John D. Grainger has clearly gone over to the other side.

The Maccabean era was historically fascinating, as the Jews rebelled against the Seleucid Empire and eventually established an independent state. Our sources for this are limited -- on the non-Jewish side, there really isn't anything except what we can glean from the histories of Appian and Diodorus Siculus and Polybius, which have nothing about the Jews and aren't very complete even for the Seleucids. On the Jewish side, we have the canonical Book of Daniel, the books of I and II Maccabees, Josephus, and a few stray comments in sources like the Talmud. II Maccabees is extremely tendentious (and often appears fictitious); I Maccabees only slightly less so although it was written by an author who is less willing to make things up; Daniel was written early in the Maccabean era but pretends to have been written four centuries earlier, so it is very cryptic; and Josephus largely follows I Maccabees. Not much to go on.

Not much, but it's something. It is possible to create a fairly coherent history from these sources -- Elias Bickerman did it, for instance, in From Ezra to the Last of the Maccabees. But Bickerman was writing in the late 1940s. We don't have any new literary sources since then, but archaeologists have been active! So there is surely room for a good new review of this history. John D. Grainger seemed a good candidate to offer it -- much of his work has been on the Seleucid Era, and I had read and been interested by one of his books on that period.

But this book has a lot more Grainger in it than history. A small example is his use of names: He calls the Seleucids "Seleukids." The general, Bacchides, becomes "Bakchides." Alexander Jannaeus is "Alexander Iannai." Every one of these usages is truer to the sources than the common names (e.g. "Seleucid" is spelled with a Greek kappa, so it should be pronounced "Seleukid") -- but they're not the names everyone else knows.

And he comes in with an axe to grind. The Seleucids are right, and the Maccabean rebels are terrorists. But every source we have tells us that the Seleucid Emperor Antiochus IV, having interfered heavily in Jewish affairs to raise money for his endless wars, decided to destroy the Jewish religion and desecrate the Temple, rededicating it to Zeus. This was the "Abomination of Desolation" of Daniel. Antiochus did this, we are told by the sources, because he was not entirely sane.

Not according to Grainger. He thinks that Antiochus's interference in Temple affairs was minimal, and was only in response to requests from those on the scene, and that it was the usual Seleucid response to local problems. No madness involved; just standard operating procedure.

But Antiochus's flakiness is not just a Jewish canard. Diodorus too tells us that Antiochus IV died insane -- and details his megalomania and aping of Roman customs. Ditto Polybius, who was in Rome to see some of this. I'm willing to allow that the Jewish sources are biased, but their basic story is supported by other sources!

And Grainger's use of sources is extremely selective. He completely ignores Daniel. He "uses" I and II Maccabees -- in the sense that he reads them, extracts one or two random facts, and then rewrites so extensively that victories become defeats and rescues of prisoners become terrorism.

Am I sure Grainger is wrong? To be honest, no. I've read all four Jewish sources (which are pretty heavy reading, at least in their English guises), and I've looked at Diodorus and Appian, but I haven't read all the secondary literature. This isn't my field of expertise. Maybe Grainger is right. But if he is, he needs to explain in more detail why he ignores Daniel, and randomly rewrites I and II Maccabees, and doesn't even take the non-Jewish sources entirely seriously. I guess I just have to keep looking for that up-to-date Maccabean history based on the sources. Frankly, this is such a whitewash that it makes me wonder about Grainger's Seleucid history that I liked.

[Update 11/23/2020: Added two references to Polybius's statements about Antiochus IV -- an important source, since Polybius is widely considered the most accurate historian of the period, even if a bad writer and one whose work survives only in fragments.] ( )