Judas Maccabeus

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the revolutionary Jewish leader Judas Maccabeus. Born in the second century BC, Judas led his followers, the Maccabees, in a rebellion against the Seleucid Empire, which was attempting to impose the Greek culture and religion on the Jews. After a succession of battles he succeeded and the Seleucid king granted the Jews religious freedom. But even after that freedom was granted the struggle for political independence continued, and it was not until twenty years after Judas’s death that Judaea finally became an independent state. Thanks to an extensive, if often confused, historical record of these events, the story of the Maccabees is well known. Judas Maccabeus has become a celebrated folk hero, and one of his achievements, the restoration and purification of the Temple of Jerusalem after its desecration by the Seleucids, is commemorated every year at the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Helen Bond 2 episodes
  Senior Lecturer in the New Testament at Edinburgh University
• Tessa Rajak 2 episodes
  Emeritus Professor of Ancient History at the University of Reading
• Philip Alexander 4 episodes
  Emeritus Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Manchester

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Programme ID: b017cjm8

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017cjm8

Auto-category: 933 (History of ancient Palestine to 70 CE)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello, so he got his people great honour and put on a breastplate as a giant and girt his warlike harness about him and he made battles protecting the host with his sword.