Antiochus IV Desecrates the Temple

167 BC, estimated dateEstimated date

The Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes plunders the temple in Jerusalem, forbids the practice of the Jewish law on pain of death and has a pagan altar set up on the altar of burnt offering.

Antiochus IV, called Epiphanes, became king of the Seleucid empire, which then ruled Judea (1 Maccabees 1:10). Jason, brother of the high priest Onias, bought the high priesthood from him and paid for leave to build a gymnasium in Jerusalem and to enrol its people as citizens of Antioch. Three years later a rival, Menelaus, outbid him (2 Maccabees 4:7–10, 23–26) (1 Maccabees 1:11–15).

Antiochus invaded Egypt, and on his way back he entered the sanctuary and carried off the golden altar, the lampstand, the table and the hidden treasures (1 Maccabees 1:16–24). When he invaded Egypt again, the Roman envoy Popilius Laenas met him with the senate’s order to end the war, drew a circle round him and told him to answer before he stepped out of it. Antiochus gave way (Polybius, Histories 29.27). Daniel speaks of “ships of Kittim” that come against the king, who then turns in rage against the holy covenant (Daniel 11:29–30). According to 2 Maccabees, Jason attacked Jerusalem on a false report that the king was dead. Antiochus took it for a revolt, stormed the city and entered the temple with Menelaus as his guide (2 Maccabees 5:5–16). Two years after the plundering, 1 Maccabees says, a royal officer fell on the city, pulled down its walls and made the city of David a citadel, whose garrison threatened the sanctuary (1 Maccabees 1:29–36).

Then the king forbade the practice of the Jewish law. Burnt offerings, sabbaths, festivals and circumcision were banned on pain of death, and the towns of Judah were ordered to sacrifice at new altars, one by one (1 Maccabees 1:41–51). On the fifteenth of Chislev “an abomination of desolation” was built on the altar of burnt offering, and on the twenty-fifth sacrifice was offered on it. Scrolls of the law were torn up and burned, and women who had circumcised their sons were put to death with their babies (1 Maccabees 1:54–61). 2 Maccabees says that the temple was renamed for Olympian Zeus (2 Maccabees 6:1–5). Josephus, writing some 260 years later, follows 1 Maccabees and adds that the king had pigs sacrificed on the altar (Josephus, Antiquities 12.248–256).

2 Maccabees tells of the aged scribe Eleazar, and of seven brothers and their mother, who died under torture rather than eat pork. One of the brothers says that the King of the world will raise them to everlasting life (2 Maccabees 6:18–31) (2 Maccabees 7:1–9, 39–41). Hebrews, in its list of the faithful, speaks of those who “were tortured, not accepting their deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection” (Hebrews 11:35), words usually taken to refer to these martyrs.

Daniel describes forces that profane the sanctuary, take away the daily offering and “set up the abomination that makes desolate” (Daniel 11:31). The phrase returns in the Gospels, where Jesus uses it of a desolation still to come (Mark 13:14). The persecution set off the revolt of the Maccabees; see the Maccabean Revolt and the Rededication of the Temple.

How this is dated

Estimated date. A scholarly estimate from primary evidence, with a margin of years.

1 Maccabees dates by the Seleucid era, “the kingdom of the Greeks”, which was counted from 312/311 BC. It puts the king’s accession in year 137, his plundering of the temple in year 143, and the altar on the fifteenth of Chislev in year 145 (1 Maccabees 1:10, 20, 54). Chislev falls in November and December. If the year is counted from the spring of 311 BC, as the book is generally thought to count for Jewish events, the desecration falls in December 167 BC: so Elias Bickerman, The God of the Maccabees (1937; English translation 1979), and Jonathan A. Goldstein, I Maccabees (Anchor Bible, 1976). If the Jewish dates are counted from the spring of 312 BC, the date is a year earlier, December 168 BC: so Lester L. Grabbe, “Maccabean Chronology: 167–164 or 168–165 BCE”, Journal of Biblical Literature 110 (1991), pp. 59–74.

The two books of Maccabees are the main sources. They are counted as canonical Scripture by the Catholic Church, as defined at Trent (Council of Trent Session 4, decree on the canonical Scriptures), and by the Orthodox Synod of Jerusalem of 1672 (Confession of Dositheus question 3 (p. 155)). Protestant churches do not count them as canonical Scripture; the Church of England lists them among the books that are read “for example of life and instruction of manners” but not used to establish doctrine (Thirty-Nine Articles article 6). 1 Maccabees carries its story down to John Hyrcanus (1 Maccabees 16:23–24). 2 Maccabees says that it abridges a five-volume history by Jason of Cyrene (2 Maccabees 2:23). The two differ on the order of events: 1 Maccabees puts the plundering of the temple after the king’s first Egyptian campaign, 2 Maccabees after his second (2 Maccabees 5:1, 11–16).

Daniel 11 follows these events closely. Many scholars conclude that it was written during the persecution; others read it as prophecy from the sixth century BC. See Daniel at the Babylonian Court.