The High Priesthood for Sale

First of all, under King Seleucus, the son of Antiochus the Great, a man named Simon brought false charges before the king against Onias the priest, a holy man who could not be corrupted. In this way he tried to bring him down, but he failed. Then, after some time, Jason, the brother of Onias, went to King Antiochus, who had succeeded his brother Seleucus, and promised him more tribute if the high priesthood were transferred to him. It was an unusual thing, and until then a forbidden one, for a man to hold the high priesthood year after year. Even so, the king’s eager mind, sick with greed, was easily persuaded. So Onias was driven from office and the priesthood was given to Jason. Jason harassed his countrymen and his country in the most shameful way. [a]

Then Jason sent the money he had promised the king by the hand of a certain Menelaus, the brother of the Simon already mentioned. Once the road was open to his ambition, Menelaus got the priesthood by the same methods Jason had used before. Not long afterward, because he had not paid the amount of money he had promised, he was driven from his position, and Lysimachus was put in his place. Then shameful struggles broke out between Jason and Menelaus, until Jason left the country as an exile. By examples like these the morals of the people were corrupted so far that many of the native Jews asked Antiochus for permission to live in the manner of the Gentiles. When the king granted their request, all the most worthless among them competed with one another to build temples, sacrifice to idols, and profane the law.

Meanwhile Antiochus came back from Alexandria. He had made war at that time on the king of Egypt, but he gave it up on the orders of the senate and people of Rome, in the consulship of Paulus and Crassus. He went to Jerusalem, and finding the people divided by the various superstitions they had taken up, he destroyed the law of God and favored those who followed ungodly ways. He carried off all the ornaments of the temple and did it great damage. That happened in the hundred and fiftieth year after the death of Alexander, while Paulus and Crassus, as we said, were consuls, about five years after Antiochus began to reign.