The Hammer: A Story of the Maccabean Times

by Alfred John Church; Richmond Seeley

Long gaps were made in the line of wall, so long that it took not a few days to make them, and would certainly require as many weeks to repair. The town thus made defenceless was further overawed by the erection of a fort in the City of David, this fort being held by a strong garrison of Greeks and Asiatic mercenaries.

The means of repression thus provided, the next thing was to extinguish all that was characteristic of the national life. First, the great centre of that life, the Temple, was formally desecrated. Already it had been subjected to such indignities that the pious Jew could scarcely bear to enter [pg 95]its precincts. But the final horror, the “abomination of desolation,” was yet to come. On the 15th of the month Chisleu (December) an altar of a Greek pattern, and consecrated to the Olympian Zeus, was placed on the great altar of sacrifice, and ten days afterwards a huge sow was slaughtered on this. Her blood, caught after the Greek fashion in a bowl, was sprinkled on the altar of incense and on the mercy-seat within the Holy of Holies—a hideous mockery of the sprinkling which the Law enjoined to be performed once in every year. From the animal’s flesh a mess of broth was prepared, and this was sprinkled on the copies of the Law. The Temple, thus dishonoured, was as if it had ceased to be.

The meeting-houses, in which, as we have seen, the people had found a substitute for the Temple worship, were summarily closed. An edict was issued commanding that every one who possessed a copy of the Law, or of any one of the sacred books, should give it up without loss of time. To call in cupidity to the aid of fear in enforcing this edict, the King’s officers were instructed to pay a reasonable price for the manuscripts thus produced. It was made a capital offence to read or to recite any part of the proscribed writings. Then the practice of circumcision was forbidden. Death was to be the penalty for all who should take any part in performing this rite—for the circumciser, the mother, the father, even the babe itself.

And then to the policy of repression Antiochus added the policy of bribery and temptation. Their own worship forbidden, the Jews were to be allured by the seductions of the worship of their masters. Hitherto little had been done in this way. Insults indeed, had been heaped upon the people; but little attempt had been made to attract them. The Temple gates, closed for more than a year, were again thrown open; and the courts, long silent, resounded with the mirth of sacrificial banquets and the gaiety of festivals. Not only all the splendours, but all the impure pleasures of heathen worship were called in to assist the attempt that was being made to sap what was left of the faith of the people.

Antiochus, who, for all his wrath at Jewish obstinacy, could not help feeling a certain respect for it, took the trouble to send among the people a missionary, if he may be so called, who was to instruct them in the new religion which their King was so anxious to impose upon them.

Theopompus, or Athenæus, to use the name which was commonly given him from his birthplace, was a follower of the philosophy of Epicurus. He had held a subordinate post, as lecturer in geometry, in the famous school of the Garden, but had found his modest income insufficient to meet his somewhat expensive tastes. If he had had but a tolerable competence, Athenæus would have made an ideal [pg 97]Epicurean. He was devoted to pleasure, but there was nothing unseemly or extravagant about his devotion. For the foolish people who ruined their constitutions and emptied their purses by exhausting excesses he had a genuine contempt. “Give me,” he would say, “a decent sufficiency of ‘outside things,’ and I am content.” As he had a fair smattering of culture, and a real acquaintance with geometry, and had a venerable appearance which happily hit the mean between hilarity and austerity, he might have been, but for a chronic want of money, a real success among the somewhat dilettante philosophers of Athens. But circumstances were against him. Poverty did not ill become an Academic, and positively set off a Stoic; but an Epicurean seemed to have missed his vocation if he could not be always handsomely dressed and able to give elegant entertainments to his friends. Athenæus, who liked above all things to be on good terms both with himself and with every one else, felt this very acutely, and he was proportionately delighted when the Syrian King proposed to him that he should go as a teacher, not without a handsome salary, of Greek religion and Greek culture.

His success was not encouraging. In the first place he had a difficulty in making himself understood. The pure Attic Greek on which he prided himself was strange to the ears of his new audience, and he could not bring himself to descend to the [pg 98]barbarous dialect to which they were accustomed. And when he was seriously called to account in the matter of his belief he found himself involved in difficulties from which he saw no way of escape. At Athens religion was politely ignored. The common people must, of course, have their gods and goddesses; and the wise man, if he were prudent, would say nothing—anyhow in public—to disturb their belief; but within the privileged walls of the schools the names of Zeus and Athené and Apollo were never so much as mentioned, except, perhaps, in the course of some antiquarian discussion.

Among his new disciples, as he would fain have reckoned them, Athenæus found a very different temper. They were terribly in earnest; abstractions and phrases did not satisfy them; they pushed their questions home in a very perplexing way.

One day at the conclusion of a lecture, the customary invitation to the audience to put any questions that might occur to them was accepted by a young man who sat on one of the front benches.

“I would ask you, venerable sir,” he said, “some questions about the gods of your religion.”