Jeremy Rosen
Hasmoneans and Greeks
Summary
As we approach Chanukah and in the current series about leadership, we will examine the Hasmonean rulers and their styles of leadership, for better and worse.
Jeremy Rosen
Manchester-born Jeremy Rosen was educated at Cambridge University England and Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem. He has practiced as an orthodox rabbi, as principal of Carmel College in the UK, and as professor at the Faculty for Comparative Religion in Antwerp, Belgium. He has written and lectured extensively in the UK and the US, where he now resides and was the rabbi of the Persian-Jewish community in Manhattan.
Well, that’s a good thing. Remember, there were Pharisees, like John Hyrcanus, sorry, there were Maccabees like John Hyrcanus and by Alexander Yanna'y, who massacred the Pharisees, who hated them, who either killed them, or sent them into exile. So the Maccabees aligned more with the Sadducees than they did with the Pharisees. It was only Salome Alexandra who brought the Pharisees back, and then the Pharisees managed to control affairs when the Temple’s destroyed, and when the Maccabees were off the scene. And they became the dominant element within Judaism that we know today. So the Maccabees changed alliance whenever it suited them, but most of the time, they were identified with the Sadducees.
That’s a very good, very good answer, question. They are interchangeable. They were used that way by different texts we rely on. So we rely both on the Books of Maccabees, which were written both in Hebrew, well, one in Hebrew and then translated into Greek, and then one in Greek and translate into Hebrew. And they chose a Greek base name, and the Jewish tradition, which tried the both “Hasmona'im,” but also had the idea of Judah Maccabee, which was directly referring to Judah because they liked the idea of Judah, and weren’t so happy with the Hasmonean Dynasty. So it was a matter of convenience, as no doubt in due course, it will be a matter of convenience as to whether the United Kingdom will be called the United Kingdom anymore.