice.
 
The end of the Jewish war is
dated by most people to 74,
because that's the time when
the final battle took place,
and the fortress that fell was
called Masada.
So if you go to Israel now
Masada is a shrine.
It's a tourist spot and a
shrine that celebrates the
defeat of the last of Jews at
Masada, the fortress that Herod
the Great had built.
 
After that Judaism changes you
have--
I'm not going to go into much
detail because the way rabbinic
Judaism--
what you know as Judaism today,
if you know anything about it
at all,
is a result of developments
that happened after 70.
It's the result of the rabbis
recognizing that the temple cult
is no longer there.
 
The rabbis, who are teachers of
the law and commentators of the
law, they become the central
organizing feature not the
priests.
 
The priesthood--you still have
Jews named Cohen,
right, which means
"priest,"
but priests in Judaism don't
really do much anymore.
It's the rabbis who become
important.
At the beginning of--around the
year 200 you have the rabbinic
Judaism starting to develop its
written text,
the Mishnah,
the Babylonian Talmud,
the Jerusalem Talmud,
and this is the birth during
these centuries of rabbinism.
 
That is rabbinic Judaism as it
comes to be important.
There was another Jewish revolt
in 132 to 135 called the Bar
Kokhba Revolt,
but that was suppressed by the
Emperor Hadrian in 135,
and that you had the complete
destruction of Jerusalem.
 
It was leveled,
it was renamed Aelia
Capitolina,
a Roman name,
and Jews after that were
forbidden even to enter
Jerusalem for a long time.
 
What's important about all
this--I told you--
I warned you last time that
last lecture on the Roman
Empire,
the Greek world,
was going to be some just
boring historical narrative and
you've had some of the same
thing this time where I just had
to tell the story of what was
going on in these centuries.
Why was this all important for
us?
Here are the main things to
take away from it.
Hellenization was extremely
important because it united the
Mediterranean world,
the eastern Mediterranean but
then the Romans even took over
some of the aspects of
Hellenization when they took
over all of the Mediterranean.
By Jesus' time,
all of Palestine was Hellenized
to some extent,
only to different degrees.
Yes, if you lived in a village
or out in the country you you
may not have spoken Greek,
you may have spoken Hebrew or
Aramaic.
 
But if you were an elite person
in any city, even in Palestine's
time, you were expected to be
able to speak Greek.
You had some exposure to Greek
culture.
Syncretism was very important.
 
The idea that religions
around--religions borrowed from
each other,
religions were mixtures of
things, and cultures borrowed
from each other,
so syncretism was very
important.
There was also conflict within
Judaism.
I've tried to emphasize that.
 
Jews weren't all agreed about
how to respond to the things,
the politics and the cultures
around them.
Jews conflicted with Jews over
how to adapt to Greek and Roman
domination and culture.
 
Political, social,
religious, linguistic,
cultural issues were all
affected in some way.
The next really important thing
is the smallness of Judea.
From the modern world we tend
to think of Jerusalem and Judea
as being very important because
of course that's where Judaism
started off and that's where
Christianity started off.
But by the standards of the
Greek and Roman worlds,
Judea was a kind of
insignificant backwater.
It wasn't a big important place
economically or politically,
and Jerusalem was not that
terribly important.
Judea was relatively
unimportant from a world
historical perspective,
but--and this is also very
important for how this lecture
plays out for the rest of the
course--
the Jews were never truly
independent during this time nor
were they ever truly powerful
during this time.
 
Even when the Hasmoneans,
Judas Maccabeus and his
brothers and their descendants,
were ruling for 100 years or
so, they never were politically
very powerful outside of that
narrow area of Judea.
 
They were never truly
independent;
they always had to fend off the
greater power of Syria,
or Egypt, or Rome.
 
The difference--the important
thing, though,
is Jews had an ideology that
supported imperial pretensions.
Go back and read the first few
Psalms,
where God says,
"To my anointed one,"
and here he's either talking to
King David or whoever is
supposed to be sitting on King
David's throne,
"You are the King of the
world.
I will make all the nations
flow to Jerusalem,
all of them will come and
worship Me in this holy
place."
 
The Psalms are full of language
that implied that whoever is in
control in Jerusalem is the king
of world,
and yet the Jews looked around
themselves and they're going,
we haven't had anybody who
approached that in centuries.
The Jews had an ideology of
empire and world domination
embedded in their scripture,
and yet their social and
political situation was just the
opposite,
and it's in that maelstrom of
Jewish ideology not fitting
reality,
that Jesus is born.
No sections this week.
 
Look at the syllabus.
 
On Monday you'll be asked to
come in with lists of historical
events as you see them in Acts
and lists of historical events
as you see them in Galatians 1
and 2.
Come in with your lists on
paper because we're going to put
it up on the board.
 
Be prepared to tell me what you
do for your homework,
and do the homework for Monday.
 
Okay?
 
It's not very difficult;
it won't take you a long time,
but follow the syllabus
instructions and come Monday
ready to talk.
 
