Greek Persecution
 | Terror reigned—women who allowed their sons to be circumcised were killed with their babies tied around their necks.. |
Alexander’s vast empire did not survive his death in 323 BCE, but fragmented into three large chunks centered in Greece, Egypt, and Syria and controlled by his former generals. These three smaller empires were known as:
- Seleucid or Syrian Greece
- Ptolemian or Egyptian Greece
- Macedonian or Greece proper, including the independent city-states of Athens, Sparta, etc.
Initially, Israel falls under the Ptolemies of Egypt. They are generally liberal and open-minded in keeping with the spirit of their capital city of Alexandria which is the world’s cultural center.
But this changes in 198 BCE after the Battle of Panias (or Banyas-Tel Dan in northern Israel). After their victory at Panias the Seleucids of Assyria, led by the King, Antiochus III, take over control of Israel from the Ptolemies.
The picture is volatile, however. The next Seleucid king, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, finds himself under a lot of pressure, holding back the Ptolemies and worrying about the rising might of Rome.
He decides that the weak link in his defenses is Israel. Israel is bordered by (1) Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea (from whence the Romans could come), and worst of all, the majority of Jews are not into Greek culture. This situation he now moves to remedy.
WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE
Some years before, when the Greeks who had conquered the entire known world first met the Jews, they were astonished. They’d never encountered people like this before. On the positive side the intellectual, spiritual and legal aspects of Judaism were totally unique and no doubt fascinating to the philosophical Greeks.
The Jews were just so different from anyone else they had ever encountered. They were the only monotheists in the world and they subscribed to a worldview that is totally different from anyone else’s - namely, that everything that exists had been created and is sustained by one infinite, invisible and caring God. This idea—particularly that this caring, perfect Being busies Himself with the lives of imperfect mortals—the Greeks found just about incomprehensible. The Greek historian Hecateus (ca 360-290 BCE) describes the unique monotheism of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.
There is no image, nor statue, nor votive offering therein; nothing at all is planted there, neither grove nor anything of the sort. The priests abide therein both nights and days, performing certain purification rites, and drinking not the least drop of wine while they are in the temple
On top of that, the Greeks could not understand the Jewish view of the Torah. This was an ancient book, which the Jews claimed they got from God, and which contained odd teachings on how to lead a life of peace, brotherhood, social responsibility, and respect for life—all values that were far removed from Greek ideals.
In short, the Greeks didn’t know what to make of the Jews.
The Jews were likewise confounded. The Greeks were people who valued education and intellectual pursuits—something the Jews also valued and very much admired. The Greeks spoke a beautiful language, which the Jews appreciated very much. (The Talmud says that ancient Greek is the most beautiful language in the world, it’s the only language you can write a kosher Torah scroll besides Hebrew.) (2)
Indeed, the Torah was promptly translated into Greek (in the 3rd century BCE) by Ptolemy III—the first such translation in Jewish history. This translation was called the “Septuagint” after the 70 rabbis who did it.
It happened that King Ptolemy gathered seventy-two sages and placed them in seventy-two houses without telling them why he had brought them together. He went to each one of them and told him, “translate for me [into Greek] the Torah of your master Moses(3).
(This translation is considered a national disaster for the Jewish people. In the hands of the non-Jewish world, the now accessible Hebrew Bible has often been used against the Jews, and has been deliberately mistranslated. Most Christian Bibles in English today depend on the Greek translation which was then translated into Latin, the language of the Roman Empire, and from there into English. You can just imagine how many interpretations and mistakes and deliberate mistranslations were made along the way.(4))
However, it was inevitable that the Hebrew Bible would be translated into Greek because Greek became the international intellectual language of the ancient Mediterranean world. It was as common everywhere as English is today! And the Jews who were mostly speaking Aramaic thanks to their foray in the Babylonian exile become conversant in Greek as well. (Hebrew was then a language primarily of prayer and of study but not the spoken language of the street, even in Israel.)
Despite this mutual appreciation—which incidentally lured a lot of Jews—the vast differences could not be tolerated by the dominant culture for long.
JEW VS. JEW
The Chanukah story is often portrayed as a struggle for national liberation—the Jewish revolt against the Greek occupation of Israel. In reality it is much complicated that that. The real conflict was not physical but intellectual. Chanukah was ultimately an ideological-spiritual war between paganism and Judaism. It was also not a struggle purely between Greeks and Jews. It was first a foremost a civil war of Jew against Jew. The initial impetus for the Greek attack against Judaism came from a certain splinter group of the Jewish people—the Hellenized Jews.
These were Jews who were sucked into Greek culture. And it is no wonder why; Greek culture was the major culture milieu of the ancient world.
We see this as a pattern in Jewish history. A world culture comes along which is enlightened and progressive and is changing the world, and some of the upper class Jews always get into it. Why? Because they are rich, sophisticated, and have lot of spare time. Then they say to the rest of the Jewish people: “Let’s get modern. Forget this ancient Jewish stuff.” (We will see this pattern repeated in Spain, and in Germany, and even today in America and Israel.)
At this time, we have a small but very vocal and powerful group of Jews, who align with the Greek authorities and who become Hellenized. They do everything the Greeks do.
They send their children to the gymnasium, and they reverse their circumcisions—a very painful operation—since so much of Greek stuff is done naked and the Greeks would consider them mutilated otherwise.
To make matters worse, the schism between the Hellenized Jews and mainstream Jews is paralleled by another schism—between two factions of religious Jews.
It begins in the third century BCE when two students named—Zadok and Bysos—begin preaching a new form of Judaism, devoid of belief in the Divinity of the Oral Torah. There is little doubt that Greek thought played a significant role in creating this early break with mainstream Judaism. Their followers are called the Sadducees and Bysosim, though it is the Sadducees that go down in history. The mainstream observant Jews, who follow the Rabbis and keep Jewish law as it has always been practiced, are called ironically “Pharisees,” meaning “separatists,” to distinguish them from the others.
Since the Sadducees do not believe that the Oral Torah comes from God, they maintain that they are only obligated to keep the laws of the Written Torah, which they read literally. (This denial of the Oral Law will occur later in Jewish history with the Karaite schism in Babylon.) But so many of the laws of the Written Torah are incomprehensible without the Oral Torah. Their answer? Each man for himself; anyone can decide what it means and act accordingly.
The Sadducees find natural allies among the Hellenized Jews, as Rabbi Berel Wein explains:
The Sadducees were always more acceptable in the eyes of the Hellenist Jews than their rabbinic foes. The alliance of the Hellenists and the Sadducees against traditional Judaism guaranteed constant turmoil in Jewish life throughout the time of the Second Temple and even thereafter. (Echoes of Glory, p. 38)
(We shall discuss the Sadducees in greater detail in future segments when we come to the Roman Empire and its domination of the Jews.)
This is how the ancient historian Josephus explains the beliefs of the Jews at this time:
The Pharisees [who are considered most skillful in the exact explication of their laws and are the leading school] ascribe all to fate and to God and yet allow that to do what is right or to the contrary is principally the power of men, although fate does cooperate in every action. They say that all souls are imperishable but that the souls of good men only pass into other bodies while the souls of evil men are subject to eternal punishment.But the Sadducees are those that compose the second order and exclude fate entirely and suppose that God is not concerned with our doing or not doing what is evil. They say that to do what is good or what is evil is man’s own choice and that the choice of one or the other belongs to each person who may act as he pleases. They also exclude the belief in immortality of the soul and the punishment and rewards of the afterworld.Moreover, the Pharisees are friendly to one another and cultivate harmonious relations with the community, but the behavior of the Sadducees towards one another is to some degree boorish, and their conversation with those that of their own party is barbarous as if they were strangers to them.(5)
You can see how the Sadducees were influenced by Greek thought. They are part of the reason that the High Priesthood and the Temple service became so corrupt (as many of the priestly class, an upper class at that time, became Sadducees). And this is why the Talmud says that so many High Priests died during the service of Yom Kippur.
FORCED HELLENIZATION
It isn’t long before the Hellenized Jews draw the Greeks into the conflict by enlisting the support of the Selucid king. Antiochus IV Epiphanes takes deliberate steps between 169 BCE and 167 BCE to Hellenize the Jews of Israel by attempting to destroy Judaism. The Book of Maccabees calls this period a “reign of terror” and describes its beginnings as:
Not long after this, the king sent an Athenian senator to compel the Jews to forsake the laws of their fathers and cease to live by the laws of God, and also to pollute the temple in Jerusalem and call it the temple of Olympian Zeus…(6)
One of the first things that Antiochus does take control of the Temple through influencing the office of the High Priest. He removes the High Priest from his position and replaces him with a Jew that he has in his back pocket. From this point on the High Priesthood becomes, to a large extent, a corrupt institution.
So here we begin to see a pattern which is going to evolve through later Jewish history of all the basic institutions being corrupted: the monarchy, the priesthood, the Temple service. What is going to be left relatively intact is the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Supreme Court, and its rabbis who will eventually write the Talmud, as we shall see.
After he installs his own High Priest, Antiochus tries to dissolve the Jewish calendar.
Antiochus, by this time, understands the Jews very well. To him these people are time obsessed - they try to make time holy. Destroy time and you destroy the Jews’ ability to practice Judaism. Therefore, Antiochus forbids the observance of Shabbat, the observance of the New Moon (Rosh Chodesh), and the observance of the holidays—Passover, Shavuot, Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot.
Next, Antiochus forbids keeping kosher and studying Torah. Torah scrolls are publicly burned, and swine are sacrificed over sacred Jewish books to defile them. Indeed, Antiochus seems obsessed by swine, knowing that this animal is particularly repugnant to the Jews; he even forces the High Priest to institute swine sacrifices in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, and also to permit worship there of a whole array of Greek gods. (See 1 Maccabees 1:41-64.)
Lastly, Antiochus forbids circumcision. To the Jews, this is the physical, tangible sign of their covenant with God. And it’s the one thing the Greeks - who worship the perfection of the human body - find most abhorrent. To them, circumcision is a mutilation.
Jews resist, so Antiochus and his henchmen go about driving the point home in a crude and cruel fashion. The Jewish historian, Rabbi Berel Wein relates this graphically in his Echoes of Glory:
Women who allowed their sons to be circumcised were killed with their sons tied around their necks. The scholars of Israel were hounded, hunted down and killed. Jews who refused to eat pork or sacrifice hogs were tortured to death ... Even the smallest hamlet in Judah was not safe from the oppression of the Hellenists. The altars to Zeus and other pagan deities were erected in every village, and Jews of every area were forced to participate in the sacrificial services. (p. 63)
This type of religious persecution was, until then, unknown in human history. Up to that time, no one in the ancient world declared war on other people’s religions, because the attitude of polytheism was “I’ll worship your god, you worship mine. The more gods the merrier.”
(Later we will see Greek and Roman mythologies blending with Zeus becoming Jupiter, etc. The ultimate in pluralism - everyone’s religion is as good as the next.)
In the polytheistic world no one died for their religion. No one, except the Jews.
The Jews maintain that there are things in this life that are worth dying for - things that are more meaningful than life itself. Jews are willing to give up their lives for Judaism. Not because God needs people to die for Him but because the ideology of Torah is something without which humanity is doomed. The Jews, who are supposed to be “the light unto the nations,” cannot abandon their mission, even when their lives are threatened.
In the early stages of the conflict many Jews chose the path of “passive resistance” by choosing to ignore the Greek restrictions and continue to learn Torah and circumcise their infant sons. This form of resistance often proved fatal as many Jews were martyred for their continued loyalty to Judaism. Resistance to Greek persecutions could also take a more active form - they could also fight against this type of tyranny and they do. What is most terrible in this fight, however, is that the Jews who are defending Judaism must fight the Greeks as well as some of their own fellow Jews who have converted to Hellenism.
The corruption of the Temple and the forced Hellenization and persecution finally becomes too much to bear for mainstream observant Jews. When they finally revolt against the Greeks, they take on their collaborators among the Jews as well.
The revolt of the Maccabees—which we celebrate today as Chanukah—is as much a story of a civil war between Jews as against Greece. It’s not a war for national liberation, nor is it a struggle for physical freedom—it is a struggle of ideas.
1)Lawrence H. Schiffman, Text and Tradition-A Source Reader for the Study of the Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism. New Jersey: Ktav Publishing House. 1998. 142. Hecateus is quoted by the great first century CE Jewish historian, Josephus, in his book Contra Apion. What was most astounding to Hacateus was the complete lack of the images and idols so ubiquitous in every pagan temple of antiquity.
2) See Talmud-Megillah 9:a-Rebbi Shimon ben Gamliel said: “Even books of scripture the sages did not permit to be written in any foreign language other than Greek.” It is important to mention that the Talmud here refers to the original, pure ancient Greek, not the common ancient Greek dialect,koine, of the Hellanstic world nor the modern Greek of today.
3)Talmud-Megillah 9b.
4)Deliberate mistranslations were usually done by Christians scholars in-order-to “bend” the text to prove Christian theology. The classic example is Isaiah 7:14 where the Hebrew word almah meaning “young woman/maiden” is deliberately mistranslated into “virgin” (in Hebrew the word is b’tulah) to support the Christian concept of virgin birth.
5)Josephus, Jewish War II 119-166
6)II Maccabees 6:1
2) See Talmud-Megillah 9:a-Rebbi Shimon ben Gamliel said: “Even books of scripture the sages did not permit to be written in any foreign language other than Greek.” It is important to mention that the Talmud here refers to the original, pure ancient Greek, not the common ancient Greek dialect,koine, of the Hellanstic world nor the modern Greek of today.
3)Talmud-Megillah 9b.
4)Deliberate mistranslations were usually done by Christians scholars in-order-to “bend” the text to prove Christian theology. The classic example is Isaiah 7:14 where the Hebrew word almah meaning “young woman/maiden” is deliberately mistranslated into “virgin” (in Hebrew the word is b’tulah) to support the Christian concept of virgin birth.
5)Josephus, Jewish War II 119-166
6)II Maccabees 6:1
| #28 of 70 in the Aish.com Jewish History Series | |
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The Revolt of the Maccabees
 | The Jewish revolt against the Greeks sets a precedent in human history - it becomes the world’s first religious war. |
We know the details of the Jewish fight against the Greeks and Hellenism from the two Books of the Maccabees as well as the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus.
These chronicles are not included in the Hebrew Bible because the Men of the Great Assembly had decided many years earlier what the Hebrew Bible should consist of and these events occurred much later in time. The Books of the Maccabees were both written in the first century BCE. I Maccabees was originally written in Hebrew as an official court history for the Hasmonean Dynasty. II Maccabees was originally written in Greek and based on earlier work written by Jason of Cyrene.
This revolt of the Jews sets a precedent in human history. It is the world’s first ideological/religious war. No one in the ancient world died for their gods; only the Jews thought that their religion—the only monotheistic religion at the time—was worth dying for.
But it is not just a war against the Greeks, it is also a civil war—Jews, who were loyal to Judaism, fighting other Jews, who had become Hellenized and who were siding with the Greeks.
The year is 167 BCE and the horrible persecution of Judaism by the Greeks is in full swing. The Greek troops show up in the town of Modi’in (a site west of Jerusalem which you can visit today off the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway) and demand that the Jews there sacrifice a pig to the Greek gods. The elder of the town, Mattathias, who is a cohen, that is of the priestly class, refuses. Even if all the nations that live under the rule of the king obey him, and have chosen to do his commandments, departing each one from the religion of his fathers, yet I and my sons and my brothers will live by the covenant of our fathers…We will not obey the king’s word by turning aside from our religion to the right hand or to the left.(I Maccabees 2:19-22)
But there is a Hellenized Jew in the town who is willing to do what is unspeakable in Jewish eyes. As he’s about to sacrifice the pig, Mattathias stabs him, also killing the Greek official present. He then turns to the crowd and announces: “Follow me, all of you who are for God’s law and stand by the covenant.” (1 Maccabees 2:27)
Those who join Mattathias and his five sons—named Yohanan, Shimon, Judah, Eleazar, Yonaton—head for the hills, expecting that the Greeks are going to come back and wipe out the whole village as a reprisal. In the hills, they organize a guerilla army, led primarily by the oldest of the sons named Judah, nicknamed Maccabee, which means “the Hammer.” Maccabee is also an acronym for mi komocho ba’alim Hashem, “who is like you among the powers O God,”—the battle cry of the Jewish people.
We don’t know exactly how large this Maccabee army was, but even the most optimistic estimates put the number at no more than 12,000 men. This tiny force takes on the fighting Greek army of up to 40,000 men.
It’s not just a numerical superiority the Greeks have. The Greeks are professional soldiers—they have equipment, they have training, and they have a herd of war elephants, which were the tanks of the ancient world. The Jews are vastly outnumbered, poorly trained, and poorly equipped (not to mention, they have no elephants), but what they lack in training and equipment they make up in spirit.
Most of the battles take place in the foothills leading from the coastal plain area (Tel Aviv) to Jerusalem. The Greeks are trying to march their armies up the natural canyons that lead into the mountain areas, the stronghold of the Jewish army. There’s only a few places where the Greeks can ascend and this is where the Maccabees choose to take them on.
Now when we read the story of the Maccabees it seems like it’s something that takes place over a few weeks—the battles take place, the Jews win, and the Greeks go home. But, in fact, it takes 25 years of fighting and a great many casualties on both sides until the Selucid Greeks finally reach a peace agreement with the Jews.
CHANUKAH
After the first three years, the Jews are able re-conquer Jerusalem. They find the Temple defiled and turned into a pagan sanctuary, where pigs are sacrificed on the altar. When they re-enter the Temple, the first thing they do is try to light a make-shift menorah (as the real gold one had been melted down by the Greeks) but only one vial of pure lamp oil with the special seal is discovered. They use this vial to light the menorah and miraculously it stays lit for eight days, by which time fresh pure oil has been pressed and delivered to the Temple.
The Maccabees then purify the Temple and rededicate it on the 25th of Kislev, which is the date on the Hebrew calendar when we begin to celebrate the eight days of Chanukah. (The Hebrew word Chanukah means “dedication” or “inauguration.”)
Early in the morning of the 25th day of the ninth month which is the month of Kislev…they [the priests] rose and offered sacrifices, as the law directs, on the new alter of burnt offerings which they had built…it was dedicated with songs and harps and lutes and cymbals…So they celebrated the dedication of the alter for eight days...(I Maccabees 4:52-56)
The miracle of the oil lasting for eight days (which is not mentioned in the Book of the Maccabees) is described in the Talmud:
...and when the royal Hasmonean House gained the upper hand and vanquished them. [the Greeks], [the Hasmoneans] .searched and found only one flask of oil…with the Kohen Gadol’s [High Priest] seal, and it contained only [enough oil] to burn for one day. A miracle occurred and it burned for eight days. (Talmud, Shabbat 21b)
Chanukah—one of two holidays added to the Jewish calendar by the rabbis—celebrates two kinds of miracles: 1) the military victory of the vastly outnumbered Jews against the Greeks; and 2) the spiritual victory of Jewish values over those of the Greek. It is this spiritual victory which is symbolized by the lights of Chanukah.
If we look at these two miracles, clearly the military victory was greater yet it is the miracle of the oil that is commemorated during the festival of Hanukah. The military victory may have been more impressive, but as we already mentioned, the real battle was spiritual and not physical. It is precisely this spiritual victory that is symbolized by the light of the menorah. (Fire, the soul and spirituality are all connected in Jewish thought). The light of Chanukah is symbolic of the inner spiritual strength of the Jewish people that despite all odds is never extinguished. It is precisely this inner spiritual strength that has enabled the Jewish people to outlast the greatest empires in history and have monumental impact on humanity.
The rededication of the Temple does not end the fight however. A Greek garrison remained stationed in Jerusalem in the Acra fortress and the Greek armies besiege Jerusalem and attempt to re-conquer the City. Many more battles will be fought before the conflict finally ends
It’s not until 142 BCE, during the reign of Seleucid monarch Demitrius, that the Greeks finally have enough of the fighting and sign a peace treaty with Simon, the last survivor of the five sons of Mattathias. (In 162 BCE-Eleazar falls in battle: thrusting a spear into the belly of war elephant on which he thought the king was riding, the elephant falls on him crushing him death. Yehuda is killed at the battle of Elasa in 161 BCE and Jonathan falls in battle in 142 BCE.)
In [that] year, Israel was released from the gentile yoke; the people began to write on their contracts and agreements: “In the first year of Simon, the great High Priest, general and leader of the Jews.” (1 Maccabees 13:41-42)
Thus Jewish sovereignty over the Land of Israel is officially restored.
THE REIGN OF THE HASMONEANS
As noted above, Mattathias was a cohen, and so it is not surprising that his son, Simon, should become High Priest. But Simon also takes on himself the title of nasi meaning “prince/president/leader.” He did not call himself king because he knew full well that a Jewish king could only come from the line of David, but for all practical purposes they assumed the role of kingship.
(The line of David—the line of kings—comes from the tribe of Judah, whereas the line of the cohanim, the priests, comes from the tribe of Levi, as per the blessing of Jacob on his twelve sons, the twelve tribes of Israel.)
This is a bad choice on the part of Simon because his descendants do not respect this distinction. They start a new ruling dynasty in Israel—the Hasmonean dynasty—which lasts for 103 years and which is marked by great territorial expansion but also by a terrible moral and religious decline. They should not have been kings in the first place and then they became corrupted by their own power.
The next ruler is Simon’s son, Yochanan Hyrcanus, a powerful and ambitious ruler. Among his many errors, Yochanan Hyrcanus does a terrible anti-Jewish thing. As part of his effort to expand the borders of Israel and strengthen the country, he forcibly converts the newly conquered peoples. This is something Judaism has never done before nor since—Jews discourage converts rather than the other way around.
One of the peoples that are forcibly converted at this time are the Idumeans. And this error costs the Jews dearly.
In Israel, not far from Beit Shemesh, there is a fascinating archeological site open to tourists called Beit Guvrin Maresha. It consists of thousands of man-made caves that are mostly cut into the soft limestone. This was one of the major cities of the Idumeans. And you can even play archeologist and go there and dig for a day. This is one of the places that the Hasmoneans conquered, giving the people a choice - convert or leave. Many of the inhabitants chose to destroy their houses and leave the country.
One of the Idumean families that is forcibly converted will become very significant for its role in the drama some years later when the Romans invade. A descendant of this family—Herod—will be appointed Jewish king and he will be a schizophrenic ruler. He will murder the High Priest, 45 members of the Jewish Supreme Court as well as several members of his own family, but he will also embark on a series of fantastic building projects that will include the city of Caesarea, the fortress at Masada, and a total re-building of the Temple. As we will see, Herod (who is only nominally Jewish) will have a very schizophrenic relationship with the Jews.
DECLINE OF JEWISH RULE
The son of Yochananon Hyracanus, Alexander Yanai, is a classic case of Hasmonean ruler leading the nation in the wrong direction. He is largely Hellenized and siding with the Sadducees (the Jews who only follow the Written Torah, making up their own interpretations) against the Pharisees (the mainstream Jews). When some of the Pharisees oppose him, he has 800 of them executed after first forcing them to watch the slaughter of their families. During the executions, Alexander Yannai hosts a Greek-style feast.
After Yannai’s death his widow, Queen Shlomzion (Salome) will rule from 76-67 BCE. She is the only ray of light in this dismal period. Her brother is Shimon ben Shetach, the leading rabbi of his generation and during her reign there is peace between the leadership and the Rabbis. This will be the last period of true peace and stability for a very long time.
The history of the Hasmonean Dynasty is a classic case of one of the great tragic families starting off so illustriously and ending so disastrously, bringing the Jewish people to ruin. (1)
The last two Hasmonean rulers are the sons of Shlomzion, Hyrcanus and Aristobolus, both of whom are totally Hellenized. Hyrcanus is the weaker of the two but he has a strong advisor by the name of Antipater, a descendant of Idumean converts to Judaism (who just happens to have a baby boy named Herod).
The brothers are fighting with each other as to who should be king. The obvious answer is neither. But tell that to morally corrupt, power hungry men. They hit on the idea of asking Rome to mediate in their dispute. (The relationship between the Jews and the Romans actually began during the Maccabian Revolt when Judah Maccabee made an alliance with Rome)
Inviting the Romans in is not like inviting a multi-national peace-keeping force or international mediation team. We’re talking about people with an incredible energy to conquer and gain all the territory they can.
The year is 63 BCE and the great Roman general Pompeii is cleaning up the last of the Greek Empire. He is more than happy to oblige and move his armies into Israel.
1) Perhaps the greatest irony of the legacy of the Maccabees is what is named after them today: The Maccabiah Games.(the Jewish Olympic Games, started in 1932 and held every four years in Israel). There is virtually no cultural institution that more typifies ancient Greek culture than their athletic competitions. That the Maccabees, who gave their lives to save Judaism from Greek influence, should have Greek-style sporting events named after is the most ironic of endings to this tragic story.
| #29 of 70 in the Aish.com Jewish History Series | |
| << Previous Part 28: Greek Persecution | Next >> Part 30: The Romans |
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