The robbery & murder behind the story of Hanukka

It is often the minor characters that play a pivotal role. So it is in the story of Hanukka, where every Jewish child knows the names of Judas Maccabeus and Antiochus Epiphanes, but who has heard of Heliodorus, intimate "friend of the emperor" Seleucus IV or chief minister of the empire, as he is called in the Second Book of Maccabees?

As in all good battles over religion, money plays an important part, and it certainly did so in the case of the Seleucids, the Syrian-Greeks, versus the Maccabees. Emperors are always short of cash, and use their powers of taxation to obtain it. But when times are hard, they pursue conquest and robbery to get their hands on it. So it was with the Seleucid emperors and the events of the revolt that led up to Hanukka.

We have to go back to 187 BCE, when Seleucus IV succeeded to the throne of his father Antiochus III, aka Antiochus the Great. Antiochus had wrested Coele-Syria, later called Palestine, from the Ptolemies of Egypt, who had held it for a hundred years after the death of Alexander the Great. The emerging Romans, not happy to see an expansion of the Seleucid Empire, finally accepted it as fait accompli but they imposed a heavy fine on Antiochus the Great in 188 BCE.

Before that, the Jews of Jerusalem had welcomed Antiochus by opening the city gates to his army in 200 BCE in return for which he had given them a charter that allowed them to live according to their ancestral ways, exempted the priests from taxes and even made royal contributions to the Temple upkeep and sacrifices.

When Antiochus the Great died, Seleucus IV continued the benevolent policies of his father and the contributions to the Temple. But he soon ran out of funds, and was interested to learn that the Temple housed a very great treasure.

The game had been given away by Simon of Bilgah, who was deputy to High Priest Onias III, and on bad terms with him. Simon had told the local Seleucid governor that the Temple contained "untold riches... and suggested that these... might be brought under the control of the king" (II Maccabees 3:6).

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