The Scroll of the Hasmoneans

A not-so-old ancient book

The First and Second books of the Maccabees describe the revolt by the Hasmoneans against their Greek occupiers in the 2nd century BCE. The Hasmoneans were Jewish partisans and 1 and 2 Maccabees are included in the Apocrypha, the collection of texts regarded by the Catholic church as part of the Bible, but by Jews and Protestants as non-canonical.

The festival of Hanukkah commemorates the success of the rebellion, and a miracle that is said to have taken place about a jar of oil. Other Jewish festivals are partly celebrated by reading extracts from the bible that refer to them. Since the Maccabee books are not in the bible there is no biblical reading to accompany the festival.

This might explain why, when a strange book appeared round about the 9th century CE purporting to tell the story of the Hasmonean rebellion, many Jewish communities introduced it into their festival commemorations. They probably had never heard of 1 or 2 Maccabees, the books hadn’t circulated in Jewish circles for centuries. This new book seemed to fill a glaring gap in the liturgy for the festival of Hanukkah.

The book, known as the Scroll of the Hasmoneans or the Scroll of Antiochus, tells broadly the same story as Maccabees, but with some striking differences. In Maccabees the hero of the rebellion is Judah Maccabee, the third of five sons of the priest Matthias. In the Scroll of the Hasmoneans the hero is the eldest brother, Yohanan.

The villain of the Scroll of the Hasmoneans and the Books of the Maccabees is Antiochus IV, the tyrannical king of the Seleucid Greek Empire, who had conquered and was now occupying Jerusalem. In 1 and 2 Maccabees, which are closer to the historical reality, the residents of Jerusalem had adopted Hellenist customs and the city was ripe for colonisation by the Greeks. Antiochus, who entered Jerusalem on his way back from defeating Ptolemy, king of Egypt, defiled the Temple, slaughtered the population, set fire to the city and demanded that the whole nation adopt his laws. The Maccabean revolt occurred a short time later after an outraged Matthias killed an Israelite who he saw sacrificing on a Greek altar.

Little of this is in the Hasmonean Scroll. Instead Antiochus is the antisemite par excellence. Sounding very much like Haman in the Book of Esther he rants about the Jews who do not obey the king’s laws, who refuse to sacrifice to Greek gods, who hope for the day when, under their own king, they will rule over land and sea; when all the world will be theirs. Unlike the Books of the Maccabees the Hasmonean revolt in the Scroll is not inaugurated by a zealous Matthias taking revenge on a man sacrificing to Greek gods. Instead it begins with a deliberate act of insurrection by Matthias’s son Yohanan, reacting to the invasion of Jerusalem which had been led, not by Antiochus, but his second in command Nicanor.

Yohanan had heard that Antiochus’s general Nicanor had invaded Jerusalem and defiled the Temple. In a fury he went to Jerusalem with a sword concealed beneath his robe. He banged on the door of Nicanor’s palace and demanded to see him. Nicanor mocked him and Yohanan responded with humility, asking for a private word with the general so that he could offer him his services. Nicanor tested his veracity by telling him to go and sacrifice a pig on the altar of the Temple. Seeing that they were alone, Yohanan drew his sword and slew Nicanor. The episode sounds very similar to the story in the Book of Judges where Ehud tricks Eglon, the tyrannical king of Moab, into a private audience then kills him with a dagger concealed in his clothes.

The Hasmonean Scroll is not very good at history. It gets its dates wrong and it extends the life of the kingdom founded by Matthias’s sons by a century. It describes the prohibitions which 2 Maccabees says that Antiochus imposed on the Jews in a manner which sounds very much like those imposed by the Roman emperor Hadrian three centuries later. It is confused about the founding of the city of Antioch. Had it got the history right there could be a compelling case for saying that it, and not the Books of the Maccabees told a more accurate story.

Nevertheless for many centuries the Hasmonean Scroll was believed to be a book of great antiquity. It was first mentioned in an 8th century legal text written by the Babylonian scholar Shimon Kerayya and a century later another legal work claimed that it had been written towards the end of the 1st century BCE.

The suggestion that the Hasmonean Scroll is very old was supported by its mention of the well -known miracle said to have occurred when the Maccabees restored the Temple. To complete the restoration they needed to rekindle the seven branched candlestick that burned perpetually in the sanctuary. The lamp could only be lit with the purest of oils and they could only find one very small phial of oil. Miraculously the oil kept the lamp alight for eight days, long enough for them to procure enough oil from elsewhere.

It is this miracle rather than the military victory that the festival of Hanukkah celebrates. Yet the miracle is only recorded in two places, once in the Hasmonean Scroll and once in the Talmud, compiled in the 5th and 6th centuries CE. It is not mentioned in 1 or 2 Maccabees. Clearly then, the argument ran, the Hasmonean Scroll must have been very ancient, because Hanukkah had been celebrated for many centuries before the Talmud was written. And Hanukkah would not have been celebrated without a textual record of the events that led to it.

Saadiah Gaon, the 10th century philosopher and exegete used the alleged antiquity of the Scroll in his lifelong battle with the Karaites, a prominent and influential Jewish sect who refused to accept rabbinic traditions or authority. They did not observe the festival of Hanukkah, arguing that it was not in the bible and merely a product of the rabbinic imagination. Saadia cited the great antiquity of the Hasmonean Scroll as proof that the events Hanukkah commemorates really took place.

Saadiah however was wrong. There are just too many historical errors in the Hasmonean Scroll to support the idea that it was written shortly after the events it describes. Not only does it get its history wrong and mention events that hadn’t happened in the period to which the book relates, its language is anachronistic, showing traces of later Arabic influence.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence against the scroll’s antiquity is that Yohanan, the hero of the story, is  described as a High Priest. He was not a High Priest; the Scroll is confusing him with a later Yohanan who was High Priest several generations after the Maccabean revolt occurred. It may be this mistaken belief that Yohanan was the High Priest that led the author of the Hasmonean Scroll to make him the hero of the story rather than his brother Judah as the Books of the Maccabees have it.

It is also possible of course that the author of the Hasmonean Scroll deliberately changed the hero of the story because he intended to tell a fanciful tale and didn’t want it to sound too like the legendary version. After all, historical accuracy is no impediment to a good read, particularly if buccaneering medieval battle stories are your thing.

The Hasmonean Scroll became very popular in the Middle Ages. We know this because many copies were found in the Cairo Genizah, the ancient repository of worn-out Hebrew texts. It was included in old prayer books and in the Middle Ages it was read on Hanukkah in Jewish communities across the world. It is still read in many Yemenite synagogues today.

You can read the Hasmonean Scroll online at https://www.sefaria.org/Megillat_Antiochus.1. Or, if you are interested in a more scholarly treatment of the dates of the book take a look at Aryeh Kasher’s 1982 article on https://www.jstor.org/stable/3622437