StephenGoranson wrote: ↑Tue Jul 20, 2021 2:47 am
Also, on Antigonus Mattathias, Vermes/Millar give some info. He was brought to the throne with Parthian help.
So - Hyrcanus II tried to retake the throne with the help of the Nabateans forces of Aretas III. Neither Hyrcanus II nor Antigonus II Mattathias would somehow be disqualified as being Kings of Judaea because outside help was called upon......
I would guess that some people affected back then were tired of the wars between his father and his uncle. Tired of ruling families (including later Herod) killing some of their own family members. Some, maybe the author of Psalms Solomon 8, thought it inappropriate to take the title king. The title "king" has also been used in various ways, including mockingly.
Tired of the civil war - undoubtedly. '..inappropriate' for either Hyrcanus II or Antigonus II Mattathias to take the title of King ?
I posted earlier: Antigonus II Mattathias was King and High Priest of the Jews....as his coins testify. A legitimate King of the Jews.
Here is what someone who claims blood links to the Hasmoneans has to say about the Hasmoneans.
Josephus: Life
.....by my mother I am of the royal blood; for the children of Asamoneus, from whom that family was derived, had both the office of the high priesthood, and the dignity of a king, for a long time together.
Antiquities book 14:
This destruction befell the city of Jerusalem when Marcus Agrippa and Caninius Gallus were consuls of Rome (30) on the hundred eighty and fifth olympiad, on the third month, on the solemnity of the fast, as if a periodical revolution of calamities had returned since that which befell the Jews under Pompey; for the Jews were taken by him on the same day, and this was after twenty-seven years' time. So when Sosius had dedicated a crown of gold to God, he marched away from Jerusalem, and carried Antigonus with him in bonds to Antony; but Herod was afraid lest Antigonus should be kept in prison [only] by Antony, and that when he was carried to Rome by him, he might get his cause to be heard by the senate, and might demonstrate, as he was himself of the royal blood, and Herod but a private man, that therefore it belonged to his sons however to have the kingdom, on account of the family they were of, in case he had himself offended the Romans by what he had done. Out of Herod's fear of this it was that he, by giving Antony a great deal of money, endeavored to persuade him to have Antigonus slain, which if it were once done, he should be free from that fear. And thus did the government of the Asamoneans cease, a hundred twenty and six years after it was first set up. This family was a splendid and an illustrious one, both on account of the nobility of their stock, and of the dignity of the high priesthood, as also for the glorious actions their ancestors had performed for our nation; but these men lost the government by their dissensions one with another, and it came to Herod, the son of Antipater, who was of no more than a vulgar family, and of no eminent extraction, but one that was subject to other kings. And this is what history tells us was the end of the Asamonean family.
Josephus quoting Stabo.
Antiquities book 15.
Now when Antony had received Antigonus as his captive, he determined to keep him against his triumph; but when he heard that the nation grew seditious, and that, out of their hatred to Herod, they continued to bear good-will to Antigonus, he resolved to behead him at Antioch, for otherwise the Jews could no way be brought to be quiet. And Strabo of Cappadocia attests to what I have said, when he thus speaks: "Antony ordered Antigonus the Jew to be brought to Antioch, and there to be beheaded. And this Antony seems to me to have been the very first man who beheaded a king, as supposing he could no other way bend the minds of the Jews so as to receive Herod, whom he had made king in his stead; for by no torments could they he forced to call him king, so great a fondness they had for their former king; so he thought that this dishonorable death would diminish the value they had for Antigonus's memory, and at the same time would diminish the hatred they bare to Herod." Thus far Strabo.
And to that - we can add Rabbi Wise:
The sympathies of the masses for the crucified king of Judah, the heroic son of so many heroic ancestors, and the legends growing, in time, out of this historical nucleus, became, perhaps, the source from which Paul and the evangelists preached Jesus as the crucified king of Judea.'' (History of the Hebrew's Second Commonwealth, 1880, Cincinnati, page 206)
Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise (1819-1900), scholar and novelist
Wow - seeking to somehow or another to discredit the Hasmoneans -