Episode Two
John Hyrcanus II was a great-grandson of Simon Maccabeus. His mother, Queen Salome Alexandra, established him as High Priest in 73 bce. He then became Ethnarch of Judea in 67 bce when she died. Hyrcanus’ brother Aristobulus had originally planned a coup against his mother, but turned it against his brother instead once she died and took the throne. Hyrcanus remained as High Priest, and was backed by the Nabateans in his ill-fated attempts to regain the throne. His restoration finally came when Pompey decided he just liked Hyrcanus better and laid siege to Jerusalem in 63 bce, ultimately capturing Aristobulus and setting Hyrcanus as Ethnarch. This lasted until Aristobulus’ son Antigonus arrived in 40 bce at the head of a Parthian army, capturing Hyrcanus, and claiming rulership.
The Parthians treated the exiled Hyrcanus as an honored spiritual teacher and special guest, and as he had been high priest of the Jerusalem temple for such a Very Long Time, his teachings had became legendary. As part of a cache of documents discovered at Qumran in 1949 ce, there was one particular scroll filled with aphorisms and parables attributed to a “Teacher of Righteousness”. Because of who he was and with his intermittent periods of temporal power, John Hyrcanus II may have been this Teacher of Righteousness. It’s also been suggested that due to similar themes and use of language, the Teacher of Righteousness was John the Baptist. I suspect that Hyrcanus II was both the Teacher of Righteousness and the model for John the Baptist in the Gospels.
In 37 bce, the Romans returned to Judea and replaced Antigonus with Herod, who had married Hyrcanus’ daughter, Mariamne, thus ending the Hasmonean dynasty. Later, after Herod had been killing off all the other Hasmoneans “just in case” (including Mariamne: he was something of a completist), he called Hyrcanus back from exile in 30 bce and executed him as well.
Unsurprisingly, once the Judeans had tasted sovereignty and independence, they didn’t like paying Roman taxes any more than they did Ptolemean or Seleucid. Had they been able to decide among themselves whose rules to follow, they might have presented a more united front and retained their sovereignty. But as rebellion had become the national pastime, every village seemed to have its own guerrilla militia to spar with.
One key rebel stronghold was a Jewish settlement in the Golan Heights called ‘Gamla’. There, in 6 ce, Judas of Gamla founded the Zealots: theocratic nationalists who resisted foreign rule and Roman taxes in particular. Forty years later, the “Sons of Judas”, James and Simon, were executed due to leading a revolt against Rome. From this hotbed of rebellion also sprang Jesus of Gamla, who married a wealthy widow who got him the job of High Priest under Herod Agrippa II. As High Priest from Gamla, Jesus was a Nazarene from Galilee. Jesus found himself positioned as one of the men in authority in Jerusalem when the rebels captured the city in 68 ce. Although Jesus of Gamla advised staying on good terms with Rome and rejecting the Zealots, he was executed by Idumean (Jewish) rebels who had infiltrated Jerusalem just prior to the Roman siege.
Simon bar Giora was a rebellion leader, military strategist, and populist who attracted fishermen and working classes of the towns around Galilee into a militia that fought for self-rule and keeping tax money local (at Jerusalem). He was very opposed to the Romans in general, Roman legions stomping around in particular, and subsequently, anyone who didn’t absolutely hate the Romans. Simon led brigades that would loot and burn the farms and houses of the families that supported Rome. In their turn, the upper class aristocracy, the nobles, and especially the Romans hated Simon. When he was finally captured, the Romans paraded him through Rome in chains and threw him to his death off a high rock. The Gospels explain that the nickname given disciple Simon was “Peter”, meaning rock or cliff. Now you know which Simon they were talking about.
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