The Rise of the Maccabees - The BAS Library

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The year is 150 BCE. For all who live in the southern Levant, life is calm and prosperous. Along the coast are busy ports whose harbors welcome ships carrying imported wine, exotic foodstuffs, and fancy tablewares. People’s homes boast luxurious interior décor: brightly painted walls, mosaic floors, stone furniture, etc. Commercial exchange, imported goods, comfortable lifestyles—all by-products of a connected, cosmopolitan world. That world is overseen by two great powers. To the south, in Egypt, are the Ptolemies, dynasts of a royal house founded by one of the generals of Alexander the Great. To the north are the Seleucids, a […]

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Endnotes

1. This article is based on recent research on the Maccabean rise presented in Andrea M. Berlin and Paul J. Kosmin, eds., The Middle Maccabees: Archaeology, History, and the Rise of the Hasmonean Kingdom (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2021).

2. 2: See Julien Olivier, “Coinage as a Tool of Ptolemy VI Philometer’s Policies: Ptolemaic Coins in Coele Syria and Phoenicia in the Middle of the Second Century BCE,” Israel Numismatic Review 13 (2018), pp. 35—54.