Gorgias was a Syrian general of the second century B.C. After Judas Maccabeus had defeated the Syrians, they determined to send a stronger force against him. According to 1 Maccabees iii. 38, which Josephus follows ("The Antiquities of the Jews" xii. 7, § 3), it was the governor Lysias who commissioned the generals Nicanor and Gorgias, sending them with a large army to Judea; but according to 2 Maccabees viii. 8, it was Ptolemy, governor of Coele-Syria and Phoenicia, who sent them. Nicanor seems to have been the commander-in-chief, although 2 Maccabees viii. 9 describes Gorgias as "a general and a man of experience in military service". Judas Maccabeus (or Judah the Maccabee from the Hebrew יהודה המכבי transliteration: Yehudah HaMakabi) translation: Judah the Hammer was the third son of the Jewish priest Mattathias. ... 1 Maccabees is a deuterocanonical book of the Bible which was written by a Jewish (pre-Christian) author, probably about 100 BC, after the restoration of an independent Jewish kingdom. ... A representation of Flavius Josephus, a woodcutting in John C. Winstons translation of his works Josephus (37 – shortly after 100 AD/CE)[1], who became known, in his capacity as a Roman citizen, as Flavius Josephus[2], was a 1st-century Jewish historian and apologist of priestly and royal... Map of the southern Levant, c. ... 2 Maccabees is a deuterocanonical book of the Bible which focuses on the Jews revolt against Antiochus and concludes with the defeat of the Syrian general Nicanor in 161 BC by Judas Maccabeus, the hero of the work. ... A medieval artists rendition of Claudius Ptolemaeus Claudius Ptolemaeus (Greek: ; c. ... Coele-Syria, meaning hollow Syria, was the region of southern Syria disputed between the Seleucid dynasty and the Ptolemaic dynasty. ... Phoenician sarcophagus found in Cadiz, Spain; now in Archaeological Museum of Cádiz. ...

The Syrians were so sure of victory that they took with them a number of merchants, to whom they intended to sell the Jewish prisoners as slaves. The Syrians camped at Emmaus; and Gorgias was sent thence with 5,000 infantry and 1,000 horse to attack Judas by night, his guides being treacherous Jews. Judas had been informed of the expedition, and attacked the main Syrian army at Emmaus, completely routing it. Gorgias, not finding the enemy in camp, concluded they had retired into the mountains, and went in pursuit of them. Judas sagaciously kept his men from touching the booty, preparing them for the impending battle with Gorgias. When the latter returned to the main camp, he found it in flames, and the Jews ready for battle. The Syrians, seized with panic, fled into the Philistine territory, and only then did the Jews seize the rich spoils (166 BCE). The word Jew ( Hebrew: יהודי) is used in a wide number of ways, but generally refers to a follower of the Jewish faith, a child of a Jewish mother, or someone of Jewish descent with a connection to Jewish culture or ethnicity and often a combination... Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio, 1601 Emmaus is the name of two places in Palestine. ... The historic Philistines (see note Philistines below) were a people that inhabited the southern coast of Canaan around the time of the arrival of the Israelites, their territory being named Philistia in later contexts. ... (Redirected from 166 BCE) Centuries: 3rd century BC - 2nd century BC - 1st century BC Decades: 210s BC 200s BC 190s BC 180s BC 170s BC - 160s BC - 150s BC140s BC 130s BC 120s BC 110s BC Years: 171 BC 170 BC 169 BC 168 BC 167 BC - 166 BC - 165...

Gorgias did not again dare to enter Judea. Once when Judas and Simon Maccabeus were carrying the war outside of that country, two subordinate generals, Joseph and Azariah, in violation of orders undertook an expedition against Jamnia, but were severely beaten by Gorgias (1 Maccabees v. 18, 19, 55-62), who is designated in "Ant." xii. 8, § 6, "general of the forces of Jamnia." 1 Maccabees does not mention this expedition, but refers to another, and calls Gorgias "governor of Idumaea" (xii. 32), which seems to be more correct than "of Jamnia." He set out with 3,000 infantry and 400 horse, and killed a number of Jews; whereupon a certain Dositheus of Tobiene (so the correct reading of the Syrian translation), one of those whom Judas had protected against the pagans, threw himself upon Gorgias and seized his mantle, intending to take him prisoner; but a Thracian horseman cut off Dositheus' arm and so saved Gorgias. The last-named then retired to Marissa (ib. verse 35; comp. "Ant." xii. 8, § 6), after which he is lost to view. Willrich assumes ("Judaica," p. 33) from the description of the booty in 1 Maccabees iv. 23 that Holofernes in the Book of Judith represents Gorgias. Simon Maccabaeus (died 135 BCE) was a son of Mattathias and thus a member of the Hasmonean family. ... Yavne (Hebrew יבנה, Arabic يبنة Yibnah) is a city in the Center District of Israel in Israel. ... Edom (אֱדוֹם, Standard Hebrew Edom, Tiberian Hebrew ʾĔḏôm) sounds like the Biblical Hebrew word for red and is a vividly apposite designation for the red sandstones of Edom. ... Pagans may mean: Paganism, a belief in natural religion. ... The Thracians were an Indo-European people, inhabitants of Thrace and adjacent lands (present-day Bulgaria, Romania, northeastern Greece, European Turkey and northwestern asiatic Turkey, eastern Serbia and parts of Republic of Macedonia). ... Holofernes appears in the deuterocanonical Book of Judith as a general of Nebuchadnezzar. ... For other uses of Judith, see Judith (disambiguation). ...

Bibliography

• Heinrich Grätz, Geschichte ii. 343, 357;
• Emil Schürer, Geschichte 3d ed., i. 205, 212;
• Benediktus Niese, in Hermes, xxxv. 466.G. S. Kr.

This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Emil Schürer (May 2, 1844 - April 30, 1910), German Protestant theologian, was born at Augsburg. ...

External link

• The Machabees at the Catholic Encyclopedia

This article incorporates text from the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, a publication now in the public domain. The Jewish Encyclopedia was an encyclopedia originally published between 1901 and 1906 by Funk and Wagnalls. ... The public domain comprises the body of all creative works and other knowledge—writing, artwork, music, science, inventions, and others—in which no person or organization has any proprietary interest. ...