Elazar the Hasmonean אלעזר החשמונאי
brother of Yehuda, killed beneath a war elephant
At Beit Zechariah the Greeks brought war elephants against the Jews for the first time, having first shown them the juice of grapes and mulberries to enrage them. One elephant stood higher than the rest and carried a royal tower; Elazar took Antiochus V to be riding it and went for it through the ranks, "killing on the right and on the left, so that they parted before him." He got under the beast and stabbed it in the belly. It fell and crushed him.
The king was not on that elephant. The book of Maccabees says of him briefly: "and he gave himself to save his people and to make himself an everlasting name." The Jews lost the battle and fell back on Jerusalem. The name, though, remained: in Jewish memory Elazar stands beside his brother as a measure of self-sacrifice rather than of success.
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Sources
Documents of the period
- 1 Maccabees 6:32–47 — the battle of Beit Zechariah and his death beneath the elephant
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 12:373–376 — the same account in Josephus
Basis: documents and evidence.