Revolt of the Maccabees

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0:00 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Pierce, O most sweet Lord Jesus, my inmost soul, with the most joyous and healthful wound of your love, with true, serene, and most holy apostolic charity. That my soul may ever languish and melt with love and longing for you. That it may yearn for you and faint for your courts, and long to be dissolved and to be with you. Grant that my soul may hunger after you, the bread of angels, the refreshment of holy souls, our daily and supersubstantial bread, having all sweetness and savor and every delight of taste.

1:02 Let my heart ever hunger after and feed upon you, upon whom the angels desire to look. And may my inmost soul be filled with the sweetness of your savor. the torrent of pleasure, the richness of the house of God. May it ever compass you, seek you, find you, run to you, attain you, meditate upon you, speak of you, and do all things to the praise and glory of your name, with humility and discretion, with love and delight, with ease and affection, and with perseverance unto the end. May you alone be ever my hope, my entire assurance, my riches, my delight, my pleasure, my joy, my rest, and tranquility, my peace, my sweetness, my fragrance, my sweet savor, my food, my refreshment, my refuge, my help, my wisdom, my portion, my possession, and my treasure.

2:03 In whom may my mind and my heart are fixed, and firm and rooted, immovably, henceforth, and forever. Amen. Lord Jesus Christ, be present now, and let your Holy Spirit bow all hearts in love and truth today, to hear your word and keep your way. Give us the grace to grasp your word, that we may do what we have heard. Instruct us through the scriptures, Lord, as we draw near, O God adored, to God the Father, and the Son, and Holy Spirit, three in one. To you, O blessed Trinity, be praised throughout eternity. Amen.

2:51 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Today we're celebrating, I believe it's the memorial of St. Nicholas. So today is St. Nick's day on the calendar. So, yes, he does exist. Where is it? Yes. Really? Ho, ho, ho comes from holy, holy, holy. That's very cool. I didn't know that. All right. So, in ancient Rome, did Santa Claus say, sa, sa, sa? Sanctus? I know, it's really bad jokes tonight.

3:39 Really bad. I might as well quit while in my head, huh? That's the worst of them all. Okay. Well, it looks like my board doesn't want to race today. Would somebody mind maybe going into the restroom and getting, or getting, I know there's some paper towels right in there, right through the window, and maybe dabbing it with some water so I can get my own writing off of the board here? I have it. It's in my office. Thank you for reminding me. Good. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Oh, you're leaving. All right.

4:25 Like I said, tonight we're not going to be referencing any verses, but I'm going to be giving you a lot of history. The, if you look, let's turn to page 262 of Understanding the Scriptures. Page 262. On page 262, right at the bottom, there's a timeline that shows us a portion of salvation history beginning with the exile in Babylon. Thank you so much, Larry. I appreciate it. All right. So the exile in Babylon. How many of the 12 original tribes were exiled in Babylon? How many?

5:17 No, in Babylon. Three. Yes, the two tribes, Benjamin and Judah, plus the Levites who were in the Levitical city. You know, I learned something really cool this last week. You know, Levitical cities served as cities of refuge to where, in the Old Testament law, if you, because it was kind of also the civil law, it was the way that, it was a positive law of the state, the way that you governed, and the way that, you know, you dealt with your neighbor. And it was very, it was very civil in many ways. If you killed somebody, you're, basically, the death penalty would come upon you. You were liable to be killed by the state. And, but if you committed homicide, you could escape to a Levitical city and, and nobody could prosecute you. You could, you could stay in the Levitical city.

6:13 It was kind of like when you played tag as a, as a, as a kiddo. You know, you'd say, olly, olly, oxen free, and then you'd run around and try and see who's it. But if you got to the safe place, to the tree, you know, you're like, ah, can't get me, can't, can't make me it, you know. So this is what, kind of like what the Levitical cities were. Well, you could stay safe in the Levitical city until an event happened. And when that event happened, you could return back to your homeland untouched, and nobody could prosecute you. Do you guys know what that event is? Does anybody know? Anybody been reading their Torah? I don't know if it's part of the Torah or whether it's part of the oral law. It's not the Jubilee, though that's a great death. It's at the death of the high priest.

7:05 Pretty cool, huh? When the high priest of the people dies in that year, whoever is in the city of refuge can return back to their homeland and basically be forgiven of the homicide that they had committed. Isn't that neat? Kind of prefigures the death of our high priest who allows for us to return to the home of the Father from the exile of sin. The high priest over all of Israel, there was only one high priest. He was a descendant of Aaron. And the high priest was kind of like the president. He was a big office. And we'll see in today's study that the office of the high priest was not just cultic, not just religious, but it was also political. He had power.

7:54 And so Antiochus IV would give it to the highest bidder. And we'll see that Jason, or Joshua, he went by two names. One's Greek, Jason. He went by, that was his Greek name. He went by a Hebrew name also, Joshua. And he bought the office of the high priest. But if you look at this timeline here on page 262, you'll see that the exile in Babylon began in, I mean, it started actually in 605 with the first exile. But when was Jerusalem destroyed and, you know, a lot of people left and were taken into Babylon from Jerusalem? 587, you guys see it, right? 587, exile in Babylon. Or 586. It was, you know, it spanned 586, 587 into 586.

8:45 The destruction of Jerusalem. And when did the people start returning to the land? What year? From Babylon. 538. And when did they start building the temple? What year was that? It doesn't say here on this timeline. They finished it in 515, but Zerubbabel started building the temple in what year? 537. One, I mean, immediately, practically. It got back. They left in 538, got there. They immediately started working in the temple. But it took them 22 years until 515 to complete the temple, this meager temple. Not because it took them 22 years as it was, that's how much work there was. But because the Samarians, or the Samaritans, interrupted the work.

9:36 And that was part of the chapter of A Remnant Returns, chapter 14. This week we're in chapter 15. But I'm just kind of doing a little bit of a review here. And so the second temple is finished and dedicated on 515. And then Ezra comes into the land and gives kind of a religious reform, causes the Jews. And remember, it was in the book of, I believe it was Ezra, the first place that the word Jew starts being used. Before it was Israelite, because you're a Judahite, a Benjaminite, a Gadite, an Asherite, an Issacharite. But now, since the majority of the returnees returning to the land are from the tribe of Judah, pretty much everybody is called a Jew. Just kind of everybody is called that.

10:33 But among the Jews, you have some Benjaminites and some Levites. And so, as we'll see, St. Paul the Apostle, who used to be St. Saul the Persecutor, he's from the tribe of Benjamin. And so he considers himself a Jew, but yet he narrows it down and he specifies in Romans chapter 9 that he's a Benjaminite from the tribe of Benjamin. And so, remember, we only have three tribes here really returning to the land. And not everybody returned. This is, remember, I mean, you know, in Babylon, it's not Babylon anymore. Now it's, well, it's still called Babylon, the city is, but it's no longer the Babylonian Empire. What empire is it now? The Persian Empire, the Medo-Persians. Well, Iran would be today and back then.

11:25 But it was called the Persian Empire, is what it was called. It was Persia. Because Cyrus was the Persian king who basically took over Babylon. Okay? So Cyrus allowed for them to return in 538. That's why they're able to return, is because Cyrus basically took over the Babylonian Empire. Now it's the Persian Empire. Or in part of that empire were the Medes. The Medes had a place in this empire. So sometimes it's called the Medo-Persian Empire. Or just the Persian Empire. And so, Ezra comes to Jerusalem, we see here, sometime right before 450, probably about 460, somewhere around there. And Ezra arrives and he makes the Jews divorce their pagan wives. Because what ended up bringing on the exile? Was it poor political management, poor military strength?

12:16 What caused the exile? Idolatry, sin. And the idolatry and the sin came largely from intermarrying and having relations with these pagan people. I mean, this is what drove Solomon's heart away from Yahweh, were his concubines and his wives, who were from foreign countries and had foreign gods. And Solomon built idols to them, statues and temples that you would worship. And this was idolatry. And this is what caused Solomon's kingdom to split under his son Rehoboam. So Ezra's saying, guys, look, we just came back from exile, let's not screw it up. Okay, let's try and hold on to our true religion here. So Ezra arrives. Then later on, Nehemiah arrives. And Nehemiah asks the current Persian emperor if he could become the governor of Judea. And the emperor says yes.

13:09 So Nehemiah comes back and he's the governor of Judea. And Nehemiah, is he from the tribe of Levi? Is he a priest? No, Nehemiah was not from the tribe of Levi. He was not a priest. But Ezra was. In fact, Ezra had descended back to Aaron, we're told in the scriptures. So Nehemiah is a layman as a governor. And what did he do in 52 days? Rebuilt the city walls. So now we have the temple rebuilt in 515. And now we have the city walls completed. And here we're like in the middle of the 5th century. Now, the 400 B.C. comes along. Around 400 B.C.

13:59 And we have kind of, I guess you could call it, it's kind of like prehistory. You know, before history started to be written down, we don't have any record of it. So we call it prehistory. I mean, history class can't begin before that because we don't know what happened. No one wrote it down. We weren't there. No one was videotaping it. So from about 400 B.C. To 180 B.C., we have Zippity-Duda with regard to the historical record within Judea. But in Judea, in the holy...

14:51 By the way, I don't really like to use the term Palestine. But I do sometimes because what else are we going to use? I like to say Holy Land because actually the Romans introduced the term Palestine to kind of, after the Phoenicians, after the Philistines, by the Mediterranean coast, to try and blot out any memory of the Jews. This happened in about the middle of the, I believe, the middle of the second century. So Palestine is actually kind of like a Roman way of trying to get rid of the Jews when they finally had had enough with the Jews. And so Palestine is kind of an anti-Semitic term in a certain sense. But, you know, we've all gotten over that. So we say Palestine, it doesn't really mean that to us today. But you'll hear me say the Holy Land a lot, or the land. And that's what I'm referring to.

15:41 Galilee, Samaria, and Judea in the time of Jesus. And so no period in history, in salvation history, since before Moses, has been so poorly documented. But in 180 BC, we have documentation of what went on in Judea. And this starts with 1st and 2nd Maccabees. In about 180 BC, 1st and 2nd Maccabees picks up. Maccabees. Two C's, two E's. Maccabees. And we get this name, Maccabees, from Judas Maccabeus. And we'll learn a little bit more about him in just a moment. Judas Maccabeus. And he's called Judas Maccabeus because Maccabeus is a Hebrew word meaning hammer.

16:33 It was like his nickname. Okay. I have curly hair, so when I was in elementary school, people would call me Curlicue. That was my nickname. So, that may be my, if somebody wrote a history of my early childhood, we'd call it the Curlicues. Instead of, you know, instead of Maccabees. Well, this is kind of what they did. It was his nickname. It was, it was hammer. And so, this is where we get the term Maccabees from. And 1st and 2nd Maccabees are kind of like a bridge between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Because the Old Testament history, we have wisdom literature and prophetic literature during this time. But we don't have any history. Because the chronicler wrote 1st and 2nd Chronicles Ezra and Nehemiah. Or compiled it.

17:21 One person did. So, it was like one work. It wasn't, it wasn't like the Jews had 1st Chronicles and over here they had 2nd Chronicles. And over here they had Ezra and then over here they had Nehemiah. And then they just kind of put them together in their Bible. Rather, it was one work. And now we separate it. Not to, not to separate them, but just to distinguish in order to unite them. So, Ezra and Nehemiah. So, Nehemiah kind of ends the history here around 400 B.C. And 1st and 2nd Maccabees picks up around 180 B.C. And so, 1st and 2nd Maccabees is like the bridge from the Old Testament to the New Testament. It kind of tells us what was going on. And you won't find 1st and 2nd Maccabees in a Protestant translation such as the New American, I'm sorry, the New International Version or the Good News Bible or another translation like that.

18:20 You'll only find it in a Catholic or Orthodox, like an Eastern Orthodox translation of the scriptures such as the New American Bible, the Revised Standard Version, which was an ecumenical translation done by Catholic and Protestant biblical scholars. You'll also find it in the NASB, I believe you'll find it there. But the RSV and the NAB are two good translations. I prefer the RSV. The one that I have all marked up is the NAB. That's my personal Bible. And the reason that you don't have 1st and 2nd Maccabees in a Protestant translation of the scriptures, but you will have it in a Catholic translation, is because 1st and 2nd Maccabees were part of the Bible, part of the Old Testament, that came from Alexandria. And I'm just kind of giving you guys a little bit of a preview.

19:18 We're going to talk about this more in depth in just a little bit. And so we call this the Alexandrian Canon. The Alexandrian Canon of Scripture is that list of books that we have in Catholic Bibles today. It comes from the translation of the Old Testaments in Alexandria. I'm sorry, Alexandrian Canon. Okay, so now I'm kind of giving you guys a little bit of a background here. Now we're going to kind of jump into the history here, and we're going to see some more things. Aramaic was the official language of the western part of the Persian Empire. So here's the big Persian Empire, and over here in the west, we had Aramaic. And so the Jews, when they returned to the land, they started not so much speaking Hebrew, but they started speaking more Aramaic.

20:15 Kind of in the same way that when people immigrate to the United States from Mexico, they start speaking English. And they'll still retain their mother tongue, Spanish, God bless you. But they'll start speaking English, will become the lingua franca, the common tongue. And so Aramaic was introduced by the Persian Empire in the western part of it. So Jesus, for instance, spoke Aramaic. In the Gospels, we have the Aramaic sayings of Jesus preserved for us. Let me see here. Let's, I'm going to turn real quick to, let's see here. I'm going to turn to the Gospel, and let me see here. I'm going to turn to the end of Mark's Gospel, and let's see here.

21:15 I'm going to turn to Mark 15, 34. Mark chapter 15, verse 34. You don't have to turn to it, but if you want to, you can. Mark chapter 15, verse 34. And this is Mark telling what Jesus said from the cross. He said, Mark says, At about three o'clock, Of course, he didn't say three o'clock. He used something else, and we translate that to three o'clock our time. At three o'clock, Jesus cried out in a loud voice from the cross, Eloi, Eloi, lima, sabachthani. And then, I'm not saying this, this is Mark saying this. Which is translated, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

22:08 Now, Mark, we're pretty sure, wrote his Gospel to people around Rome, who spoke Greek and Latin, but it was probably written in Greek. And so, when he was writing it, he had to translate the Aramaic for the Romans. And so, we're given what Jesus said from the cross in Aramaic, Eloi, Eloi, lima, sabachthani. And then he says, Which is translated, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And Mark does this throughout his Gospel. He will say exactly what Jesus said, and then he'll say, Which is translated, or which means, like for instance, when Jesus cured, let me see here, when Jesus cured a child in Mark 5, he says, He took the child by the hand and said to her, Talitha kum, which means, Little girl, I say to you, arise.

23:04 Talitha kum. And that's Aramaic. And we also, John, in John's Gospel, we're told that when Jesus was crucified, Jesus King of the, Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews, was put above him on the cross. And has anybody ever been to the chapel at St. Thomas Aquinas in College Station? St. Thomas Aquinas in College Station? Yeah, if you guys ever go there, go look inside their church, there's this huge crucifix. It's beautiful. I mean, they must have spent thousands on it. And above Jesus is this big sign with the same thing written in four languages. Aramaic, Hebrew, Latin, and Greek.

23:53 The four languages that were spoken by those people who were there at Jesus' crucifixion. And in John's Gospel, we're told that Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews, was put in four languages. Aramaic, Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. Not in that order. But those four languages. And so, the person who did this piece of art, this crucifix, follows John's Gospel and actually puts it in the Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, and Greek. It's really cool. So if you ever want to see what it looks like, go there. So that just kind of explains Jesus' what he spoke. And again, we're going to see that what we're learning here, both this week and next week, is going to lead into the New Testament. I'm showing you the background of the New Testament. Kind of what the New Testament authors, including our Lord, kind of had as their background.

24:44 And so at the beginning of the fourth century, the Jews began to speak Aramaic. Okay. In 336, Darius III took up the Persian throne. So let's go ahead and turn in our books here to page 264. Page 264. Now, I'm getting this history, 336 B.C., not from the Bible, because we don't have that history, really. This comes from secular history, from secular sources. This is how we know who were all the rulers of the Persian Empire. On page 264, you'll see all the rulers of the Persian Empire there.

25:34 And who is the final ruler of the Persian Empire? Darius III. He came onto the throne in 336, and his last year was what? 330. This was Darius III. So something happened during the reign of Darius III to stop the Persian Empire. In the same year, around 336, there was, back in Greece, Greece was not like one big empire, one big nation. They were separate kind of like city-states. And they were kind of independent. And sometimes they would war with one another. And during this time, the person who was ruling at that time in Greece was Philip II of Macedon.

26:28 Philip II of Macedon. And Philip II was assassinated. And his son took up the throne in the same year that Darius III took up the throne. Does anybody know what Philip II of Macedon's son, who that is? Alexander. His son is Alexander. And Alexander, we now know as Alexander the Great. Which Alexandria, Egypt, is named after. This is where, why we call this canon of scripture, I just talked about the Alexandrian canon. And so Alexander the Great came into power the same year as Darius III did.

27:17 So we have Alexander the Great in Greece. We have Darius III over in Persia. And Alexander the Great kind of unifies the Greeks. And he starts conquering. He wants to expand the Greek civilization, Greek philosophy, Greek science. And the Greeks called themselves Helens. So this was called Hellenization. Hellenization. So we'll see that through Alexander the Great, we start having this process of Hellenization. Hellenization. So Alexander the Great, within five years, approximately five years, he conquers Persia in the east. He comes from the west, from Greece, goes through the Holy Land, and that's Persia, and conquers Persia.

28:11 And so in 3.30, we see that Darius III's reign here, on page 264, ends in 3.30. Because that's when the Persian Empire is no longer the Persian Empire, but now it's Alexander's Empire. And there's a pious legend that when Alexander got beyond Persia, he had conquered India, he weeped, because there were no more lands to conquer. But the true history is most probably that his generals didn't want to go on. They're like, this is enough. We're going to be too far stretched. We can't rule all of this. But unfortunately, as is the way with all worldly rulers that don't rise from the dead, in 323, Alexander the Great died in Babylon.

29:06 How? Had a fever. Didn't have any Tylenol. So Alexander the Great dies at what age? 33. You guys know your history. This is good. Okay, so I'm preaching to the choir. Oh, it says it right there. Okay. It says it right there on the page. And so, when Alexander died, his empire, which extended down into Egypt, Greece, what used to be Assyria, Persia, all of this was divided among his generals. And tonight, we're only going to be concerned with two of his generals, because only two of his generals really have an impact upon our history here tonight. Oh, my gosh.

29:52 This stuff really doesn't want to... Larry, do you guys mind giving me some more water so I can write on the board? That's okay. I'll write in the gaps. I... Okay. Shh. Don't tell Larry. I guess we're going to get some more. Okay. So the... I'm going to want some more paper towels. The... These two generals of Alexander's that we're going to be concerned with tonight are who? Do you guys know? Did you read your chapter? A while ago? Ptolemy and Seleucus. So Ptolemy is...

30:41 He's a Greek man. And so is Seleucus. And Seleucus got what used to be the Persian Empire. He got the east. The eastern part. Ptolemy got Egypt. And the Egyptian city, Alexandria. And it was under Ptolemy that Alexandria grew to be a large city of Hellenization. of Greek culture where the Jews multiplied in number was in Alexandria under Ptolemy's reign. Or the Ptolemaic dynasty. You know, Ptolemy's sons. And so here in the west we have Ptolemy. And in the east, the Ptolemy.

31:32 And in the east we have Seleucus. Thank you very much, Larry. I appreciate it. Thanks. I'll pay you later. He's like, all right. And so in the east, in what used to be Persia now, we have the Seleucid dynasty, the descendants of Seleucus, the general of Alexander the Great. And in the west we have the Ptolemaic dynasty down in Egypt. At first they warred over the Holy Land, or Palestine. But does anybody know who was successful between Ptolemy and Seleucus in getting the Holy Land? When they were kind of vying over it?

32:27 Ptolemy. Right. Ptolemy got the Holy Land. So Ptolemy was over the Holy Land from 323 when Alexander died. Until 198. So Ptolemy, the Ptolemaic dynasty, had control of the Holy Land from 323 B.C. to 198 B.C. And I'll tell you the event that caused it to switch hands, because this is just fun history. But before we get into that, I'm going to say that it was at the beginning of the 3rd century, so the end of the 200s B.C., that the Septuagint was created in Alexandria. And so the Septuagint was the Greek translation of the Old Testament.

33:32 Because the Jews, you know, they were speaking Aramaic, right, because of the Persian Empire, but they also spoke Hebrew, you know, at the same time, in the same way that immigrants from Mexico still speak Spanish. Well, down in Egypt, they began to read and write, not in Hebrew or Aramaic, but in Greek, because they were being cultured, they were being absorbed, or they were absorbing the Greek culture. So down in Egypt, under Ptolemy, who's a Greek, and so this is, you know, Hellenization is occurring, we have the Greek translation of the Old Testament is created by 70 scribes, 70 Jewish scholars. And so Septuagint means 70, 70, in Greek. So that's where we get the term Septuagint for.

34:22 So while Septuagint means 70, it's named after the 70 scribes who created it, it's also, it is also the name of that Bible, that Old Testament Bible in Greek that was created. And they, but they had, in the Septuagint, you not only had books like, that we have in the Catholic Bible, not in the Protestant Bible, like Baruch, or Judith, or 1st and 2nd Maccabees, or Tobit, Sea Rock Wisdom. But you also had other, some other books. And the names slipped my mind at the moment, I'm thinking of 1st and 2nd Esdras, for instance, those are, those might have been in there.

35:21 And so, and again, there were different forms of the Septuagint. And the Septuagint, again, was this Greek Old Testament, and this was the version of the Old Testament that St. Paul, St. Peter, the author to the Epistle to the Hebrews, and Jesus, and Matthew, Luke, which they all used. And the Septuagint, and we know this because when you're translating things from the Hebrew into the Greek, Or, let's say you have one version of the Old Testament in a certain language, and you have a certain version of the Old Testament in another language. When you end up copying it, you know, over time, little nuances get changed. And so, we can tell whether or not they were, the New Testament authors were quoting from the Septuagint versus a Hebrew version of the Old Testament, depending upon what was said.

36:23 So, like, for instance, nowhere in the Hebrew Old Testament did Isaiah 7.14 prophesy or say that a virgin shall conceive. And you guys all know this prophecy because Matthew 1.23 quotes this verse. Matthew 1.23 quotes Isaiah 7.14 saying that a virgin shall conceive. Well, nowhere in the Hebrew translations do you have a virgin. You have an Alma in Hebrew, which means a young woman, not a virgin, per se. But it was in one of the Septuagint versions that you actually had the Greek word for virgin in the Old Testament in Isaiah 7.14. So, when Matthew is quoting the Old Testament, he's quoting one of the Septuagint translations, one of those variations.

37:17 Also, in Matthew 3.3, Mark 1.3, John 1.23, I know I'm saying this so fast so you guys can't write it down, so you can't verify. The author of the gospel, either Matthew, Mark, or John, quotes Isaiah 40.3. And I believe it's quoting John the Baptist, or about what John the Baptist was doing. It's quoting Isaiah 40.3. And the Greek version says, make his path straight. In the Hebrew version, it says, make level in the desert a highway. So, you know, it's kind of different from making paths straight and making level in the desert a highway. That's in the Hebrew version.

38:04 Let me show you guys some other ones here. Here, in Paul, in Romans 9.27, quotes Isaiah 10.22. And he says that only a remnant of them, quote unquote, will be saved. That's, will be saved is in the Greek version of Isaiah 10.22. In the Hebrew, it says, only a remnant of them will return. So, there's a difference between being saved and returning. Now, that's just a small nuance. I mean, really, it's the same thing. Returning to the land is being saved. There was a, to the Hebrew is kind of the same idea, but they're different words. There's, I mean, it's, you're going to do a more literal type of translation. In 1 Peter, chapter 2, verse 22, 1 Peter 2.22, he quotes Isaiah 53.9, Isaiah chapter 53, verse 9.

39:04 He says that Jesus committed no sin. In the Hebrew version of the Old Testament, it says that he had done no violence. And so, done no violence, but in the Greek, it was committed no sin. And also, this is really neat. You know how we say that there are seven gifts of the Holy Spirit from Isaiah 11.2? By the way, if you guys ever want to find the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, go to Isaiah chapter 11, verse 2. It's a prophecy of the Messiah. And it talks about what he'll be like, the virtues he'll have, these gifts. So, we call them the Isaiahan gifts because they're in Isaiah, the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Well, the seventh gift, piety, is only found in the Septuagint. It's not in the Hebrew version. So, that's kind of a cool little thing. We only have six gifts of the Holy Spirit if the early...

39:55 And the early church used the Septuagint version of the Old Testament to evangelize the Jews. Because most of the Jews were speaking, reading, and writing Greek all throughout, you know, what would then be the Roman Empire. And the early Jewish rabbis actually called the Septuagint the golden calf. Because in their minds, the Jews were becoming apostate because they were now worshiping Jesus Christ, who they considered just to be a man and not God. And so, it's like the Septuagint was the golden calf. It's like it's causing all these Jews to become Christians. And it's not good in a Jew's eyes who does not see Jesus as being the incarnation of Yahweh, the new temple. And so, that's just a little bit of history there for you, just to kind of show you some things.

40:54 Okay, now we're going to really get into history here. And so, Ptolemy had his capital in Alexandria. Seleucus had two capitals, one in the east in Seleucia, and one in the west at Antioch. So, this is how Antioch kind of grew up to become a big city. It was under the Seleucid kings. And so, the Holy Land was vied after. But, remember, I told you that Ptolemy and the Ptolemaic kings had rule of the Holy Land between 323, when Alexander the Great died, and 198. In 198, you guys remember Caesarea Philippi? We've talked about this before in the Bible study. Here's the Sea of Galilee.

41:42 Here's the Jordan River going south of it. Here's the Dead Sea. Which, I don't know why I'm using blue to draw it, because it's dead. I should probably use black. But, up here north of the Sea of Galilee, a three-day journey, you have Caesarea Philippi, which is talked about in Matthew 16. This is where Jesus appoints Peter the chief shepherd over his covenant family. And in Caesarea Philippi, it was called Caesarea Philippi in Jesus' day, because the Romans had renamed it that. But, it goes by two other names. It goes by Panium, which is named after the god Pan, because at Caesarea Philippi, there's this huge rock. And upon the rock was, no longer, there was a pagan temple built to the god Pan. And Pan was the god of the shepherds, right?

42:38 So, Jesus, the good shepherd, appoints Peter as the chief shepherd, where the false shepherd, the false god of the shepherds, Pan, is worshipped. It's also called Banias. Banias was another term for it. And Banias means baths, because there were baths there. There's also kind of a play on words, Banias, Panium, you know, ban, pan, it's kind of a play on words. But it was actually at this place where one of the Seleucid kings, and you might kind of recognize his name because it's similar to another name, but the Seleucid king, Antiochus, Antiochus III, conquered the Ptolemaic army at this place. It was a major battle.

43:34 And he drove, Antiochus III drove the Ptolemies from the Holy Land. So now it's under Seleucid control. So in 198, the Seleucid king, Antiochus III, won a major battle at Panium, or Banias, drove the Egyptian army from Asia. In 175, so let's see here down, in 175, a successor of Antiochus III, Antiochus IV, Antiochus IV, came to power. And Antiochus IV was not humble. He considered himself to be the visible manifestation of Zeus. Right?

44:21 So he believed himself to be the physical manifestation of Zeus. He was really, everybody thought he was wacko. And he was, but they didn't tell him that because, you know, he'll, he'll, he's, he's got the power. And so he called himself Epiphanies. And I was actually born on Epiphany. Epiphany means God manifest. Or God is manifest. And so we celebrate Epiphany because Jesus was made manifest to the world, to the, to the three magi and to the shepherds. And so every January the 6th, we celebrate Epiphany. Here in the United States, sometimes we transfer it to the, to the, to the next Sunday. Um, which I don't like because, hey, my birthday is on Epiphany, January the 6th.

45:13 And so, I like this date a lot because I was born on Epiphany. You know? I'm just kidding. In the, in the East, they used to celebrate Christmas on, on January the 6th. And so, uh, but in the West, they would celebrate Christmas on December the 25th. So, the, the church kind of, you know, kind of, uh, uh, gave both sides their due. Had Christmas on December the 25th, Epiphany on January the 6th. So, he considered himself, Antiochus the 4th, Epiphanies, because he was God, he was Zeus manifest. And, when he became king, over what was the Seleucid dynasty, the proper high priest, by the way, all of this now is in 1st and 2nd Maccabees. I'm just giving you 1st and 2nd Maccabees history.

46:03 What, what will be really beneficial to you is to go home and to read 1st and 2nd Maccabees between now and next week, plus the chapter. So, if you're really into this, if you're retired or something, uh, go ahead and read 1st and 2nd Maccabees. And, this will all begin to make more sense. But, at the time that he took the throne, Onias the 3rd, Onias the 3rd was the legitimate high priest in Jerusalem. And, Onias the 3rd was away, kind of, on business. He was out, he was out of Jerusalem. And, at that time, this guy named Joshua, who was his brother, so, Onias' brother Joshua. And, Joshua went by the Greek name Jason. Joshua bribed Antiochus the 4th for the high priesthood. Antiochus the 4th said, okay, he said, why should I do this for you?

46:57 And, Joshua goes, well, first of all, I'm going to give you a lot of money. How much does he give them? The book tells us. 440 talents of silver. The book says it was about 16 tons of silver. It's what Jason gave Antiochus the 4th to buy the high priesthood. So, this is a little corrupt, wouldn't you say? Well, guess what? Jason just has the high priesthood for three years. Because another guy, Minelos, Minelos, outbids Jason for the high priesthood. And, Minelos doesn't even have the money to pay for it. He's kind of doing it on credit.

47:46 And so, Minelos has to go into the temple treasury to steal stuff to get the money to pay Antiochus the 4th what he had promised him for the high priesthood. And, Minelos was later, I believe he was executed. And so, this is like a soap opera. We've got lots of fun things going on. One of the things that Jason did that, I believe it's in 2nd Maccabees, is not very happy about, the author of Maccabees, is that Jason built a gymnasium in Jerusalem. Now, what's so bad about that? We're here having this Bible study in a gymnasium. Well, the gymnasium, it wasn't like you just went over there and you worked out a little bit and you went home. Now, it would be like, you know, becoming a part of our church youth group. You know, yeah, we have some fun, you know, maybe a movie night or whatever.

48:36 But, it's intrinsically tied up with the worship of Jesus and following his rule over our lives. So, if you come to our youth group, you're not just going to have fun. You're going to become Christian eventually. Well, this is what the gymnasium was. In the gymnasium, you participated in the sports, not like over at the YMCA with all your clothes on, but you were butt naked. And so, scripture tells us that the Jews became ashamed of their mark of circumcision, so they covered it up. Now, I don't know how they did that. What did they do? Wear jock straps? I don't know. I used a lot of makeup. I have no clue. But that's what it says. But, and the gymnasium was also intrinsically tied up with the worship of Heracles and of Hermes. So, when you went to the gymnasium, you pinched incense to Heracles or Hermes.

49:29 It wasn't entirely secular. And so, you could see why devout, pious Jews would be a little upset with having gymnasium in the middle of Jerusalem. Well, the faithful are upset. They're a little mad. So, there's unrest in Jerusalem. So, we're told in 1 and 2 Maccabees that Antiochus IV dispatched a really bad guy. Apollonius. We're told that, let me see if I can get the spelling of his name right here. Here we go. Apollonius was dispatched by Antiochus IV to Jerusalem with Messian mercenaries. And so, he took all these soldiers into Jerusalem. And he came on, we're told that he came on terms of peace.

50:19 But then, when the unsuspecting Jerusalemites, the Jews, you know, led them into the city gates, he slaughtered them. And he sold their women as slaves. Took some as slaves. He looted and partially destroyed Jerusalem. And then he erected a citadel in Jerusalem, probably, it no longer exists, but it was probably west of the temple. And so, Apollonius erected the citadel west of the temple, and it was called the Akra. I don't know what that means, but it was called the Akra. And this was a citadel. So, it was like a fortress west of the temple with its own little walls. It was a little community.

51:06 And we're told that it was not just a fortress, but it was also a community of both pagans. Mari, are you falling asleep? Okay, good. Good. Larry, would you pinch her and just make sure that she's awake? Okay, good. I'm sorry. See, now you're going to be awake for the rest of the study. You'll be like, oh my gosh, I can't believe you just said that. It was a colony of Hellenized pagans and apostate Jews. So, this would be kind of like, you know, allowing some people to have a little shrine to Buddha, you know, going over to where our little gazebo is with our statue of Mary and Jesus. And kind of maybe, you know, maybe just beside that, creating a little statue of Buddha. You know, make a little wall around it so nobody can get in there and take it, and pinching incense to Buddha.

51:58 Well, I mean, our parishioners would be up in arms. We'd be like, what is going on? This is horrible. Well, this is what happened. We had this, the Akra was in the middle of Jerusalem. And Antiochus IV issued an edict that practically forbade the practice of Judaism. And so, copies of the law were destroyed. The circumcision of children was forbidden. Jews were forced to eat swine's flesh on pain of death. And on December of 167, December of 167, Antiochus IV introduced the worship of himself, Zeus, in the temple. So, a statue to Zeus was erect in the temple, and on the altar of the temple, in the temple, pigs were sacrificed to Zeus.

52:57 I mean, pigs, the unclean of the unclean of the animals, that you could not sacrifice or eat, or touch. So, the cult of Zeus was introduced in the temple in December of 167. But during this time, when we're having this going on, this gymnasium, this slaughter of the people by Apollonius II, the erection of Zeus, this certain type of people arose, and they're called the Hasidim. The Hasidim. And the Hasidim, this word means devout or pious. So, today we have Hasidic Jews, the pious, the devout. Well, the Hasidim arose, and they started kind of a resistance. And over in the hill country, let me see, I'm going to try and salvage some of this board here, since I, thank you again, Larry, for the secret magic potion that gives me more room to write on. The, over in the hill country, outside of Jerusalem, there was a priest.

54:02 And so, if he's a priest, what tribe is he from? Levi. And what's his name? Do you guys know who I'm going to bring up? No, not Judas. He was the old man. Judas' dad. Yeah, Mattathias. Mattathias was an old Levitical, you know, man with that, you know, legitimately considered himself a priest. So, Mattathias formed a resistance himself with his five sons. So, we have Mattathias, Mattathias, and his five sons. We have, I'm going to go ahead and try this a little bit, doing house cleaning, housekeeping.

54:59 Well, Mattathias had five sons, John, Simon, Judas, Maccabeus. Judas, okay, Judas, Maccabeus, Judas the hammer, Eleazar, and Jonathan. And they joined forces with the Hasidim. They joined forces with the Hasidim. And they launched a guerrilla war against the Seleucids and the Jews who sided with the Seleucids. The Hasidim were just devout Jews who wanted to follow the law, who didn't want all this paganism being introduced. And so, they started launching guerrilla war attacks upon these people.

56:01 And so, this is kind of what's going on in Iraq right now. We have these big bad Americans who are over in the land. And so, we have like these guerrilla warfare type of attacks by the Taliban and by other people, you know, trying to get the Americans out. Well, the situation is kind of reversed here. We have the, not people bringing, trying to bring, you know, just good old democracy, but trying to destroy a religion, trying to destroy Judaism in there, the Seleucids. And so, we have guerrilla warfare being launched. Well, Mattathias dies of old age. And so, his leadership passes to his third son, Judas Maccabeus. He was kind of like a natural leader. And so, Judas Maccabeus is a major figure in, obviously, in 1st and 2nd Maccabees. And it ends up being named after him.

56:49 And his followers, the people gathered around him, were called the Maccabees. And the name kind of became true because he would hammer. I mean, there was, he was a good warrior. And so, Judas Maccabeus won several major battles. And he marched into Jerusalem, bottled the Seleucid garrison up in the citadel. So, he didn't destroy it, but he at least contained them within the citadel where they couldn't get out. And then, he proceeded to cleanse the temple. And he cleansed the temple in December of 164. Exactly three years after Zeus, after Antiochus, I don't want to call him, I don't want to give him credit, right? After Antiochus IV introduced the cult of Zeus.

57:39 And so, he rededicated the temple. He dedicated it. And so, now, we have the Feast of Dedication as a Jewish feast. Has been celebrated ever since then in December. So, what Jewish feast is coming up around the time of Christmas? Happy, happy, oh, happy Hanukkah. Happy Hanukkah. Adam Sandler, I know, who's a Jew, wrote a really great song about Hanukkah. And so, Hanukkah, which means dedication, basically was established with this rededication. So, we're going to call it Hanukkah. There are different spellings of the name. One of the more popular ones is one in two Ks, Hanukkah. And so, this is where Hanukkah comes from.

58:29 So, you guys can now, you can tell your Jewish friends. I know, I think we only have two Jewish families in this town, I believe. I learned that from going door-to-door evangelization here. I ran into one of them. And there's an old, there's actually an old synagogue right in downtown, right across, right across from Wells Fargo, right there next to the police station. I was looking at that and I went, that looks like a church. And then, I found out from this Jewish family that that was a synagogue. And then, one day, I stopped and I went and I read the plaque. Okay, so, we have the establishment of Hanukkah. But then, eventually, Judas died. And he was succeeded by his brother. Who was he succeeded by? Jonathan. Jonathan becomes a leader.

59:16 But then, Jonathan is captured. And when he's captured, Simon becomes a leader. And while Simon's a leader, Jonathan dies in captivity. They basically murder him. They kill him. They kill the captive. And Simon ruled for quite a while. Let's turn to the timeline here. That we have on page, well, we can, let's see here. Under Simon, let's turn to, let's see if I can find this. There was a timeline here, I believe, that, 282? 280. There you go. On page 280, you guys will see that what year did Simon die in? 134.

1:00:09 So, in 134, well, 134 he died. But during, it was during Simon's rule, that in 142, before 134, but in 142 BC, this is a big date. This is a big date. Because on 142, we have independence. Jewish independence. Guys, this is huge. We've been under the rule of the Babylonians, the Persians, the Ptolemies, the Seleucids. In 142 BC, we have Jewish independence. Jewish independence. This is a huge date. So, now the Jews coin their own coins.

1:00:57 They have their own, you know, they have their own dating system. They're no longer under the rule of the Seleucid Empire. Because the Maccabees, under the Maccabees, you eventually had this independence given. Because they had fought so many battles and they had won. And here, we have these signs, under Mattathias. You have Mattathias, then Simon. Then Simon dies in 134. And after, who's Simon's son who rules after him? John Hyrcanus. John Hyrcanus is a huge name in Jewish history. John Hyrcanus. Now that you had Jewish independence, let's look at what that looked like. I don't know why they went to the third side.

1:01:49 Maybe it was just because Judas was, he was the, he just had this natural leadership capacity. Yeah, I don't know. I have no clue why he did that. I don't know. But let's look on page 279. On page 279, look at the yellow area, right in the very middle. Where Judea and Perea are. That was the extent of the Jews, of their Jewish independence, of their land. When under Simon, Jewish independence was gained. It's not much, is it? It's just a little bit there in Judea and Perea. But look at all of the dark purple. You have Samaria, Edumea, some of the Phoenicia.

1:02:43 You have Galilee. This is the extent of the Davidic kingdom. The northern area of Samaria and Galilee is conquered. And as well as down below Judea and Edumea. This is the old Davidic dynasty. You guys remember northern kingdom, southern kingdom? Before there were two kingdoms, there were one kingdom. All that land. Under John Hyrcanus, John Hyrcanus is like the Jewish Alexander the Great. He immediately wins battle after battle after battle. And now not only is there Jewish independence, but the Jews are beginning to gain more land. And now you have the Davidic kingdom again. You have all the land is recaptured. Guys, the prophets are being fulfilled in Jewish eyes. We have independence.

1:03:30 We have the land. But there's a problem. This kingdom, this dynasty, what tribe do they come from? What tribe was Mattathias from? Levi. Now, last week, we saw in the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, as well as elsewhere in the Old Testament, that the Messiah would come from what tribe? David. So something's not quite right here. The prophecies aren't quite matching up. We have a Levitical dynasty, not a Jewish dynasty. And Mattathias' great-grandfather was named Hasamoneus. So, Hasamoneus.

1:04:27 And this is where we get Hasmonean from. The word Hasmonean. This dynasty under Mattathias and Simon, and after Simon, John Hyrcanus, after John Hyrcanus, another guy. This dynasty is called the Hasmonean dynasty. H-A-S-M-O-N-A-E-A-N. Okay. And the reason it's called Hasmonean, if you're ever wondering, you know, it's because these people descend from this popular guy, Mattathias' great-grandfather, Hasmoneus. So that's where Hasmonean comes from. So you have this Hasmonean dynasty. It's Levitical, not Davidic. You're conquering all the land. By the way, we know this, not from scripture, that Mattathias' great-grandfather was Asamoneus, but we know this from Josephus, an early Jewish historian, Josephus.

1:05:22 And so the Hasmonean dynasty, but then, and so we have Jewish independence in 142. John Hyrcanus comes to rule in 134 B.C. Things are going good. We see that the kingdom keeps expanding under Aristobulus I and Alexander Johnius, and on page 279, it's continuing to extend. But let's take a sneak peek, a sneak preview, on page 288 of next week's chapter, chapter 16. page 288. We'll see that John Hyrcanus dies in 106.

1:06:23 By the way, it says he died in 104 on the genealogy chart. I don't know if that's a real discrepancy, or whether, there were two calendars. There was the temple calendar and kind of the secular calendar. And so, they may be using two different datings here. But we'll just go with what it says. 106 B.C. John Hyrcanus dies, leaves priesthood to Aristobulus I and government to his wife. Aristobulus kills his mother. That's great. He reigns for how long? A year. Goes to show you, you know, don't kill your mom. You'll only reign for a year. And then, Alexander Johnius is king and high priest from 103 to 76. And then, Salome Alexander is queen from 76 to 67. Her son succeeds her from 67 to 63.

1:07:13 And what happens in 63 B.C.? Pompeii, the Roman, conquers Jerusalem. Guys, Jewish independence, so long, farewell. Hasmonean dynasty? I don't think so. Guess who's going to become the king eventually in 37 B.C.? Herod. An Edomite. You know, Edomea, Edom. A pagan is going to kind of marry in and he's going to become the king. And Herod is cruel. He's vicious. He basically kills all of his family so he can become king.

1:08:01 I mean, Herod, I mean, this is Herod who was alive. This is Herod the Great who, when Jesus was born, was king. And what did Herod do? Killed all the innocent. Because he heard that the Messiah would be arising soon. He was afraid. And so he had all the infants killed. Jesus escapes. This is why Mary and Joseph go down to Egypt to escape the slaughter of the innocents. But in 63 B.C., we have Pompeii coming in and conquering. So what we thought was the fulfillment of Jeremiah, of Isaiah, of Ezekiel, it's happening, it's being fulfilled. No, it's not.

1:08:49 This is a huge letdown to the Jews. So the Romans are now in power, so now we're going to hope for a Messiah who will conquer the Romans. Right? God's trying to show the Jews that he has something else in mind with the Messiah. not political independence and geographical stability, but a different type of kingdom. The Davidic kingdom no less, a descendant of David. But it's not going to be a political and a military kingdom. It's not going to be of this world. Like, like we see, you know, the Persians or the Romans or the Babylonians. God is teaching the Jews that it's going to be different by this continual upset.

1:09:38 and sometimes in our lives we continually have upset. But it's God's will. God is stopping things from happening the way we want it to happen because he has something greater in mind. I was reading about the founding of Opus Dei by Dr. Scott Hahn in Ordinary Work, Extraordinary Grace, My Spiritual Journey in Opus Dei. And he was talking about Jose Maria Escriva, St. Jose Maria Escriva. And when he very first founded Opus Dei, which is Latin for work of God, he prayed to God, God, if this is not your will, crush it. If Opus Dei is not your will, crush it.

1:10:26 And now, and Opus Dei has been growing by leaps and bounds and people are being drawn to this charism of living out their baptismal priesthood in the secular world and it's just, it's been, it's incredibly faithful to the church, it's very orthodox, it's a wonderful organization, it wasn't God's will to crush it. But sometimes, it is God's will to crush things. Like, what the Jews thought that they had. This type of independence. In 63 B.C. Because he is going to send the Messiah, it's going to be imminent, the kingdom is going to be imminent, the Messiah is going to come, and then he's going to die. And he's going to look like a failed Messiah. But then he's going to rise on the third day, he's going to send to heaven to the throne of his father David, we're told by Peter at Pentecost, and then we're going to have the church.

1:11:15 The kingdom. But the church, I mean, isn't this political, military kingdom here on earth, it's primarily a heavenly kingdom. We see this in the book of Revelation, where John is describing the throne, but the throne's not here on earth, it's up in heaven. And as the angels and the saints pray in heaven, so events happen on earth. And so we have a heavenly kingdom that's extended to earth. But we'll see more about this next week when we go into chapter 16, the world of the New Testament. And we'll look at the history of, you know, why did the Pharisees arise, the Sadducees, the Maccabees, after them, Herod the Great.

1:12:05 We're going to look at all this history, and then it's going to be on January the 9th and the 10th when we come back in the spring that we're going to really get into the New Testament. Let's go ahead and close in prayer, and then I have some announcements for right afterwards. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Lord Jesus, thank you for this evening. Thank you for the gift of this Bible study. Thank you for the gift of your Messiah. Thank you for those crushed plans that you have taken away when you know better, when your will is better than our own. And so we praise you and we give you we give you praise. I'm going to pray this prayer in this prayer book.

1:13:10 Here it is. Lord Jesus Christ, take all my freedom, my memory, my understanding, and my will. All that I have and cherish you have given to me. I surrender it all to be guided by your will. Your grace and your love are wealth enough for me. Give me all these Lord Jesus and I ask for nothing more. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.