by
Damien F. Mackey
“And of the battle that they had fought against the Galatians, in Babylonia;
how they, being in all but six thousand, when it came to the point, and the Macedonians, their companions, were at a stand, slew a hundred
and twenty thousand, because of the help they had from heaven,
and for this they received many favours”.
2 Maccabees 8:20
Judas Maccabeus was wont to stir up courage in his troops before a battle by recalling heroic past deeds by the likes of fellow-Israelites, David, Jonathan, Saul, and so on (e.g. I Maccabees 4:30).
His father, Mattathias, had employed the very same tactic (2 Maccabees 2:51-64).
Now Judas, just prior to an encounter with his nemesis, Nicanor, recalled two mighty victories by outnumbered Jews.
The first (8:19) “when, under Sennacherib, 185,000 men had perished” at the hands of their Jewish “forbears”.
Whilst that incident is a most famous one, the details of it have become completely obscured over time. Hopefully I have managed to recover them in my articles, such as:
And the Assyrian will fall ‘by the hand of a woman’
https://www.academia.edu/44521678/And_the_Assyrian_will_fall_by_the_hand_of_a_woman
The second military incident to which Judas will refer immediately after this first one has completely baffled historians – myself included.
It is this (8:20):
And of the battle that they had fought against the Galatians, in Babylonia; how they, being in all but six thousand, when it came to the point, and the Macedonians, their companions, were at a stand, slew a hundred and twenty thousand, because of the help they had from heaven, and for this they received many favours.
A typical reaction to this is the one to be found in The Jerome Biblical Commentary, as given by Fr. Neil J. McEleney (C.S.P), writing on “2 Maccabees” (27:74 (B): “In the battle with the Galatians: This incident of Jewish mercenaries in support of Macedonian troops is otherwise unknown”.
Sadly, no attempt at all here to come to grips with the text.
I had previously thought that what Judas was referring to could only be a garbled version of the historical event at the climax of the Book of Esther:
“… in Babylonia”. The Esther incident took place in Persia, but it had involved the whole Persian empire.
“Galatians”, “Macedonians”. Haman of Esther is variously, but wrongly, called a “Macedonian” in some versions of Esther 8:12.
The hard-pressed Jews in Esther received from Persia “reinforcements” (8:30).
9:5: “So the Jews struck down all their enemies with the sword, with resulting slaughter and destruction, and worked their will on their opponents”.
With a bit of tinkering, I had thought, this could be the second incident to which Judas Maccabeus was referring.
However, whereas the Book of Esther specifically states, twice Esther (9:15): “But they [the Jews] took no plunder” - and 9:17 - the Jews, in the account by Judas Maccabeus, are said, quite contrary to this, to have “won incalculable gains”.
The true incident to which Judas refers I now believe to be found in the story of Judas’s brother, Jonathan, in I Maccabees 11. Coming as it does in the narrative a couple of chapters after the death of Judas (9:18), it would appear to be anachronistic in the exhortation of Judas to his men.
But 1-2 Maccabees can be like that, with sometimes overlapping chronologies.
I suggest that the incident might have occurred (certainly while Judas was still alive) when Judas had formed a friendship with his erstwhile foe, Nicanor, with Judas then settling down and marrying (2 Maccabees 14:24-25).
King Demetrius, who will figure in the incident, is now on the scene (I Maccabees 11:19), and is residing “at “Antioch” (11:44). Jonathan, who usually accompanied Judas, could well have been taking care of business with Judas newly married.
So here is the said incident. But it does not take place at all “in Babylonia”.
I Maccabees 11:38-51:
When King Demetrius saw that the land was peaceful under his rule and there was no further resistance, he disbanded his whole army and sent everyone home, except the soldiers he had hired from the Greek islands. This made all the soldiers who had served under his predecessors hate him because they had lost their source of income. One of Alexander's former supporters, Trypho, saw that all the soldiers were complaining about Demetrius, so he went to Imalkue, the Arab who was responsible for bringing up Alexander's young son Antiochus. Trypho stayed there for a long time and kept urging Imalkue to hand the boy over to him, so that he could make him king in place of his father. He also told Imalkue about the decrees of Demetrius and how the soldiers hated him.
Jonathan sent a message to King Demetrius asking him to remove his troops from the fort in Jerusalem and from the fortresses in Judea, since they kept harassing the Jews. Demetrius replied: I will do what you request, and when the opportunity presents itself, I will bestow upon you and your nation the highest honors. But now you can help me by sending soldiers to fight for me, because all of my troops have revolted.
So Jonathan sent 3,000 trained soldiers to Antioch. The king was delighted when they arrived, because a mob of 120,000 had gathered in the city determined to kill him. But he escaped to the palace while the mob took control of the streets and began to riot. Then the king called on the Jewish soldiers for help, and they all rushed to his aid. They went through the whole city and killed at least 100,000 people. They saved the king's life, but they plundered and burned the city. When the people saw that the Jews had complete control of the city, they lost courage and appealed to the king, requesting him to arrange a truce and stop the Jewish attack. The rebels threw down their arms and surrendered. The king and everyone in his kingdom now had great respect for the Jews, who returned to Jerusalem with a great deal of loot.
Unlike in the Mordecai incident, when the Jews took no plunder, Jonathan’s men “returned to Jerusalem with a great deal of loot” (v. 51).
This text is surely the right mix for the incident described by Judas Maccabeus, especially if “Antioch” here is taken to have been the so-called Pisidian Antioch in Galatia, rather than Antioch in Syria:
https://www.biblegateway.com/resources/encyclopedia-of-the-bible/Antioch-Pisidia
Lying strictly in Phrygia beyond the limits of Pisidia, which, as Acts 14:24 correctly implies, comes between it and Pamphylia, Antioch is, nevertheless, in a controlling position “near” Pisidia (so Strabo, xii 577). To distinguish it from the other Antioch in Phrygia it is popularly said to be “of” Pisidia, or, as in the reading of the oldest codices of Acts 13:14, “Pisidian.” A great wedge of mountain ranges, based to the W on Lycia and to the E on Cilicia Tracheia, embraces Pamphylia, and converges in Pisidia to its N. E-W traffic is here ruled out by the terrain, but routes, such as that followed by Paul, run N into the interior up the river valleys.
Where they emerge into the lake-studded plateau that marks the limit of Pisidia, stands Antioch, astride the southernmost of the great E-W highways of Asia Minor, that was to carry Paul on to Lycaonia (Acts 14:6). Immediately to the N again is the range now known as Sultan Dag, which in antiquity gave to its “slopes” on either side the name of Phrygia Paroreios. This tract, which centers on Antioch, was incorporated in the new Rom. province of Galatia in 25 b.c. Thus, on the “South Galatian” theory, Antioch is one of the places to which the epistle to the Galatians was addressed.
A detachment of Jews fighting in Galatia on behalf of the harrassed Macedonians, and winning a great victory over 120,000, killing some 100,000 of them.
