Statement
At first, as Bickerman proposed, the revolt may have been less a rebellion against foreign rule than an internal Jewish civil war, with the Maccabees attacking Jewish collaborators first.
References
p. 76
reports disagreement · main text · ch. 3
Efron, Lehmann and Weitzman. The Jews: A History. 3rd edition. New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2019.
Verification anchor recorded · checked against the page text
Scholarly debate
Why did Antiochus IV persecute Jewish religious practice?
5 positions · no single answer · take a seat →
- A
Mental instability
Some scholars
On this view, Antiochus suffered from a mental disorder. The thesis draws support from his reputation for bizarre behavior and from a contemporary joke that turned his title Epiphanes into Epimanes, 'the madman'.
- B
Claim to divinity
A hypothesis mentioned by the authors
As the title Epiphanes ('god manifest') suggests, he may have considered himself divine and resented the Jews' failure to worship him, as the emperor Caligula would later do.
- C
Anti-Jewish prejudice
Apion, a Greek writer of the first century CE
According to Apion, Antiochus acted out of indignation at supposed Jewish barbarity (the kidnapping and sacrifice of young Greeks). The authors judge that the account reveals more about Apion's prejudice than about the king's motives, and note that it anticipates the medieval blood libel.
- D
Pragmatic motives
Other scholars
On this view, the king acted for financial, political or military reasons: to reassert himself after his humiliating withdrawal from Egypt under Roman pressure, or to obtain the Temple's resources.
- E
Internal Jewish conflict
Elias Bickerman
On this reading, Antiochus became entangled in a conflict between cosmopolitan reformers (the priests Jason and Menelaus) and a religiously conservative faction. The idea of banning circumcision and the Sabbath would have come from the reformers, and the revolt would have been primarily a civil war.