Free The Age of the Maccabees (Illustrated) by Annesley Streane

cruel
administrators of justice; whilst the Pharisees, appealing to traditional
interpretations of the Scriptures, allowed mercy to preponderate, and only
required a pecuniary compensation from the offender. The Sadducees, on the
other hand, were more lenient in their judgment of those false witnesses whose
evidence might have occasioned a judicial murder, as they only inflicted
punishment if the execution of the defendant actually took place”.
    So long as the struggle
was for religious freedom, as it was in the days of the first generation of
Maccabean brothers, the Pharisees were heartily on the side of the rulers.
“When this contest had been brought to a successful issue, and Hyrcanus showed
that his aim was for the aggrandizement and extension of the Jewish state, and
even for his personal glorification as the civil prince, and not merely the chief
ecclesiastical personage, their support began to be exchanged to some extent
for suspicion and coldness. For all the earlier portion of his rule, however,
he contrived to prevent a formal difference from manifesting itself. At length
the crisis came.
    On the occasion of a
banquet to the chief Pharisees, Hyrcanus, perhaps in order to test the
sincerity of their friendship, and lead them to make the attack, for which he
may have had good reason to think that they were preparing, asked them to
mention anything in his conduct which they considered blameworthy. A certain
Eleazar ben Povia replied that he should content himself with princely
authority and transfer the high priest’s diadem to a worthier head, inasmuch as
his mother had been made a captive during an attack on Modin by the Syrians.
The charge which this implied was inquired into and found false. Hyrcanus
called upon the Pharisees to inflict punishment for the slander. They condemned
their colleague to the penalty assigned to ordinary slander, viz., stripes and
imprisonment. The Sadducees suggested that a punishment so trivial in
proportion to the offence of making this charge against the chief civil and
ecclesiastical ruler showed disaffection on the part of the Pharisees to his
rule. He thenceforward withdrew his favor from them, showing his estrangement
by various changes in the details of administration, civil offices, as well as
those connected with the Temple, being now given to the Sadducees.
    This clouded the short
remainder of Hyrcanus’s days, and proved the commencement of discord and
disaster to the nation. His house, indeed, appeared thoroughly prosperous.
    “It was because they
had devoted such intense labor, and had been proved in the severest crisis,
that the Hasmoneans, like David of old, had attained supreme power, which came
to them unsought and yet, by the inevitable necessity of circumstances, backed
by the acclamation and most earnest cooperation of the people ... Their
position as rulers, therefore, was if possible more prosperous, and full of
brighter promise for a long-future, than David’s had ever been. In John
Hyrcanus and his five sons, it seemed that the perpetuity of their house was
secured. But collapse was near. Hyrcanus died at the age of sixty, after
thirty-one years’ rule, in the year 106 BC. Josephus says that “he was esteemed
by God worthy of the three privileges—the government of his nation, the dignity
of the high-priesthood, and prophecy”. Whatever we think of this last claim, we
may at any rate accept it as a sign of the high estimation in which he was held
by his countrymen during the greater part of his reign.
     

FROM THE ACCESSION OF ARISTOBULUS TO THE DEATH OF
JANNEUS (106—78  BC)
     

     
    HYRCANUS, before his
death (of which no particulars have come down to us), named his wife as his
successor, and his son Judah—better known by his Greek name Aristobulus—as high
priest. The latter soon transferred his mother from the throne to a prison, and
getting rid of his four brothers in a similar manner, he assumed the title of
king, although he did not