Persecutions by Antiochus IV Epiphanes

Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Seleucid ruler, set out to abolish Judean worship: the sabbath and circumcision were forbidden, sacrifice to Greek gods was made compulsory, and the Temple in Jerusalem was desecrated with the erection of a foreign altar. This is the first known persecution targeting a religion as such, rather than a people for its revolt.

The resistance began in the town of Modiin, where the priest Mattathias refused to sacrifice and slew the officer who had come to compel him. His sons — the Maccabees — waged a seven-year war against the Seleucid garrisons and their Hellenized allies. The literature of the period preserved the memory of individual refusals: the elderly scribe Eleazar, who chose death rather than appear to eat forbidden meat, and the mother whose seven sons are executed one after another before her eyes.

The purification of the Temple, three years after its desecration, is the origin of the festival of Hanukkah; the Hasmonean dynasty that emerged from it ruled over Judea until the arrival of Rome.