Judah and his Jewish fighters defeated the Greeks one more time, then came to Jerusalem, where they cleansed the Temple of the statues of the Greek gods and dedicated it once more to the worship of the Lord. That's where the Feast of Chanukkah- or Dedication- comes from.

The Hasidim, the Pious Jews, started the rebellion against the Seleucids when Mattathias, the old priest, killed people in Modein who tried to offer sacrifices to the Greek gods. Mattathias died soon after, but his son Judah raised up a rebel army that hammered the Greeks time and time again.

King Antiochus III of the Seleucids took over the territory of Jerusalem and Judea from the Ptolemaic kingdom of Egypt. His son, King Antiochus IV, in an attempt to strengthen his southern border, and to prevent rebellion, tried to destroy the Jewish religion and tried to get the Jews to worship the Greek gods. It didn't work.

The Greeks came to Jerusalem and set up idols and honored their gods in the dramatic presentations. This created a cultural hostility with the Jewish prohibition on graven images. Greeks, and later some Christians, viewed the physical world as lowly, even sinful, but the Jews saw creation as good because God created it.

Philip of Macedon gained hegemony over the Greek states, and his son Alexander led the Greeks on an epic campaign to conquer the Persian Empire. Alexander died at the age of 33 years old, but not before spreading Greek culture into every corner of the previous Persian Empire.

After defeating the Persians, Athens established their empire, which was actually a hegemony, or domination of the other Greek states. This led to war against Sparta and disaster. Following the warfare, the giants of Greek philosophy emerged- Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, who was the teacher of Alexander the Great.

The culture of Athens lives on today in the modern world. The Greeks gave us Democracy and Dramatic Theatre, and we're still using words from ancient Greek, and we have buildings that use principles from Greek architecture. Greek civilization, as we will see later, stands against Jewish culture.

King Cyrus and the Persians quickly conquered the Babylonian Empire, then they turned their attention to the Greeks. The Persians met with defeat twice, at the beach of Marathon and later in one of the greatest naval battles of all time.

King Cyrus established the Medo-Persian Empire, then came against and destroyed the Kingdom of Lydia. This brought the Persians in contact with the Greeks. Meanwhile, the Jews lived in exile in Babylon, studying the Torah, and Jerusalem remained as a pile of rubble.

This is the start of a new topic- a look at the ancient Jewish state, started by the Hasmonean family. We'll be taking a look at the Chanukkah story, along with most of ancient history- the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the start of the Christian religion.