When was the Maccabean revolt?

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Accepted Answer

From 167 to 160 BC. Antiochus IV Epiphanes forbade the Jewish law and defiled the Temple in Jerusalem in December 167 BC; the priest Mattathias raised the revolt at Modein the same year; his son Judas Maccabeus won the battles of 166–164 and cleansed the Temple in December 164, the event kept as Hanukkah; Judas fell in 160. His brothers carried the struggle on until Simon won freedom from Seleucid tribute in 142 BC. The map stands at Jerusalem in 167 BC; a few scholars put the desecration a year earlier, in 168. Antiochus had become king in 175 BC; he plundered the Temple in 169, and after Rome turned him out of Egypt in 168 he ordered, in 167, pagan sacrifice throughout Judea. On the fifteenth of Kislev of the Seleucid year 145 the “abomination of desolation” was set on the altar, in the words Daniel uses of the king whose forces would “pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice”. At Modein, north-west of Jerusalem, Mattathias killed the king's officer and the Jew who came to sacrifice, and fled to the hills with his five sons. Judas, called Maccabeus, probably “the hammer”, beat the Seleucid generals: Seron at Beth-horon about 166, Gorgias at Emmaus in 165, Lysias at Beth-zur in 164, and on 25 Kislev 164 the Temple was rededicated for eight days, the “feast of the dedication” at which John shows Jesus walking in Solomon's porch. The dates rest on the years of the Seleucid era in 1 Maccabees, which began in autumn 312 BC by the Macedonian count and in spring 311 by the Babylonian; the book seems to use both, so a few scholars read 15 Kislev of year 145 as December 168 rather than 167. Antiochus died on campaign in Persia late in 164, about the time of the dedication. Judas defeated Nicanor at Adasa on 13 Adar 161 and made a treaty with Rome, but in 160 he fell at Elasa fighting Bacchides. Daniel's “two thousand and three hundred days” until “the sanctuary be cleansed”, and his “thousand two hundred and ninety days” from the taking away of the daily sacrifice, were read of Antiochus's persecution already in antiquity, as Jerome's commentary records; the books of Maccabees that tell the story are in the Greek and Slavonic Bibles but not in the Hebrew canon.