Main news for 1 November 2019

The sacred writer's words that it is impossible to violate the law given by God with impunity prove relevant both in the context of the events described in the Books of Maccabees and in any other. For the author of the book, Hellenism becomes a sin against God and the Torah. At first glance such a position may seem not only conservative, but even directly retrograde: in those times Hellenism was associated with progress, civilization, and the advanced ideas of the age, and such associations had every basis. Even the state founded after their victory by the Maccabees themselves was Hellenistic in cultural terms; in those times it simply could not be otherwise.

Unfortunately, however, Hellenism brought with it not only new ideas and achievements of civilization. Its coming was accompanied by a decline in morals, connected not with science and philosophy as such, but with the fact that together with the traditional worldview, traditional spiritual and moral values were passing into the past. Freedom has two sides, and its reverse, dark side manifested itself fully in the Hellenistic world: amoralism, spiritual and moral looseness, and cynicism as a life position became companions of Hellenistic civilization.

And many people, even believing Jews, were ready to surrender before the spiritual pressure of "the darkness of this age": it seemed to them that resistance was useless, that everything happening was as inevitable as the coming of winter or summer in its turn. Those who were not afraid to call things by their names and called looseness and amoralism sin, not an achievement of progress and triumph of new ideas, were often regarded as retrogrades opposing progress for the sake of outdated ideas and principles. Such a situation would later be repeated many times in world history, but already in the Christian world; here it first appeared so brightly and distinctly.

This fascination with such "progress" could be stopped in only one way: those fascinated by it had to be allowed to feel its reverse side and experience it themselves. And God permitted this to His people: the persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes began, and he acted precisely in the spirit of the new age, which did not take seriously spiritual life, religion, God's law, or God Himself.

The only real value of Hellenism turned out to be earthly power, and the Jews fascinated by it very quickly felt this for themselves. Then they turned to the most "retrograde" ideas, even to the idea of holy war, and to the most "absurd" notions, even to faith in the near coming of the Messiah. Then God helped His people win: He could not allow the history of His people to end at the whim of a half-mad, arbitrary ruler.