Apocryphal

After the era of Malachi, prophecy stopped. Books continued to be written but none were accepted as scripture by the Jewish community. Eventually the term ‘apocryphal’, or ‘hidden’ was used to describe these books. This word in turn came to mean “unreliable. Thus, Douglas Adams describes the Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy as containing “much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate.”

1 Maccabees is one of the few Jewish historical books preserved from this period. It describes the desecration of the temple by the Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes in 167 BC. Until then, the Jews had generally been allowed to observe their laws by the Persian and then Hellenic rulers. Antiochus, however

arrogantly entered the sanctuary and took the golden altar, the lampstand for the light, and all its utensils … he stripped it all off. He took the silver and the gold and the costly vessels; he took also the hidden treasures that he found. Taking them all, he went into his own land. (1 Macc 1:21-24)

Worse…

on the fifteenth day of Chislev, in the 145th year, they erected a desolating sacrilege on the altar of burnt offering …The books of the law that they found they tore to pieces and burned with fire. Anyone found possessing the book of the covenant or anyone who adhered to the law was condemned to death by decree of the king. … On the twenty-fifth day of the month they offered sacrifice on the altar that was on top of the altar of burnt offering. According to the decree, they put to death the women who had their children circumcised and their families and those who circumcised them, and they hung the infants from their mothers’ necks. (1 Macc 1:54-61)

2 Maccabees describes “one of the scribes in high position, a man now advanced in age and of noble presence, … being forced to open his mouth to eat pig’s flesh.” (2 Macc 6:18)

This triggered the Maccabean revolt, after which Judea was able to restore some autonomy. With the arrival of the Roman Empire (Pompey entered the Most Holy Place in 63 BC, reportedly finding it empty), Herod the Great became a Roman Jewish client king. One of his propagandist acts was to rebuild the temple into the large complex into which Jesus would enter and turn the tables on the Jewish aristocracy.

There would end up being 8 books of the Maccabees. These would become increasingly apocryphal, in the modern sense, to the extent that half of them wouldn’t even make it into the Apocrypha.

Antiochus, meanwhile, apparently met his end in naer-farcical fashion:

So the all-seeing Lord, the God of Israel, struck him down with an incurable and invisible blow; for scarcely had he uttered those words when he was seized with excruciating pains in his bowels and sharp internal torment, a fit punishment for him who had tortured the bowels of others with many barbarous torments. Far from giving up his insolence, he was all the more filled with arrogance. Breathing fire in his rage against the Jews, he gave orders to drive even faster. As a result he hurtled from the speeding chariot, and every part of his body was racked by the violent fall. (2 Macc 9:5-7)