A Religious Encyclopaedia - Or Dictionary of Biblical, Historical, Doctrinal, and Practical Theology; Based on the Real-Encyklopädie of Herzog, Plitt, and Hauck #264674

The first principle in the politics of the Mace donian states of the East was the Hellenizing of the native populations. Antiochus IV. Also fol lowed it. Amongst all his subjects, the Israelites were the ones whose spirit and culture were the most bitterly antagonistic to Greek customs. But it was this very people, whom on account of their relations with foreign states, their wealth, and the importance of their geographical position, it was the most necessary for him to subject. It does not surprise us that some of the Jews should have regarded the introduction of foreign customs as. Something unavoidable, and offered no resist ance. The zeal, however, of the strict advocates of the ancestral religion became intense under the Oppression. They liked to call themselves the Oppressed the Poor and the Pious Indignant at this moral resistance, Antiochus finally inaugurated as religious persecution, which began with under hand restrictions. These measures induced an Open revolt, whose leader was the priest and patriot Mattathias of Modin. His bold deed of the public murder of a royal official was the sign for the beginning of the revolt. Fleeing to the mountains, he, with the co-operation of his five heroic sons, organized war on a small scale. He died 166 bc.