The Inter-testamental Period
The Inter-testamental Period
Israel had to wait another 400 years before her Messiah was born. This is called “the inter-testamental period,” since no book of either the Old or the New Testament was written during it. The voice of prophecy was known to be silent. The author of the First Book of the Maccabees, which belongs to the Apocrypha8 and describes the events of 175–134 BC, mentions this several times. He refers to a time of great affliction for Israel as being “worse than any since the day when prophets ceased to appear among them” (1 Macc. 9:27) and says that Simon was confirmed as leader and high priest in perpetuity “until a true prophet should appear” (1 Macc. 14:41).
Nevertheless, there are references to this period in the Book of Daniel, which is certainly one of the most difficult books in the Bible. Questions regarding its authorship, composition and interpretation continue to perplex scholars. It contains several remarkable dreams and visions, some of which are explained, while others are left wholly or partially without explanation.
In general, these predict the rise and fall of the great empires, especially as they affect the people of God. The best-known is Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of a vast image of colossus, whose head was made of gold, breast and arms of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron and feet of mixed iron and clay. Then (in the dream) a stone hit the feet, and the whole image was smashed to pieces. Daniel interpreted the dream as referring to successive empires. Traditionally, these have been understood as Babylon (“You are the head of gold”), Medo-Persia (the breast and arms), Greece, the kingdom which “will rule over all the earth,” and Rome, which became “a divided kingdom” and did not stand. If this is right, then the stone, “cut out, but not by human hands,” is the kingdom of the Messiah, of which Daniel says:
The God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed…. It will … endure forever. (Dan. 2:44)
These great empires did follow one another. They provided the setting within which God’s drama of redemption was acted out. The Babylonian kingdom lasted from 605 to 539 BC, the Medo-Persian from 539 to 331, the Greek from 331 to 63, and the Roman from 63 on into the Christian era.
Later chapters of the Book of Daniel are more explicit. His vision recorded in chapter 8 is of a powerful ram, charging west, north and south, with no beast able to stand before it. Being two-horned, it represents the Medo-Persian empire (v. 20). Then “a goat … came from the west, crossing the whole earth” (v. 5). This is “the king of Greece” (v. 21), that is to say, the rise of the Greek empire under Philip of Macedon. The goat from the west “had a prominent horn” between its eyes, with which it struck the ram and broke its two horns. This prominent horn will be Philip’s son, Alexander the Great, who after a series of dashing victories against Asia Minor, Tyre, Gad and Egypt, defeated the Persian army in 331 BC.
“The goat became very great” (v. 8), referring perhaps to the continuance of Alexander’s campaign through Afghanistan as far as India. “But at the height of his power his large horn was broken off,” for he died in 323 BC in Babylon, and in its place four prominent horns grew up, for Alexander’s empire was divided into four major regions under his generals—Macedonia and Greece, Thrace or West Asia, Syria and Babylonia (under Seleucus) and Egypt (under Ptolemy).
Of these the last two dominated the fortunes of Israel for the next 300 years. “They brought untold miseries upon the world” (1 Macc. 1:9). As in earlier centuries Palestine was a buffer territory between the Assyrian-Babylonian-Persian empires to the northeast and the Egyptian to the southwest, so now Judea was caught between the Seleucids ruling Syria and the Ptolemies ruling Egypt. The former are termed “the king of the north” in Daniel 11 and the latter “the king of the south.” Both dynasties lasted until the middle of the first century BC, and relations between them varied from uneasy coexistence to active hostility and warfare. Judea kept coming under the control now of the one, now of the other.
Returning to Daniel’s vision of the he-goat, whose one conspicuous horn had been replaced by “four prominent horns,” the vision developed as follows:
Out of one of them came another horn, which started small but grew in power to the south and to the east and toward the Beautiful Land. It grew until it reached the host of the heavens…. It set itself up to be as great as the Prince of the host; it took away the daily sacrifice from him, and the place of his sanctuary was brought low … and truth was thrown to the ground. (Dan. 8:9–12)
This “little horn” is interpreted as “a stern-faced king” who “will cause astounding devastation and … will destroy the mighty men and the holy people” (Dan. 8:23–24). He seems without doubt to be Antiochus Epiphanes (175–163 BC), who is further designated “a contemptible person” in Daniel 11:21.
In 167 BC Antiochus Epiphanes ordered the suspension of the temple sacrifices, the destruction of the Scriptures, and the discontinuance of circumcision, Sabbath observance and the food laws. The climax came in December, when a new altar was dedicated to Zeus, “the Lord of heaven” (of whom Antiochus claimed to be an incarnation), and unclean animals were offered upon it. Thus the continual burnt offering was taken away and the sanctuary profaned by “the abomination that causes desolation” (Dan. 11:31).
The king’s edict applied to the provinces as well as to Jerusalem, on pain of death. Many complied. Many others resisted, welcoming death rather than defilement. The most fearful tortures and massacres took place, some of which are described in the Books of the Maccabees. The martyrs died “by sword and flame, by captivity and plunder” (Dan. 11:33 RSV). It is probably to them that the author of the Letter to the Hebrews was referring when he wrote:
Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawn in two; they were put to death by the sword … the world was not worthy of them. (Heb. 11:35–38)
Organized resistance was sparked off by the high priest Mattathias who took it upon himself to kill both a Jewish traitor and the king’s officer who was inviting them to sacrifice. This led to a period of guerrilla warfare, in which pagan altars were demolished, Jewish children forcibly circumcised and compromisers slain.
Mattathias died in 166 and was succeeded in turn by three of his sons—Judas who was surnamed Maccabaeus, an epithet meaning probably “the hammer” or “the eradicator” (166–161 BC), Jonathan (161–143 BC) and Simon (143–135 BC).The details of their revolt against Gentile rule and of their extraordinary military exploits are recorded in the Books of the Maccabees.
Probably the most triumphant moment in their history came in 164 BC when, under the leadership of Judas Maccabaeus, the temple area was purified and the temple itself restored, a new altar was constructed and dedicated, and the sacrifices began to be offered again.
On the anniversary of the day when the Gentiles had profaned it, on that very day, it was rededicated, with hymns of thanksgiving, to the music of harps and lutes and cymbals. (1 Macc. 4:54)
The war of independence continued for many years, and political autonomy was not secured until 128 BC under John Hyrcanus, Simon’s son. He was priest and leader, and some said prophet and king as well. He and his sons annexed a good deal of the territory surrounding Judea.
But in 63 BC the Roman general Pompey entered Jerusalem, and penetrated even into the holy of holies, to the horror of the priests. Judea became a Roman protectorate, and Jewish independence was lost again.
In 40 BC Herod, who had already been military prefect of Galilee and later joint tetrarch of Judea, was made by the Roman senate “King of the Jews.” Gradually he reconquered his kingdom and in the year 37 BC besieged and took Jerusalem, executing Antigonus, the last of the Maccabean priest-rulers. Herod was always unpopular as an Edomite foreigner (although a Jew by religion). Nevertheless he reigned for thirty-three years. It was under his sponsorship that in 19 BC the great reconstruction of the temple began. The work continued almost until AD 70, when the temple was again and finally destroyed, this time by the Roman army.
Throughout the uneasy period of Maccabean rule, important movements were developing in the Jewish community which later hardened into the various religious parties of our Lord’s day.
The revolt of the Maccabees was first and foremost a religious protest, a defiant refusal to compromise with Hellenizing influences. Nothing aroused the indignation of the Maccabees more than the time-serving high priests, installed by favor of the Seleucid kings. They and their followers are the “renegade Jews” of the Books of the Maccabees, who wanted even to remove the marks of circumcision and so to ape Greek ways as to wear Greek dress and to build themselves a Greek stadium in which to compete in the games.
The Jews who avoided all contamination from Hellenizing influences were the Hasidim, or pious ones. They were thoroughgoing separatists, the ancestors of the Pharisees, concerned for religious rather than political freedom.
The Hasmoneans (the Maccabees’ family name) were not content with religious freedom; they wanted national independence too. They got involved in all kinds of political intrigue, and their successors were the Sadducees.
The political extremists, wanting to continue the Maccabean struggle for independence, were the Zealots. They were revolutionary firebrands, determined at all costs to wrest their freedom from Rome.
When, in the fullness of time, Jesus Christ came, the people once tried “to come and make him king by force” (John 6:15). But he withdrew from them. He had to explain that, although he was indeed a king, his kingdom was “not of this world” (John 18:33–38). The freedom he offered was freedom from the tyranny of sin.
If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. (John 8:31–32)