A History of Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths. Karen Armstrong
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in Jerusalem. The first sign of the rift occurred in about 180, when the high priest Onias III, the son of Simon II, was accused of hoarding a large sum of money in the Temple treasury. King Seleucus IV immediately dispatched his vizier Heliodorus from Antioch to Jerusalem to recover the money, which, he believed, was owed to the Seleucid state. By this date, enthusiasm for the Seleucids had waned in the city. In 192, Antiochus III had suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the advancing Roman army, which had annexed Greece and much of Anatolia. He was allowed to keep his throne only on condition that he paid an extremely heavy indemnity and annual tribute. His successors were, therefore, always chronically short of money. Seleucus IV probably assumed that since the charter obliged him to pay all the expenses of the Jerusalem cult out of his own revenues, he had the right to control the Temple finances. But he had reckoned without Jewish sensitivity about the Temple, which now surfaced for the first time. When Heliodorus arrived in Jerusalem and insisted on confiscating the money in the Temple coffers, the people were overcome with horror. Onias became deathly pale and trembled convulsively; women ran through the streets, clad in sackcloth, and young girls leaned out of their windows calling on heaven for aid. The integrity of the Temple was saved by a miracle. As he approached the treasury, Heliodorus was struck to the ground in a paralytic fit. Afterward he testified that he had seen the Jewish god with his own eyes.
The incident was a milestone: henceforth any attack on the Temple was likely to provoke a riot in Jerusalem. Over the years, the Temple had come to express the essence of Judaism; it had been placed in the center of the emotional map of the Jews, constituting the heart of their beleaguered identity. It was regarded as the core of the nation, the source of its life, creativity, and survival. The Temple still exerted a centripetal pull on the hearts and minds of those Jews who carried out the directives of the Torah. Even in the diaspora, Jews now turned toward Jerusalem when they prayed and had begun to make the long pilgrimage to the holy city to celebrate the great festivals in the Temple. The psalms, prayers, and sacred writings all encouraged them to see the Temple as paradise on earth, an objective correlative for God himself. As Jews struggled to preserve a distinct identity in the midst of a world that urged them to assimilate, the Temple and its city had become an embattled enclave. Gentiles were not allowed anywhere near the Temple buildings, and any attempt to violate that holy separateness was experienced collectively by the people as a rape. This was not a rational position: it was a gut reaction, instinctive and immediate.
But the crisis of 180 did not end with Heliodorus’s stroke. There were insinuations that Onias had somehow been responsible for his illness and he felt bound to go to the Seleucid court to clear his name. But he had played into the hands of his enemies. While he was at Antioch, his ambitious brother Joshua—or Jason, as he preferred to be called—curried favor with King Seleucus and offered him a hefty bribe in return for the high priesthood. Seleucus was only too happy to agree, and Onias was forced to flee the court and was later murdered. But high priest Jason was not a conservative like his brother. The Torah had become meaningless to him, and he wanted his people to enjoy the freedoms of a wider world by adopting the Greek lifestyle. Soon after he had taken office, King Seleucus was also murdered, by his brother Antiochus Epiphanes, and Jason offered the new king a further sum of money, asking in return that the old charter of 200 be revoked. He did not want Judah to continue to be an old-fashioned temple state based on the Torah. Instead, he hoped that Jerusalem would become a polis known as Antioch after its royal patron. Ever in need of cash, Antiochus accepted the money and agreed to Jason’s program, which, he hoped, would consolidate his authority in Judah.
But Jerusalem could not become a polis overnight. A significant number of the citizens had to be sufficiently versed in Greek culture to become Hellenes before the democratic ideal could be imposed on the city. As an interim measure, Jason probably had leave to establish a society of “Antiochenes,” who were committed to the Hellenizing project. A gymnasion was established in Jerusalem, provocatively close to the Temple, where the young Jews had the opportunity to study Homer, Greek philosophy, and music; they competed naked in the sporting events. But until Jerusalem was a full-fledged polis, the Torah was still the law of the land, and it is therefore unlikely that Hermes and Herakles were honored in the Jerusalem gymnasion. Jason’s plans received a good deal of popular support during this first phase. We hear of no opposition to the gymnasion in the biblical sources. As soon as the gong sounded for the athletic exercises, the priests used to hurry down from the Temple Mount to take part. Priests, landowners, merchants, and craftsmen were all attracted to the challenge of Hellenism and probably hoped that a more open society would improve Jerusalem’s economy. There had always been opposition to the segregationalist policies of Nehemiah and Ezra, and many of the Jews of Jerusalem were attracted by the Greek ideal of world citizenship. They did not feel that Judaism was necessarily incompatible with the Hellenic world. Perhaps Moses could be compared to a lawgiver such as Lycurgus? The Torah was not necessarily a sacrosanct value: Abraham had not obeyed the mitzvoth
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