Armstrong Chapter 6

So I've read this colorful history before: Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, and on it goes. Armstrong tries to do a good job of describing "what really happened" in the city but I still find so much speculation even as we move further from the haziness of antiquity. It's impossible to tell just the history of Jerusalem without also discussing the history, development, and philosophies of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Someone mentioned how they could not imagine the fusion of church and state. Back in the day, the church or religion WAS the state. There was no state as we know of it today, there were empires with kings who ruled by divine right. Some placated their conquered subjects by making overtures to existing religious traditions or by visiting shrines. Others asserted their religious supremacy by destroying these shrines.

One such group who tried to assert their way of life on others, in the Jewish tradition at least, were the Syrian-Greeks led by Antiochus. The chapter called Antioch in Judea introduces us to Hellenism and the story of Chanukah. Armstrong actually does a pretty decent job at recreating the the background to the story. Obviously, the military victory of the Maccabees over the Greeks represents something far greater for Jews than Armstrong lets on, but in the long history of Jerusalem, the Hasmonean Kingdom is but a blip. The Hasmoneans were great warriors who saved Jews from persecution and Judaism from assimilation. However, as we see time and time again, they turned into brutal oppressors themselves. That really sucks.