Life[edit]

Jason of Cyrene is an unknown Hellenistic Jew. While Greek-speaking, he still favored the rebel Maccabees in their revolt against the Seleucid Empire; the rebels included both traditionalist Aramaic-speaking Jews as well as Greek-speaking Jews who opposed the anti-Jewish decrees of King Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Cyrene, Libya in the Hellenistic era was a province at the western edge of the Ptolemaic Kingdom, which also included Egypt and Cyprus. Diaspora Jews had spread through Ptolemaic lands in this era, so him being from Cyrene is plausible, and the long-standing Ptolemaic rivalry with the Seleucids that had resulted in the Syrian Wars would have meant that supporting the Maccabees and opposing the Seleucids would have aligned with the politics of the government, so there would be little fear of censorship.


Some scholars suggest that Jason might have been an eyewitness to the events of the Maccabean Revolt and lived in Judea at some point. This is dismissed by other scholars as unlikely, as parts of the book 2 Maccabees that seem likely to stem from Jason's history make strange geographical statements concerning the region, such as a claim in 2 Maccabees 12:9 that a fire in distant Jamnia was visible from Jerusalem.^[1]