He attacked their flanks and their rear and surprised them by sudden assaults in the middle of the night.When,however,the Syrians made halt and drew up their regiments in battle formation,Judas and his followers would vanish into the mountains.But as soon as their exasperated opponents had grown tired of waiting and had relaxed their guard,they returned,and killed them off by small detachments.
After several years of this sort of skirmishing,Judas had so skilfully strengthened his position that he could risk an expedition against Jerusalem.
He took the city and the Temple was restored in all its former glory and holiness.
Unfortunately,just when at the height of his fame,Judas was killed in a skirmish and the Jews once more were without a leader.
John and Eleazar Maccabee were both dead.
John had been captured in ambush a few years before and had been executed,while Eleazar had accidentally been crushed by a war-elephant.
Jonathan,the youngest,was elected commander-in-chief,but he held his office for only a few weeks.Then he was murdered by a Syrian officer and the leadership fell to Simon,the only surviving son of old Mattathias.
Meanwhile on the other side,Antiochus had died.
His son had succeeded him;but immediately afterwards,Demetrius Soter,a nephew of Antiochus,had returned from Rome,had murdered his cousin,and in the year 162had proclaimed himself King of the greater part of western Asia.
This was a stroke of luck for the Jews.
Demetrius was beset by so many difficulties at home,that he could not afford the extra burden of a Jewish revolution.
He made peace with Simon Maccabee,who thereafter ruled over Judah as “High Priest and Governor,”a somewhat vague dignity which we can best compare to the position held eighteen centuries later by Oliver Cromwell,when he was made “Lord High Protector of England.”
The outside world,impressed by the ability of the Maccabees,virtually recognised the new Jewish state as an independent kingdom and accepted the “High Priest and Governor”as the legitimate ruler of a new country.
Then the High Priest set to work to put order into his state.He concluded treaties with his neighbours.
Coins were struck with his picture.
The army recognised him as their chief.
When he and two of his sons were murdered in the year 135B.C.,the Maccabee family was so firmly established that the throne automatically descended to John,called Hyrcanus,who ruled for almost thirty years and was the recognised sovereign of a small but well organized kingdom in which Jehovah was worshipped according to the most rigid exactions of the ancient laws and in which no foreigner was tolerated,except for a short visit,connected with important business.
But alas!as soon as a period of comparative peace had been inaugurated,the Jews once more became a victim of those old religious discussions and controversies which in bygone days had done so much harm to their land.
Theoretically,the country was still a theocracy.The High Priest was recognised as the highest official of the state and as Mattathias Maccabee had belonged to a family of hereditary priests,everything was according to the strict interpretation of the law.
But the world was moving rapidly.
The idea of a theocracy had died out long since in all other parts of Asia and Europe and Africa.
It was practically impossible to maintain it in this little land-locked community,surrounded on all sides by people who had willingly adopted the modern Greek and Roman ideas upon the subject of statecraft.
Under pressure from abroad,the Jews were now beginning to be divided into three distinct and separate parties,each one of which believed in a different set of principles of government and worship.
These three groups were to play a very important role in the history of the next two centuries.It is therefore necessary to discuss them in some detail.
Most important of all were the Pharisees.
We do not know much about their origin.
The party seems to have been founded during the difficult years preceding the Maccabean revolt.For as soon as Mattathias had raised his brave sword in token of revolt,he found himself backed up by a group of men who were known as the “Hasideans,”or “the pious.”
When the struggle for independence had been crowned with success,and when the first religious enthusiasm was beginning to wane,the Hasideans,under the new name of the “Pharisees,”came to the front and maintained themselves until the end of the independent kingdom.
Even the fury of Titus,the Emperor,could not subdue their ardour and many of them have survived until this very day,although they are no longer restricted to the old Jewish faith.
The Pharisees were exactly what the Hebrew name implied.They were the “separated people.”They were different from the rest of the people on account of their fanatical allegiance to the letter of the law.
They knew the ancient books of Moses by heart.Every word,almost every letter,suggested something to them.
They lived in a world of strange ordinances and even more incomprehensible taboos.There were a few things which they must do and a thousand things which they must omit doing.
They and only they were the true followers of almighty Jehovah.While the rest of humanity was condemned to eternal perdition,the Pharisees,by their painstaking obedience to every comma and every exclamation mark in the law,were sure to enter the kingdom of Heaven.
Generation after generation,they spent the valuable hours of the day and of the night,poring over the ancient scrolls,explaining,annotating,expounding,interpreting and elucidating obscure and totally irrelevant details of some half forgotten sentence in a dark Chapter of Exodus.
They made a virtue of great public humility.
But in their heart of hearts,they were inordinately proud of those qualities which distinguished them (in their own eyes)from all other men and women,for whom,to speak the truth,they felt only the deepest contempt.
