Dr. Ehrman, I agree with pretty everything you’ve written in this post, with one exception. When you write: “Jews were being forced to abandon their Jewish customs and worship of Yahweh to adopt Greek culture and religion,” I don’t think that’s totally accurate. I think it’s more accurate to say that SOME Jews FELT LIKE they were being forced to abandon their Jewish customs and worship of Yahweh to adopt Greek culture and religion. That may seem like a minor detail, but I think it’s a very significant point. If you’ll indulge me, I’ll explain what I mean.

Remember that the Hasmoneans weren’t a group of urban Jerusalem elites who rebeled against Antiochus. No, for the most part, the Jerusalem elites were on Antiochus’ side. They were the equivalent of the ruling establishment of a third-world nation who were the puppets of a hegemonic power, like, for instance the Maha Raja was in British contolled India, or the current Iraqi and Afghan governments are to American hegemony. That is, the established powers did not have that much of an issue with adopting the customs and cultures of the hegemonic, occupying power, but when you leave the capital, the average citizen highly resents the occupying power who controls the ruling power in the capital. Incidentally, this is exactly the same type of relationship we see in Jesus’ time, with the important exception that the Jerusalem elite were now in the pocket of Rome instead of Antioch.

Anyway, my greater point is that the Maccabean revolt was not a revolt by the Jewish ruling class in Jerusalem against Antioch, but was really a rural, populist uprising against BOTH Seleucid hegemony and the Jerusalem establishment that was in Antiochus’ pocket. Note that instigators and leaders of that revolt came from a lesser Levitical family, from the one horse town Modi’in out in the countryside of Judea, not from the established priestly families in Jerusalem — and that’s why many of the Levitical families later revolted against Hasmonean rule, because they were outraged that a minor priestly family would be in control of Jerusalem and the Temple, rather than the traditional Zadokites.

Anyhow, that’s why it would be more accurate to say that some Jews — namely the more traditional, rural Jews of the Judean countryside — had FELT like their traditions were being undermined (whether they actually were or not) by both an intolerant hegemon (Antiochus) and the Jerusalem establishment that he controlled. If I were to make a modern analogy that effectively illustrates the scenario: think of the urban, coastal, liberal elites of New York City and Los Angeles as like Antiochus Epiphanes; Washington DC as like the Jerusalem establishment who were the puppets of Antiochus; and the good ole, heartland, biscuits and gravy, conservative God-fearing Evangelical Christians of the “real” fly-over America — who are being persecuted by those godless communists in DC, New York and California — are the rural Jews who rose up against Antioch and Jerusalem. That, I think, is the more accurate way to look at it.