historical perspectives: from the hasmoneans to bar kokhba in light ...

46 DANIEL R. SCHWARTZ
looting by the king in Jerusalem, differ as to the date of the event.
1 Macc. 1:20 dates the visit to 143 of the Seleucid Era (henceforth:
SE), which, virtually all agree, means 170/169 BCE and hence refers
to the aftermath of Antiochus' first invasion of Egypt. 2 Maccabees
5, however, reports his visit to Jerusalem only after the opening verse
explicitly places it in the wake of Antiochus' second invasion of Egypt
(v. 1: ).
In line with a general scholarly bias favoring the historical reliability
of 1 Maccabees, most scholars have accepted its dating of
Antiochus' robbery in Jerusalem and simply rejected 2 Maccabees'
testimony out of hand. 4 Nevertheless, two harmonizing suggestions
have been made: (1) some scholars, most notably Abel, distinguish
between two stages in Antiochus' first Egyptian campaign and suggest
that 2 Maccabees' reference to the "second invasion" refers to
the latter part of the first one; (2) more recently, Gera has attempted
to deal with the problem by translating as "approach" rather
than "invasion." 5 Such a translation allows Gera to take "second"
in 2 Macc. 5:1 to be alluding back to 4:21, which reports that
Antiochus visited Jaffa due to his fears of Egyptian aggression; if the
reader takes that to be Antiochus' first approach to Egypt, then his
first invasion of Egypt (in the usual reckoning) could be termed, in
5:1, his second approach to Egypt.
In my opinion, neither harmonizing solution is acceptable. The
first is rather desperate and has nothing to recommend it. Gera's,
in contrast, has a certain attraction insofar as it takes "second" in
2 Macc. 5:1 to be building not on the reader's knowledge of something
the book doesn't mention (the fact that Antiochus twice invaded
the country) but, rather, on the reader's knowledge from 4:21. But
I hesitate to accept it for three reasons: (1) if read this way, 5:1
would in fact confuse the reader, because 4:21 does not mention
that Antiochus went anywhere near Egypt, while 2 Maccabees 5
definitely states that Antiochus went to Egypt and back (see v. 21);
4 See, e.g., M rkholm, Antiochus IV, 142; E. Schiirer, The History of the Jewish People
in the Age of Jesus Christ, vol. 1, rev. and ed. G. Vermes et al. (Edinburgh: T&T
Clark, 1973), 151 (and 152-53 n. 37); M. Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and
Judaism, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974), 115-16.
5 F.-M. Abel, Les limes des Maccabees, Etudes bibliques (Paris: Gabalda, 1949),
348-49 (followed by Schurer, History of the Jewish People, 153 n. 37); D. Gera, Judaea
and Mediterranean Politics, 219 to 161 B.C.E., Brill's Series in Jewish Studies 8 (Leiden:
Brill, 1998), 155-56.