1 Maccabees 11-16
Hail King Simon! Plus, A Bit of a “Red Wedding” Thing.
Twice.
Welcome to the next instalment of An Atheist Explores
Sacred Texts (Apocrypha version).
In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through
the Old Testament Apocrypha, commenting on it from the point of view of the
text as literature and mythology.
For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/3aEJ6Q5
For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP
And now:
1 Maccabees 11
“And the king of Egypt gathered together a great host, like the
sand that lieth upon the sea shore, and many ships, and went about through
deceit to get Alexander's kingdom, and join it to his own.”
Last time I suggested that the truce between the Ptolemys
and the Seleucids wouldn’t last. It doesn’t even last a chapter before Ptolemy
is plotting against Alexander. He takes his armies through Spain, but also,
confusingly, through Israel as well, where he meets with Jonathon. I can only
assume that “Spain” is a typo and it’s meant to be “Syria”, because otherwise
that’s a long way around to the northern part of the fertile crescent.
Not a lot happens with Ptolemy and Jonathon except that
Ptolemy isn’t particularly bothered by the destruction of the Temple of Dagon.
He marries his daughter to Demetrius (DJ), and when Alexander learns of this
the two have a battle. Alexander loses, flees to Arabia but is caught by
Zabdiel the Arabian, who sends his head to Ptolemy. Ptolemy, however, “also died the third day after,
and they that were in the strong holds were slain one of another”. Slain by whom, we aren’t told, but the implication would
seem to be by DJ’s forces, since he’s the one that ends up Last King Standing.
There then follows a series of
power plays, despite the text saying that “King Demetrius sat on the throne of his kingdom, and the land was
quiet before him”. Not so quiet, it would seem.
Jonathon is fighting against a local garrison of Hellenic troops based within
Jerusalem, and negotiates a treaty with Demetrius Junior which seems
tremendously favourable to the Jews – freedom from all taxes, dominion over
Judea and Samaria and various other presents. In return, Jonathon sends three
thousand troops to Antioch to help DJ with what sounds like a civil uprising –
“Howbeit they that were of the
city gathered themselves together into the midst of the city, to the number of
an hundred and twenty thousand men, and would have slain the king”.
Meanwhile, a former captain of Alexander, called Tryphon,
finds the son of Alexander, one Antiochus, as a captive/ward of the Arabs, and sets
in motion a plan to put Antiochus on the Seleucid throne. Demetrius has failed
to keep any of his promises, and so when Tryphon brings back Antiochus and “took the elephants and won Antioch”,
it’s the new regime under Antiochus who offer good terms to Jonathon. Perhaps
not surprisingly, Jonathon joins Antiochus and takes up arms against Demetrius.
At Gaza the Jews suffer a massive set-back against Demetrius’ forces, but then,
despite most of them apparently running away, Jonathon sets to with renewed determination
and wins the battle in the end.
1 Maccabees 12
“Jonathan the high priest, and the elders of the
nation, and the priests, and the other of the Jews, unto the Lacedemonians
their brethren send greeting”
The chapter opens with a slightly confusing series of
communications, where Jonathan sends emissaries to Rome, and also to the
Lacedaemonians (who once upon a time were the Spartans). The Roman embassy is
dealt with in a couple of verses where Jonathan and the Romans renew an old
peace agreement. The letters to Lacedaemonia, on the other hand, refer back to
letters from the time of Darius that instigated a treaty between the Jews and
the Spartans, and Areus, King of Lacedaemonia, claims that “It is found in writing, that
the Lacedemonians and Jews are brethren, and that they are of the stock of
Abraham”. So the Spartans are supposedly a lost tribe or something?
That’s amusing.
Anyway, it’s just as well that Jonathan has made peace
with these two powers because Demetrius is on the move again (spelled at one
point “Demebius” which I think is probably just a transcription error on the
website). There are some more military manoeuvres, which aren’t very
interesting to recap; the end result is that Jonathon defeats Demetrius and
returns to fortify Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, Tryphon does the classic “evil vizier” thing,
planning to kill young Antiochus his puppet king and take the throne for
himself, but is worried about Jonathan’s military power. So he does a bit of a
Red Wedding thing, inviting Jonathan to a peace conference, where he says “choose a few men to wait on
thee, and come thou with me to Ptolemais, for I will give it thee, and the rest
of the strong holds and forces, and all that have any charge: as for me, I will
return and depart: for this is the cause of my coming”. Jonathan
believes him, but once inside Ptolomais with a thousand men (out of his
original army of forty thousand), Tryphon’s forces massacre them.
Tryphon tries to take the rest of Jonathan’s army, hoping
that they will be easily defeated with their king and leader dead, but
unfortunately for him it just strengthens the resolve of the Jewish forces and
they repulse him. By the end of the chapter, however, all the nations hostile
to Judea are making plans to invade the now leaderless and weakened country.
1 Maccabees 13
“Now when Simon heard that Tryphon had gathered together a great
host to invade the land of Judea, and destroy it, And saw that the people was
in great trembling and fear, he went up to Jerusalem, and gathered the people
together”
Leadership passes to the last remaining son of Judas
Maccabee, called Simon (yay!). It turns out that Jonathan wasn’t killed in the
last chapter, merely captured, because now Tryphon tries to ransom him for “an hundred talents of silver and his two
sons”. Simon suspects a trap, but also fears the opinion of the people “who might have said, because I did not send
him the money and the children, Jonathan is dead”. However, Tryphon is a
duplicitous individual, and later in the chapter he kills Jonathan anyway.
Simon, meanwhile, manages to drive Tryphon away, and
forms an alliance with Demetrius. He collects Jonathan’s bones and builds a
sepulchre and seven pyramids for his parents and brothers, and curiously “And in these he made cunning
devices, about the which he set great pillars, and upon the pillars he made all
their armour for a perpetual memory, and by the armour ships carved, that they
might be seen of all that sail on the sea.” I did a quick search,
and it seems that not only are the Tombs of the Maccabees still a lost site,
but also don’t expect anything particularly impressive in terms of the pyramids;
Second Temple and Roman-era Judean memorial pyramids were a thing, it would
seem, but generally more like a little cairn than the Pyramids of Giza.
Anyway, Tryphon finally kills the young Antiochus and
nicks his throne, which we all knew he would, and “brought a great calamity on the land”. Back in Judea, Simon defeats
some people in Gaza with a siege tower, and finally manages to force the people
in the “tower” in Jerusalem to surrender. I was never quite sure who these
people were. I guess puppet rulers installed by the Seleucids given that they
ask Tryphon for help. They are allowed to surrender, and the tower is “purified” to remove heathen worship.
1 Maccabees 14
“As for the land of Judea, that was quiet all the days of Simon;
for he sought the good of his nation in such wise, as that evermore his
authority and honour pleased them well.”
Most of this chapter is about
the peace in the time of Simon, about how “The ancient men sat all in the streets,
communing together of good things” and “For every man sat under his vine and his fig
tree, and there was none to fray them”, idyllic times. Simon expands
the territory of Judea to include the sea port of Joppa (which, I would assume,
opens them up to the lucrative Mediterranean trade), decorates the Temple, and
so on.
He sends embassies to Rome and Sparta, and most of the
rest of the chapter are the letters that he gets in response, which pretty much
sum up the above deeds, again. It leaves the whole chapter looking like some
big celebration of how great Simon is, as if it was written by some sycophantic
courtier. I mean, really, once is enough about how you purified the “tower”.
Somewhat confusingly, Demetrius also writes to sing
Simon’s praises, when it looked like he was captured by the King of the Medes
in the opening verses (for crossing Medea without permission on his way to a
fight with Tryphon).
Something that puzzled me before, and is bought up again
here. Simon is referred to as the High Priest, but also “captain, and governor of all the Jews”. And I think Jonathan was
named is those terms as well. It looks like the post of High Priest and secular
leader have been combined in one person. And this can’t end well. I’d assume
that, although this picture paints the rule of Simon as a rosy one, there would
be some traditionalists grumbling about this mixing of roles.
1 Maccabees 15
“Moreover Antiochus son of Demetrius the king
sent letters from the isles of the sea unto Simon the priest and prince of the
Jews, and to all the people”
Back to another Antiochus, who first sends a letter to
Simon offering friendship and amnesty (it must, in these times, be a great
indulgence to allow a former subject kingdom to keep “all the armour that thou hast made, and all the fortresses thou hast
built”. Antiochus announces his intention to go to war against Tryphon, the
usurper, and he lays a land and naval siege to a place called Dora.
However, for some unknown reason Antiochus then decides
that he’s going to get angry with Simon and the Jews, and sends an emissary,
Athenobius, to demand the return of the cities of Joppa and Gazera. It’s not
obvious why Antiochus has this sudden change of heart. There’s a letter sent
out from the Romans announcing their friendship with Simon (which is sent to “all the countries and to
Sampsames, and the Lacedemonians, and to Delus, and Myndus, and Sicyon, and
Caria, and Samos, and Pamphylia, and Lycia, and Halicarnassus, and Rhodus, and
Aradus, and Cos, and Side, and Aradus, and Gortyna, and Cnidus, and Cyprus, and
Cyrene”). Perhaps this triggers something in Antiochus. But also Simon
sends two thousand men to help him with his siege against Tryphon, so his
sudden change of heart seems very unreasonable. Perhaps that’s the picture that
the author of Maccabees is trying to paint.
Because Antiochus has taken to messing about
breaking treaties, Tryphon manages to escape. Antiochus gives chase, leaving an
underling called Cendebeus to take on the Jews. We end this chapter with
Cendebeus making a fortification at a place called Cedron from whence he starts
to invade and kill the people of Judea.
1 Maccabees 16
“Wherefore Simon called his two eldest sons, Judas and John, and
said unto them, I, and my brethren, and my father's house, have ever from my
youth unto this day fought against the enemies of Israel; and things have
prospered so well in our hands, that we have delivered Israel oftentimes.”
Simon is now getting old, so he appoints his two eldest
sons Judas and John as captains in his stead. They ride out against Cendebeus
and defeat him, but then Simon’s son in law, Ptolomee, son of Abubus (great
name) decides, for some reason, to be treacherous.
Ptolomee hosts Simon and his sons Judas and Mattathias to
a banquet in his castle of Docas, near Jericho, and then goes full Red Wedding
on them – “So when Simon and his sons had
drunk largely, Ptolemee and his men rose up, and took their weapons, and came upon
Simon into the banqueting place, and slew him, and his two sons, and certain of
his servants.”
After such a momentous event, the chapter ends a bit
abruptly. Ptolomee sets out to conquer Jerusalem; meanwhile John is forewarned
about assassins and kills them first, but after this we are told in the last
two verses that “As
concerning the rest of the acts of John, and his wars, and worthy deeds which
he did, and the building of the walls which he made, and his doings, Behold,
these are written in the chronicles of his priesthood, from the time he was
made high priest after his father.”
So I’m guessing that either this will be taken up in 2nd
Maccabees where we left off, or that book will retell some of this and
continue. Or maybe that’s it for the story of John of the Hasmoneans.
This was quite a fun Book to read, despite all of the
various Ptolemys and Antiochuses. I’ve always enjoyed these ones that are more
pure history with lots of double-crossing, even though sometimes the endless
descriptions of how the protagonists first went to one place, and then to
another, then back to the first place, and stayed there, then went somewhere
else etc. etc. etc. can get a bit wearisome
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