The Age of the Maccabees (Illustrated) (7 page)

So long as the struggle
was for religious freedom, as it was in the days of the first generation of
Maccabean brothers, the Pharisees were heartily on the side of the rulers.
“When this contest had been brought to a successful issue, and Hyrcanus showed
that his aim was for the aggrandizement and extension of the Jewish state, and
even for his personal glorification as the civil prince, and not merely the chief
ecclesiastical personage, their support began to be exchanged to some extent
for suspicion and coldness. For all the earlier portion of his rule, however,
he contrived to prevent a formal difference from manifesting itself. At length
the crisis came.

On the occasion of a
banquet to the chief Pharisees, Hyrcanus, perhaps in order to test the
sincerity of their friendship, and lead them to make the attack, for which he
may have had good reason to think that they were preparing, asked them to
mention anything in his conduct which they considered blameworthy. A certain
Eleazar ben Povia replied that he should content himself with princely
authority and transfer the high priest’s diadem to a worthier head, inasmuch as
his mother had been made a captive during an attack on Modin by the Syrians.
The charge which this implied was inquired into and found false. Hyrcanus
called upon the Pharisees to inflict punishment for the slander. They condemned
their colleague to the penalty assigned to ordinary slander, viz., stripes and
imprisonment. The Sadducees suggested that a punishment so trivial in
proportion to the offence of making this charge against the chief civil and
ecclesiastical ruler showed disaffection on the part of the Pharisees to his
rule. He thenceforward withdrew his favor from them, showing his estrangement
by various changes in the details of administration, civil offices, as well as
those connected with the Temple, being now given to the Sadducees.

This clouded the short
remainder of Hyrcanus’s days, and proved the commencement of discord and
disaster to the nation. His house, indeed, appeared thoroughly prosperous.

“It was because they
had devoted such intense labor, and had been proved in the severest crisis,
that the Hasmoneans, like David of old, had attained supreme power, which came
to them unsought and yet, by the inevitable necessity of circumstances, backed
by the acclamation and most earnest cooperation of the people ... Their
position as rulers, therefore, was if possible more prosperous, and full of
brighter promise for a long-future, than David’s had ever been. In John
Hyrcanus and his five sons, it seemed that the perpetuity of their house was
secured. But collapse was near. Hyrcanus died at the age of sixty, after
thirty-one years’ rule, in the year 106 BC. Josephus says that “he was esteemed
by God worthy of the three privileges—the government of his nation, the dignity
of the high-priesthood, and prophecy”. Whatever we think of this last claim, we
may at any rate accept it as a sign of the high estimation in which he was held
by his countrymen during the greater part of his reign.

HYRCANUS, before his
death (of which no particulars have come down to us), named his wife as his
successor, and his son Judah—better known by his Greek name Aristobulus—as high
priest. The latter soon transferred his mother from the throne to a prison, and
getting rid of his four brothers in a similar manner, he assumed the title of
king, although he did not venture to place it upon the coins struck in his
reign. His successors till the time of Pompey continued the regal title. It is
doubtful whether he actually was called “Friend of the Greeks”. This, at any
rate, expressed his line of action. His Greek leanings, however, did not
prevent him from extending the Jewish territory in a northerly direction and
Judaizing the inhabitants. The chief event of his reign was this expedition
against the Itureans, a large section of whom he compelled to submit to
circumcision and conform to the other requirements of the Law. Probably it was
mainly Galilee that he thus annexed, extending in this way his country’s
dominions northwards, as his father had done into the opposite region.
Continued invasions in the same direction would have given the caravan roads
leading from the land of the Euphrates to Egypt into the hands of the Judeans,
which possessions, combined with the warlike courage of the inhabitants and the
defensive condition of the fortresses, might have permitted Judea to attain an
important position among the nations.

The accounts which we
possess of Aristobulus are in the main drawn from hostile sources. The Greeks,
indeed, whose friendship he cultivated, seem naturally to have taken a
favorable view of his character. The Pharisees, with whose party he completely
broke, did not admit that he was possessed of any virtue. They attribute to him
the deaths of his mother and brother, Antigonus. The latter, with, or more
probably without, the sanction of Aristobulus, was slain in the palace, and the
tragic circumstances of his end are said to have had such an effect on the
already weak health of the ruler that his own death quickly ensued (105 BC).

He was succeeded by his
brother Alexander Janneus. The latter was a Grecized form of the Hebrew
Jonathan, with Jannai as an intermediate stage. He and his brothers were
released from the prison to which Aristobulus had consigned them, by the widow
of the late ruler, Salome or Alexandra. It is almost certain that she gave him
her hand in wedlock as well. If so, we see that he did not hesitate to violate
the law that the high priest should not marry a widow. This falls in with the
general character of his reign, in which the kingly side is much more prominent
than the priestly. Simon ben Shatach, however, brother of the queen, soon
assumed a prominent position, and thus the Pharisees’ influence was powerful
throughout the reign.

Janneus inherited the
vehemence and warlike inclinations of many of his forbears, without possessing,
to an equal extent, the prudence which had characterized the more distinguished
of the Maccabees. He succeeded, however, in extending his dominion, with the
help of his Pisidian and Cilician mercena¬ries, and without any very grievous
disaster. At this time the rivals for the Syrian throne, Grypus and Cyzicenus,
were too busily engaged with each other to cause him muchdisquietude in his
attempt to acquire a firmer hold upon the coast towns. His troops overran the
district of Gaza, while he himself proceeded to carry on a vigorous siege of
Ptolemais, a city the possession of which was highly important for trading
purposes. A further inducement no doubt consisted in the fact that it contained
a large body of Jewish colonists.

At this time (circ. 105
BC) Ptolemy Lathyrus had been driven from Egypt by his mother Cleopatra, the
revolution being probably, in part at least, effected by the help of Egyptian
Jews, with whose interests Cleopatra had identified herself. Lathyrus, who had
taken up his abode in Cyprus, viewing the intestine troubles of Syria,
bethought himself of retrieving his own fortunes by the attempt to bring
Palestine again under the Egyptian dominion. Ptolemais refused to receive him.
Janneus sought to keep him in play with friendly expressions, while he sent to
Egypt to warn Cleopatra and request aid. Lathyrus, discovering Janneus’s real
policy, attacked and routed him atAsophon, near the Jordan, a success which was
followed, according to Jewish (probably exaggerated) tradition, by great
cruelties practiced upon the neighboring inhabitants. Soon the combined army
and fleet of Egypt, led respectively by Cleopatra and her son Alexander,
brought Ptolemy’s hopes to a close, and he was obliged to return to Cyprus. The
opposition of the Jews in Egypt was the only thing which saved Judea from
becoming thereupon subject to Cleopatra’s rule. Her army had been despatched
under the command of two Jews, Helkias and Ananias. Theformer had died during
the expedition. The latter strongly protested against the annexation, pointing
out that his countrymen in Egypt would not be slow to visit upon the queen what
they were certain to consider a gross breach of faith.

Janneus soon renewed
his attempts upon various outlying cities, and with success. He captured Gadara
on the Lake of Galilee and other towns, and after nearly a year’s siege
obtained possession of Gaza (96 BC) through an act of treachery. The resistance
was fierce to the end, and the overthrow complete. Before the siege the town
was one of the busiest and most prosperous in Palestine; afterwards it was
little better than a huge ruin, in which fire and spoliation had done their
worst.

On the ecclesiastical
side Janneus was far from popular. The Pharisees, who had the warm support of
the people, were offended at the indifference with which the high priest
regarded the details of ritual, to which they attached the utmost importance.
Simon ben Shatach doubtless fomented these quarrels, and the stories which have
come down to us concerning him, while many of them are childish, and doubtless
not without considerable accretions of tradition, yet show at any rate a man
who had the skill to secure a powerful share in the conduct of affairs. At
length a crisis came. It could only be with deep-seated resentment that pious
Jews could look on and see a wild warrior like Alexander Janneus discharging
the duties of high priest in the holy place, certainly not with the
conscientious and painstaking observance of the ordinances regarded by the
Pharisees as Divine. Even while he was discharging his priestly office it is
said that for the first time they broke out in open rebellion. During the feast
of Tabernacles, whenevery one taking part in it was required to carry a palm
branch and a citron fruit as a festal emblem, Alexander was once, as he stood
beside the altar about to offer sacrifice, pelted by the assembled people with
the citrons. At the same time they insulted him by calling out that he was the
son of a prisoner of war, and was unworthy of the office of sacrificing priest.
Alexander was not the man to bear this quietly. He called in the aid of his
mercenaries, and 600 Jews were massacred.

Thus unpopular at home,
Janneus proceeded to gratify his military instincts by leading his hired troops
to attack Obedas, king of the Arabians. His enemy outmaneuvered him, shut up
his forces in a narrow valley, and defeated them with great slaughter. Escaping
to Jerusalem with difficulty, he found his people in revolt, and for the next
six years (94-89 BC) he was engaged in civil war, dismissed by Josephus in
scarcely more than the statement that “in the several battles that were fought
on both sides, Janneus slew not fewer than fifty thousand of the Jews”. The
disfavor with which he was regarded by the majority of his people was
counterbalanced in several ways. His Sadducean leaning induced that party to
assist him, and they formed by far the wealthiest portion of the community, and
could avail themselves besides of the Temple treasury. The provinces on the
east of Jordan, which had been taken from Obedas, were restored to him, and
this probably secured him from feeling sufficient interest in the contest to
intervene. Egypt, as we have seen, owing to the strong Jewish element there,
was unable to make use of the divisions in Palestine for any purpose of
aggrandizement, while Syria was still distracted by domestic strife.

At length, however, the
side opposed to Janneus obtained some help from the last-named quarter.
Demetrius III (Eucaerus), the ruler of part of Syria, accepted the invitation
proffered by the Pharisees, and armies composed, on both sides alike, of Jewish
and foreign elements met near Shechem (88 BC). Demetrius was on the whole
successful after an engagement in which the loss on each side was severe.
Janneus withdrew to the mountain country, and was joined by a number, said to
have been 6,000, of deserters from Demetrius. They divined the latter’s
intentions of annexation, and apparently did not desire, whatever might be
Janneus’s faults, that their country should again have experience of the Syrian
yoke. Under these circumstances Demetrius hastened homewards, and Janneus
proceeded to seize and punish with great cruelty those who had maintained so
prolonged a resistance to his rule. For the rest of his reign the Pharisees
were crushed.

Judea now became for a
short time the seat of war between the most powerful of the claimants to the
Syrian throne, Antiochus XII (Dionysus) and the Nabatean king, Aretas. The
latter, after a victory over Antiochus, vanquished Janneus, but was persuaded
by concessions of territory to withdraw. For the next three years Janneus’
success in arms, and in the consequent acquisition of fresh territory for his
country, was such, that when in 81 BC he returned to his capital, he was
received with enthusiasm by the people who had so long opposed his rule. His
health was undermined by a long course of excesses, and while seeking to
repress outbreaks of disaffected subjects in 78 BC he died at the age of 49
years.

It was one of the
results of the peculiar warfare of the Hasmonean princes that Palestine
gradually became studded with fortresses or castles apart from the main seats
of their ancient history or civilization, and commanding the passes in which
they entrenched themselves against their enemies. Such had been Modin under
Mattathias and Judas, and Masada under Jonathan; such was Hyrcaneum under John
Hyrcanus; such, under Alexander Janneus, was Macherusbeyond the Dead Sea, and
Alexandreum in the mountains between Samaria and the Jordan valley, which
subsequently became the recognized burial-place of the later princes of the
Hasmonean family, as Modin earlier had been of the first. But Hyrcanus and
Alexander were interred, in regal or pontifical state, in tombs which long bore
their names close to the walls of Jerusalem. If extent of dominion be a test of
prosperity, Janneus may certainly claim credit for winning a considerable
number of cities with their neighboring territories. Also, in spite of his
carelessness in regard to Pharisaic ritual or traditions, he insisted that
those whom he conquered should accept Judaism,on the penalty of devastation of
territory and large destruction of life. Accordingly he left the kingdom larger
than it had been at any time since the Exile.

This work of conquest however
proved at the same time a work of destruction. It did not lead, as once the
conquests of Alexander the Great had done, to the furtherance, but to the
extinction, of Greek culture. For in this respect Alexander Janneus was still
always a Jew, who subjected the conquered territories, as far as they went, to
Jewish modes of thought and manners. If the cities in question would not
consent to this, they were laid waste. Such was the fate which befell the
greatand hitherto prosperous coast towns and the Hellenistic cities on the east
of the Jordan. The Romans, Pompey and Gabinius, were the first to rebuild again
those ruins, and re-awaken in them a new prosperity.