THE BOOK OF DANIEL AND
ANTIOCHUS IV’S PERSECUTION OF
THE JEWS
Dr. Benjamin Scolnic
1 Maccabees 1
The king wrote to all his kingdom, for all to
become one people and for each to abandon his
own customs. Many Israelites accepted his
religion and sacrificed to idols and violated the
Sabbath. The king set letters … containing orders
… to violate Sabbaths and festivals, to defile
temple and holy things …… to leave their sons
uncircumcised ….so as to forget the Torah and
violate all the commandments. Whoever
disobeyed the word of the king was put to death.
The Persecution was Historical
“What provoked the persecution by Epiphanes
remains an enigma in spite of intense study by
many scholars, but a persecution there was, and
the war it provoked is history’s first recorded
struggle for religious liberty.” - Shaye Cohen
“As for historicity, there can be no doubt about the
main claim, that Antiochus issued and enforced
decrees against the practice of Judaism.” - Seth
Schwartz
Tcherikover
It was not the revolt which came as a response to the persecution, but
the persecution which came as a response to the revolt. Only on this
assumption can we understand Antiochus’ decrees and their political
purpose. The Jewish faith was faced, not after Antiochus’ decree, but
before it, with the alternative of renouncing its existence or of fighting
for its life.
Bickerman
1 Macc 1 is historically false; the impetus for the
persecution came not from Antiochus IV but from the
Jewish Hellenists, Menelaus and his allies, who wanted to
change the very nature of Judaism.
But 2 Maccabees says:
2 Macc 6:1 states that Antiochus:
sent Geron the Athenian to compel the Jews to depart from
their ancestral laws and to cease living by the laws of G-d. He
was also to defile … the temple in Jerusalem … and to
proclaim (it) to be the temple of Zeus Olympius.
Bringmann
• What caused such a strong reaction from the
conservative Jews was that the Syrians who lived
in the Akra dedicated the Temple to Zeus.
• For this reason, the High Priest Menelaus
instituted a new cult combining the Jewish god,
Baal Shamem and Zeus; Antiochus IV officially
issued the edict to begin this new cult.
• Some Jews rose in rebellion against what they
considered to be an outrage.
Mittag
The origins of the persecution are to be found in the
interplay between Seleucid officials and Jewish groups;
Antiochus’s role was limited.
The question remains…
Why would a religious persecution be the
response to a political uprising?
Towards a new theory
Based on:
• Daniel 11
• Antiochus IV’s biography
• The theory of Jonathan Goldstein
• Seleucid coinage
The Scorned Prince
Daniel 11:21:
There will stand in his place a scorned man who was not
given the splendor of royalty and he will come and take the
kingdom/kingship with schemes.
What Antiochus Adapted from Rome
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Toga!
Ran for office
Sat in an ivory curule chair
Reviewed the soldiers in triumphal processions
Gladiators
Employed Roman architects
Goldstein
Antiochus IV models his persecution on the one against
the Bacchants in Rome when he was a hostage there in
the 180’s BCE.
The Persecution in Rome
186 BCE to the Senatus consultum de
Bacchanalibus, by which the Bacchanalia were
prohibited throughout all Italy (Ab urbe
condita 39.8–39.18). Measures conducted over a
span of five years took the lives of seven thousand
people, the majority through execution, and
caused great terror inside and outside of the city,
numerous suicides, and a mass flight from Rome.
According to Cicero, the measures even included
military attacks (De legibus 2.15.37).
Polytheism and Persecution?
While Hume and others have claimed a strong
interrelationship between monotheism and religious
persecution, is it possible that polytheistic societies were
capable of systematic religious exclusion and
persecution?
So it is fair to conclude …
… that Antiochus IV took all of this in. He had
come to Rome not as a child but as an adult who
could integrate his experiences in sophisticated
ways. He was an extremely ambitious man, a
smart and crafty survivor who was skilled in
warfare and diplomacy.
It is at least plausible that he integrated aspects
of his experience in Rome into his view of how
the power of a state can be applied.
Appian
Afterward, on the death of Antiochus the Great, his son
succeeded him and gave his son as a hostage to the
Romans in place of his brother. When the latter arrived at
Athens on his way home, Seleucus was assassinated as
the result of a conspiracy of a certain Heliodorus, one of
the court officers.
Heliodorus and Seleucus IV in Dan 11:20
His place will be taken by one who will dispatch an
officer to exact tribute for royal glory, but he will be
broken in a few days, not by wrath or by war.
2 Maccabees 3
Heliodorus’s supernatural epiphany in 2 Macc 3
can be read as his culminating realization that the
rights of Seleucid provinces and of their temples
and cults must be respected and that they should
not be taxed oppressively for the desires of the
kingship. Heliodorus explains this position to
Seleucus IV, who still continues to pursue his
policies of financial accumulation at the expense of
his subjects.
Appian
When Heliodorus sought to possess himself of the
government he was driven out by Eumenes and Attalus,
who installed Antiochus therein in order to secure his goodwill …
The Gradual Rise of Antiochus IV
While scholars think of Antiochus as attaining
immediate absolute power right after the
assassination of his brother Seleucus IV, Dan
11:21–24 makes it clear that the internal power
struggle to control the Seleucid kingdom
continues from 175–170.
We cannot understand the Antiochene
persecution if we do not understand the career
and methods of Antiochus IV.
The Scorned Prince
Daniel 11:21:
There will stand in his place a scorned man who was not
given the splendor of royalty and he will come and take the
kingdom/kingship with schemes.
11:22
The forces of the flood, including the prince with whom he made a
compact, will be overwhelmed and broken by him.
11:23
And, from the time an alliance is made with him, he will
practice deceit; and he will rise to power with a small
nation.
Dan 11:24
He will invade the richest of provinces unawares, and will do what his
father and forefathers never did, lavishing on them spoil, booty, and
wealth; he will have designs upon strongholds, but only for a time.
Dan 11:21-24 is correct
Antiochus IV became Regent in 175 shortly
after the assassination of Seleucus IV.
Antiochus IV married the boy king’s mother
and for several years, intrigued, plotted
and put his friends in positions of power,
Just as Dan 11:21-24 states.
He may have become co-king in 172
but he was not sole king until 170/69.
The Coins of the Boy Antiochus
We have no less than twelve different coins, from
no less than four different cities and at least
nineteen different moneyers (at least fourteen from
Antioch on the Orontes, two each from Tarsus and
Antioch in Persis and one from Tyre) that
represent the kingship and legitimate succession
of the boy King Antiochus, son of Seleucus IV and
Laodice IV. He must have been king for several
years.
Babylonian Evidence
• The Astronomical Diary entry BM 34036 = Sp.
132 corroborates the idea that Antiochus IV was
not sole king until 170 or 169.
• The Babylonian King List even differentiates
between the date of the execution of Antiochus
son of Seleucus IV in 170 and the sole kingship
of Antiochus IV in 169.
Dan 8:23–25
impudent and versed in intrigue who will destroy the mighty
and the people of holy ones. By his cunning, he will use
deceit successfully. He will make great plans, will destroy
many, taking them unawares.
The Rise and Fall of Jason
• The gradual rise of Antiochus during those years
provides the political context for the rise and fall
of Jason and the rise of Menelaus in Judaea.
Antiochus IV replaces Onias III with his brother
Jason as the high priest of Judaea because
Jason promises the kinds of sums Seleucus IV
had sought. Antiochus IV gradually replaces
supporters of Heliodorus and the young king
Antiochus with those more loyal to him, such as
several Milesians (Dan 11:22), and with those
who promise him even more money, such as
Jason in 175/74 and Menelaus in 172.
The Day of Eleusis 168 BCE
• Antiochus IV, now completely in command, centralizing
power and financial resources better than his brother,
successfully invades Egypt in 169 (the Sixth Syrian War).
He places his nephew Ptolemy VI in power as his puppet.
But the young man allies himself with his sister and
brother and rejects Antiochus IV, who then invades again
in 168. Though successful again, he is repulsed by the
Romans at the ‘Day of Eleusis’ (Polybius, Livy, etc.). This
is a dramatic humiliation that threatens the perception of
his power in his own kingdom.
Jason’s Attempted Coup
• Thinking that Antiochus IV is dead in Egypt, the
former High Priest Jason attacks Jerusalem in an
effort to displace Menelaus. Humiliated in Egypt,
Antiochus needs to make the case that he is still
in control. In repulsing Jason and punishing what
at least seemed to be a rebellion, Antiochus uses
Judaea to make a dramatic case for his power by
demonstrating that he can control everything
including the ritual observances of the most
fervent religious adherents in his world, the
Judaeans.
Dan. 11:29-30
At the appointed time he will return
And he will come to the south
but the second time will not be like the first time
And the ships of Cyprus will come back with him
But he will be driven out
And he will return, raging against the holy covenant.
The Roman Model
In so doing, he uses the model of the persecution of the
Bacchants that he had personally witnessed while a
hostage in Rome.
Conclusion
• Antiochus IV learned in Rome that religious persecution
can be a weapon in the arsenal of political power. Jason’s
rebellion in 168, motivated by rumors of Antiochus’s death
but really at the moment of his political humiliation, was a
pretext for a demonstration of such power.
• For all of the modern theories, the Bible knew this
thousands of years ago.