and celebration of religious festivals and the teaching of Torah Palmer, 2002: 3. He forced the Jews to worship Zeus, God of the Greek. He desecrated the temple
by sacrifice a swine on the altar. He even forced the priest in local areas to sacrifice swine to Zeus and if they rejected it, their position as priests were
immediately replaced by anyone who were ready to do it. Some of the Jews agreed with this as it brought them to the new paradigm of the Jews. However,
some of them did not. It was Mattathias, a local priest in Modein who rejected it. He and his five sons then rebelled. Many of the Jews then joined them and most
of them were the peasants. It was first started by Judas, first son of Mattathias. Judas was called
“Maccabeus” or “the hammer” as their braveness and struggles to fight the well trained and well equipped troops Palmer, 2002: 4. They
attacked Selucid troops and in 164 BCE, the temple was cleansed again. In 142, under the control of Simon, the fifth son of Mattathias, the Greek was defeated
and Jews finally got its independence. All these struggles then were called as the “Maccabean Revolt” Palmer, 2002: 4.
4. The Jews under Roman Rule
Francois Houtart in his journal, “Palestine in Jesus Time” explains some
important information about the history of the Jews which in this case was lived in Palestine at the time of Jesus. In this journal, he explained how Palestine at the
time lived under control of the Roman Empire began from the arrival of Pompey in 63 BCE. After being freed from the conquest of the Greek, Palestine then
subjugated by the empire Rome though there were some wealthy landowning class of people. Roman Empire gained the whole regions of Palestine then
changed Palestine‟s economic production system into the system of the Empire Houtart, 1976: 12. The dominion of Roman Empire began from the economic
field where the Roman Empire tried to raise the tax. This kind of system made the urban workers and the lower middle class as this was a double exploitation to
them. In political point of view, there was a hierarchy that involving the
Palestinian too. It is stated that Around the Temple was to be found the priestly community which had the
responsibility of organizing worship and exercising the policing function through the Levites. It was a priest who held the office of the treasurer.
Then followed a series of officials, priests, Levites and laymen. In analyzing the political system, a stratification of the groups becomes
relevant. The Sadducees constituted the Jewish aristocracy and they were linked to the Roman power through their economic interests. The
Pharisees were members of the urban lower middle class: arti-sans, small traders and scribes, who wielded little political power although they were
represented in the Sanhedrin Houtart, 1976: 19 .
It could be seen that at the time, religious aspect were still respected by the Roman Empire. They had power in order to control the people. From the ideology
and religion point of view he also said that “We have seen that the religious
leaders and the religious symbol represented by the Temple played a very important role from the economic, social and political points of view Houtart,
1976: 20 .” This means that religion held an important role at that time. People at
that time embraced monotheism and it was a product of a long evolution. This was the basis of the whole ideological system. Jewish tradition at the time held the
belief of Judaism and they believed that Moses received the Torah. It was the Jewish written law consisting five books of Moses in written in Hebrew. Torah,
