Game of Thrones – Hasmonean Civil War
The Hasmonean story began with the heroic Hanukka tale but ended in a civil war sparked by two rival royal brothers. Two cultural elites – Pharisee and Sadducee – vied for dominance in the death...
Tag Archives: Hasmoneans
Shmuel Zanwil Kahane’s Map of Holy Sites
The Rock of Destruction Location: Jerusalem Hills Near Eshtaol and Zor’a, atop a barren, stony hill along the road to Jerusalem, a lone rock juts out. Here, according to a legend recorded in the early...
A Brief History of the Hasmoneans
Hasmonean generations (click image to enlarge) All in the Family Priestly families preferred to marry within their own privileged class, but the Hasmoneans took this practice to something of an extreme. Despite the rivalry between...
Cast a Giant Shadow
Antiochus' Castle People generally assume the history of Hasmonean Jerusalem began with the Seleucid conquest of Judea from the Egyptian Ptolemies, escalated with Antiochus Epiphanes’ anti-Jewish edicts and the idol he placed in the Temple,...
