Jonathan Becomes High Priest

The Seleucid appointment of Jonathan, the youngest of Mattathias’ sons, to the high priesthood meant that he now had official sanction to raise an army, which he did immediately, even before he attended to matters such as the rebuilding and strategic fortification of Jerusalem and its countryside that Josephus describes. While Jonathan’s role was highly traditional in that he was mainly expected to do the bidding of the king and collect taxes—as indeed he did—over time the office of the high priest situated political, military, and cultic power in one individual, a development that resulted in the fragmentation of the Judean population and the emergence of Jewish sectarianism during this period. Documents from Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls) suggest that the Essenes evolved as a group at least partly because they believed that the high priest ought to be a descendant of the line of Zadok, the first to serve in the First Temple in that capacity. The later rabbis also, as likely descendants of the Pharisees, disliked the concentration of power in the hands of the Hasmoneans, which may explain their reimagining of the miracle of Hanukkah as the miracle of the small container of oil lasting for eight days and their diminution of the Hasmonean military victory.