lethargic_man | Monday, April 2nd, 2012

The miracle of Chanukah is normally regarded as the military victory over the Seleucids, winning Judea's independence. I've elsewhere heard it said that actually the Hasmoneans were able to take advantage of the fact the Seleucid empire was disintegrating. ( Read more... )

More early influence of the Romans (XIII.4.113):( Read more... )

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Letting the son of the king be brought up by an Arabian called Malchus (or "Malichus" in War)? Somehow, I suspect it'll all end in tears. (Malik is Arabic for "king"; the χ here probably reflects the old Greek pronunciation, as as aspirated K (/k^h/) rather than a /kh/ sound as in כ.)( Read more... )

XIII.5.167 follows up the earlier mention of the Jews' and Spartans' alleged relationship:( Read more... )

XIII.171.3 gives a somewhat odd definition of the three sects of Judaism at the time:( Read more... )

As I mentioned beforehand, the Hasmonean leadership only gradually, over many years, made Judaea into an independent kingdom. ( Read more... )

XIII.6.215:

[Simon] also took the citadel of Jerusalem by siege, and cast it down to the ground, that it might not be any more a place of refuge to their enemies when they took it, to do them a mischief, as it had been till now. ( Read more... )

So where was this citadel? That's a good question.

( How the Hasmoneans, religious fundamentalists who killed Hellenisers, became Hellenised themselves within three generations )

( Antiochus the Pious, who gave the Jews bulls to sacrifice at Succos, even whilst besieging Jerusalem )

( Evidence that the prohibition on travelling beyond the _teḥum_ on Shabbos already existed in the second century BCE )

( Destruction of the Samaritan Temple )

From time to time Josephus gives an explanation of the differences between the Pharisees and Sadducees; that in XIII.10.295 agrees with what I would have generally have thought to be their biggest difference:( The Sadducees reject the Oral Law of the Pharisees. The question is to what extent the Oral Law goes back to antiquity, and the value of _Antiquities_ in providing evidence for this going back three and a centuries before the time of the Mishna )

XIII.11.308 reveals that Queen Shlomtzion (probably best known to my Jewish readers by having a street in Jerusalem named after her, and to my non-Jewish readers by her Greek name, Salome Alexandra) took part in the plot to have her own son killed:( Read more... )

As the following passage reveals, this is not the town called Strato's Tower, but another place with the same name. Who's Tower, I hear you ask. This is the town you will be familiar with (if you're familiar at all with Israel) under the name Caesarea, the name it was given when it was refounded on a much larger scale by Herod the Great. I was then intrigued to know how far back the town went under it's old name, because I had never heard of it. The Jewish Encyclopaedia says:( Read more... )

Aristobulus was succeeded by his brother Alexander Yannai, about whom Josephus tells an amusing episode (XIII.13.372):

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[pelted with citrons (well, lemons)]
Shamelessly including a picture (from here), as last time it got some people to read my post

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Alexander Yannai was a bit of a bad egg( Read more... )

One can see why Jesus fled from him, in the Talmudic story in which Jesus is misattributed to his time (possibly a confusion of Jesuses?). <checks Wikipedia> Ah, in BT Sotah 47a and Sanhedrin 107 it says:

What was the case of Rabbi Joshua ben Perahiah? When King Yannai put the Rabbis to death. [Shim'on ben Shetah was hidden by his sister and] Rabbi Joshua ben Perahiah and Yeshu fled to Alexandria in Egypt.

So, most definitely a bad egg, then. (If you're interested in the full story about Jesus, which is pretty much the only one in the Talmud in which Jesus is portrayed sympathetically, you can read it here.

Josephus notes