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Have
you ever wondered why the New Testament was written
in Greek at a time when the country was populated
by Jews speaking Hebrew and Aramaic and governed
by Italian tourists? For an answer we have to rejoin
our history of Israel at the point when God goes
strangely quiet, as far as Scripture is concerned.
He seemingly enters into a long 450 year slumber,
perhaps carefully planning His comeback in the person
of Jesus the Messiah.
Empires come and go and most register barely a blip
in the grand scheme of things, but the Ancient Greeks
were an exception. They made a real impact and,
in many ways, have heavily influenced our current
thinking in Christian as well as worldly matters.
First they enlightened the World in the areas of
philosophy, mathematics and science, with such luminaries
as Aristotle, Socrates and Plato, then they conquered
it, spreading both their knowledge, but also their
culture and language. Alexander the Great was to
blame for the latter. Described as probably the
greatest military genius of all time, his conquests
stretched as far as India in the east and Egypt
in the south. And in the middle was dear old Israel,
smarting from their third conquest in three turbulent
centuries, when it passed from Persian into Greek
hands after the defeat of the Persian Empire in
331 BC.
Of course, at that time it wasn't called 'Israel',
it was just a province of the Greek empire. Actually
it fell within the Seleucid Empire, named after
Seleucus, one of the generals who grabbed what they
could after Alexander's death. The most significant
event during those times was during the reign of
Antiochus IV. He was the latest in a line of Seleucus's
and Antiochus's, a succession expedited by a series
of strategic poisonings. This new king went by the
name of Epiphanes, which meant 'God manifest'. He
obviously had a high opinion of himself, which wasn't
shared by the Jews of the day. They renamed him
Epimanes, a play on words meaning 'completely barmy'.
He was hated by those Jews who were eager to retain
their heritage in the face of the Greece-ifying
or Hellenization that was going on. His aim was
to erase Judaism forever and to turn all the Jews
into Greeks. He did this, craftily, by passing laws,
punishable by death, for anyone practising Judaism,
keeping the Sabbath or eve n found in possession
of sacred scrolls. In every town and village altars
were set up to Greek gods and sport was made almost
compulsory. The last straw was in 168 BC. Antiochus's
soldiers brought a statue of Zeus into the Temple
in Jerusalem and built an altar in honour of this
god. This was the ultimate insult to God-fearing
Jews and provoked a national stirring, leading to
the uprising led by Judah Maccabee. When the (eventually)
victorious Judah and his men entered the Temple
in Jerusalem they found it in total disarray and
completely defiled by the altar and the idol. They
destroyed all that was impure and rededicated the
Temple to God. This is commemorated by Jews to this
day by Hanukkah, which is the Festival of Dedication.
These were important historical events because there
was a real danger that the Jews would have been
assimilated into Greek culture, with the same end
result as when the northern Kingdom of Israel was
absorbed into the Assyrian Empire and lost to history,
centuries before. God would not allow this to happen,
for the sake of His Covenant with Abraham, regarding
the land being an everlasting possession for His
people, the Jews and also for the other Covenants,
made with David (2 Samuel 7:11-16) and through Jeremiah
(Jeremiah 31:31-34), which promised a 'seed of David'
to be the anointed one, or Messiah. How could a
Jewish Messiah be born (and recognised as such)
if all Jews had turned into Greeks and had swapped
synagogues for gymnasiums and the Torah for Aristotle?
So God acted through such people as the Maccabees
and the many martyrs (the first martyrs were Jews,
not Christians) who died for their faith at that
time. The Jewish people had to prevail, the Messianic
line of David had to be preserved, as we read in
Jeremiah 23:5-6, 'The days are coming,' declares
the Lord, 'when I will raise up to David a righteous
Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what
is just and right in the land. In his day Judah
will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This
is the name by which he will be called: The Lord
Our Righteousness.''
In 161 BC, Judas Maccabee was killed in battle,
two years after his brother Eleazar had met an untimely
end crushed by an elephant (after spearing it in
the stomach from below!), also in battle. From Judas,
a family dynasty was created, the Hasmonean dynasty,
the name coming from Hashmon, a distant ancestor.
From this time onwards for a hundred years, thanks
to a peace treaty forged by another brother, Simon,
Israel remained more-or-less an independent state,
ruled by a convoluted succession of Hasmoneans.
These rulers also generally functioned as high-priests
in an intriguing mixture of the sacred and the secular.
Simon was a benevolent ruler, easy on any Jews who
had been hellenized and was held in such high esteem
that not only was he the ruler and High Priest,
but was also given the role of commander-in-chief
of the army! Interestingly he was made hereditary
High Priest 'until such time as God speaks to the
contrary'. As it was then believed that prophecy
had ceased in Israel, thi s was expected to last
forever - as history was to show, they were wrong
on both counts! |
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Under the Hasmoneans, Jewish territory expanded
from the small state of Judea, roughly equivalent
to the territory held by the tribe of Judah, to
take in territory after territory under subsequent
rulers. Eventually the land also included much that
was part of the old Solomon empire, back in the
days before the exile. On the religious front, there
had always been people, notably the Hassids, who
opposed the idea of the Hasmonean rulers also functioning
as High Priests. This came to a head around 100
BC with the emergence of the Pharisees, a national
religious revivalist movement who, despite the later
bad press they were to get (not all of it deserved),
were actually a breath of fresh air at the time. |
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In many ways they represented the ancient equivalent
of the charismatic revival at the end of the 20th
Century. The Pharisees opposed the status quo of
the hereditary priesthood but they, in turn, were
opposed by another new group, the Sadducees, who
were in support of the priesthood. Ma ny battles
were fought between these factions in the Sanhedrin,
the religious ruling body. It seems that the scene
is being firmly set for the events to come in the
Gospels, but there are a few more details to fill
in first. |
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