Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight we're going to be talking about what happened between the Testaments. That is, what happened in Judea and the ancient world between the time of the Old Testament and the time of the New. Tonight, we're going to be learning how the Jews fared under the rule of the Greeks. We're going to be talking about the origin of the Septuagint. We'll learn how the Romans came to govern Judea. We'll talk about who was Herod and how did he come into power?
You'll also be learning the only time that Judea was ruled by a Jewish queen. And then we'll also be learning about the history of the Sadducees and the Pharisees before the birth of Christ. Now, I'm sure a lot of the names we'll be discussing tonight are going to be a bit unfamiliar to you. And I've purposely prepared this in such a way that I'm going to try to keep the number of names to a minimum, because I know that can get confusing and boring just to be hearing a bunch of unfamiliar names.
But there are seven names that I think it would be good to remember, if not after this message is over, at least through the course of this message, because you'll be hearing these names several times. The first one are the Seleucids. These were Greek rulers, a dynasty of Greek rulers after the time of Alexander the Great, who ruled the area of Syria. We'll be talking more about them. Antiochus, he was one of the Seleucid rulers who started a major revolt in Judea.
We'll be talking about the Maccabee family, and there were several of them that led the revolt against Antiochus. OK, we'll be talking about a Jewish ruler named Hyrcanus. He was of the Maccabee family. He was both a priest and a king. We'll also be learning about a ruler named Aristobulus. Finally, we'll be talking about Antipater. He was the father of Herod the Great and about Pompey. He was the Roman general who brought Judea under Roman control.
Let's begin by talking about the situation at the close of the Old Testament historical books. This will just be a review. As you remember, a remnant of Jews returned from Babylon around the year 537 BC under the Persian appointed governor, Zerubbabel. I mean, Zerubbabel was a Jew, but his authority came from Persia. And there were Jews who were still there in the land that this remnant was able to, to some degree, merge with. And together they finally rebuilt a temple to Yahweh or Jehovah.
However, Judea was now a province of Persia. And when we talk about Judea, don't think of it in terms of the united Israel under David and Solomon. Reestablished Judea for most of its history was a small city-state with many foreign peoples living in the land that had formerly been controlled by the Israelites. Now, you probably remember the reforms under Nehemiah and Ezra, how they rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem and required the Jews to put away the foreign wives that they had married.
Well, really, nothing of further significance happened under the rule of the Persians. However, while Persia ruled the Middle Eastern world all the way to the borders of India, the Greek city-states were flourishing in the West and had reached a very high level of culture. Now, they had never conquered much beyond Greece itself because these city-states were always warring among themselves. The Persians had tried to conquer Greece. They invaded it, but they were unable to take it.
However, they did conquer the Greek cities of Ionia in what is today Western Turkey. However, things changed for Greece around the year 346 BC. This is when a gifted king from the very backwater Greek region of Macedonia, his name was Philip, was able to either conquer all of the Greek city-states or to cajole them into recognizing him as the head of all Greece. And this is the first time that there had been any ruler whom all of Greece recognized. And then he worked to unite the Greeks into a single nation.
Well, as you might imagine, at first, a number of the city-states rebelled against him, but he was able to crush these revolts to the point that nobody was able to resist his authority any longer. He then announced to the Greeks the rules by which Greece would thereafter be governed. There would be hereafter no more wars of Greeks against Greeks, but rather all would unite for the common good.
The city-states would still retain their autonomy in local government, kind of like the United States government with the states and the federal government. And very wisely, Philip did not require the city states to pay any kind of tribute or tax to him. So they weren't chafing under his rule. All he asked of them was that they would supply men and ships for a united Greek army commanded by him.
Eventually, he announced his plans for a great crusade to free the Greek cities of Ionia that were under Persian rule and also to seize Persian wealth in revenge for the destruction that Persia had wreaked on Greece a century earlier. Well, this was a good plan to the Greeks, and this quest served to further unite them behind Philip. However, before he could launch this crusade, he was murdered by one of his own bodyguards.
Well, the kingship now fell to Philip's 20-year-old son, Alexander, who was one of the most unique, charismatic individuals of all human history. Although he was little more than a boy in age, Alexander radiated energy and strength. He had a magnetic visage. When he entered a room, he quickly mastered it. When he was only 18 years old, he had commanded one of the wings of his father's army in an important victory against the Greek city-state of Thrace.
In fact, he was so ambitious as still a young teenager that his father had once told him," My son, you must find a kingdom big enough for your ambitions. Macedonia is too small for you." Alexander was extremely self-confident and was totally fearless. He typically personally led the charges of his cavalry into battle. By the time he died, he was covered with a dozen or more wounds from various battles. Yet he was as intelligent as he was brave.
His personal teacher had been Aristotle, and Alexander had been schooled in all of the knowledge and wisdom of the Greek world. In fact, during his campaign in the east, Alexander surrounded himself with geographers, astronomers, geologists, and artists. He regularly sent back botanical specimens to Aristotle to examine. Now, shortly after Alexander assumed the kingship when he was just 20, the cruel but capable Persian ruler, Artaxerxes Ochus, was murdered.
He was a descendant, of course, of the Artaxerxes we read about in the scriptures. And so the untried Darius III assumed the scepter. Well, Alexander quickly decided that this was the time to launch the crusade his father had planned. There had been a change in the dynasty and no one knew what kind of person, how good a general or ruler this Darius III would be. So Alexander crossed into Asia Minor with his army, and with lightning speed, he quickly liberated Greek city after Greek city from their Persian yoke.
Cities threw their gates open to him as their Persian overlords fled. Before long, the Greek cities of Ionia were totally free. And if it had been a different person, that may have been the end of the campaign. But Alexander wanted more. He wanted to deliver a crippling defeat to the main Persian army such that they would never menace Grecian territory again.
Well, upon hearing the news of what had happened to the cities there in Western Asia Minor, Darius III mobilized a huge Persian army of 300,000 men against Alexander's army of only 35,000. And the two armies met at a place called Issus. Although he was outnumbered nearly 10 to 1, Alexander wasn't afraid to engage the Persian army. He was not only courageous, but he was also a brilliant military tactician.
He managed to outmaneuver the massive Persian army, and then in the thick of the battle, Alexander saw an opening in the Persian line, and he rushed through it with his light cavalry. He saw Darius III in his chariot and charged right at him. Well, Darius lost his nerve and fled, and his army followed after him and were completely routed. Well, after this incredible and fairly easy victory, Alexander was no longer content with just a secure Greece. He now wanted nothing less than the entire Persian Empire.
Well, in the course of just a few years, Alexander got what he wanted. He conquered the entire Persian Empire and even beyond conquering part of India. What made his campaign somewhat easier is that to a large degree, the Persian Empire was made up of defeated peoples like the Egyptians, who saw Alexander as a liberator. And Alexander was normally very magnanimous in his victories. Most cities surrendered to him without a fight.
And Alexander did not allow his soldiers to just kill wantonly or to plunder the cities they conquered as a normal rule. However, if a city refused to surrender to him, such as Tyre did, well, then he made it such an example of them that few other cities would dare to resist him. In the year 333 BC, Jerusalem opened its gates to Alexander, and so Judea passed from being a Persian province to a Greek one. Ironically, although no man had been able to slay Alexander, he was defeated by, of all things, a mosquito.
While inspecting a project to drain some of the swamps of the Euphrates River, he was bitten by a mosquito and contracted a severe fever, probably malaria. And he ended up dying from this at the age of 33. At his death, he ruled the largest empire in human history up to that time. Even though he only lived 33 years, Alexander left quite a legacy behind him. He was not like Attila the Hun or other similar conquerors whose only interest was to kill, plunder, and acquire land.
Now, Alexander had a definite mission to bring Greek learning and culture to the whole known world. He wanted to civilize everybody and raise their level of knowledge and society to that of the Greeks. And he founded Greek cities throughout his new empire, the most important of which was Alexandria in Egypt. And because of Alexander's conquests, a lot of Eastern commerce and culture flowed westward to Europe, and a lot of Western commerce and culture flowed eastward all the way to India.
Koine Greek became the international language throughout the Western half of Alexander's empire. In fact, it became the international language throughout Europe all the way to Rome, where Latin was their basic language, but most people spoke Greek. In the Far East, Aramaic remained the common language. Because Alexander died at such a young age, he wasn't able to provide for a succession to his kingship.
Immediately after his death, his generals killed Alexander's wife and his children and then divided the empire among themselves. As to the Middle East, the area we're concerned with in our discussion tonight, Egypt went to Alexander's general named Ptolemy, and Asia Minor, Syria, and Mesopotamia went to his general Seleucus. And these two generals started two great dynasties, the Ptolemies in Egypt and the Seleucids of what we'll call greater Syria.
You've probably heard the name Ptolemy before, I'm sure, although you have to remember each one of the rulers was named Ptolemy. So sometimes it seems like, wow, this Ptolemy did everything. Well, it's because there were so many of them, they all had the name Ptolemy. The Seleucids may or may not be a name you've heard of before. But like I say, their headquarters were in Syria. Sometimes books will refer to them as Syrians, but you have to understand these were Greek rulers over that area of Syria.
Now, in Egypt, the Ptolemies were ardent patrons of art and learning. Ptolemy invited scholars from all over the Greek world to Alexandria, his capital, at state expense. He constructed the largest library in history up to that time, filling it with 700,000 manuscripts. Many of the Greek scientists and inventors we think of actually lived in Alexandria, or at least studied there, not in Greece.
One example would be Euclid, the father of geometry, Archimedes, who said," Give me a lever long enough and I'll move the whole world." He apparently studied in Alexandria, and he lived in a Greek colony himself. In fact, the water screw that he invented was used by Egyptian farmers to irrigate their fields. So Alexandria probably became the idealized Greece of the ancient world, something Greece itself had never realized was reconstructed there in Egypt. And the Ptolemies were very popular in Egypt.
In fact, the Egyptians worshipped Alexander as a god. Also, the Ptolemies in general treated the Jews very well, and many of the Jews immigrated to Egypt to live there. And you may remember from Bible history that a number of Jews had fled there at the time that Babylon had destroyed Jerusalem. And so you had Jews living there already who joined with these new Jews who moved down there, and a large colony of them or sector, I should say, lived there in Alexandria, Egypt.
Now, Ptolemy II, the son of the founding Ptolemy, invited Jewish scribes to come to Alexandria and to translate the Jewish scriptures into Greek so that they could be read by all peoples. And they did this. And this was the very first translation of the Bible covering all of the Old Testament. And the Septuagint became the Bible of the Jews who lived throughout the Greek and Roman worlds.
In fact, it was the Bible that the New Testament writers quote from, and it was the Old Testament version used by the early Christians after the apostles. Unfortunately, human lust for power being what it is, the Ptolemies and the Seleucid rulers constantly waged war against each other in order to enlarge their kingdoms. And Judea was caught in the middle of this. Eventually, the Seleucid rulers of Syria came to rule Judea. And these new Greek rulers decided who would serve as high priest in Judea.
I mean, they didn't destroy the priesthood, but they made the decision of who would be the next high priest when a high priest died rather than it following a family dynasty. Now, as far as I know, it was always someone who was still in the lineage of Aaron, but the high priesthood no longer automatically passed from father to son.
In the year 167 BC, Antiochus IV, who was the seleucid ruler of Greater Syria, he's sometimes known as Antiochus Epiphanes, he decided to Hellenize the Jews, that is, to bring them under Greek culture so that they would better fit into a united empire. Now, with most peoples, that had been no big problem. The Greeks didn't care what gods they worshipped, and most peoples didn't care what culture they followed because their religions put no restrictions on them of any kind. But it was quite different for the Jews.
Trying to make them into Greeks would require no less than their giving up totally the Jewish religion. Now, our primary source of information about these events is from the book of 1 Maccabees. I think this would be a good time to clear up a huge misunderstanding that most evangelicals and other non-Catholics have about the Book of Maccabees. And in fact, the other books of the so-called Apocrypha. Now, I grew up believing that these books were some kind of fairy tales that the Roman Catholics had invented.
And so in my mind, there was always an aura of evil around them. I never even wanted to look at them. Well, nothing could be further from the truth, particularly concerning the book of 1 Maccabees. It's simply an historical book that was written before the birth of Christ, describing the history of the Jews under Antiochus and under the Maccabees who fought against him. Even most secular historians respect 1 Maccabees as a book that contains reliable history. The book itself makes no claim to be inspired.
There's no theology in it. It's simply history. Now, many Christians through the centuries have viewed it as inspired, but it makes no difference whether we view it as part of the canon or not, because like I say, it's history. The Jews were certainly familiar with 1 Maccabees because their festival of Hanukkah is based on it. The early Christians read First Maccabees regularly, and they quote from it often. Luther's Bible contained Maccabees, along with the other books of the Apocrypha.
And so most of the Christians who belonged to churches that sprung out of the Reformation read and were familiar with Maccabees and the other books of the Apocrypha. And they quote from them often when you read the writings of the different Reformers, and including the Anabaptists, you'll find lots of references to the Apocrypha and references to the Maccabees.
In fact, these books were included in the original 1611 King James version, but with the notation that they were to be read for edification and not for theological doctrine. So English Christians grew up knowing these books very well. I think we've all heard of Handel's Messiah, written by George Handel, the German composer who had come and lived in England. Now, he was Lutheran and then attended the Anglican Church in England.
And his second best oratorio after the Messiah was one called Judas Maccabeus about the events from the Book of Maccabees. And it was something that the English people were all familiar with. I mean, I personally think every Christian should read and know the contents of 1 Maccabees, because without it, you're missing a very important piece of Jewish history that has great importance when we get down to the New Testament. Now, whether or not it should be in the canon is irrelevant, like you say, it's history.
OK, back to our story. I was saying that Antiochus IV had decided to Hellenize the Jews to turn them into Greek, so to speak. He introduced the gymnasium to Jerusalem. Now, the gymnasium wasn't just a place to exercise. It's where young men were schooled in all of the knowledge of the Greeks, in mathematics and science, things like that, and also in the general philosophy of the Greeks. Antiochus banned the Jewish religion.
He forbade the Jews to circumcise their children or to live under the law, that is, the Mosaic Law. He changed the temple of Jehovah or Yahweh into a temple of Zeus. He even had a pig sacrificed on the altar there to Zeus. And sadly, many of the Jews, perhaps most of them, went along with these changes and even promoted them. I'm going to read to you a section from the book of Maccabees about this.
It says," On the 15th day of the month Chislev in the year 145," that's in the year of the Greeks, the king erected the horrible abomination upon the altar of Holocaust, and in the surrounding cities of Judah, they built pagan altars. They also burnt incense at the doors of houses and in the streets. Any scrolls of the law, which they found, they tore up and burned. Whoever was found with the scroll of the covenant and whoever observed the Mosaic Law was condemned to death by royal decree.
So they used their power against Israel, against those who were caught each month in the cities. On the 25th day of each month, they sacrificed on the altar erected over the altar of Holocaust. Women who had had their children circumcised were put to death in keeping with the decree with the babies hung from their necks. Their families also and those who had circumcised them were killed. But many in Israel were determined and resolved in their hearts not to eat anything unclean.
They preferred to die rather than to be defiled with unclean food or to profane the holy covenant. And they did die. Terrible affliction was upon Israel. That again was from 1 Maccabees. Well, not only did Antiochus take measures to stamp out the Jewish religion and to turn the Jews into a Hellenized people, he constructed a fortified citadel in Jerusalem manned by his soldiers and by Hellenistic Jews who supported him. And this citadel was so strong, it lasted, was still there in the time of the Romans.
And when we get to the New Testament, it's then known as the Fortress of Antonia, but it's actually this same fortress built by the Seleucid Greeks several centuries before. Again, the time period we're looking at was the year 167 and 166 BC when these events were going on, about a century and a half before Christ was born. I'm going to read you one more and this will be the last one from the book of 1 Maccabees.
It reads," In those days, Mattathias, son of John, son of Simeon, a priest of the family of Joarib, left Jerusalem and settled in Modain. Now, just an aside here, Modain is a little village about 20 miles northwest of Jerusalem. Continuing from Maccabees, when he saw the sacrileges that were being committed in Judah and in Jerusalem, he said," Woe is me.
Why was I born to see the ruin of my people and the ruin of the holy city and to sit idle while it is given into the hands of enemies and the sanctuary into the hands of strangers?" Then Mattathias and his sons tore their garments, put on sackcloth and mourned bitterly. I'm still reading here. The officers of the king in charge of enforcing the apostasy came to the city of Modain to organize the sacrifices. Many of Israel joined them, but Mattathias and his sons gathered in a group apart.
Then the officers of the King addressed Mattathias," You are a leader, an honorable and great man in this city supported by sons and kinsmen. Come now! Be the first to obey the king's command, as all the Gentiles and the men of Judah and those who are left in Jerusalem have done. Then you and your sons shall be numbered among the king's friends, and shall be enriched with silver and gold in many gifts.
But Mattathias answered in a loud voice," Although all the Gentiles in the king's realm obey him so that each forsake the religion of his fathers and consents to the king's orders, yet I and my sons and my kinsmen will keep to the covenant of our fathers. God forbid that we should forsake the law and the commandments.
We will not obey the words of the king nor depart from our religion in the slightest degree." As he finished saying these words, a certain Jew came forward in the sight of all to offer sacrifice on the altar in Modain, according to the King's order. When Mattathias saw him, he was filled with zeal. His heart was moved and his just fury was aroused, and he sprang forward and killed him upon the altar.
At the same time, he also killed the messenger of the king who was forcing them to sacrifice, and he tore down the altar. Thus, he showed his zeal for the law, just as Phineas did with Zimri's son of Salu. Then Mattathias went to the city, shouting," Let everyone who is zealous for the law and who stands by the covenant follow after me." Thereupon he fled to the mountains with his sons, leaving behind in the city all their possessions.
Many who sought to live according to righteousness and religious custom went into the desert to settle there. They and their sons, their wives, and their cattle, because misfortunes pressed so hard on them. Well, of course, it didn't take long for the news to reach the Seleucid rulers. They sent an army out after Mattathias and his sons. Now, Mattathias was joined by a group of Jews known as the Hasidim, who are the ancestors of both the Pharisees and the Essenes.
Although heavily outnumbered, this valiant group of Jews were able to hold out against the Greeks and their Hellenistic Jewish supporters. They waged war against the Jewish compromisers. They tore down pagan altars. They had children circumcised who had previously not been. And they promoted the worship of Jehovah throughout the land. Well, Mattathias himself died within a year after he started his revolt. But before dying, he left the mission in the hands of his third son, Judas.
Now, Judas was a very able leader, and he had great faith in God. So he wasn't afraid to fight the Greeks, even though he and his men were nearly always heavily outnumbered. In fact, in most of the battles, it was Judas and his small army that were boldly attacking the Greeks, even though they were only a fraction of the size of the Greek army. In fact, Judas, because of his boldness and effectiveness, was given the surname Maccabeus, which means hammer.
He was the hammer of God against the Greeks and against the apostatizers. Well, eventually, Judas Maccabeus regained the entire land of Judea, and he was able to restore worship in the temple in Jerusalem. On Chislev, the 25th, which would be approximately December 14th, the temple with its altar was cleansed, rededicated, and the daily sacrifices were reinstituted there in Jerusalem. And this event is still remembered by Jews to this day in their Feast of Lights, or what we know as Hanukkah.
But unfortunately, that wasn't the end of the struggle. The Grecian armies came back and laid siege to Jerusalem in the year 163 BC. When I say Grecian, other reference sources might say Syrian. Hopefully, again, we all understand what we're talking about. This was the Seleucid rulers of Syria, and they weren't necessarily ethnic Greeks, that is the army. The army would have been made of all kinds of people who were under the rule of these Greek rulers who were separated from Greece itself.
Well, Judas Maccabeus was in a desperate situation because there was an acute food shortage in Jerusalem, and there they were under siege. Well, the Greek army had its own problems as well. So both sides entered into a peace treaty that guaranteed the Jews freedom of worship. Now, perhaps that should have ended the entire matter, and maybe it could have, but it didn't. That's because Judas now decided that he wanted to gain political freedom for Judea as well as religious freedom.
Now, the Hasidim, these Jews who were very zealous for the law, who had supported the Maccabees and fought with them, they didn't support Judas in this. They said," No, we've got what we were fighting for. Let's be content with that." And so this divided the Jewish forces. And so the Seleucid rulers from Syria reinvaded Judea. And for a brief time, the Hellenistic Jews who sided with the Syrians, they gained the upper hand again. But Judas continued his struggle against them.
It was like a long, fought-out guerrilla war. Well, then, Judas made a terrible mistake. It was the very same mistake that Jews had made before the Babylonian captivity. And that is, he sought help by making an alliance with a Gentile nation, and that nation was Rome. As had been prophesied in Daniel, the Romans were well on their way to becoming the next world power. The Grecian Empire was in decline, and the Roman Empire was growing.
Over a period of several centuries, the Romans had conquered the Etruscans and other peoples of Italy, had come to rule all of Italy, and then had overthrown the Carthaginian kingdom of North Africa and Spain. And then they had defeated the Celts in Gaul and other places. So by the year 168 BC, this was one year before Antiochus had started his program of Hellenizing the Jews. The Romans had conquered Greece itself.
So while the Maccabees were struggling against their Greek overlords, the Romans were moving eastward, slowly taking over the Grecian Empire. And so making an alliance with Rome gave the Jews a formidable ally. And yet it was so ironic that Judah Maccabee, who had so depended on God's might, who had told his men, it doesn't matter they were greatly outnumbered. If God is on our side, that's all that matters. That in the end, He turned to human assistance. But I don't know that we're any different.
How many of us have tasted God's power, have had God answer prayers and intervene in our lives. And yet, a year later, we'll not trust in God and will turn to human means to accomplish something. This has been the story of God's people throughout all the centuries. Well, soon after forming his alliance with Rome, Judas Maccabee was finally killed in battle. But that didn't end the movement for independence. He was replaced as leader of the independence movement by his brother, Jonathan.
Now, history books today generally refer to him as Jonathan Maccabee because they referred to this whole family and the lineage as the Maccabees, where originally it was just Judas who was given that title because of his prowess as a warrior. Well, Jonathan was very capable just like his brother Judas. And he continued the guerrilla warfare against the Greeks.
And after Jonathan had defeated one of the Greek generals, the Greeks entered into a peace treaty with him, again assuring the Jews of complete religious freedom, but not granting them total political independence. Well, by this time, Antiochus IV, who had started this whole mess, he had died and his sons were fighting to take over the throne in his absence. And one of his sons had gained the ascendancy over the other ones, and he was now ruling there in Syria, the seat of the Seleucid rule.
Well, this son of Antiochus appointed Jonathan, Jonathan Maccabee, as governor of Judea and as high priest. So now you had the secular rulership and the Office of High Priest both in one office. And this was a new dynasty of High Priest because the lineage of High Priest had not run through this family that Mattathias and his sons belonged to. They were priests, and I believe they were of the line of Aaron, but they had not been of the line of the high priests through the centuries.
So the Jews sort of had what they wanted, their own ruler, their own high priest again, but it was under the authority of the Seleucid Empire. Well, this began what is also referred to as the Hasmonean Dynasty. It's the same thing as the Maccabean dynasty. The terms are essentially interchangeable, and some books will refer to them one way and one the other. So if you run across those terms like the Hasmoneans, it's talking about the Maccabees or vice versa.
Well, Jonathan's rulership lasted only a few years before he was murdered by one of the Seleucid rulers who was supposed to be his friend. Well, upon the death of Jonathan Maccabee, a third brother, Simon, became head of the Jewish movement. So now you have three of the sons of Mattathias, all of these men being priests who were heading this movement for Jewish independence.
Well, shortly after he came into power that is, Simon is both governor and high priest, several factions among the heirs of Antiochus back in Syria were fighting each other to obtain the kingship again. Well, Simon agreed that he would support one of the sons in this fight, who was called Demetrius II, on the condition that Demetrius would grant Judea complete independence, no more tribute to pay, no more having to get permission from Syria for anything. The Jewish people would be totally independent.
Well, Demetrius, of course, was fighting for the throne, and so he needed all the help he could get. So he agreed to those terms. This was the year 142 BC. It was 24 years after the Maccabee family began their struggle against the Greeks. And so now, for the first time in centuries, for the first time since the Babylonian captivity, the Jews were an independent nation again. They no longer had to pay any taxes to a foreign king.
Well, of course, Simon knew that this independence might be short-lived because if Demetrius II didn't end up gaining the power in Syria, then he could rightfully expect that the Syrian army would be back there to punish them for supporting Demetrius. So to strengthen his position, Simon captured the fortress of Gazarah. He expelled the Gentile people from it, and he repopulated it with Jews. And then in Jerusalem, he was able to accomplish something that neither of his brothers had been able to do.
I mentioned that way back when Antiochus first decided to try to Hellenize the Jews, that he had built this citadel in Jerusalem that no one was able to take. Even though Judas had cleansed the temple and they reinstituted sacrifices and all that, he still wasn't able to get these Hellenized Jews and some of their Greek army out of Jerusalem because they were holed up in that citadel. Well, Simon Maccabee was finally able to take control of this citadel.
So that got all of the Hellenists out of control, all of the Greeks out of Judea. Well, Simon also renewed the alliance with Rome that his brother Judah had originally made. Well, the Jewish people, of course, were very strong supporter of the Maccabee family. So they declared to Simon that both the high priesthood and the kingship would remain with him and to his descendants forever.
Well, unfortunately, Simon ruled for only eight years before he was murdered by an ambitious son-in-law who wanted to take over the throne himself. Yet during Simon's brief reign, he had achieved both religious and political independence for Judea. He had extended the boundaries of the nation. And under him, the Jewish people finally had a period of peace again. As I said, he was murdered by a son-in-law who thought he would be able to take the throne.
The son-in-law also murdered the various sons of Simon to ensure this. But one of the sons whose name was John Hyrcanus heard about the plan, was able to escape from being killed, and in fact, he captured and killed the man who had been sent to kill him. And so then he became king and a high priest in his father's place. This was the year 135 BC. Well, shortly after he came into power, this is John Hyrcanus. Syria again invaded Judea.
It destroyed the walls of Jerusalem and forced the Jews to begin paying tribute again to the Greek overlords. And so it looked like all those years of struggle, they were right back to where they had started, except they still did have religious freedom, which was the most important thing. However, then, something happened that strengthened their position considerably. And that is, during all of those decades of struggle there in the Middle East, a new power had arisen in the Far East.
These were the people known as the Parthians. They originated in Central Asia, and they had always been a subjugated people most of their history. But now they had suddenly come into power and they had slowly taken control of virtually all of Persia. And now they were knocking at the east door, you might say, of Syria. So now the Seleucid rulers had a much bigger threat, a much bigger concern than what was going on in Judea.
And that was they had to defend themselves against the Parthians, or they might be totally vanquished. So the Seleucid rulers turned their attention away from Judea to defend their borders against the Parthian threat. Well, John Hyrcanus seized this opportunity, and he quit paying tribute to Syria. And he also reestablished the alliance that his father and uncles had made with Rome, because now Rome was, so to speak, knocking on the west door of the Seleucid Empire.
They had the Parthians on the east and the Romans on the west. And so their hands were pretty full. And so John Hyrcanus knew he would be able to get away with this because the Seleucid rulers just did not have the manpower to take care of all of these problems. Well, with the Seleucid threat out of the way, John Hyrcanus took advantage of the situation to expand Judea's boundaries. I had mentioned that when all of this began, Judea was essentially a city-state.
You had Jerusalem and some villages and rural areas around it, but you didn't have this vast area that had once been ruled by David and Solomon. But John Hyrcanus conquered Samaria to the north, and there he destroyed the Samaritan Temple at Mount Gerizim. You know, for many years, I had always thought that the Samaritans had just worshiped on what they considered a sacred mountain.
You know Jesus mentioned that they worshipped there at Mount Gerizim, but I had not realized there had been a temple there at one time and that it wasn't that long before the time of Christ that it had been destroyed by the Jews. We know from reading the New Testament that the Jews disliked the Samaritans. I don't know if they had any good reason to dislike them, but the Samaritans obviously had a good reason to dislike the Jews for what they had done to them.
Well, John Hyrcanus also conquered Idumea, which was to the south of Judea. Now, Idumea is simply a modified name for Edom. It's the same land we read about way back there in the time of Moses. And when John Hyrcanus conquered Idumea, he forced the Idumeans to become circumcised and to adopt the Jewish religion. So they became Jews by religion, even though they were not descendants of Israel or Jacob. John Hyrcanus also began minting coins bearing his own name, which was an unprecedented step for a Jewish king.
Neither David or Solomon even had done that. But Hyrcanus now began having internal problems within his realm. I mentioned earlier that the Hasidim, a group of Jewish purists, had joined up with Mattathias and his sons in that original fight, but they were not supportive of Judas Maccabee when he began fighting for political independence after winning religious freedom. Well, from what historians can tell, the Hasidim branch into two groups, the Essenes and the Pharisees.
The Pharisees felt that the high priesthood had become worldly and secularized. Well, the Essenes felt that way too. And the Pharisees began publicly saying that Hyrcanus should step down as high priest. But they were countered by a new religious group called the Sadducees, who were an aristocratic party made up primarily of wealthy priests. Again, at this point in time, the priesthood and the civil rulership had become combined.
And so you had all of these wealthy aristocrats in Judea who at the same time were priests. So King John Hyrcanus and the Sadducees joined forces against the Pharisees. Well, John Hyrcanus reigned for 31 years, much longer than any of the Maccabees before him. And again, he was the second generation being the son of Simon. And he was the first one of the Maccabee family or the Hasmonean line to die peacefully.
In one of the most unusual moves in Jewish history, John Hyrcanus decided that his wife would succeed him as the civil head of Judea, and that his oldest son, Aristobulus, would succeed him as high priest. I'm not aware of anything like that ever happening before. You had, of course, Jezebel and her daughter back in the time of Ahab, but they were Phoenicians. They were not Jews. However, Aristobulus, the son who had been chosen to be high priest, he wasn't agreeable to this.
So at his father's death, he took both offices, both civil and priestly, and his mother didn't end up becoming the ruling queen. He also imprisoned three of his brothers and had a fourth one killed. Well, at this time, you can probably see that things are beginning to decay morally and spiritually among the Maccabees. They started off as such a heroic, godly family. And now we're just a couple generations down the line.
This is the grandson of Simon Maccabee, and you already have brothers imprisoning one another, killing one another in order to get the throne. You didn't have that with Judas and Jonathan and Simon, the sons of Mattathias. Well, Aristobulus reigned only one year before he died of an illness. However, during his brief reign, he conquered Galilee and he forced the people there to become circumcised and to practice the Jewish religion.
So again, many of the people that you come across in the days of Jesus from Galilee weren't necessarily ethnic descendants of Jacob or Israel. They were Gentiles who had been forced to convert to Judaism, but you did also have Jews who lived there as well. Well, when Aristobulus, and I should clarify that he's Aristobulus the first, because we're going to be talking a whole lot about another Aristobulus, Aristobulus II. Well, when he died, his wife, Salome Alexandra, released the three brothers that he imprisoned.
And then she sort of assumed the position of power broker. And she appointed one of these three brothers, Alexander Jannaeus, to be king and high priest. And then she married him. This was the year 103 BC, about a century before Christ was born. Well, as I said, you can see from what's happening that the Maccabean dynasty had definitely lost its spiritual integrity that it had begun with. That's evident just from the names you start seeing now. I think to myself, why would a Jew name his daughter Salome Alexandra?
Obviously, Alexandra is in admiration of Alexander the Great. And so you want your Jewish daughter to emulate or be remembered by him and not by a name like Miriam or something like that. And why would a father name his son Alexander Jannaeus? Again, you've got Alexander, this emulation, this admiration for a pagan king. If you wanted to admire someone, why wasn't it David or Moses or Elijah or maybe Judas Maccabeus or someone like that?
Furthermore, in marrying his widowed sister-in-law, Alexander Jannaeus violated the very mosaic law, which is very specific that a high priest could only marry a virgin. Well, as the Seleucid Empire was crumbling, Alexander Jannaeus tried to fill the vacuum by conquering much of the lands that the Greeks had once controlled. So he captured all of the coastal Greek cities from Carmel all the way to Gaza and forced the inhabitants there to follow the Jewish religion.
He also conquered territories to the west and to the south so that the size of his kingdom reached that of the kingdom that David and Solomon had ruled over. The difference is that now a large number of the peoples in the newly expanded Judea were not Israelites or Jews by ancestry. They were various Gentile people who had been forced to follow the Jewish religion. Now, unlike his grandfather and his grandfather's brothers, the original Maccabees, Alexander Jannaeus was not a particularly godly man.
He was a wealthy drunkard who loved war and who was living in violation of the Mosaic law. Well, finally, because of his unrighteousness, the Jewish people turned against him, and he ended up waging war against his own people using foreign mercenaries, and his armies ended up slaying 50,000 or more Jews. In fact, things were so bad that the Pharisees finally were so desperate that they called upon the Greek Seleucid rulers to come to their aid.
I think how ironic here the Pharisees whose forefathers had fought the Seleucid Greek rulers were now going to those very Greek rulers and asking them to come back to Judea and help them. Well, the Seleucid rulers were willing to do that, so their Greek armies came back into Judea and they defeated the troops of Jannaeus and they forced him to retreat to the mountains. Well, now the Jews began to reconsider the whole matter. They didn't like Jannaeus, that's for sure.
But they didn't want to be ruled by the Greeks once again. So many of them now fled back to the side of Alexander Jannaeus. And with their help, he was able to drive the Greeks back out and to regain his kingdom. Ah, but now it was payback time. Once he was back on the throne, Jannaeus decided he was going to deal with the Pharisees who had called in the Greeks in the first place. And so he ordered 800 of them to be crucified, not just killed, but to be crucified.
And while they were dying, he had their wives and their children slaughtered before their very eyes. And while all of this was happening, he was feasting and carousing with his concubines. Well, Alexander Jannaeus reigned for 27 years all the way to the year 76 BC. On his deathbed, he appointed his wife, Salome Alexandra, the one who had brought him the kingship in the first place as his successor.
She would have probably been happy to be high priest as well, but that would have been such a violation of the Mosaic law. The Jews would not have stood for that. But for the first time, you had a Jewish queen who was there, not because she was someone like Jezebel, but because her own husband had asked her to take over the rulership. And then she selected her oldest son, whose name was Hyrcanus. This is Hyrcanus II. We talked earlier about John Hyrcanus. Well, this is Hyrcanus II.
And she called for him to be the high priest. Well, before dying, her husband, the one who had slaughtered all of these Pharisees, had requested her to make peace with the Pharisees, and she did that. In fact, this was easy because her own brother now was leader of the Pharisees. So maybe you're beginning to see that all of these groups now, there was so much political intrigue and intermarriages between them all.
Now, unlike the Pharisees, the Essenes, who were disgusted with the Maccabee rulers as well, you know they said, we're not even going to try to deal with them. Let's get totally away from political power and all of that. Well, the Pharisees soon became the power behind the throne of this Jewish queen. And they reintroduced Pharisaic legislation that had been abandoned by the original Hyrcanus I. They also slaughtered the Sadducees who had been behind that massacre of the Pharisees.
Well, now the Sadducees came to the Queen to ask favors of her, and they were headed by none other than Aristobulus II, who was the queen's own son, the brother of the new high priest, Hyrcanus II. And I'm sure by now these names are beginning to go around and around in your head, and you're not going to have to hear any more new names of Jewish rulers after this.
We've come down to you've got this queen, Salome Alexandra, ruling her son, Hyrcanus II, is High Priest and her other son, Aristobulus II, is head of the Sadducees. Well, the Queen gave permission to the Sadducees to leave Jerusalem and to take control of various fortresses throughout the land of Judea. And then after reigning for nine years, Salome became ill and she died. Well, upon her death, Hyrcanus II, who was already high priest, also became the king. And this may have worked out well.
The problem was he was a very weak, easily manipulated person, probably not competent to be the king of Judea. And unfortunately, his brother, Aristobulus, was quite competent and extremely ambitious and unprincipled as well. So no sooner did Hyrcanus II take office and his brother declare war upon him. Well, Hyrcanus took refuge in that citadel in Jerusalem that had been built by the Greeks. But finally, his brother forced him out.
And after ruling only for three months, Hyrcanus agreed to abdicate both as king and as high priest. He would retire from public life, but he would continue to receive the revenue he had been receiving as king and high priest. I find it so hard to believe that these two brothers couldn't at least agree to split the offices between them, and one of them be high priest and one of them be king. But no, Aristobulus wanted both of those. Well, that would have maybe been the end of the matter.
But over in neighboring Idumea, the land of the Edomites that had been conquered now by the Maccabean rulers and had been forced to become Jews by religion. The governor there who had been appointed by the Jews was a very sly, ambitious man named Antipater. And so he contacted Hyrcanus and told him," Look, you're the real king. You're the real high priest, not your brother.
You shouldn't let your brother push you around like that." I'll tell you what, as your friend, I'm going to help you regain your throne and your priesthood. And he also convinced Hyrcanus, and he was probably right, your brother is going to end up killing you. And that's very likely what would have happened because he would have always been a threat. So Hyrcanus then fled. This is Hyrcanus again, the second we're talking about. He fled from Judea and took refuge with one of the nearby Gentile kings.
He then arranged for this neighboring Gentile king to invade Judah to force Aristobulus his brother from the throne. Now, Antipater didn't care anything for Hyrcanus, but he saw this as an opportunity where he could get power in Judea. Well, right when this was happening, the Romans had finally reached the borders of Judah in their war against the Seleucid Empire. In fact, the Roman General Pompey was now fighting the Greeks in Syria, and Aristobulus had sent armies to fight alongside the Romans.
Well, when General Pompey reached Damascus, both brothers Aristobulus and Hyrcanus sent envoys to Pompey, trying to win his support for their side in the struggle for the Jewish throne. Well, rather than making a decision right away, he was in the middle of this campaign. Pompey said he would wait until he had finished his campaign against the Seleucid rulers. And of course, that may have taken a couple of years, and then he would get back to this issue. Well, this really annoyed Aristobulus.
And so he ordered his armies to withdraw from the Roman campaign. Well, now in turn, this infuriated Pompey. So he decided he would put the Seleucid campaign on hold, and he went after Aristobulus. He chased Aristobulus all the way back to Jerusalem, and then he laid siege to the city of Jerusalem itself. Well, the majority of the Jews in Jerusalem and probably throughout the land supported Hyrcanus. He was the rightful king. So they opened the gates and let the Romans come in.
Well, then Aristobulus and the men who supported him, they took refuge in the Temple Mount there inside the walls of Jerusalem. Well, Pompey besieged the Temple Mount for three months, and finally he was able to take it. And he slaughtered 12,000 Jews, these various supporters who were holed up there with aristobulus. He even entered the Holy of Holies and looked around and then left, but he did nothing further to disturb it.
In fact, the next day, he ordered the temple to be ritually cleansed and to resume the sacrifices there. He had Aristobulus arrested and taken in chains to Rome, and he had Hyrcanus reinstated as the high priest, but he did not reinstate Hyrcanus as the king. Well, Pompey was now the one deciding who was going to do what in Judea. And so because of these two brothers fighting each other in their own selfishness, you now had the Romans controlling Judea. To be honest, I think it was going to happen anyway.
The Romans were out to conquer the whole Mediterranean world. They would not have left this little land of Judea as an independent state. It would have happened one way or another, but that it happened because the Jews themselves invited the Romans there is quite interesting. And I also think of all the Old Testament warnings against the Israelites of Old from making alliances with the Gentile kings, calling them their lovers who would someday come and kill them. And this had happened with Rome.
They had made an alliance with Rome. And in the end, Rome came and became the rulers of Judea. Now, Pompey didn't name Antipater to any particular office. During all of this time, this Idumean governor, Antipater, who had said he would help Hyrcanus to obtain his office back. See, during all of this, he was right alongside their Hyrcanus and all of it. And Pompey left him in charge of things without giving him any kind of title. But Antipater, the Idumean, became the de facto ruler of Judea.
And being a clever man, he did everything he could to ingratiate himself to the Romans. Meanwhile, the Jews who had supported Aristobulus, those who had not been slaughtered, they tried several times to regain the throne of Judea. But with the help of Rome, Antipater was able to defeat them. Well, meanwhile, Civil War had broken out in Rome between Julius Caesar and the Senate, and Pompey was aligned with the Senate. Well, Antipater saw that Julius Caesar was going to be the likely victor in all of that.
So adroitly switching sides, he gave a lot of help now to Julius Caesar and helped him to defeat Pompey. Well, once Caesar had defeated Pompey, in appreciation for what Antipater had done for him, he appointed him as procurator of Judea. Then he reconfirmed Hyrcanus as the high priest of Judea. He also gave Hyrcanus the title of Ethnarch of the Jews, a title that didn't really have any authority.
Antipater was now the real ruler as he had been even before he had a title, but now he was officially the ruler appointed by Rome. Of course, Rome held the power, not Antipater or the Jews. Well, after being made procurator of all of Judea, Antipater appointed his 25-year-old son, Herod, later known as Herod the Great, as governor of Galilee. Well, I could go on. There were a number of other intrigues in the decades that followed.
But in the end, after his father's death, Herod, who had now married back into the Hasmonean or Maccabean dynasty, became king of Judea, but of course, under the authority of Rome. And it was this Herod, also known as Herod the Great, who was still ruling Judea when Jesus was born. It was this Herod, the son of Antipater, who ordered the killing of all of the male boys two years old and younger there in Bethlehem.
But so that we don't get confused, he's not the same Herod as the one who put John the Baptist to death. That was Herod Antipas, one of Herod's the great sons, who was the tetrarch of Galilee. And it was that Herod Antipas to whom Pontius Pilate sent Jesus for trial, but that Herod had sent him back to Pontius Pilate, neither side really wanting to touch what could be a political hot potato.
OK, so you've got Antipater, the original one who weaseled his way into the rulership of Judea, then his son, Herod the Great, who followed him. And then you had Herod Antipas, who was not ruler of all Judea, but he was Tetrarch of Galilee. Well, in conclusion, we've brought the history of the Jews from the time of Nehemiah down to the time of Jesus with the various Herodian rulers and the Romans being the ones who were the ultimate ones in charge of Judea. Well, what were the Jews to do?
Start another war of independence, this time against the Romans and against the Herodian rulers? Well, that's what many of them eventually did. But God sent His Son to show them a better way. Jesus stepped into this whole political mess, into this world of bloodshed and hatred that I've been describing tonight, and boldly told the Jews," Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, and do good to those who hate you." Those were revolutionary words.
And Jesus announced a revolutionary kingdom that went with those words, a kingdom that cared nothing for earthly power, a kingdom where brothers didn't fight and kill each other, grasping for power, but rather a kingdom where the greatest would be the one who served others the most.
A kingdom ruled by a heavenly king whose citizens would not seek to accumulate wealth or earthly power, but would seek only to serve their king and to expand his kingdom, not with the sword, but by sharing the good news of this kingdom to others. And when I reflect on the history of mankind before the birth of Christ and the history of the Jews that we've been discussing tonight during this intertestamental period, I have to say that the announcement of the kingdom of God is indeed good news.