This lesson, lesson 25, is on the Maccabees. This is a very exciting, awesome period of salvation history, and very few people know about it, as I'm going to explain later. It's not even in Protestant Bible, so they have no clue what's going on. A lot of Catholics, of course, have a reading for the first time, and so it's really exciting, and I just really love this period of the Maccabees.
And before we dive in, let's look at the notes here. I want to explain this transition from Persian rule to Greek rule and Greek oppression, because things get really, really bad under the Greeks. And up to this point, we've seen a lot, if a revolving door with world superpowers. Back during the kingdoms, you had Assyria, Assyria conquers the north, and Babylon is the new kid on the block, they count for the south, and the needle Persia is new, and they let the Jews go back to Jerusalem.
And under Persia, it wasn't too bad, really. I mean, it wasn't great by no means, but the Persian Empire ruled from 539 to 331, that's a solid 200 years, almost on the dot, just not quite, but 200 years of rule over the known world there, and the Jews were able to return to Jerusalem. They were able to rebuild the temple, rebuild the city and the city walls. If you remember the story with Joshua and Jorubba Bell, they rebuilt the temple, and then Ezra helps to reestablish observance of the Torah, and then you have Niyamaa trying to rebuild the city walls in the city itself in order to have a culture again.
And all of that happened thanks to the generosity and the patronage of the Persian kings. They issued these eks to allow the Jews to go back, they even gave money out of their royal treasury, they encouraged their people to give free will offerings, and that was all really, really good. So the Jews were able to practice their religion, practice their customs, practice their observed their faith, without really much interference from Persia at all. And that was very positive.
Persia had a very open ended religious freedoms policy, religious freedom was a big deal for the Persians because they felt that if they're conquered peoples, we were to worship their own gods, they would be much more likely to be happier and less likely to revolt, more happy because they worship your own gods and therefore less likely to revolt against Persia. And not only that, but the Persian kings might even be blessed by their subjects gods and be able to keep authority. So it was pretty wise, actually, pretty good strategy. So even though things were pretty good on Persia, by far was not perfect.
Remember the whole theme of partial fulfillment that we talked about in the past. The Jews, although they were returned, they had the temple, they were observing the law, they rebuilt the city walls and they're struggling with their own obedience. They've remembered Niyamaa's pulling people's hair out and yelling at them because they keep falling back into their own habits. And so everything was good, but partial fulfillment.
They still long for true autonomy, true political independence with the re-establishment of that deviate kingdom. They believed in the covenant that God made with David that there would always be someone on the throne. They heard the prophets say that God would bring the Messiah, the anointed one, the king of David, from David's line back, but that hadn't happened yet. And not only that, but so many of their cousins from the various tribes had been exiled and had blended in ethnically, religiously, with all the nations around about them.
And they believed, as the prophets said, that God would bring them back to the promised land and they would dwell together in peace under the Messiah. So partial fulfillment, Persia seems to be going well. Then there's a revolving door again. Now there's a new superpower and that's Greece.
So what happened is while Persia is doing their thing and they're the top dog, they're the king of the hill, back in Greece, the city-states of Greece were very fractured, very weak. You probably know Sparta and Athens and Corinth and all these different city-states. They ruled themselves. So they were constantly, of course, making allies or fighting friend or foe all the time, amongst each other, until Philip II, of Macedon in Greece, really began to unite them.
And his son is the famous Alexander the Great. He became king in 336 BC and he really united Greece even more because he was incredible. If you wanna consult some other ancient texts, pick up Plutarch, how Plutarch is an ancient historian. He wrote many biographies of Greek famous Greek men and Roman men and one of his biographies is on Alexander and he was incredibly talented, like master military strategist.
So he was able to further unite these various weak city-states, Greek city-states and began to conquer all the whole known world, even as far as India, which was unthinkable. In fact, there's this little legend that after he conquered India, he began to weep and cry and one of the generals said, why are you crying Alexander? And he said, because I have no more worlds to conquer. Like he had just gone in such a short amount of time.
He had moved everybody down and conquered everything. So in 331, that was the famous year in which he destroys and overturns the Persian Empire. And that began a new era of the ancient world called the Hellenistic or the Greek period because hellos means Greece. So Hellenistic and Greek is the same thing.
That's like a new chapter in the ancient world. So thanks Alexander's conquest and how thorough he was and how efficient he was, you begin to see this process called Hellenization take place. The ancient world was Hellenized. And Hellenization was the spread of everything Greek, Greek language and culture and religion, customs, sport, art, philosophy, you name it, anything Greek, that was like the new thing, right?
It was a rage at the time. And everyone wanted to be Greek. And so the world was Hellenized really, really quickly. Many of the peoples around the ancient world embrace all things Greek.
And so like I say, the language becomes the language becomes the language of commerce and trade. And everyone began to speak Greek gradually from this point on. While Alexander didn't rain long, he died very quickly, a short life unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, the only god knows. But he died in the year 323 of some kind of virus.
He didn't have a legitimate heir. He only probably had kids all over the place. He had no legitimate heir. So what he decided to do while he was yet still alive, he divided his new baby empire.
It's super unstable. You don't have very long, he did not have long to establish it. So he decided I'm going to divide it amongst my generals for territories for the four generals. So that would be Egypt and Syria, Macedonia, which is basically the area on Greece and Asia Minor.
Now as time went on, these four territories or kingdoms consolidated into two primary kingdoms, the Tolimian and the Seleucid, and then gradually in time, sometime around the year 200 BC, roughly, the Seleucids became the sole superpower and they were the ones in charge of everything, the Seleucids. They're heirs to Alexander's Greek kingdom. Now, as the Tolimian, the Tolimian kingdom, they were in the south while the Seleucids were in the north, the Tolimians weren't so bad. They're kind of like the Persians to a certain extent.
The Tolimians allowed the Jews to worship as they wanted to. They were still pushing all things Greek for sure, but it wasn't as violent persecution. It was when the Seleucids became the world superpower and they conquered the Tolimians, everything changed. Now the Hellenization really ramped up.
You didn't really have a choice. And it was Antiochus IV, his nickname called himself really. The Theosapithenese, god manifested. How's that for humility amongst this dude, right?
He's god manifested. He was the most ambitious, the most ruthless, the most violent, really insane, salucic king of them all. He was completely wicked and he brought all kinds of problems to the Jewish people. He was so bad that the Greeks themselves called him Epimanius, which means out of his mind.
He's not Theosapithenese, he's just Antiochus Epimanius, out of his mind, just wacky crazy. So he wanted to make his empire Greek like no other before him. He was gonna do it by corruption. He was gonna do it by force.
He had no qualms, no scruples. Anybody who stood in his way, he would mow down. He had no problems killing people if necessary, and corrupting anyone else. All right, so in the midst of this transition all the way to Antiochus IV, the IV that is the historical context and the occasion in which we find a Maccabean story.
Judas Maccabius, his family, they're going to lead a revolt against Greece. It's gonna be very successful, very, very swift, thanks to God's blessings, and they're gonna fight against the oppression, they're gonna fight against the persecution, and they're gonna come out on top. And that's the story that we're gonna look at. Now, before we dive into just giving some more introductory points here, I wanted to share with you the first, if you'll open up First Maccabius chapter one, I wanna read to you the first 10 verses because everything that I just shared with you about this historical context is found right here in the Bible.
That's really, really exciting to start to see in these books so much parallel or confirmation between what we find in the text of scripture and extro-biblical text as well. So it's all confirmed, this is solid history, and I just read it for you here because again, it sets the stage for our Maccabean revolt. All right, so I'm gonna first Maccabius chapter one verse one. It says, after Alexander, the son of Philip, the Macedonian, who came from the Landa Catean had defeated Darius, the king of the Persians and the Medes, he succeeded him as king, and that's, as I said in the year 331, is when Alexander did that.
He fought many battles, conquered strongholds, and put the death to death the kings of the earth. He advanced to the ends of the earth in plundered many nations. When the earth became quiet before him, he was exalted and his heart was lifted up. He gathered a very strong army and ruled over countries, nations and princes, and they become, they became tributary to him.
And after this, he fell sick and perceived that he was dying. So he summoned his most honored officers who had been brought up with him from his youth, and he divided his kingdom among them when he was still alive. And after Alexander had reigned 12 years, he died, so that's 323. Verse eight, then his officers began to rule each in his own place.
They put, they all put on crowns after his death and so did their sons after them for many years, and they caused many evils upon the earth. Verse 10, from them came forth a sinful route, Antiochus Epiphonius, son of Antiochus the king. He had been a hostage in Rome, he began to reign in the 130th, 7th year, etc., it's basically 175 BC. All right, so that sets up our whole story for the Maccabees.
You've got your highlights and your notes, but it's all laid out beautifully right here in the first 10 verses of Maccabees chapter one. So with that, then let's just give a little introduction to first and second Maccabees and what makes them unique.