Seder Olam Revisited: C30a- Hellenism
- Albert Benhamou
- Jul 7
- 19 min read
Updated: Jul 8
CHRONOLOGY OF JEWISH HISTORY
Generation 30: Hebrew years 3480-3600 (280-160 BCE)
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Introduction
In the 30th chronological generation, Hellenism gains momentum in the empire that Alexander created and that his generals are peacefully governing. Hellenism led to assimilation for the conquered peoples to embrace "civilization". As a result, the Jewish nation was in great danger to lose its identity. On the surface, conflicts were a thing of the past, because a single empire meant no more wars. But this was apparent: in this generation, conflicts between Hellenistic dynasties, especially the Ptolemaic and the Seleucid, started to emerge.
Chronology of events during the 30th Generation
Hebrew Year | BCE | Event | Source |
3502 | -288 | Emancipation of the Seleucid Jews | Eusebius, 122nd Olympiad |
3505 | -285 | Ptolemy II Philadelphus reigns | |
3505 | -285 | Emancipation of the Ptolemaic Jews | |
3514 | -246 | Ptolemy III Euergetes the Benefactor reigns | |
3514 | -246 | The book of Sirach | Sirach (apocrypha) |
3520 | -240 | Antigonus of Socho | Talmud, Avoth, Mishna 3 |
3530 | -230 | Compilation of the Septuagint | Talmud, Megillah, 8b-9b ; Letter of Aristeas |
3539 | -221 | Ptolemy IV Philopator reigns | |
3643 | -217 | Battle of Raphia/Gaza: Ptolemy IV defeats Antiochus III the Great | Maccabees I |
3558 | -202 | Battle of Zama: Rome defeats Carthage | |
3560 | -200 | The Nash Papyrus | Univ. Cambridge |
3561 | -199 | Battle of Paneas: Antiochus III takes Judea from Ptolemy V | |
3571 | -189 | Rome supports the weak Ptolemy vs. Antiochus and imposes a levy against the Seleucid kingdom | |
3573 | -187 | Seleucus IV Philipator, son of Antiochus III, reigns | |
3580 | -180 | Ptolemy VI Philometor reigns | |
3582 | -178 | Seleucus IV decree to rise tax in Judea; Heliodorus' mission | Heliodorus stele ; Maccabees II, chapter 3 |
3585 | -175 | Heliodorus kills Seleucus IV | Appian of Alexandria |
About Year 3480 – 280 BCE – The high priests since Jaddua
Jaddua was the grandson of Joiada, and the last high priest to be mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (Nehemiah 12). The high priests have been as follows until the present chronology:
Jaddua (or Ido in Hebrew), born ~Hebrew year 3333 (427 BCE), in office ~371-320 BCE
Onias I, son of Jaddua, ~320-280 BCE
Simon the Just, son of Onias, ~280-240 BCE; High Priest for 40 years (Talmud, Yoma, 9a)
Eleazar, son of Onias I, and brother of Simon, from ~240 BCE (the son of Simon the Just, Onias II, was too young for the role)
Manasseh, uncle of Eleazar
Onias II, son of Simon the Just, until ~180 BCE
Simon the Just was the one who met with Alexander the Great during his conquest of Judea (see document C29, year 332 BCE). He was both High Priest (Kohen Gadol) and President of the Sanhedrin (Nassi), which was the great assembly of 120 Elders set up in Jerusalem since the Return to Sion:
Simon the Just was one of the last of the men of the Great Sanhedrin. He used to say: "The world is based upon three things: the Torah, the divine service, and the practice of kindliness". (Talmud, Avoth, Mishna 2)
These times were times when emancipation through assimilation to Hellenism was offered to the Jews. Eager to strengthen their recently established kingdom, the Seleucid leader offered them the full rights of citizenship in his newly founded ‘civilized’ cities (polis) and equal rank to the Hellenists. According to Eusebius' Chronicles, this emancipation was decreed at the end of the 122nd Olympiad (about 288 BCE). The same was offered to the Jews of Egypt two years later when Ptolemy also granted freedom to his Jewish citizens.
As a result, and over the years, many Jews gradually endorsed Hellenism and assimilated into this foreign culture. This created divisions among the Jewish nation, and this division between assimilation and tradition was the root cause of the disasters that fell upon them in the future.
About Year 3502 – 258 BCE – The Zenon Papyri
An important discovery of some 20,000 papyri documents, dating from 259 BCE, was made in Egypt during the First World War. They were called the Zenon Papyri after the name of a business agent, Zenon, who was sent for some years to Judea by Appolonios, finance minister (the dioketes) of Ptolemy II for the procurement of goods. The papyri are from the correspondence of Zenon with his master and with many other people he dealt with during his lengthy stay in Judea. This source gives an important snapshot of Judean society in these times, with names of places, of people, business practices, litigations and so on. The Greek documents have been made available online by the University of Michigan. Some parts of the texts have already been translated. Here is one example:
In the 27th year of the reign of Ptolemy [II] son of Ptolemy [...] at Birta of the Ammanitis [probably present-day Amman in Jordan], Nikator son of Xenokles, at the service of Tobias [probably a Jewish landowner there] sold to Zenon [...] in the service of Apollonius the dioketes [a financial agent] a Sidonian girl named Phragis, about seven years old of age, for fifty drachmai. (Victor Tcherikover, Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum, Volume 1, 1957, page 120; to read these documents online, click here)
It is equally interesting to notice the Sidonian slave girl. Sidonians are part of the so-called Phoenician people (the others are the people of Tyre; the name 'Phoenician' was given by the Greek historians). The reason of their presence in Judea is that Sidonians were granted the use of Judean harbors by the Persians for their maritime trade to counterbalance the naval power of the Greek nations. The result was that Sidonians established themselves in the land of Israel from the Persian era but were later enslaved by the Greeks. The price of the slave girl was 50 drachmas, compared to 80 drachmas for a donkey!
Year 3514 – 246 BCE – The book of Sirach
Ptolemy II "Philadelphus", the son of the army general who accompanied Alexander in his campaigns, reigned over Egypt between 285 BCE and 246 BCE. His son Ptolemy III reigned after him and was called “the Benefactor”. He gave freedom to the Jews who were captive or enslaved in Egypt. He also showed some originality in his reign by willing to write his laws or decrees in a bilingual way, Egyptian hieroglyphs and Greek alphabet. This was a very important step that would help future historians to decipher old languages. His son Ptolemy IV followed this approach and was the king under whom the Rosetta Stone was created, in three languages. This stone was key to decipher the hieroglyphs in the 19th century.
It is probably because of Ptolemy III’s effort to rally scholars able to write in different languages that a Jewish scribe from Jerusalem, Sirach ben Joshua, was invited to Egypt at this time:
When I arrived in Egypt in the 38th year of the reign of Ptolemy the Benefactor and stayed for some time, I found opportunity for no little instruction. Therefore, it seemed highly necessary that I myself should devote some diligence and labor to the translation of this book. During that time, I have applied my skill day and night to complete and publish the book for those living abroad who wished to gain learning and are disposed to live according to the law. (Apocrypha, Sirach, Prologue, 8-10)
Sirach arrived in Egypt at the end of the reign of Ptolemy II, who indeed reigned for about 38 years. As he was towards the end of his life, his son Ptolemy III called "the Benefactor" was probably acting as regent until his old father’s death. Sirach wrote a book to serve as a guide for the Jewish community of Alexandria who, at the time, needed books written in a language they could understand, Greek, as they had lost the knowledge of Hebrew.
The book of Sirach is a praise for Wisdom which comes to those who fear God, and guidance for his brethren about how to conduct their life:
Before all other things wisdom was created. […]
If you desire wisdom, keep the commandments, and God will bestow her upon you.
For fear of God is wisdom and culture; loyal humility is his delight.
Do not play the hypocrite before men; keep watch over your lips.
Do not exalt yourself lest you fall and bring dishonor upon you.
(Apocrypha, Sirach, Chapter 1, 4 and 26-30)
Sirach also advised to study the history of the generations to learn from their examples:
Study the generations long past and understand:
Has anyone hoped in God and been disappointed?
Has anyone persevered in His fear and been forsaken?
Has anyone called upon Him and been rebuffed?
Compassionate and merciful is God.
He forgives sins. He saves in time of trouble.
(Apocrypha, Sirach, Chapter 2, 10-11)
Sirach gave extended advice to man, wife, children, all to live a life with purpose:
With three things I am delighted, for they are beautiful to God and to men: harmony among brethren, friendship among neighbors, and the mutual love of husband and wife.
Three kinds of men I hate, their manner of life I loathe indeed: a proud pauper, a rich dissembler, and an old man lecherous in his dotage.
(Apocrypha, Sirach, Chapter 25, 1-2)
About Year 3520 – 240 BCE – Antigonus of Socho
When Simon the Just died in 240 BCE, he had a son, Onias II, who was too young to be High Priest, so Simon was succeeded by his younger brother Eleazar while his disciple Antigonus of Socho became Nassi. The latter was the first prominent Jewish leader to bear a Greek name, “Antigonus”, given by parents who probably wanted to endorse Hellenism, an assumption that marked Antigonus in his life and provoked a reverse reaction in him to finally endorse the religion of his ancestors:
Antigonus of Socho received [the Oral Tradition] from Simon the Just. He used to say: 'Be not like servants who serve the master in the expectation of receiving a reward. But be like unto servants who serve the master without the expectation of receiving a gratuity and let the fear of heaven be upon you'. (Talmud, Avoth, Mishna 3)
This teaching may be understood as follows: in the first part, the sentence can be read as a plea against assimilation, do not endorse Hellenism thinking that it will bring you any reward, and the second part of the sentence is directed towards faith to God, the real master. Tradition holds that, from the time of Antigonus and because of misinterpretations of the above teaching, some Jews assimilated and formed some factions or sects (minim in Hebrew). It started from two disciples of Antigonus: Zadok whom followers were called the Sadducees, and Boethus whom followers were called the Boethusians, the latter being considered as a subset of the former larger group.
About Year 3530 – 230 BCE – The Septuagint
Ptolemy the Benefactor was eager to gather all the knowledge of the world in the library he (or his father) founded in Alexandria, capital of the Ptolemaic dynasty:
Demetrius of Phalerum, the president of the king's library, received vast sums of money, for the purpose of collecting together, as far as he possibly could, all the books in the world. By means of purchase and transcription, he carried out, to the best of his ability, the purpose of the king.
On one occasion when I was present, he was asked: How many thousand books are there in the library? and he replied, 'More than two hundred thousand, O king, and I shall make endeavor in the immediate future to gather together the remainder also, so that the total of five hundred thousand may be reached. I am told that the laws of the Jews are worth transcribing and deserve a place in your library.' 'What is to prevent you from doing this?' replied the king. 'Everything that is necessary has been placed at your disposal.' 'They need to be translated,' answered Demetrius, 'for, in the country of the Jews, they use a peculiar alphabet (just as the Egyptians, too, have a special form of letters) and speak a peculiar dialect. They are supposed to use the Syriac tongue, but this is not the case; their language is quite different.' And the king, when he understood all the facts of the case, ordered a letter to be written to the Jewish High Priest that his purpose (which has already been described) might be accomplished. (Letter of Aristeas, 9-11, translation by R.H. Charles, Clarendon Press, 1913)
Eleazar, brother of Simon the Just, was the High Priest at the time. He authorized the translation of the Torah into Greek. Upon request from the king, Eleazar the High Priest sent six elders from each [Jewish] tribe, totaling 72 elders, to Alexandria to work on the translation of the Bible into Greek (Talmud, Megillah, 9a). The purpose was two folds: first, the goal was to enrich the library of Alexandria, but second, the Jews who lived in Egypt had lost the use of the Hebrew language and therefore asked to have the Bible translated for their prayers:
When the work was completed [on the 8th of Tevet], Demetrius collected together the Jewish population in the place where the translation had been made, and read it over to all, in the presence of the translators, who met with a great reception also from the people, because of the great benefits which they had conferred upon them. They bestowed warm praise upon Demetrius, too, and urged him to have the whole law transcribed and present a copy to their leaders. After the books had been read, the priests and the elders of the translators and the Jewish community and the leaders of the people stood up and said, that since so excellent and sacred and accurate a translation had been made, it was only right that it should remain as it was, and no alteration should be made in it.
And when the whole company expressed their approval, they bade them pronounce a curse in accordance with their custom upon anyone who should make any alteration either by adding anything or changing in any way whatever any of the words which had been written or making any omission. This was a very wise precaution to ensure that the book might be preserved for all the future time unchanged. (Letter of Aristeas, 308-311)
The translation of the Bible into Greek was an extraordinary event as it unveiled for the first time to a large public the contents that, before, were only known to the keepers of the Jewish tradition. Also, it had been approved by Jewish scholars:
There is no difference between books [of the Scripture] and tefillin and mezuzahs save that the books may be written in any language whereas tefillin and mezuzahs may be written only in Assyrian. Rabbi Simeon ben Gamaliel says that books [of the scripture] also were permitted [by the Sages] to be written only in Greek. (Talmud, Megillah, 8b)
The Septuagint later became a major catalyst to the adoption of Christianity by the Gentiles, especially the Greeks, who had access to the text of the Scriptures and could embrace the new faith more easily.
There are no known remains of the original text of the Septuagint. The earliest two copies which were discovered date from the Christian Era, and their text bear many discrepancies from the Hebrew text. This led Historians to believe that the Christian copyists altered the original Greek translation of the Septuagint and probably destroyed the original copies. They did this as well to gospels that were not included in the New Testament. The original Septuagint was a good transcription of the Hebrew text, because the only differences between the original Greek version and the Hebrew text had been noted in the Talmud. One example is related as follows:
They [the 72 Elders] also wrote for him [Ptolemy] ‘the beast with small legs’ and they did not write ‘the hare’ [Leviticus 11:6 uses the word אַרְנֶבֶת meaning 'hare'], because the name of Ptolemy's wife was ‘hare’, lest he should say, The Jews have jibed at me and put the name of my wife in the Torah. (Talmud, Megillah, 9a-9b)
Ptolemy's wife was Berenice II, daughter of King "Magas" of Cyrenaica (modern-day Libya). The word ‘hare’ in Greek is λαγός, pronounced lagos. Maybe the pronunciation of lagos and Magas was deemed to be too close, which would explain the caution used by the translators.
About Year 3535 – 225 BCE – Onias II
When Onias II, youngest son of Simon the Just, became mature enough to gain the role of High Priest, he had a dispute with his brother Shimon and fled to Egypt. But he later returned to Judea to become High Priest. But he was not very intelligent.
He decided not to pay tribute to the king of Egypt. This caused a crisis with Ptolemy III which could have led to a war against Judea. But one of Onias' nephews, Joseph son of Tobias, managed to avoid the conflict by collecting the taxes on behalf of the king of Egypt. Through him started a class of civil servants who held the function of tax collectors instead of letting people controlled the High Priest to do so. As a result, corruption was not long to follow and the burden over the Jewish population increased due to these self-made tax collectors.
This collaboration of these Jewish tax collectors with the Greek authorities ultimately led to the rebellion of the Maccabees several years later. But, before that, it led to the establishment of a dual religious authority (the Zugot, meaning the ‘couples’: see below in year 170 BCE), to share the duties and not lose them to another class of civil servants as Onias II had caused.
Year 3539 – 221 BCE – Ptolemy IV Philopator
Ptolemy IV succeeded to his father in Egypt. At the time, Judea was still under Ptolemaic rule but, in the reign of Ptolemy IV, the role of Egypt would start to decline.
The Books of the Maccabees opens with the battle of Raphia (also called battle of Gaza) in 217 BCE when Philopator defeated the Syrian army of Antiochus III the Great who attempted to take control of the Levant.
After his victory, Philopator went to Jerusalem at the invitation of the Jews and offered a sacrifice to God to thank Him for the victory. But he also wished to enter the Holy of Holies, where only the High Priest was allowed in, and only once a year. The entire population of Jerusalem stood up to oppose such move by prayers and lamentations. The High Priest Simon II prayed for God to intervene:
Here the all-seeing God, who is before all things, Holy in the holies, heard our righteous supplication; and chastised him [Ptolemy] who was greatly exalted with insolence and boldness: shaking him this way and that way, as a reed is shaken by the wind; so that he lay upon the floor without the power of exertion, and paralyzed in his limbs, and not even able to speak, being overtaken with a just judgment. Whereupon his friends and bodyguards, when they saw that speedy and sharp punishment which had overtaken him, being afraid lest he should even die; struck with overwhelming fear, they quickly drew him out of the place. (Maccabees I, 2:21-23)
After his recovery, Philopater left Jerusalem with threats to the Jewish nation. Back in Egypt he began a life of debauchery and was eventually assassinated a few years later in 204 BCE.
Year 3545 – 215 BCE – Demetrios the Chronographer
The campaign of Philopator against Judea probably put the Egyptian Jews in discomfort and distress. Most of them lived in Alexandria and had adopted the Hellenistic culture. They didn't speak Hebrew but were sentimentally connected with their brethren in Judea. At this time, a Jew called Demetrios (or Demetrius) endeavored to write a chronology of Jewish history. This was the first attempt at doing such work, based on the Scriptures and devoid of religious considerations.
Demetrios worked with the Septuagint as a source because he only knew Greek. His work has been lost since, except for the extracts that Christian writers used after his death, of which notably Eusebius of Caesaria and Clement of Alexandria. The former gave an account of the chronology established by Demetrios (Eusebius of Caesarea, Praeparatio Evangelica, Book IX, chapters 19-29, to access this chapter online, click here). And the second gave an account of the Lost Tribes, as compared to the two of Judah and Benjamin who form the Jewish people (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, Book I, 21:141, to access this text online, click here).
These chronological calculations, when they concerned events beyond the times of the Bible, were generally wrong. For example, Demetrios stated that there were 573 years between the deportations to Assyria and the reign of Ptolemy IV. Instead, the captivity of the Ten Tribes occurred in various phases between the Hebrew years 3016 (captivity of Naphtali) to year 3038 (fall of Samaria) (see document C26a), and Ptolemy started to reign in year 3539. So, the difference is between 523 and 501 years, not 573.
Despite these calculations’ errors, the important point is that, as soon as the Septuagint was published, Jewish and foreign cultures started to study the Biblical text (in Greek). This also influenced the scholars of early Christianity as it provided them with a tool to establish the new doctrine, and religion, based on interpretation of ancient Hebrew scriptures especially about the arrival of the Messiah in the person of Jesus: for this, they needed to extract from the scripture some calculations of chronology to prove the case. As of the Greek philosophers, most of the early Christian scholars accused them of plagiarism from these Hebrew scriptures: for example, the above-mentioned chapter from Clement's work starts with: On the plagiarizing of the dogmas of the [Greek] philosophers from the Hebrews, we shall treat a little afterwards.
Year 3556 – 204 BCE – Ptolemy V Epiphanes
Ptolemy IV and his wife-sister were assassinated and replaced by their son Ptolemy V Epiphanes who was only 5 years old. So, the kingdom was ruled by a succession of military regents who were more interested in eliminating each other.
The Rosetta Stone dates from the beginning of the reign of Ptolemy V Epiphanes and contains details about his rise to godhood status over Egypt.
Year 3560 – 200 BCE – The Nash Papyrus
The Nash Papyrus is a manuscript held by the University of Cambridge, England, which was acquired in 1898 in Egypt. The papyrus contains the earliest known scripture of the Ten Commandments and a part of the Shema Israel prayer. It is written in Hebrew but with mistakes which make people think it was a Hebrew retranslation from the Greek Septuagint, for the purpose of personal daily prayer. It was the oldest Hebrew manuscript of a Biblical text, until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the middle of the 20th century.
Year 3562 – 198 BCE – Judea passes under Seleucid rule
The chaotic situation in Egypt raised the risk that other Hellenistic realms would seek to gain territories from the Ptolemies or to annex their kingdom. This caused a war. The result of it was that Macedonia (Greek region) took control of some islands which had belonged to the Ptolemies, while Antiochus III from the Seleucid dynasty (Syrian region) took over the Levant, including Judea.
The Seleucid king won a decisive battle of Panyas (present-day Banyas, in Northern Israel) in 200 or 199 BCE. And to seal a lasting peace over his annexation of Judea, Antiochus III gave in 192 BCE one of his daughters, Cleopatra, as a wife to Ptolemy V then aged 17. But, despite the conciliary attitude, the bitterness of having lost the Levant was not easily forgotten and, soon after, the Ptolemaic rulers decided to side with Rome to get support in their dispute against the Seleucid kingdom. This was good timing for Rome who had just defeated the Carthaginians at the battle of Zama in 202 BCE and took over their realm in the western Mediterranean. Rome was now eyeing up towards the eastern side of the sea with growing interest.
At the beginning, Antiochus III wanted to please the people of Judea and granted them special rights and religious freedom. But the Seleucid king pursued his ambition to conquer the weakened Egypt and end the Ptolemaic rule. This led Rome to intervene in regional affairs and, after three years of conflict, Antiochus III had to accept the harsh conditions of the Romans in 189 BCE. These included a very heavy annual fine to be paid to Rome. So, Antiochus III imposed new levies on the people of his dominions, and this new tax policy applied to the Judeans.
Year 3580 – 180 BCE – Aristobulus of Paneas
Ptolemy V died in 181 BCE and was succeeded by his son Ptolemy VI who reigned from the age of 6 years old until 145 BCE.
The Jews of Alexandria, having embraced the freedom and emancipation granted to them by the Ptolemies, prospered and assimilated to the Hellenistic culture. Some of their scholars attempted to reconcile their Judaism with the Greek philosophy, and its various forms.
Aristobulus of Paneas was one of these Hellenized Jews of Alexandria, from a family having some prominent position with the ruling Ptolemaic dynasty. He endeavored to demonstrate that the Greek philosophers (Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato) owed their thoughts to the Mosaic laws and morale, and that several Greek authors (such as Homer) borrowed themes from the Bible to write their own works. This may have been an attempt to justify that Hellenized Jews could embrace Greek philosophy because, in their eyes, it was not much different from the Bible. They saw Moses as the “Father of the Greek philosophy”. This theory was even echoed by some Greek philosophers such as Nemenius of Apamea who asked: What is Plato but Moses speaking Attic Greek?
Aristobulus was a follower of the Peripatetic school of Greek philosophers. The movement was founded by Aristotle who had encounters with Jewish scholars at the time of Alexander's campaigns (see document C29, year 330 BCE). So, there may be some substance behind what Aristobulus considered having been the source of Greek philosophy. Some Early Christian scholars supported his theory of Greek "plagiarism".
Year 3582 – 178 BCE – The Heliodorus inscription
Seleucus IV succeeded his father Antiochus III on the Seleucid throne in 187 BCE. He could not succeed in raising money fast enough from Judea to pay his duty to Rome. In 178 BCE, he ordered his minister Heliodorus to go to Jerusalem and seize the money deposited in the Temple! The story is told in the Second Book of the Maccabees and has since been confirmed by the discovery in 2006 of a stele in Tel Maresha (today a national park in the Judean Lowlands, called Maresha – Beth-Guvrin), the so-called Heliodorus inscription, which bears the order from the king to get the money from the sanctuaries of the region:
King Seleukos to Heliodoros his brother greetings. Taking the utmost consideration for the safety of our subjects, and thinking it to be of the greatest good for the affairs in our realm when those living in our kingdom manage their lives without fear, and at the same time realizing that nothing can enjoy its fitting prosperity without the good will of the gods, from the outset we have made it our concern to ensure that the sanctuaries founded in the other satrapies receive the traditional honors with the care befitting them. But since the affairs in Koile-Syria [Judea] and Phoinike [Phoenicia] stand in need of appointing someone to take care of these (i.e. sanctuaries) . . . Olympiodoros . . . (Heliodorus stele, for complete translation, click here)
The money was collected by the Temple to help the widows and orphans among the people and was managed by the High Priest, so the king's orders caused a lot of grief to the population:
But Heliodorus, because of the king's commands which he had, said that this money must in any case be confiscated for the king's treasury. So, he set a day and went in to direct the inspection of these funds. There was no little distress throughout the whole city. [...]
But when he arrived at the treasury with his bodyguard, then and there the Sovereign of spirits and of all authority caused so great a manifestation that all who had been so bold as to accompany him were astounded by the power of God and became faint with terror. For there appeared to them a magnificently caparisoned horse, with a rider of frightening mine, and it rushed furiously at Heliodorus and struck him with its front hoofs. Its rider was seen to have armor and weapons of gold. (Second Book of the Maccabees, chapter 3)
Then a second miracle occurred. The people of Jerusalem, fearing that the death of the king' envoy would cause severe retaliation, praised to God to spare his life. Onias the High Priest accompanied their prayers and Heliodorus was resuscitated. The story concludes as follows:
Then Heliodorus offered sacrifice to the Lord and made very great vows to the Savior of his life, and having bidden Onias farewell, he marched off with his forces to the king. And he bore testimony to all men of the deeds of the supreme God, which he had seen with his own eyes.
When the king asked Heliodorus what sort of person would be suitable to send on another mission to Jerusalem, he replied: "If you have any enemy or plotter against your government, send him there, for you will get him back thoroughly scourged, if he escapes at all, for there certainly is about the place some power of God. For He Who has His dwelling in heaven watches over that place Himself and brings it aid, and He strikes and destroys those who come to do it injury." (ibidem)
Year 3585 – 175 BCE – Assassination of Seleucus IV
A short time after he returned from Jerusalem, Heliodorus assassinated Seleucus IV in 175 BCE and reigned in his stead as a regent with Seleucus IV's young son Antiochus (Appian of Alexandria, 95-165 CE, The Syrian Wars, 9, 45. To read it online, click here).
Seleucus IV had one heir, Demetrius, but he had been sent to Rome as royal hostage, with all the honors due to an heir. He was in fact educated and raised by Rome to become a future ally. Heliodorus did not rule long: Antiochus, the younger son of Seleucus IV, managed to oust the usurper Heliodorus, and started to reign as Antiochus IV.
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Albert Benhamou
Private Tour Guide in Israel
Tammuz 5785 - July 2025
