Antiochus IV and the Decrees against the Torah

Antiochus IV, who called himself Epiphanes—'God manifest'—ruled a Seleucid kingdom in trouble: humiliated by Rome in the west, its treasury empty, held together by a shared Greek culture. Judea, with its separate law, obstructed that unity, and Antiochus dealt with the obstacle directly.

He first interfered in the High Priesthood, selling the office to Jason and then to Menelaus for money and promises of faster Hellenization; a gymnasium opened at the foot of the Temple Mount. Returning from a failed Egyptian campaign he entered the Temple and carried off the golden altar, the Menorah, the table and the vessels. In 3596 came decrees of a new kind: no Shabbat, no circumcision, no sanctifying the new moon, no study of Torah. Scrolls were burned. A statue of Zeus was set up in the Temple and swine offered on the altar. Officials toured the towns demanding that elders publicly sacrifice to an idol.

The first martyrs for faith appeared: the elder Elazar, who refused even to pretend to eat forbidden food, and the woman with seven sons executed one by one before her eyes, whom tradition names Hannah. These decrees, not taxes or occupation, made revolt inevitable.

After Alexander the divergence of the chronologies nearly disappears: both rest on the same Greek and Roman documents. The remainder of a year or two is the difference between the traditional count and the date refined from external sources.