with death. There were four forms of execution – stoning, burning, beheading and strangling. Adulterers were stoned, a punishment inflicted by the whole community (though the condemned were first thrown down a cliff so that they were usually unconscious by the time of the stoning). A son who struck his father was garrotted. A man who fornicated with both a mother and her daughter was burned.
The Temple was the centre of Jewish life: the high priest and his council, the Sanhedrin, met there. Every morning, the trumpets announced the first prayer, like the muezzin of Islam. Four times a day, the blaring of the seven silver trumpets called the worshippers to prostrate themselves in the Temple. The two daily sacrifices of a male sheep, cow or dove without blemish at the Temple altar, morning and evening, always accompanied by an offering of incense on the altar of perfumes, were the chief rituals of Jewish worship. The word ‘holocaust’, derived from the Hebrew olah meaning to ‘go up’, refers to the burning of the whole animal whose smoke ‘goes up’ to God. The city must have smelt of the Temple altar, the censers with their delicious cinnamon and cassia mixing with the reek of burning flesh. Small wonder the people wore much myrrh, nard and balm as perfumes.
Pilgrims poured into Jerusalem for the festivals. At the Sheep Gate to the north of the Temple, sheep and cattle were herded and wrangled, ready for sacrifice. At Passover, 200,000 lambs were slaughtered. But Tabernacles was the holiest and most exuberant week of the Jerusalem year, when men and girls in white costumes danced in the Temple courtyards, singing, waving lighted torches and feasting. They gathered palms and branches to build huts on the rooftops of their houses or in the Temple courts. *
Yet even under the pure Simon, there were many worldly Jews who probably looked like rich Greeks, living in their new Grecian palaces on the western hillside known as the Upper City. What the fanatical Jewish conservatives regarded as heathen pollution, these cosmopolitans saw as civilization. This was the start of a new pattern in Jerusalem: the more sacred she became, the more divided. Two ways of life existed in the closest proximity with the intimate loathing of a family feud. Now the city – and the very existence of the Jews – was threatened by the most infamous monster since Nebuchadnezzar. 29
ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES: THE MAD GOD
Jerusalem’s benefactor, Antiochus the Great, could not rest: he now turned to the conquest of Asia Minor and Greece. But the over-confident King of Asia underestimated the rising power of the Republic of Rome, which had just defeated Hannibal and Carthage to dominate the western Mediterranean. Rome repelled Antiochus’ bid for Greece, forcing the Great King to surrender his fleet and elephant corps and send his son to Rome as a hostage. Antiochus headed east to replenish his treasury but, while looting a Persian temple, he was assassinated.
Jews, from Babylon to Alexandria, now paid an annual tithe to the Temple, and Jerusalem was so rich that her treasures intensified power struggles among the Jewish leaders and started to attract the cash-strapped Macedonian kings. The new king of Asia, named Antiochus like his father, rushed to the capital at Antioch and seized the throne, killing any other family claimants. Brought up in Rome and Athens, Antiochus IV inherited the irrepressible, glittering talents of his father but his cackling menace and manic flamboyance more resembled the demented exhibitionism of Caligula or Nero.
As the son of a Great King laid low, he had too much to prove. As beautiful as he was unhinged, Antiochus relished the pageantry of court ritual yet was bored by its constraints, priding himself on his absolute right to surprise. In Antioch, the young king got drunk in the main square and bathed and was massaged in public with expensive unguents, befriending grooms and porters in the baths. When a
The Temple was the centre of Jewish life: the high priest and his council, the Sanhedrin, met there. Every morning, the trumpets announced the first prayer, like the muezzin of Islam. Four times a day, the blaring of the seven silver trumpets called the worshippers to prostrate themselves in the Temple. The two daily sacrifices of a male sheep, cow or dove without blemish at the Temple altar, morning and evening, always accompanied by an offering of incense on the altar of perfumes, were the chief rituals of Jewish worship. The word ‘holocaust’, derived from the Hebrew olah meaning to ‘go up’, refers to the burning of the whole animal whose smoke ‘goes up’ to God. The city must have smelt of the Temple altar, the censers with their delicious cinnamon and cassia mixing with the reek of burning flesh. Small wonder the people wore much myrrh, nard and balm as perfumes.
Pilgrims poured into Jerusalem for the festivals. At the Sheep Gate to the north of the Temple, sheep and cattle were herded and wrangled, ready for sacrifice. At Passover, 200,000 lambs were slaughtered. But Tabernacles was the holiest and most exuberant week of the Jerusalem year, when men and girls in white costumes danced in the Temple courtyards, singing, waving lighted torches and feasting. They gathered palms and branches to build huts on the rooftops of their houses or in the Temple courts. *
Yet even under the pure Simon, there were many worldly Jews who probably looked like rich Greeks, living in their new Grecian palaces on the western hillside known as the Upper City. What the fanatical Jewish conservatives regarded as heathen pollution, these cosmopolitans saw as civilization. This was the start of a new pattern in Jerusalem: the more sacred she became, the more divided. Two ways of life existed in the closest proximity with the intimate loathing of a family feud. Now the city – and the very existence of the Jews – was threatened by the most infamous monster since Nebuchadnezzar. 29
ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES: THE MAD GOD
Jerusalem’s benefactor, Antiochus the Great, could not rest: he now turned to the conquest of Asia Minor and Greece. But the over-confident King of Asia underestimated the rising power of the Republic of Rome, which had just defeated Hannibal and Carthage to dominate the western Mediterranean. Rome repelled Antiochus’ bid for Greece, forcing the Great King to surrender his fleet and elephant corps and send his son to Rome as a hostage. Antiochus headed east to replenish his treasury but, while looting a Persian temple, he was assassinated.
Jews, from Babylon to Alexandria, now paid an annual tithe to the Temple, and Jerusalem was so rich that her treasures intensified power struggles among the Jewish leaders and started to attract the cash-strapped Macedonian kings. The new king of Asia, named Antiochus like his father, rushed to the capital at Antioch and seized the throne, killing any other family claimants. Brought up in Rome and Athens, Antiochus IV inherited the irrepressible, glittering talents of his father but his cackling menace and manic flamboyance more resembled the demented exhibitionism of Caligula or Nero.
As the son of a Great King laid low, he had too much to prove. As beautiful as he was unhinged, Antiochus relished the pageantry of court ritual yet was bored by its constraints, priding himself on his absolute right to surprise. In Antioch, the young king got drunk in the main square and bathed and was massaged in public with expensive unguents, befriending grooms and porters in the baths. When a
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