Page 33 - Attractive Deception - The False Hope of the Hebrew Roots Movement

the crown tax and other taxes also. And that the city may the sooner recover its inhabitants, I grant
a discharge from taxes for three years to its present inhabitants, and to such as shall come to it, until
the month Hyperheretus. We also discharge them for the future from a third part of their taxes, that
the losses they have sustained may be repaired. And all those citizens that have been carried away,
and are become slaves, we grant them and their children their freedom, and give order that their
substance be restored to them."

This letter, written by the Seleucid ruler, an ancestor of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, demonstrates that
the Greeks were not only content to allow the Jews to continue their own form of worship, but were
taking steps to help them restore the Temple and to bring back the scattered Jews to the land of
Palestine. Although there was undoubtedly a growing religious conflict between the Orthodox Jews
and the growing number of Hellenized Jews, a conflict in some ways mirrored in Israel today
between the Orthodox and secular Jews, a great deal of the conflict with the Greek rulers was
political.

Historical records reveal that a quarrel about taxation arose during the reign of Ptolemy III Euergetes
(246-221 B.C.) and the Jewish High Priest Onias. The quarrel resulted in the appointment in 242
B.C. of Joseph, son of Tobiah, a nephew of the High Priest, to the office of tax collector. This led
to a rivalry between the Jewish Tobiad family and the Oniad High Priests. Similar disputes continued
after the Seleucids gained control of Palestine. Those Jews that were content with Greek rule and
culture were viewed as traitors by the Orthodox Jews.

Sometime prior to 168 B.C. an influential segment of the Jews revolted against the Greeks. This
resulted in the Seleucid King taking away from the Jews their autonomy and forbidding them access
to the Temple. This latter step points to the Jewish religious leaders being the source of the revolt.
These acts by the Greeks were taken only when a conquered people proved to be rebellious. Most
Jewish and Christian information about the Maccabean Revolt comes from the books of I and II
Maccabees. These are books written by Jews, and as such they can be expected to paint a historic
picture that is slanted in favor of the Jews, and particularly of the Maccabees who became leaders
of the Hasmonean Dynasty.

Recommended Reading
http://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/re-examining-hanukkah/3/
http://www.orinst.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/files/Documents-Maccabees.pdf

I and II Maccabees, although included in the Apocrypha to the Bible, are not considered part of the
canon of Scripture. They should not be deemed to be “Spirit breathed,” and their historical narrative
should be examined for evidence of historic revisionism. The recording of Jewish history is no
different than that of any other people in that it has included a great may deceivers and unfaithful
witnesses.

I do not doubt that after some act of rebellion by the Jews, the Greeks did suppress the free exercise
of the Jewish faith. Nor do I doubt that they defiled the Temple in Jerusalem. It would have been in
keeping with the practice of the Greeks to convert the use of a rebellious people’s holy places to the
worship of Zeus or other Greek deities, and it is recorded by numerous sources that this is in fact