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To: Cronos

Ah. Thanks for the explanation.


4 posted on 02/17/2011 2:17:56 AM PST by Blueflag (Res ipsa loquitur)
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To: Blueflag
you're welcome.

What I find fascinating about this is that when we when we read Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of 1 Maccabees, we read how Antiochus defiled the Holy Temple and put an abomination in there and the righteous Jews fled to the mountains.

And this connects with Matthew 24:15-20
[15] When therefore you shall see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place: he that readeth let him understand.
[16] Then they that are in Judea, let them flee to the mountains:
[17] And he that is on the housetop, let him not come down to take any thing out of his house:
[18] And he that is in the field, let him not go back to take his coat.
[19] And woe to them that are with child, and that give suck in those days.
[20] But pray that your flight be not in the winter, or on the sabbath.
And you see the parallels in 1 Macc 1.34 "And they took the women captive, and the children, and the cattle they possessed" and 39 "And they shed innocent blood round about the sanctuary, and defiled the holy place"
and 1 MAcc 2:32-38
And forthwith they went out towards them, and made war against them on the sabbath day, [33] And they said to them: Do you still resist? come forth, and do according to the edict of king Antiochus, and you shall live. [34] And they said: We will not come forth, neither will we obey the king's edict, to profane the sabbath day.
[35] And they made haste to give them battle.
[36] But they answered them not, neither did they cast a stone at them, nor stopped up the secret places,
[37] Saying: Let us all die in our innocency: and heaven and earth shall be witnesses for us, that you put us to death wrongfully.
[38] So they gave them battle on the sabbath: and they were slain with their wives, and their children, and their cattle, to the number of a thousand persons


Jesus was no doubt drawing on the historical memory of the Jews
5 posted on 02/17/2011 2:21:41 AM PST by Cronos ("They object to tradition saying that they themselves are wiser than the apostles" - Ire.III.2.2)
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To: Blueflag
The background is that after Alexander the Great died in 323 BC, there were two dynasties of his generals that ruled over the historic lands of the Middle-East.

There were the Ptolemies in Egypt and the Seleucids in Persia. These were descended from Alexander's two main generals: Ptolemy and Seleucus

one of Seleucus' descendents, Antiochus IV Epiphanes was determined to impose hellenic religion and civilization on the Jews. He wanted to (and DID) put an idol in the Temple on Jerusalem.

Maccabees tells about how the Jews struggled for decades against an all-powerful enemy, how they came close to being destroyed forever

These books were included in Martin Luther's German Bible and in the first King James Version (1611) and the Gutenberg Bible (15th century). They were included in nearly all Bibles until removed by the Edinburgh Committee in 1825

These books are referred to in the NT, for example, in Hebrews 11:35

35 Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection
links to 2 Maccabees 7.
6 posted on 02/17/2011 2:36:29 AM PST by Cronos ("They object to tradition saying that they themselves are wiser than the apostles" - Ire.III.2.2)
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