Yeah...way ahead of you.
One needs to understand the political situation in Judaea c 165 BC. The Seleucids were the nominal rulers having evicted the Ptolemaic Greeks a century or so earlier. The Seleucids, however, had their asses kicked by the Romans at Magnesia in 190. Antiochus the Great died while trying to collect the indemnity that the Romans demanded in exchange for peace which led to 25 years of internecine strife, revolts and assassinations among various claimants to the throne. Meanwhile, the Seleucid empire continued to vanish piece-by-piece.
So, in that atmosphere, one should not be surprised that a group of nobles took the opportunity also to rebel against Seleucid control and seek independence. All of this horseshit about god could well have been written into the story later on by priests seeking to establish their own position in the new kingdom. Certainly, the establishment of the Hasmonean monarchy represents the only time in the entire first millenium when there was actually an admittedly minor regional power in Judaea which could make a pretension to expansionist policy.
This covers a very short period of time, perhaps 60 years before the Hasmoneans, like the Seleucids earlier, dissolved into a bickering bloody clan which ended up being swept aside when Pompeius Magnus came rolling through the region.
One needs to understand the political situation in Judaea c 165 BC. The Seleucids were the nominal rulers having evicted the Ptolemaic Greeks a century or so earlier. The Seleucids, however, had their asses kicked by the Romans at Magnesia in 190. Antiochus the Great died while trying to collect the indemnity that the Romans demanded in exchange for peace which led to 25 years of internecine strife, revolts and assassinations among various claimants to the throne. Meanwhile, the Seleucid empire continued to vanish piece-by-piece.
So, in that atmosphere, one should not be surprised that a group of nobles took the opportunity also to rebel against Seleucid control and seek independence. All of this horseshit about god could well have been written into the story later on by priests seeking to establish their own position in the new kingdom. Certainly, the establishment of the Hasmonean monarchy represents the only time in the entire first millenium when there was actually an admittedly minor regional power in Judaea which could make a pretension to expansionist policy.
This covers a very short period of time, perhaps 60 years before the Hasmoneans, like the Seleucids earlier, dissolved into a bickering bloody clan which ended up being swept aside when Pompeius Magnus came rolling through the region.
