Maccabee campaigns of 163 BC
During the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire, there were a series of campaigns in 163 BC in regions outlying Judea - Ammon, Gilead, Galilee, Idumea, and Judea's coastal plain, a wider region usually referred to as either Palestine or Eretz Israel. The Maccabee rebels fought multiple enemies: Seleucid garrisons and hired mercenaries under a commander named Timothy of Ammon, non-Jewish inhabitants hostile to the Maccabees and their Jewish neighbors, and possibly the Tobiad Jews, a clan that generally favored the ruling Seleucid government. During 163 BC, the main Seleucid armies composed of Greeks were elsewhere, so the Maccabees were free to expand their influence against their neighbors.
The Maccabees did not in general hold the territory they fought in during this period, but rather engaged in raids on opposing power centers and retributive attacks on anti-Jewish populations. The book 1 Maccabees describes a vicious campaign of extermination on both sides: the Gentiles were out to slaughter the Jews, and the Maccabees massacred Gentiles they believed involved, burning down their towns as intimidation and revenge. The Maccabees invited Jews living in hostile territory back to Judea as refugees and escorted them back under the safety of their army.
Primary sources[edit]
The campaigns against Timothy (Greek: Timotheus) and the local Gentiles (non-Jews) are recorded in the books of 1 Maccabees (1 Maccabees 5), 2 Maccabees (2 Maccabees 10:14–38, 2 Maccabees 12:10–37), and Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews Book 12, Chapter 8. 2 Maccabees also mentions Timothy and his armies briefly in passing in while discussing the Battle of Emmaus (2 Maccabees 8:30–8:33); this is generally assumed to be a "flash-forward" in time to discuss Timothy's defeat rather than actually happening during the Emmaus campaign of 164 BC by most historians, however.[1]
Background[edit]
In 164 BC, the Seleucids sent a major expedition to restore order to the Judean countryside led personally by Regent Lysias, who administered the western half of the Seleucid Empire while King Antiochus IV was on campaign in the eastern provinces. However, the Seleucid force was forced to withdraw by a combination of the Battle of Beth Zur as well as the death of Antiochus IV. Lysias returned to the capital Antioch to stave off any succession challenges to the young boy king Antiochus V Eupator and thus defend his own authority as Regent of the entire Empire. The Maccabees took Jerusalem and were now able to extend their authority while the main Seleucid army was distracted; only local garrisons and hostile local militias were left to stop them during the next year of 163 BC. In this time period, only Judea truly had a strong majority of Jews; many outlying regions, while having substantial Jewish populations, had many non-Jews. Relations apparently collapsed between Jews and Gentiles during the radicalization spurred by the revolt, so the Maccabees went on campaign to protect the outlying Jews and attack hostile Gentiles.
Scholarly analysis[edit]
1 Maccabees contains brief letters requesting help from the Maccabees against Timothy from the Jews of Gilead at Dathema, as well as another letter from the Jews of Galilee requesting aid there. John Grainger, a historian skeptical of the reliability of the books of Maccabees, argues these letters were potentially postfactum inventions made to provide additional justification for the expeditions. While granting that the situation between Jews and Gentiles was likely tense, Grainger believes that the expeditions were more likely driven by a combination of pre-emptive defensive moves to weaken nearby sources of Seleucid power, an attempt to gather needed manpower for Judas's armies by going on a recruiting drive, and a looting expedition. He also argues that these raids probably did not stretch as far as claimed. The book 1 Maccabees was likely written under the reign of John Hyrcanus, an era where the Hasmonean state had expanded its borders beyond Judea. To Grainger, the book may be trying to justify the conquests in the time of the author (~130–100 BC) by prefiguring them in Judas's time and giving them a moral arc of rescue of fellow Jews and punishment to enemies of the Jews.[5]
