1 Maccabees Q&A Chapters 1 - 7

If you thought 1 Maccabees was confusing the first time through, welcome to the Q&A episode where we prove it wasn’t just you, it’s the text. The hosts dive into chapters 1–7 and immediately tackle the big brain question: is Eupator related to Jupiter? Short answer: nope. Longer answer: his name basically means “son of awesome dad,” because Antiochus IV Epiphanes was so full of himself he named his kid after his own greatness... right before we detour into how Darth Vader literally means “Dark Father.”

Then we finally untangle that maddening date-counting system. Every “in the 137th year…” line is pegged to the Seleucid Era starting around 312 BCE, but with Syrians counting autumn-to-autumn and Jews counting spring-to-spring, so all the dates are off by a year depending on whose calendar you’re using. It’s not you; it’s ancient imperial bookkeeping.

From there, the episode wades into the absolute pronoun soup of 1 Maccabees 7: Demetrius I murders the child-king Eupator, Alci–sorry, Albus Dumbledore (Alcimus) sells out Judas to the Greeks, Bacchides and Nicanor take turns trying to crush the revolt, and the so-called “wicked Jews” and “faithful Jews” mostly look like people just trying not to die under whichever empire currently has the bigger sword. The hosts call out how both sides weaponize “faithfulness,” and even tie it to modern intra-Jewish and Israel/Palestine tensions—same God, different factions, infinite bloodshed.

It all climaxes with Nicanor’s Day: Judas kills Nicanor, they chop off his head and right hand, and the Jews turn it into a yearly celebration on the 13th of Adar—basically the day before Purim—until later rabbis go, “Yeah, maybe we don’t center a mutilation festival in the liturgical calendar.” Now it survives mostly as an obscure historical footnote… or as an excuse for the hosts to propose atheist meetups involving a giant foam hand and a fake severed head.

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📌 Topics Covered:

• Why Eupator is not Jupiter—and how his name basically translates to “Son of Awesome Me”
• The Seleucid Era date mess: autumn vs. spring years and why the numbers never quite line up
• Breaking down the chaos of 1 Maccabees 7: who killed whom, and why every “he” is a jump-scare for your brain
• Alcimus/“Albus Dumbledore” as a traitorous descendant of Aaron angling for that high priest clout
• The Hasideans: pious idealists, useful idiots, or just people who didn’t want to get murdered today
• Nicanor’s Day—the bloody holiday that got quietly yeeted from the Jewish calendar
• Parallels between Maccabean factionalism and modern fights over what it means to be a “good Jew” or “good believer”
• Foam hands, fake heads, and how to turn a forgotten holy day into an atheist block party

💬 Best Quote from the Episode:

“What the fuck even happened in chapter seven with all the pronouns?”