The tyrant in the rabbinic versions, however, is not Antiochus Epiphanes but Hadrian: “Hadrian came and seized upon a widow …” (S. Eliyahu Rab. 30)
This story bears remarkable parallels to that of the widow-martyr, Hannah, in 2 Maccabees, especially in my revised context according to which the Seleucid king Antiochus IV ‘Epiphanes’ was Hadrian:
Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ and Emperor Hadrian. Part One: “… a mirror image”
For one, an “Antiochus” denounces the mother and her daughters to the emperor Hadrian.
In 2 Maccabees 7 it is Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ who tortures the victims, but who is named in Jewish legends, “Hadrian”.
In the Christian tale the mother has only daughters.
In the Maccabean account the mother has only sons.
St. Sophia is, as Hannah is (according to Jewish tradition), a widow.
In both tales the children remain composed even whilst being tortured.
In both tales the pious mother, who encourages her children, outlives them all, but soon dies (St. Sophia 3 days later).
Here is my account of the Jewish widow-martyr, according to my revised history, with the Herodian and Maccabean ages now contemporary, and Hannah tentatively suggested as the New Testament widow, Anna the prophetess:
Anna was a widow – and, appropriately, the woman-martyr in Maccabees has no husband with her but only sons. Soon we shall read that she was, according to rabbinic tradition, “a widow”.
And she was indeed very wise and prophetic, as would befit an Anna the prophetess.
Moreover, Anna had had the inestimable privilege of witnessing the future hope of Israel and she accordingly “gave thanks to God and spoke about the Child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38).
If Anna were also the woman of Maccabees, then her experience of meeting the Holy Family would have greatly fortified her in her worthy task of urging her seven sons not to apostatise. Her hope had become their hope.
And so the youngest of the sons can hopefully proclaim to the king (2 Maccabees 7:32-35):
‘It is true that our living Lord is angry with us and is making us suffer because of our sins, in order to correct and discipline us. But this will last only a short while, for we are still his servants, and he will forgive us. But you are the cruelest and most disgusting thing that ever lived.
So don’t fool yourself with illusions of greatness while you punish God’s people. There is no way for you to escape punishment at the hands of the almighty and all-seeing God’.
The wise mother also manages to ‘shatter the theory of evolution’ with her ex nihilo remark (7:28):
‘God did not make them out of existing things’:
http://www.usccb.org/bible/2mc/7 “that is, all things were made solely by God’s omnipotent will and creative word; cf. Heb 11:3. This statement has often been taken as a basis for “creation out of nothing” (Latin creatio ex nihilo)”.
Hannah’s (Anna’s) martyrdom, along with her seven sons, I would estimate to have occurred very soon after the Presentation.
The Holy Family was now safe from “the king”, in Egypt.
Now, a traditional Jewish interpretation of this dramatic account of martyrdom may have great import for our revised Maccabean-Herodian history and for the ‘shaving off’ of Romans. My question has been: And who is Caesar Augustus?
… whilst Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ was the king present during the martyrdom of the woman and her seven sons, there are accounts in the Jewish Talmud and Midrash according to which the king in the story was “Caesar” (e.g. Talmud, Gittin 57b and Midrash Eicha Rabba 1:50). Even more shockingly (in standard historical terms) the cruel king overseeing the martyrdom is sometimes named “Hadrian”. Stephen D. Moore, in The Bible in Theory: Critical and Postcritical Essays, p. 196, when discussing the famous incident in the Maccabees of the mother and her seven martyred sons, adds this intriguing footnote (51) according to which Antiochus was replaced in rabbinic tradition by Hadrian:
Nameless in 4 Maccabees, the mother is dubbed … Hannah … in the rabbinic tradition …. The tyrant in the rabbinic versions, however, is not Antiochus Epiphanes but Hadrian: “Hadrian came and seized upon a widow …” (S. Eliyahu Rab. 30); “In the days of the shemad [the Hadrianic persecutions]…” (Pesiq. R. 43). ….
As said, this is ‘shocking’ in a conventional context which would have Antiochus (c. 170 BC) separated in time from the reign of the emperor Hadrian (c. 117-138 AD) by some three centuries. But it accords perfectly with the descriptions of Hadrian as “a second Antiochus” and “a mirror-image of Antiochus”.
[End of quote]
Now, here is the story of the Christian saint and her daughters – all so marvellously named:
The Holy Martyrs Saint Sophia and her Daughters Faith, Hope and Love were born in Italy. Their mother was a pious Christian widow who named her daughters for the three Christian virtues. Faith was twelve, Hope was ten, and Love was nine. Saint Sophia raised them in the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. Saint Sophia and her daughters did not hide their faith in Christ, but openly confessed it before everyone.
An official named Antiochus denounced them to the emperor Hadrian … who ordered that they be brought to Rome.
Realizing that they would be taken before the emperor, the holy virgins prayed fervently to the Lord Jesus Christ, asking that He give them the strength not to fear torture and death. When the holy virgins and their mother came before the emperor, everyone present was amazed at their composure. They looked as though they had been brought to some happy festival, rather than to torture. Summoning each of the sisters in turn, Hadrian urged them to offer sacrifice to the goddess Artemis. The young girls remained unyielding.
Then the emperor ordered them to be tortured. They burned the holy virgins over an iron grating, then threw them into a red-hot oven, and finally into a cauldron with boiling tar, but the Lord preserved them.
The youngest child, Love, was tied to a wheel and they beat her with rods until her body was covered all over with bloody welts. After undergoing unspeakable torments, the holy virgins glorified their Heavenly Bridegroom and remained steadfast in the Faith.
They subjected Saint Sophia to another grievous torture: the mother was forced to watch the suffering of her daughters. She displayed adamant courage, and urged her daughters to endure their torments for the sake of the Heavenly Bridegroom. All three maidens were beheaded, and joyfully bent their necks beneath the sword.
In order to intensify Saint Sophia’s inner suffering, the emperor permitted her to take the bodies of her daughters. She placed their remains in coffins and loaded them on a wagon. She drove beyond the city limits and reverently buried them on a high hill. Saint Sophia sat there by the graves of her daughters for three days, and finally she gave up her soul to the Lord. Even though she did not suffer for Christ in the flesh, she was not deprived of a martyr’s crown. Instead, she suffered in her heart. Believers buried her body there beside her daughters. ….
“Modern authors tend to accept as an axiom that in the twelfth century,
there existed a strong identification between crusaders and the Maccabean warriors. Penny Cole wrote, for example, that “in all essential ways the struggles
of the Maccabees against the persecutor Antiochus . . . and by association,
of the crusaders against Muslim infidel, are substantially identical”.”
Elizabeth Lapina
Elyse Sulkey compares – but also unfavorably contrasts, with reference to Guibert of Nogent – the Maccabees and the Crusaders, when she writes as follows in her article, “Guibert of Nogent: The Development of Rhetoric from Anti-Judaism to Anti-Semitism”: https://vtuhr.org/articles/10.21061/vtuhr.v5i1.40/
During the twelfth century, authors began to reach back into the Old Testament to find biblical precedents for the crusaders, which eventually led to the use of the Maccabees as “proto-crusaders.” …. The Maccabees were a Jewish rebel force active in the mid-second century BCE who fought to reassert Judaism in Judea against the influence of Hellenism and the Seleucid Empire. ….
The Maccabees made an apt comparison for crusaders because they used forced conversion and conquest to meet their aims, much like the crusaders. …. In his early works, Guibert followed traditional models of exegetical debate about the Old Testament. ….
From the beginning of The Deeds of God through the Franks, Guibert set out to ensure that his audience understood that Jews, even the Maccabees, are lesser than their Christian counterparts. In the introduction he stated that he wrote his chronicle of the First Crusade because “[he] thought, if [he] may dare to say this, that it deserved being told with greater dignity than all the histories of Jewish warfare, if God would grant someone the ability to do this.” …. Guibert thus makes it clear that despite their accomplishments, one of his goals in writing The Deeds of God through the Franks was to elevate Christian crusaders above the well-known Jewish warriors. He does this throughout The Deeds of God through the Franks by demonstrating Jewish theological shortcomings, a technique often employed in anti-Judaic writing.
Later, Guibert further emphasized the higher status of the crusaders in comparison to the Maccabees. He retold the sermon of Pope Urban II in Clermont declaring that the pope had said, “If the Maccabees once deserved the highest praise for piety because they fought for their rituals and their temple, then you too, O soldiers of Christ, deserve such praise, for taking up arms to defend the freedom of your country.” …. The pope continued on to tell the crusaders they were fighting the Antichrist. In this instance, a comparison was being drawn that the Maccabees fought for their own sake, while the crusaders fought for God as well as the protection of their country. …. This comparison elevated the crusaders for their righteous, spiritual cause while putting the Maccabees in a realm of corporeal selfishness.
Guibert continued this critique of the Maccabees when he related the “despicable vanity of the Jewish people.” …. Though Guibert excused Jewish fathers now celebrated by the Church, such as David, Joshua, and Samuel, he accused the Jews of being a “wretched” people who served God only to fill their own bellies. ….
Guibert then declared that these “idolaters” were given their victories, while the Christian crusaders were sacrificing to achieve theirs. …. While Guibert seemed to emphasize the disadvantages the crusaders faced, he later said “if celestial help appeared long ago to the Maccabees fighting for circumcision and the meat of swine, how much more did those who poured out their blood for Christ, purifying the churches and propagating the faith, deserve such help.” …. Guibert used these passages not only to demonstrate to his readers the weakness of the Maccabees, who needed worldly comforts and divine help in order to succeed, but to assure his readers that the crusaders would be victorious because of their greater sacrifice and true devotion to God. Later in The Deeds of God through the Franks, Guibert reminded us of his previous point by stating that neither Ezra nor Judas Maccabeus suffered as much as the crusaders for their victories. ….
This passage also served to illustrate how the crusaders did not just possess purer motive and devotion than the Maccabees, but actually surpassed the accomplishments of their greatest warriors. ….
[End of quote]
Region of Erzurum conquered by Seleucids, by Seljuks
The proximity of Erzurum to the important centers of civilization in addition to its natural conditions and geographical location made it one of the oldest settlement centers of Anatolia.
Some excavated stone artifacts take back the history of the settlement in this area as early as the Paleolithic age.
The Macedonian King Alexander conquered the region in the 4th century B.C which was dominated by the Hurris, Hayasas, Urartians, Assirians, Cimmerians, Iskıts, Meds and Persians in turn after 3000 B.C.This region was reined by the Seleucids after the death of Alexander. Later on by the Roman Empire was the scene of the bloody wars between the Romans and Parthes. With the division of the Roman Empire into two parts in 395, Erzurum which was included in part of the Byzantine Empire changed hands between the Byzantines and the Sassanides a number of times. The invansion of the region by the Hun State which was established on the north of the Blacksea between the years 295-398 was the first entry of Turks into the region. In this period there was a city by the name Karin in the location of Erzurum and another city by the name Erzen on the west of the Erzurum Plateau in this period.
Anatolius who was the general of the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius 2(408-450) who himself had taken the Erzurum region back from the Huns, had a castle built in the most strategic location of the region where Karin was located against the attacks that could come from Iran and changed the name of the city to Theodosiopolis. ….
Erzurum changed hands between the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim Arabs consisting of the Ummayads and the Abbasids until the year 949.The Muslims named Theodopolis as “Kalikala” which meant “Carpet City” Erzurum the population of which reached 200 thousand in the 7th century was one of the largest cities of the world at the time.The Seljuk Turks who entered the Byzantine territory in order to conquer Eastern Anatolia captured Erzen which was located on the west of the plain in 1048. The people who ran from Erzen which had been ruined after the attacks,found rescue in Kalikala and changed its name to Erzen. The original Erzen which that was ruined after the attacks,was later named as Kara Erzen and in time as Karaz. And the new Erzen was later referred to as Roman Erzen which in turn became Erzurum, the modern name of the city. …
one is cautioned: “Not to be confused with Seleucid Empire”.
“The Great Seljuq Empire (Modern Turkish: Büyük Selçuklu Devleti; Persian: دولت سلجوقیان) was a medieval Turko-Persian[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] Sunni Muslim empire, originating from the Qynyq branch of Oghuz Turks.[9] The Seljuq Empire controlled a vast area stretching from the Hindu Kush to eastern Anatolia and from Central Asia to the Persian Gulf. From their homelands near the Aral sea, the Seljuqs advanced first into Khorasan and then into mainland Persia before eventually conquering eastern Anatolia”. ….
[End of quote]
One might easily, however, confuse the names, Seleuc-id and Seljuk, or Saltukid.
Just as one may be excused for noticing many striking parallels between the Macabbees and the Crusaders, fighting to regain the Holy City of Jerusalem.
Elizabeth Lapina provides further such similarities at:
Narratives of the Crusades and, more specifically, of the First Crusade provide one of the most important clusters of references to the Maccabees – primarily the Maccabean warriors, but also the Maccabean martyrs – in Christian medieval sources. Many authors writing about the crusades used the stories of both types of the Maccabees, the warriors and the martyrs, to interpret current events in the Holy Land.
There was a particularly large number of references in connection with one event: the Battle of Antioch, fought between crusaders and Muslims on June 28, 1098. Two more crucial references appear in the context of two more battles fought by Prince Roger of Antioch in the vicinities of the city: the Battle of Tall Danith (1115) and the Battle of the Field of Blood (1119). Although there seems to be no direct connection between Antioch and the Maccabean warriors, the city was of paramount importance for the Maccabean martyrs. Although the locations of the martyrdom of seven Maccabean brothers, their mother, and Priest Eleazar and of their initial burial (the remains eventually found their way to Constantinople and Rome) are uncertain, a number of patristic sources mention Antioch in connection with them.
There is no doubt that at one point Antioch was the center of the Maccabean cult. In one of his sermons, St. Augustine of Hippo argues vehemently that the Maccabean martyrs belong not to the Jewish but rather to the Christian tradition. As proof, he refers to a church dedicated to the Maccabees in Antioch. Augustine found it ironic and fitting that the city bearing nearly the same name as King Antiochus IV, the persecutor of the Maccabean martyrs, would celebrate those whom he persecuted.
In Late Antiquity, Antioch suffered an unprecedented series of disasters from which it never recovered. The Crusades, however, signaled a rediscovery of the city by western Christians. On their way to Jerusalem, crusaders stopped at Antioch and besieged the city for eight months. Within days of its capture, they found themselves besieged in turn by an impressive army assembled by Kerbogha, atabeg of Mosul. The lack of supplies was drastic, desertions multiplied, the majority of horses were lost, and reports were made to the Byzantine emperor Alexius that the annihilation of the crusaders was imminent. In desperation, unable to continue their resistance in the long-depleted city, crusaders opted for a battle, in the course of which they routed Kerbogha’s troops.
Apart from its purely military significance, the Battle of Antioch was at the very center of medieval conceptions of the First Crusade. For many authors, the triumph of crusaders at this particular point, when everything foreboded disaster, proved the extent of God’s support for the Christian side.
For many contemporaries, this was made evident by a number of miracles reported in connection with the battle: the discovery of the Holy Lance; a multiplication of visions; and – most importantly for the present discussion – intervention of a number of saints, perhaps an entire celestial army, on the side of crusaders. In this manner, the battle would end up, to some degree, upstaging the capture of Jerusalem a year later. It is unclear what exactly the crusaders and medieval chroniclers of the Crusades knew about the importance of Antioch within the cult of the Jewish martyrs in Late Antiquity. When describing the city, crusading sources do not mention the Maccabees. One of the rare exceptions is the so-called Charleville Poet, who claims that Antioch was very ancient: “The book of Maccabees asserts its [Antioch’s] existence, when the priest is said to have perished, next to Daphne.” The poet is apparently alluding to the assassination of the pious Priest Onias in the vicinity of the city, described in the Second Book of Maccabees (2 Macc 4:34). Still, it is possible that crusaders learned about the ancient cult of the Maccabees at Antioch during their interactions with the local population, which included a sizable Christian minority. At least some of the chroniclers of the First Crusade must have had access to St. Augustine’s above-mentioned sermon. And they were undoubtedly familiar with King Antiochus IV Epiphanes, whom a variety of medieval sources present as an Antichrist-like figure. Just as St. Augustine did centuries earlier, they must have been capable of constructing an associative link between Antioch and the Maccabees through the intermediary of Antiochus.
Whatever the case might be, the connection between the city of Antioch and the Maccabees displays a certain degree of continuity from Late Antiquity to the crusading period. However, if in Late Antiquity it was the Maccabean martyrs that attracted attention …
Damien Mackey’s comment: On this subject, and for further Maccabean-Christian parallelism, see e.g. my article:
… during the crusading period it was the Maccabean warriors.
In general, medieval writers of history were always eagerly looking for biblical prototypes of later events and figures. While Maccabean martyrs hardly resembled crusaders, Maccabean warriors did. Maccabean warriors shared the name of the Maccabean martyrs, but, of course, not their fate, fighting Antiochus actively under the leadership of Judas Maccabeus. Both the Maccabean warriors and crusaders fought for control of the city of Jerusalem and took pride in the restoration of holy sites. While the Maccabees fought against a Pagan enemy, crusaders struggled against Muslims, whom they frequently associated with Pagans. Last but not least, both profited from divine help on the battlefield. Modern authors tend to accept as an axiom that in the twelfth century, there existed a strong identification between crusaders and the Maccabean warriors.
Penny Cole wrote, for example, that “in all essential ways the struggles of the Maccabees against the persecutor Antiochus . . . and by association, of the crusaders against Muslim infidel, are substantially identical.”
Indeed, Baldwin I, the second ruler and first Latin king of Jerusalem, was called a “second Maccabee” in the laudatory inscription on his tombstone.
Describing the Battle of Tall Danith, in which Prince Roger of Antioch emerged victorious, Fulcher of Chartres exclaims as follows: “For when did victory of fighters ever depend upon the number of men? Remember the Maccabees, Gideon, and many others who confided not in their own strength but in God and in that way overcame many thousands.”
Maccabees models for Teutonic Order
“This was interesting because I work on the Teutonic Order’s crusade in Lithuania,
and in the Order’s Latin chronicles the Maccabees are the main model”.
A reader
I did a quick check on this subject at Google and found the following verifications of what the reader above has claimed regarding the first part of this article:
This study examines the religious and historical literature of the Teutonic Order, the brotherhood of warrior-monks whose northern crusade subdued and converted the eastern Baltic region during the late Middle Ages. Chapter One presents the background against which the Teutonic Knights produced their Biblically-inspired works. It establishes that the early years of the 14th century were a time of crisis for the Order. Chapter Two focuses on the Rule of the Teutonic Order and the Biblical foundation upon which its statutes rested. It was to this Rule that the Knights turned in their “generation of crisis,” and it was from this Rule that their Order drew its stubborn will to survive. The Rule rekindled in the warrior-monks a sense of Biblical mission and it inspired them to defend themselves not only with the sword, but also with the written word. Chapter Three provides an overview of the Order’s crisis-born literature; Deutschordensliteratur is defined and circumscribed according to specific documents, authors and themes. A work by work survey pays special attention to Biblical translations. The Order’s German rendering of I and II Maccabees is the subject of Chapter Four. The Makkabaerbuch receives thorough treatment as the work best typifying the literary efforts of the brothers. ….
Across the different genres of literary and pragmatic texts used in the German Order, the Maccabees, especially Judas Maccabeus, figure prominently as forerunners of the Teutonic Knights on a historical, typological and allegorical level. The main focus of this paper will be on how the Maccabäer, 1 the most comprehensive vernacular version of the Books of the Maccabees ever prepared, 2 adapts that material for the Order. 3 The framework for understanding the way in which biblical epic is presented is provided by the prologues to the
Statuten des Deutschen Ordens, in which the Maccabees occupy a key position ….
The Statutes of the Teutonic Knights: A Study of Religious Chivalry
Indrikis Sterns
….
We remember also the struggle, praiseworthy and pleasing to God, of the knights who were called the Maccabees; how stoutly, for their honor and their faith, they fought with the pagans who wished to force them to deny God, and, with His help, defeated and exterminated them so that they cleansed once again the Holy City which the pagans had defiled, and restored once again peace in the land.
4. These struggles, this holy Knightly Order of the Hospital of Saint Mary of the German House has zealously imitated and has deserved to be graced with many honorable members, for there are knights and chosen fighters, who for love of honor and the fatherland have exterminated the enemies of the faith with a strong hand. They also, from abundance of love, receive visitors and pilgrims and the poor. They also from tender-heartedness, serve with fervor the sick who lie in the hospital. ….
This article explores the evolving use of Maccabaean ideas in sources concerning the conduct of Christian holy warfare between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries.
It demonstrates that the memory of the Maccabees and other Old Testament exemplars played an important role in shaping the idea of crusading and its subsequent evolution to encompass new frontiers in the Baltic and Iberia, as well as structural developments in crusading, such as the establishment of the military orders. ….
Title: The late Fifteenth-Century Utrecht Chronicle of the Teutonic Order : manuscripts, sources, and authorship ….
….
425 The most notable biblical exempla used by the military orders are arguably the Maccabees: E. Poleg, ‘On the books of Maccabees: an unpublished poem by Geoffrey, prior of the Templum Domini’, Crusades 9 (2010) 13–56; Morton, ‘Defence of the Holy Land’; M.C. Fischer, ‘The books of the Maccabees and the Teutonic Order’, Crusades 4 (2005) 59–71.
…. Book 1 of the Chronicle of Prussia ends with the author directly linking the knights to the Maccabees, a Jewish family mentioned in the Apocrypha to the Bible who were said to have defended a realm around Jerusalem during the second century BC. Part of a tradition of drawing comparisons between crusaders in the Holy Land to the struggles of heroes of the 0ld Testament who battled to protect the Promised Land, the mention of the Maccabees is significant for its implications in the adopted crusading ideology in the Baltic. The Teutonic Knights compared their endeavors to those of the Israelites and Maccabees so they could style themselves as a new generation of defenders of the Holy Land.
….
Even with the Holy Land permanently lost to the Muslims, the 0rder continued to use such Biblical metaphors to justify their actions in the Baltic. ….
“And just as Judas Maccabeus is promised divine aid in a dream before his victory
over Nicanor, so Constantine dreams that he will conquer his rival Maxentius”.
Paul Stephenson
Some of the Greek (Seleucid) history, conventionally dated to the last several BC centuries, appears to have been projected (appropriated) into a fabricated Roman imperial history of the first several AD centuries.
Most notably, in this regard, is the supposed Second Jewish Revolt against emperor Hadrian’s Rome, which – on closer examination – turns out to have been the Maccabean Jewish revolt against Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’, of whom emperor Hadrian is “a mirror image”.
See e.g. my series:
Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ and Emperor Hadrian. Part One: “… a mirror image”
Now, last night (2nd December, 2019), as I was reading through a text-like book on Constantine: Roman Emperor, Christian Victor (The Overlook Press, NY, 2010), written by Paul Stephenson, I was struck by the similarities between the Dyarchy (Greek δι- “twice” and αρχια, “rule”) – which later became the Tetrarchy (Greek τετραρχία) of the four emperors – on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the Diadochoi following on from Alexander the Great.
Concerning the latter, we read (The Jerome Biblical Commentary, 1968, 75:103): “With Alexander’s death, the leadership of several successors (Diadochoi) was ineffectual, and finally a fourfold division of the empire took place”.
Compare the Roman Tetrarchy with the “fourfold division” of Alexander of Macedon’s empire.
Added to this was the parallel factor of the ‘Great Persecution’ against Christians (c. 300 AD, conventional dating), and, of course, the infamous persecution of the Jews by Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’.
And I have already pointed to similarities between one of the four Roman emperors, of the time of Constantine, Galerius, and Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’.
But these are the sorts of similarities of which Paul Stephenson (author of the book on Constantine) is also aware (on p. 128 below he uses the phrase “the remarkable coincidences”).
109:
Lactantius’ On the Deaths of the Persecutors is the best and fullest account of the period 303-13 and this is indispensable. But it is also an angry screed, with no known model in Greek or Latin literature, nor in Christian apologetic. Not only did Lactantius delight in the misfortune and demise of the persecuting emperors, he also attributed them to the intervention of the god of the Christians, defending the interest of the faithful. Such an approach rejected the very premise on which martyrs had accepted death at the hands of their persecutors: that their god did not meddle in earthly affairs to bring misfortune upon Roman emperors. This was the first step in articulating a new Christian triumphalist rhetoric, which we shall explore more fully in later chapters.
In doing so, Lactantius drew on an Old Testament model, the Second Book of Maccabees, which still forms an accepted part of the Orthodox canon. Thus, the opening refrain of each text thanks God for punishing the wicked, and the agonizing death of Galerius mirrors that of Antiochus Epiphanes (2 Maccabees 9). And just as Judas Maccabeus is promised divine aid in a dream before his victory over Nicanor, so Constantine dreams that he will conquer his rival Maxentius.
127
Lactantius took great pleasure relating [Galerius’] death as divine punishment for his persecutions, describing his repulsive symptoms and the failure of pagan doctors and prayers to heal him.
Here I (Damien Mackey) will take the description from:
“And now when Galerius was in the eighteenth year of his reign, God struck him with an incurable disease. A malignant ulcer formed itself in the secret parts and spread by degree. The physicians attempted to eradicate it… But the sore, after having been skimmed over, broke again; a vein burst, and the blood flowed in such quantity as to endanger his life… The physicians had to undertake their operations anew, and at length they cauterized the wound… He grew emaciated, pallid, and feeble, and the bleeding then stanched. The ulcer began to be insensible to the remedy as applied, and gangrene seized all the neighboring parts. It diffused itself the wider the more the corrupted flesh was cut away, and everything employed as the means of cure served but to aggravate the disease. The masters of the healing art withdrew. Then famous physicians were brought in from all quarters; but no human means had any success… and the distemper augmented. Already approaching to its deadly crisis, it had occupied the lower regions of his body, his bowels came out; and his whole seat putrefied.
The luckless physicians, although without hope of overcoming the malady, ceased not to apply fermentations and administer remedies. The humors having been repelled, the distemper attacked his intestines, and worms were generated in his body. The stench was so foul as to pervade not only the palace, but even the whole city; and no wonder, for by that time the passages from waste bladder and bowels, having been devoured by the worms, became indiscriminate, and his body, with intolerable anguish, was dissolved into one mass of corruption.”
128
… Already dying [Galerius] issued the following edict [ending persecution] ….
…. Lactantius cites the edict in full. The story has much in common with the account of the death of Antiochus, persecutor of the Jews in the Second Book of Maccabees. Lactantius must have been struck by the remarkable coincidences, and borrowed Antiochus’ worms and stench.
….
The plot now thickens, with the heretical Arius also dying a horrible (Antiochus-Galerius) type of death:
275
Under imperial instruction, Arius was to be marched into church and admitted into full communion, but he never made it. Tradition holds that he died on the way, a hideous death reminiscent of Galerius’, which in Lactantius’ account drew heavily upon the death of Antiochus, persecutor of the Jews in 2 Maccabees. ….
Constantine more like ‘Epiphanes’
Some substantial aspects of the life of Constantine seem to have been lifted
right out of the era of king Antiochus IV ‘Epiphanes’ and the Maccabees.
As briefly noted above:
Constantine’s victory over Maxentius is somewhat reminiscent of the victory over Nicanor by the superb Jewish general, Judas Maccabeus.
“And just as Judas Maccabeus is promised divine aid in a dream before his victory over Nicanor, so Constantine dreams that he will conquer his rival Maxentius”.
Other comparisons can be drawn as well.
For instance, Constantine’s army, too, was significantly outnumbered by that of his opponent.
Again, after Constantine’s victory the head of Maxentius was publicly paraded:
“His body was recovered, his head removed, then mounted on a lance and paraded triumphantly by Constantine’s men”.
Cf. 2 Maccabees 15:30-33):
Then Judas, that man who was ever in body and soul the chief defender of his fellow citizens, and had maintained from youth his affection for his compatriots, ordered Nicanor’s head and right arm up to the shoulder to be cut off and taken to Jerusalem. When he arrived there, he assembled his compatriots, stationed the priests before the altar, and sent for those in the citadel.
He showed them the vile Nicanor’s head and the wretched blasphemer’s arm that had been boastfully stretched out against the holy dwelling of the Almighty. He cut out the tongue of the godless Nicanor, saying he would feed it piecemeal to the birds and would hang up the other wages of his folly opposite the temple.
Prior to his battle with Nicanor, Judas, according to 2 Maccabees (15:15-16), received from the deceased prophet Jeremiah, in “a dream, a kind of waking vision, worthy of belief” (v. 11), a golden sword.
Stretching out his right hand, Jeremiah presented a gold sword to Judas. As he gave it to him he said, ‘Accept this holy sword as a gift from God; with it you shall shatter your adversaries’.
Could this be the origin (in part) of the Excalibur (King Arthur) legends?
For Constantine apparently occupies a fair proportion of Arthurian legend according to:
Constantine the Great, who in AD 306 was proclaimed Roman emperor in York, forms 8% of Arthur’s story, whilst Magnus Maximus, a usurper from AD 383, completes a further 39%. Both men took troops from Britain to fight against the armies of Rome, Constantine defeating the emperor Maxentius; Maximus killing the emperor Gratian, before advancing to Italy. Both sequences are later duplicated in Arthur’s story.
Earlier, I had likened somewhat the fourfold division of the empire of Alexander the Great and the tetrarchy of Constantine’s reign, including the case of the emperor Galerius with whom I had previously identified Antiochus IV ‘Epiphanes’.
And, as I pointed out in the following article, historians can find it difficult to distinguish between the buildings of (the above-mentioned) Herod and those of Hadrian:
Of chronological ‘necessity’ they must assume that, as according to this article:
In the later Hadrianic period material from the earlier Herodian constructions was reused, resetting the distinctive “Herodian” blocks in new locations.
…. The first pair of roundels on the south side depicts Antinous, Hadrian, an attendant and a friend of the court (amicus principis) departing for the hunt (left tondo) and sacrificing to Silvanus, the Roman god of the woods and wild (right tondo).
Tondi Adrianei on the Arch of Constantine, Southern side – left lateral, LEFT: Departure for the hunt, RIGHT: Sacrifice to Silvanus
….
The first pair of roundels on the south side depicts a bear hunt (left tondo) and a sacrifice to the goddess of hunting Diana (right tondo).
….
On the north side, the left pair depicts a boar hunt (left tondo) and a sacrifice to Apollo (right tondo). The figure on the top left of the boar hunt relief is clearly identified as Antinous while Hadrian, on horseback and about to strike the boar with a spear, was recarved to resemble the young Constantine. The recarved emperor in the sacrifice scene is likely to be Licinius or Constantius Chlorus.
….
Tondi Adrianei on the Arch of Constantine, Northern side – left lateral, LEFT: Boar hunt, RIGHT: Sacrifice to Apollo
….
On the north side, the right pair depicts a lion hunt (left tondo) and a sacrifice to Hercules (right tondo). The figure of Hadrian in the hunt scene was recut to resemble the young Constantine while in the sacrifice scene the recarved emperor is either Licinius or Constantius Chlorus. The figure on the left of the hunt tondo may show Antinous as he was shortly before his death; with the [first] signs of a beard, meaning he was no longer a young man. These tondi are framed in purple-red porphyry. This framing is only extant on this side of the northern facade. ….
Fred S. Kleiner (A History of Roman Art, p. 326, my emphasis) will go as far as to write that “every block of the arch [of Constantine] were [sic] reused from earlier buildings”:
The Arch of Constantine was the largest erected in Rome since the end of the Severan dynasty nearly a century before, but recent investigations have shown that the columns and every block of the arch were reused from earlier buildings. …. Although the figures on many of the stone blocks were newly carved for this arch, much of the sculptural decoration was taken from monuments of Trajan, Hadrian …. Sculptors refashioned the second-century reliefs to honor Constantine by recutting the heads of the earlier emperors with the features of the new ruler. ….
The highly paganised (Sol Invictus) polytheistic worshipping, family murdering, Constantine makes for – somewhat like Charlemagne – a very strange, exemplary Christian emperor.
And Constantine’s rushed ‘conversion’ during his Persian campaign, just before his death: https://www.ukessays.com/essays/history/constantine-the-great-a-roman-emperor-history-essay.php “Since he was converted into Christianity later in his life, he was not baptized until a little time before his death. He died on May twenty second, A.D. 337 on the way to campaign against the Persians”, is something of a carbon copy of that of Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’, upon his flight from Persia, terminally ill. Besides all this, he would become a Jew himself and visit every inhabited place to proclaim there the power of God.
The whole account of it is, I think, vividly narrated in 2 Maccabees 9:1-29.
My first attempt at collapsing the Maccabean era into the approximate time of the Nativity of Jesus Christ – {which chronological revision needed to be done, so I had become convinced} – in an article entitled “A New Timetable for the Nativity of Jesus Christ”, fell down due to my failure then properly to weave Herod ‘the Great’ into the new tapestry.
The basic scenario (from memory), intertwining, I-II Maccabees with the Gospel Infancy narratives, had in common:
a major unifying edict (or decree), issued
for the entire kingdom, by
the current king-emperor;
a movement away to one’s ancestral home;
signs and portents in the skies; and
slaughtering of innocents.
This dual scenario now set up the likelihood that the grandiloquent emperor of Maccabees, Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’, be identified with the edict issuer of Luke, “Caesar Augustus” (meaning that the latter would have been a Greek, instead of a Roman).
I had jumped to the hopeful, but false, conclusion that Herod, too, was Hadrian.
Now needed is a more appropriate Maccabean model (than King Antiochus – his alter egos) for King Herod of Judea.
When we look at Maccabees in relation to Luke chapters 1-2, we find that, according to the latter, it was:
the time of Herod king of Judea (1:5); and
Caesar Augustus (2:1); when there was
(c) a governor of Syria (2:2).
In 1-2 Maccabees, we also once again have (b) an emperor, namely Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’, and (c) a governor of Syria (2 Maccabees 4:4).
But do we have as well in Maccabees (a) a Herod-like governor of Judea at this time?
The purpose of this article will be to seek an answer that question.
According to what I wrote above:
“The basic scenario (from memory), intertwining, I-II Maccabees with the Gospel Infancy narratives, had in common (i) a major unifying edict (or decree), issued (ii) for the entire kingdom, by (iii) the current king-emperor; (iv) a movement away to one’s ancestral home; (v) signs and portents in the skies; and (vi) slaughtering of innocents”.
Before proceeding in this article to try to identify Herod ‘the Great’ himself in a Maccabean scenario, I need to recall for the reader basically some of my points of interconnection between these documents, as discussed in my now-discarded article, “A New Timetable for the Nativity of Jesus Christ”.
(i-iii) Edict for entire kingdom issued by current king-emperor
Luke 2:1: “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire [Roman] world”.
[Please note, the Greek phrase, pasan thn oikoumenhn, does not mention “Roman”].
I Maccabees 1:43: “Antiochus now issued a decree that all nations in his empire should abandon their own customs and become one people”.
(iv) Move back to ancestral home
Luke 2:4: “So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David”.
I Maccabees 2:1: “Mattathias, who was the son of John and the grandson of Simeon, moved from Jerusalem and settled in Modein” [the Maccabean ancestral home, cf. 9:19: “Jonathan and Simon took their brother’s body and buried it in the family tomb at Modein …”.]
(v) Signs and portents in sky
Luke 2:8-14: “And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger’. Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests’.”
2 Maccabees 5:1-4: “About this time Antiochus the Fourth made a second attack against Egypt. For nearly forty days people all over Jerusalem saw visions of cavalry troops in gold armor charging across the sky. The riders were armed with spears and their swords were drawn. They were lined up in battle against one another, attacking and counterattacking. Shields were clashing, there was a rain of spears, and arrows flew through the air. All the different kinds of armor and the gold bridles on the horses flashed in the sunlight. Everyone in the city prayed that these visions might be a good sign”.
(vi) Slaughter of innocents
Matthew 2:16: “When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi”.
1 Maccabees 1:60-61: “Mothers who had allowed their babies to be circumcised were put to death in accordance with the king’s decree. Their babies were hung around their necks, and their families and those who had circumcised them were put to death”.
1 Maccabees 2:9: “Our children have been killed in the streets, and our young men by the sword of the enemy”.
2 Maccabees 5:11-13: “When the news of what had happened in Jerusalem reached Antiochus, he thought the whole country of Judea was in revolt, and he became as furious as a wild animal. So he left Egypt and took Jerusalem by storm, giving his men orders to cut down without mercy everyone they met and to slaughter anyone they found hiding in the houses. They murdered everyone—men and women, boys and girls; even babies were butchered”.
“Philip” of 1-2 Maccabees shapes well as Herod
Despite the (i-vi) points of commonality found between the Maccabean and Infancy (Gospel) narratives, as discussed above, there was a sore need also, so I firmly believed, to be able to match, to Luke 2:1’s important “census”, a corresponding Maccabean one.
Nothing of the like seemed to be forthcoming from 1-2 Maccabees, though, I was finding.
There does exist such a census, however. And we need to go to the Book of Acts to learn of it. According to the famous Jewish teacher (rabbi), Gamaliel (Acts 5:37): “… Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt”.
Josephus gives a fuller account, according to which (as summarised at):
To curry favor with Rome, King Herod put a golden eagle outside of the Temple of Jerusalem. Like other military standards, this eagle was carried into battle. The presence of the eagle meant the presence of the Roman Legion. By placing one at the gates, Herod was making a powerful statement regarding Jerusalem’s sovereignty under Rome.
Making idols was forbidden to the Jewish people, even if there was no attempt to worship them. Yet the Romans regarded eagle standards as holy symbols, anointing them on special days. Two respected teachers of the law, Judas and Matthias, spoke to religious scholars about this violation.
A group of these men pulled down the golden eagle and cut it into pieces. The king’s captain detained 40 participants, along with Matthias and Judas, and brought them before Herod. They explained that they made the choice to destroy the idol because they upheld the laws of Moses, and loved their religion. ….
[End of quote]
The revolutionaries Judas and Matthias, in the garbled account of Josephus, are clearly the Maccabean pairing of Judas and his father, Mattathias.
But now, thanks to Gamaliel and Josephus, we can re-date this part of the Maccabean era to the time of king Herod of Jerusalem.
And that hopeful fusion of what are supposedly two quite different historical ages now makes it imperative – and, might I say it, inevitable – that we find Herod ‘the Great’ himself situated in the Maccabean narratives, officiating during the reign of king Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’.
My Maccabean era alter ego for Herod
Herod ‘the Great’, revised, can only be the bloodthirsty “Phrygian” tyrant, “Philip”, whom Antiochus placed in charge of Jerusalem (2 Maccabees 5:21-22): “So Antiochus carried off eighteen hundred talents from the Temple, and hurried away to Antioch, thinking in his arrogance that he could sail on the land and walk on the sea, because his mind was elated. He left governors to oppress the people: at Jerusalem, Philip, by birth a Phrygian and in character more barbarous than the man who appointed him …”.
About half a dozen texts in 1-2 Maccabees refer to this “Philip”, whom I am now identifying with Herod ‘the Great’ – that is, in the context of my re-locating the Maccabean era to, in part, the time of the Nativity of Jesus the Messiah.
In presenting these texts here I shall be giving them, not in the sequence in which they appear, but according to what I would consider to be their proper (approximate) chronological order:
King Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ appoints Philip to Jerusalem (2 Maccabees 5:21-23):
So Antiochus carried off eighteen hundred talents from the Temple, and hurried away to Antioch, thinking in his arrogance that he could sail on the land and walk on the sea, because his mind was elated. He left governors to oppress the people: at Jerusalem, Philip, by birth a Phrygian and in character more barbarous than the man who appointed him; and at Gerizim, Andronicus; and besides these Menelaus, who lorded it over his compatriots worse than the others did.
That Philip was even “more barbarous than” king Antiochus himself already tells us a lot about this character. Also, I am interested in the fact that Philip was “a Phrygian”.
Herod ‘the Great’ has always been thought of as a “half-Jew”, an Idumean (Edomite).
Philip, now under duress from Judas Maccabeus, must call upon his northern allies for military support (2 Maccabees 8:8-10):
When Philip saw that the man [Judas] was gaining ground little by little, and that he was pushing ahead with more frequent successes, he wrote to Ptolemy, the governor of Coelesyria and Phoenicia, to come to the aid of the king’s government.
Then Ptolemy promptly appointed Nicanor son of Patroclus, one of the king’s chiefFriends, and sent him, in command of no fewer than twenty thousand Gentiles of all nations, to wipe out the whole race of Judea.
He associated with him Gorgias, a general and a man of experience in military service. Nicanor determined to make up for the king the tribute due to the Romans, two thousand talents, by selling the captured Jews into slavery.
We have already read in this article about a rising against Herod ‘the Great’ by a Judas.
Philip had accompanied king Antiochus on his march eastwards, to Persia. The now-dying king, on his return, makes Philip “regent” (1 Maccabees 6:14-17):
Then he called for Philip, one of his Friends, and made him ruler over all his kingdom. He gave him the crown and his robe and the signet, so that he might guide his son Antiochus and bring him up to be king. Thus King Antiochus died there in the one hundred forty-ninth year.When Lysias learned that the king was dead, he set up Antiochus the king’sson to reign. Lysiashad brought him up from boyhood; he named him Eupator.
Philip was thus elevated to virtual kingship until the son of Antiochus was old enough to rule.
Philip returns the body of the deceased king (2 Maccabees 9:28-29):
So the murderer and blasphemer, having endured the more intense suffering, such as he had inflicted on others, came to the end of his life by a most pitiable fate, among the mountains in a strange land. And Philip, one of his courtiers, took his body home; then, fearing the son of Antiochus, he withdrew to Ptolemy Philometor in Egypt.
Regarding Egypt, it is interesting that Herod ‘the Great’ had married a Cleopatra (though called “of Jerusalem”).
I am not sure if Philip’s flight to Egypt (like the Holy Family had done earlier because of Herod) occurred before, or after
his attempt to seize the kingdom for himself, which attempt Lysias was able to frustrate (I Maccabees 6:55-56, 63):
Then Lysias heard that Philip, whom King Antiochus while still living had appointed to bring up his son Antiochus to be king, had returned from Persia and Media with the forces that had gone with the king, and that he was trying to seize control of the government.
….
Then [Eupator] set off in haste and returned to Antioch. He found Philip in control of the city, but he fought against him, and took the city by force.
“And just as Judas Maccabeus is promised divine aid in a dream before his victory
over Nicanor, so Constantine dreams that he will conquer his rival Maxentius”.
Paul Stephenson
Some of the Greek (Seleucid) history, conventionally dated to the last several BC centuries, appears to have been projected (appropriated) into a fabricated Roman imperial history of the first several AD centuries.
Most notably, in this regard, is the supposed Second Jewish Revolt against emperor Hadrian’s Rome, which – on closer examination – turns out to have been the Maccabean Jewish revolt against Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’, of whom emperor Hadrian is “a mirror image”.
See e.g. my series:
Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’ and Emperor Hadrian. Part One: “… a mirror image”
Now, last night (2nd December, 2019), as I was reading through a text-like book on Constantine: Roman Emperor, Christian Victor (The Overlook Press, NY, 2010), written by Paul Stephenson, I was struck by the similarities between the Dyarchy (Greek δι- “twice” and αρχια, “rule”) – which later became the Tetrarchy (Greek τετραρχία) of the four emperors – on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the Diadochoi following on from Alexander the Great.
Concerning the latter, we read (The Jerome Biblical Commentary, 1968, 75:103): “With Alexander’s death, the leadership of several successors (Diadochoi) was ineffectual, and finally a fourfold division of the empire took place”.
Compare the Roman Tetrarchy with the “fourfold division” of Alexander of Macedon’s empire.
Added to this was the parallel factor of the ‘Great Persecution’ against Christians (c. 300 AD, conventional dating), and, of course, the infamous persecution of the Jews by Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’.
And I have already pointed to similarities between one of the four Roman emperors, of the time of Constantine, Galerius, and Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’.
But these are the sorts of similarities of which Paul Stephenson (author of the book on Constantine) is also aware (on p. 128 below he uses the phrase “the remarkable coincidences”).
109:
Lactantius’ On the Deaths of the Persecutors is the best and fullest account of the period 303-13 and this is indispensable. But it is also an angry screed, with no known model in Greek or Latin literature, nor in Christian apologetic. Not only did Lactantius delight in the misfortune and demise of the persecuting emperors, he also attributed them to the intervention of the god of the Christians, defending the interest of the faithful. Such an approach rejected the very premise on which martyrs had accepted death at the hands of their persecutors: that their god did not meddle in earthly affairs to bring misfortune upon Roman emperors. This was the first step in articulating a new Christian triumphalist rhetoric, which we shall explore more fully in later chapters.
In doing so, Lactantius drew on an Old Testament model, the Second Book of Maccabees, which still forms an accepted part of the Orthodox canon. Thus, the opening refrain of each text thanks God for punishing the wicked, and the agonizing death of Galerius mirrors that of Antiochus Epiphanes (2 Maccabees 9). And just as Judas Maccabeus is promised divine aid in a dream before his victory over Nicanor, so Constantine dreams that he will conquer his rival Maxentius.
127
Lactantius took great pleasure relating [Galerius’] death as divine punishment for his persecutions, describing his repulsive symptoms and the failure of pagan doctors and prayers to heal him.
Here I (Damien Mackey) will take the description from:
“And now when Galerius was in the eighteenth year of his reign, God struck him with an incurable disease. A malignant ulcer formed itself in the secret parts and spread by degree. The physicians attempted to eradicate it… But the sore, after having been skimmed over, broke again; a vein burst, and the blood flowed in such quantity as to endanger his life… The physicians had to undertake their operations anew, and at length they cauterized the wound… He grew emaciated, pallid, and feeble, and the bleeding then stanched. The ulcer began to be insensible to the remedy as applied, and gangrene seized all the neighboring parts. It diffused itself the wider the more the corrupted flesh was cut away, and everything employed as the means of cure served but to aggravate the disease. The masters of the healing art withdrew. Then famous physicians were brought in from all quarters; but no human means had any success… and the distemper augmented. Already approaching to its deadly crisis, it had occupied the lower regions of his body, his bowels came out; and his whole seat putrefied.
The luckless physicians, although without hope of overcoming the malady, ceased not to apply fermentations and administer remedies. The humors having been repelled, the distemper attacked his intestines, and worms were generated in his body. The stench was so foul as to pervade not only the palace, but even the whole city; and no wonder, for by that time the passages from waste bladder and bowels, having been devoured by the worms, became indiscriminate, and his body, with intolerable anguish, was dissolved into one mass of corruption.”
128
… Already dying [Galerius] issued the following edict [ending persecution] ….
…. Lactantius cites the edict in full. The story has much in common with the account of the death of Antiochus, persecutor of the Jews in the Second Book of Maccabees. Lactantius must have been struck by the remarkable coincidences, and borrowed Antiochus’ worms and stench.
….
The plot now thickens, with the heretical Arius also dying a horrible (Antiochus-Galerius) type of death:
275
Under imperial instruction, Arius was to be marched into church and admitted into full communion, but he never made it. Tradition holds that he died on the way, a hideous death reminiscent of Galerius’, which in Lactantius’ account drew heavily upon the death of Antiochus, persecutor of the Jews in 2 Maccabees. ….
Constantine more like ‘Epiphanes’
Some substantial aspects of the life of Constantine seem to have been lifted
right out of the era of king Antiochus IV ‘Epiphanes’ and the Maccabees.
As briefly noted above:
Constantine’s victory over Maxentius is somewhat reminiscent of the victory over Nicanor by the superb Jewish general, Judas Maccabeus.
“And just as Judas Maccabeus is promised divine aid in a dream before his victory over Nicanor, so Constantine dreams that he will conquer his rival Maxentius”.
Other comparisons can be drawn as well.
For instance, Constantine’s army, too, was significantly outnumbered by that of his opponent.
Again, after Constantine’s victory the head of Maxentius was publicly paraded:
“His body was recovered, his head removed, then mounted on a lance and paraded triumphantly by Constantine’s men”.
Cf. 2 Maccabees 15:30-33):
Then Judas, that man who was ever in body and soul the chief defender of his fellow citizens, and had maintained from youth his affection for his compatriots, ordered Nicanor’s head and right arm up to the shoulder to be cut off and taken to Jerusalem. When he arrived there, he assembled his compatriots, stationed the priests before the altar, and sent for those in the citadel.
He showed them the vile Nicanor’s head and the wretched blasphemer’s arm that had been boastfully stretched out against the holy dwelling of the Almighty. He cut out the tongue of the godless Nicanor, saying he would feed it piecemeal to the birds and would hang up the other wages of his folly opposite the temple.
Prior to his battle with Nicanor, Judas, according to 2 Maccabees (15:15-16), received from the deceased prophet Jeremiah, in “a dream, a kind of waking vision, worthy of belief” (v. 11), a golden sword.
Stretching out his right hand, Jeremiah presented a gold sword to Judas. As he gave it to him he said, ‘Accept this holy sword as a gift from God; with it you shall shatter your adversaries’.
Could this be the origin (in part) of the Excalibur (King Arthur) legends?
For Constantine apparently occupies a fair proportion of Arthurian legend according to:
Constantine the Great, who in AD 306 was proclaimed Roman emperor in York, forms 8% of Arthur’s story, whilst Magnus Maximus, a usurper from AD 383, completes a further 39%. Both men took troops from Britain to fight against the armies of Rome, Constantine defeating the emperor Maxentius; Maximus killing the emperor Gratian, before advancing to Italy. Both sequences are later duplicated in Arthur’s story.
Earlier, I had likened somewhat the fourfold division of the empire of Alexander the Great and the tetrarchy of Constantine’s reign, including the case of the emperor Galerius with whom I had previously identified Antiochus IV ‘Epiphanes’.
And, as I pointed out in the following article, historians can find it difficult to distinguish between the buildings of (the above-mentioned) Herod and those of Hadrian:
Of chronological ‘necessity’ they must assume that, as according to this article:
In the later Hadrianic period material from the earlier Herodian constructions was reused, resetting the distinctive “Herodian” blocks in new locations.
…. The first pair of roundels on the south side depicts Antinous, Hadrian, an attendant and a friend of the court (amicus principis) departing for the hunt (left tondo) and sacrificing to Silvanus, the Roman god of the woods and wild (right tondo).
Tondi Adrianei on the Arch of Constantine, Southern side – left lateral, LEFT: Departure for the hunt, RIGHT: Sacrifice to Silvanus
….
The first pair of roundels on the south side depicts a bear hunt (left tondo) and a sacrifice to the goddess of hunting Diana (right tondo).
….
On the north side, the left pair depicts a boar hunt (left tondo) and a sacrifice to Apollo (right tondo). The figure on the top left of the boar hunt relief is clearly identified as Antinous while Hadrian, on horseback and about to strike the boar with a spear, was recarved to resemble the young Constantine. The recarved emperor in the sacrifice scene is likely to be Licinius or Constantius Chlorus.
….
Tondi Adrianei on the Arch of Constantine, Northern side – left lateral, LEFT: Boar hunt, RIGHT: Sacrifice to Apollo
….
On the north side, the right pair depicts a lion hunt (left tondo) and a sacrifice to Hercules (right tondo). The figure of Hadrian in the hunt scene was recut to resemble the young Constantine while in the sacrifice scene the recarved emperor is either Licinius or Constantius Chlorus. The figure on the left of the hunt tondo may show Antinous as he was shortly before his death; with the [first] signs of a beard, meaning he was no longer a young man. These tondi are framed in purple-red porphyry. This framing is only extant on this side of the northern facade. ….
Fred S. Kleiner (A History of Roman Art, p. 326, my emphasis) will go as far as to write that “every block of the arch [of Constantine] were [sic] reused from earlier buildings”:
The Arch of Constantine was the largest erected in Rome since the end of the Severan dynasty nearly a century before, but recent investigations have shown that the columns and every block of the arch were reused from earlier buildings. …. Although the figures on many of the stone blocks were newly carved for this arch, much of the sculptural decoration was taken from monuments of Trajan, Hadrian …. Sculptors refashioned the second-century reliefs to honor Constantine by recutting the heads of the earlier emperors with the features of the new ruler. ….
The highly paganised (Sol Invictus) polytheistic worshipping, family murdering, Constantine makes for – somewhat like Charlemagne – a very strange, exemplary Christian emperor.
And Constantine’s rushed ‘conversion’ during his Persian campaign, just before his death: https://www.ukessays.com/essays/history/constantine-the-great-a-roman-emperor-history-essay.php “Since he was converted into Christianity later in his life, he was not baptized until a little time before his death. He died on May twenty second, A.D. 337 on the way to campaign against the Persians”, is something of a carbon copy of that of Antiochus ‘Epiphanes’, upon his flight from Persia, terminally ill. Besides all this, he would become a Jew himself and visit every inhabited place to proclaim there the power of God.
The whole account of it is, I think, vividly narrated in 2 Maccabees 9:1-29.
Parallel Lives, Also BC Afterglows In AD 