Vigils Reading

A Reading on the Book of Maccabees from a book by Dom Damasus Winzen ¹

During the exile, a great winnowing took place: out of it emerged a remnant of those who were determined to remain faithful. They were certain of the unique character of their religion and their chosenness, and this very certainty gave them an absolute determination to survive and an abiding hope in the future. When the dawn of a new day seemed to arise with the downfall of Babylon, and Cyrus, king of Persia, ended the Babylonian exile in 537 B.C., through a decree which allowed the Jews to return into their homeland, forty thousand were ready. Under the leadership of Zerubbabel, a prince of the house of David, as governor, and Jeshua, son of Josadak, as high priest, they set out to rebuild the temple and the city. After long years of rivalries, intrigues and open hostilities on the part of the neighboring tribes the second temple was finished and dedicated in the year 516 B.C. When the attacks from the outside did not cease, Nehemiah, a high official of Jewish blood at the Persian court, was sent to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Despite determined opposition on the part of Israel’s enemies this task was carried out successfully. Now the most important step in this whole work of reconstruction was taken by Ezra, the scribe. He was a man of the book. He represented all that Israel had learned in the school of the exile.

Now all the essential factors that were going to determine this period of Jewish history were set up: the temple with its ritual and its leading official, the high priest; the walls of Jerusalem under the guardianship of the governor; the law, entrusted to the scribes. Divine Providence, which was now leading the chosen people into the last phase of preparation for the coming of the Messiah Jesus, arranged the course of events in such a way that all the hopes put on these things by the Jewish people came to nought. The temple with its treasures and the high priests with their enormous revenues became objects for foreign powers to plunder or buy. The walls of Jerusalem, the symbol of political power, conquered after bloody battles by Judas Maccabeus, were held thereafter by Jewish kings until “the scepter was taken was taken away from Judah” by Herod, the Idumaean. The “fence” which the Pharisees built around the religion finally eclipsed the law of Moses, so that when the Messiah came he could say to the scribes: “You make void the commandments of God that you may keep your own traditions”. (Mk 7:9). The entire period of reconstruction which followed the Babylonian exile was designed to make it clear that this temple, and this Jerusalem, and these doctors of the law were not the fulfillment of the glorious promise which God had made through Isaiah and Jeremiah about the new covenant he was going to make with his people.

This was also the tragedy of the Maccabees. With all their valor and all their heroism, their restoration of the temple and of the Jewish state was never wholly successful. In the eyes of orthodox Jews they remained usurpers, and for that reason the two books which tell of their great deeds were never received into the Jewish canon of holy Scripture. For us Christians, however, they are of greatest importance, because they give us a picture of the conflict between Judaism and Hellenism which developed in the 3^rdand 2^nd century B.C. As a consequence of the invasion by Greek civilization that took place in the wake of Alexander’s conquest of the Persian empire. The process of Hellenization might have gone much further had not Antiochus Epiphanes of Syria attempted to substitute pagan worship for Jewish. This brought about the Maccabean revolt recounted in the books of Maccabees.

1Pathways in Scripture – Damasus Winzen – Word of Life – Ann Arbor, MI – 1976 – pg 152