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Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. And today we're doing Jewish Braveheart. Or maybe Braveheart is Scottish Maccabees. I don't know. Here's what I'm driving at. Remember yesterday when I was like, hey, you know those movies where the bad guy comes to town, the oppressor, and they do something bad, and then a hero has to rise up and resist the oppressor, and it's really easy to root against the bad guy. Well, today we're into that part of the story. We're working on the stuff that happened between the Old Testament and the New Testament. We talked a few days ago about early Rome, the Kingdom of Rome, the Roman Republic. We carried that story all the way up to the Emperor Caesar Augustus, the first emperor, the one who was in charge and called for the census that caused Mary and Joseph to go to Bethlehem. So that's where we have things on pause with Rome. Then we spent a little bit of time talking about the fate of Persia and Greece after the Old Testament and how they fought for a while, but then kind of mushed together a little bit. And then in the 330s and 320s BC, they did a lot more than mush together. The one completely trampled over the other, and everything became Greekified. And that is where we left off yesterday. It's a pretty sad story. Alexander the Great was a young man, 32, 33 years old. And I think it would have been a very different outcome in terms of how the whole world turned out if Alexander had lived to a ripe old age. Who knows what he would have done or how he would have led? Remember, he was descended of the greatest intellectual family tree of one of the greatest intellectual people groups of all time, the classical Greeks. Socrates taught Plato, Plato taught Aristotle. Aristotle personally tutored Alexander the Great. And then Alexander the Great came to the throne at a young age when his dad, Philip II, for whom Philippi is named, and he went on a giant march of conquest, but then he died young in Babylon. Alexander the Great does not have an heir. He has a son on the way by his wife Roxana, but she's, I mean, she's just barely pregnant with the kid, and he's gonna be a tiny baby for you can't run an empire like that. So, with no obvious heir on the way, a steward is appointed, but that just doesn't have teeth because you got these mega generals of Alexander's who are hardened by battle. They've seen everything. All of the rules of government and the world don't apply to them. Think about it. They know how to topple governments, they know how to topple kingdoms. No one can stop them. They're basically superheroes as long as they have their reputation and their knowledge and their army. And so they start fighting with each other. I mean, they're not they're not like, oh, let's sit around and just wait and see how the paperwork works out. And we'll sort this out in court and you know, well, well, we'll argue that no, just fight. Then in the end, three large empires emerge from Alexander's even larger empire within a few decades of Alexander's death. The first one is the Antigonid Empire, that's in Greece and Macedonia, Southeast Europe. They're not going to be in view very much for the purposes of our conversation. Another one that's a little more in view is in Egypt, and this is the Ptolemaic Empire, founded by Ptolemy I, a general of Alexander. And just as a fun side note, his great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, however many times, granddaughter is Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, lover of Mark Antony, committer of suicide by Cobra, and she dies just shortly before Jesus is born, as the Roman Empire is being founded and established by Caesar Augustus. So that's kind of a fun connection. But then the third of the empires to come out of the time of Alexander the Great is the one we're going to be paying attention to for our story. And this is the Seleucid Empire. Now, Seleucus, Niconor, I think is how you say it is Seleucus Nicon N-I-C-A-N-O-R. I think I'm remembering that right. What I am sure of is this. Seleucus bought into the dream of Alexander the Great. That dream being we need to Greekify everything. Greek culture superior, Persian culture inferior. He and his descendants are real pushy about Greek culture, Greek religion, even like Greek physiology. They really look down their nose at the subject people group. I mean, the prominent subject people group that we are talking about as well, that being the Jews. They look down their nose at them because the Greeks do a lot of stuff naked. And the Jews, if they participate in Greek stuff naked, they look uh weird down there in their nether regions because the Jews they circumcise their men and the Greeks, they don't. And it seems like this is just such a uh an odd thing to have be a hang up between the two groups, but it was a hang up. There was apparently even some sort of reverse circumcision procedure invented to make it so that Jews who wanted to Greekify and be more like their Seleucid overlords could look more like their Seleucid overlords when they did sports, which they did entirely naked. I don't I don't get it either. I know. I yeah, I know I hear all those questions. I don't get it either. I play a lot of sports. I feel like every single one that I play would be worse and less effective naked. But I mean the Greeks, this is what they did. I mean, they conquered the world. I guess they get to decide if you do your sports naked, if you conquer the world, you get to be the chooser on that. But the Jews didn't like it, and they didn't have to like it, and Seleucus and his descendants couldn't make them like it, but some went along with it, and so the Jews start to feel this internal turmoil as a subject people under the thumb of the increasingly oppressive Seleucids through the 200s and into the early 100s BC. And there starts to be just this foment, this sense of we need to get rid of these Greeks. This isn't working out. They're encroaching more and more onto the stuff that makes us us. Now, this is very interesting to me because throughout the Old Testament, and it's okay if you don't know this, by the way, if if you're newer to Bible stuff, I'll bring you up to speed here. But throughout the Old Testament, the problem with God's chosen people, the Jews, the Hebrews, the Israelites, at different times they go by different names, is that they just don't obey God that much, considering that they've seen the miracles of God and that they owe their existence to God, they forget. And, you know, before I get on my high horse here, well, I'm forgetful. I forget to do things that are consistent with what I say I believe sometimes too. So, you know, of course, if you have a book that's this thick, listen to that. That I mean, that's just a lot of story over a very long time. There's gonna be some ugly incidents and some disappointing eras in the history of that people, and there are. So throughout the Old Testament, the people they have a deal with God. He made it through the prophet Moses. God basically said, Hey, this family, this ethnic group, you're gonna be my chosen people. I am going to be your God, you're gonna be my people, and I'm gonna give you a law. And everybody is going to know that you are my people and that I am the one true God, because if you obey me, I'm gonna bless you beyond what would ever make sense to anyone. But also, if you disobey me, I'm gonna punish you in front of everybody. Either way, like it's kind of you know up to you, however, you want to act. Either way, people are gonna know that I'm the one true God and that you are my people. And that right there is the structure of basically the whole Old Testament. Sometimes the people of God obey God, but more often they forget and they worship other gods and they do stupid stuff and they violate the law of God, and then God punishes them, just like he said he would do, by raising up their neighbors, other kingdoms and empires. And the at times in the Bible, in the Old Testament, the people are like, Why do you keep using these awful foreign countries to punish us? The prophet Habakkuk gets the opportunity to directly ask that to God. Like, these people are even worse than us. Why are you letting them do it? And you know, God gives his answer, which is basically, well, we had a deal and you disobeyed me, and I'm punishing you. But he really makes it clear like I'm not forgetting about these other nations. They're gonna rise and fall, they're gonna get theirs. I will punish them as well for their evils and their injustice. So, after running through this cycle, however many times, through the whole gigantic Old Testament, at the very end, once again, during the Persian age, under the reign of Artaxerxes I of Persia, Ezra and Nehemiah get everything in order, totally dialed down. They call everybody into Jerusalem. They're like, we're gonna read you the whole law and we're gonna go around and explain it. We don't care how long it takes. And everybody's like, okay, we get it. We're in. And Nehemiah, who's a very administratively minded dude, is like, all right, I'm gonna make sure that we build systems and institutions and things that will outlast any given generation to make sure that the temple is funded, that we're training up new talent to handle the religious stuff, the religious life of the community and the sacrifices. We're gonna make sure the walls are built up and everything is set so that when I, Nehemiah, the last main character of the Old Testament, dies, everything can just keep going into perpetuity. And then the Old Testament turns off in about 440 BC. You and I know, because we've talked about it for a couple days, that Alexander comes on the scene about a hundred years later and conquers Persia and seems initially to get along with Israel just fine. But then, as we were discussing a few minutes ago, after Alexander dies and General Seleucus and his descendants end up with custody of the Jewish people in Jerusalem, over the next several decades, it just does not go very well. And from about 300 BC to about 170 BC, it just keeps getting worse and worse and worse as the descendants of Seleucus keep trying to inflict more force, more control, and more Greek religion and cultural stuff on the Jews until some of the Jews get sick of it. And then there's an inciting event that's recorded in some ancient Bible-adjacent literature that I happen to really appreciate that we're going to look at tomorrow. But this inciting event is going to lead to blood, revolution, betrayal, and eventually it will set in motion a series of events that weaken the Greeks, the Seleucids, that is, and open the door for the Romans to come in and eventually, not so long before the time of Jesus, take control of Jerusalem, of Judea, of the whole area. Then that's, of course, the status quo when the New Testament starts, and that's the status quo in the book of Philemon. All right, tomorrow, 167 BC, the Jews versus the Seleucids. I'm banging my two fists together. Conflict. It's a great story. I'm excited to unpack it together tomorrow. All right, that's plenty for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon, but