On this first week of Advent

Candida Moss that "Mary loving Roman Catholic" late of Notre Dame, author of that classic anti-Cyril article "The Monster Who Gave Us The Mother Of God" as well as of some less-impressive literature on such mythical antiChristian persecution as we are not facing here... she is back. This time hitting the Jews. Catch "Did Archaeologists Just Find Evidence of Hanukkah Stories?" before this article too gets its new title and maybe content.

Yeah, I'll admit - I was always of two minds about Moss. That book she did was a disgrace. Since then... I will say, Dyothelete to Dyothelete: Ms Moss was right about Cyril complete, I'd say, with the "monster" original title. In this present article she uses the "BCE" notation, denying our Christ, because her editors told her to deny Him - but how it that different from any other of us, who sign "Equity" pledges to stay employed?

Today Ms Moss is talking a Lachish-Forest fort overlooking Maresha. She cites the archaeologists dating it to 112 BC. Which postdates what we call the "First Book of Maccabees".

As Moss was right about Cyril, she seems right about the fortress. The Judaea / Seleucia relationship did not end with the Maccabean "independence". In fact the Maccabees did not achieve independence; they needed to navigate their way against the Ptolemies and the Romans, and the Parthians. They found VERY soon that they still needed the Syrians. They didn't pay taxes anymore... directly... but they ended up paying more, in supplying soldiery. It may be that 1 Macc was commissioned by Johanan whom Josephus will name "Hyrcanus", exactly to demand that independence which (Johanan claimed) had been promised forty years prior.

As to that fort, if it dates to the 110s-100s BC, then I should look to John "Hyrcanus". John mounted a second Judaea rebellion in the wake of the Antiochus civil-war to his north, Grypus v. Cyzicenus. These events postdate, I think, the writing of 1 Macc (124 BC) and certainly of 2 Macc (as Jason of Cyrene intended it). Not exactly the Hanukkah story.