Religion and Politics 3. The Maccabees Uprising
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The Maccabees Uprising . 167-160 B. C.  In my class on Religion and Politics I had students study two uprisings rooted in religious communities.  One was the Maccabeean uprising against the Seleucid Empire and the other was Osama bin Laden.  This podcast is on the Maccabees.  There will soon be a podcast on Osama bin Laden. Thinking of these two uprisings in comparative and analytical terms, leaving aside your preferences, yields valuable insights.  A word about these texts.  The word “canon” means the official books of the Bible.  The canon was closed about 300 years before the birth of Christ.  Jonah was the last-added book.  To Christians, the canon was re-opened with the gospels.  To Jews, it is still closed.   But between the closing of the canon and the birth of Christ, there was a lot of history and a lot of teaching, and a lot of writing.  The books that emerged during that time are called The Apocrypha, a word that means both hidden and unfolding.  They are in the Catholic Bible but not in the Protestant or Jewish canons.  The Jewish leaders of that time were worried about revolutionaries who claimed to be prophets and would produce revealed books to prove it.  They had a rule that if you are a prophet you must perform a miracle in the presence of a minyan (10 righteous people).  Otherwise, there were severe penalties.  To avoid these problems, books would be written in mystical styles with spirits and creatures and miracles.  They would also be placed well into the past, as if they had been “rediscovered.”  The book of Daniel was of that style, being placed hundreds of years in the past.  There is a word pseudepigrapha that means falsely attributed.  It does not mean false.  It is as if you wanted to write a book on politics today and presented it in the form of a secret diary of George Washington.  After about ten pages any reader would realize this is not George Washington at all but a commentary on today’s political situation.  A couple of thousand years later, people might not get that point.  When you read Daniel and his troubles with an oppressive ruler who is abusing believers, you need to realize that this is really about a contemporary leader.  Except the author does not want to be arrested.   Also during that time the writings would often use metaphors and codes.  Everyone at the time knew what those things meant, but today we often read them as if they are somehow factual, or even as predictions of future events.  That was how I was brought up.   In the discussion of Maccabees II we will discuss some examples of this style and what it means.  Remember, the authors knew what they meant, and so did everyone at the time who read those texts.  I thought about breaking this into two podcasts, Maccabees I and Maccabees II, but left it in one.  It's a bit long, but it covers all the bases.  Suggestion:  You might download the books of Maccabees I and Maccabees II so you can follow along with the discussion.  You might even read them in advance if you wish. Or just lean back and enjoy yourself.  People:  Tobias, Mattathias, Antiochus Epiphanies, Ptolemy, Seleucid, Onias, Heliodorus, Judah Maccabees.  Terms and places:   Galilee, Samaria, Judea, Syria, pseudepigrapha, canon, cohen, zealot, gymnasium, shema, phalanx, Hasid, Hellenism, Hannakah, Apocrypha, Torah, Modein. 
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