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272 worship of Greek gods throughout the kingdom; in Judea, it specifically forbade the observance of the Sabbath and cir- cumcision. In accordance with the decree, the Jerusalem tem- ple was to become a temple to Zeus; and in 167 B.c.E., on the 25th day of the Hebrew month Kislev—equivalent to today’s December 25—an idol, a statue representing Zeus, “The Lord of Heaven,” was set up by Syrian-Greek soldiers in the tem- ple, and the great altar was altered and used for sacrifices to Zeus. The sacrilege could not have been greater. The unavoidable Jewish uprising, begun and led by a priest named Matityahu and his five sons, is known as the Hash- monean or Maccabean Revolt. Starting in the countryside, the uprising quickly overcame the local Greek garrisons. As the Greeks rushed in reinforcements, the revolt engulfed the whole country; what the Maccabees lacked in numbers and weapons, they compensated for by the ferocity of their reli- gious zeal. The events, described in the Book of Maccabees (and by subsequent historians), leave no doubt that the fight of the few against a powerful kingdom was guided by a cer- tain timetable: /t was imperative to retake Jerusalem, cleanse the temple, and rededicate it to Yahweh by a certain dead- line. Managing in 164 B.c.£. to recapture only the Temple Mount, the Maccabees cleansed the Temple, and the sacred flame was rekindled that year; the final victory, leading to full control of Jerusalem and restoration of Jewish indepen- dence, took place in 160 B.c.E. The victory and rededication of the Temple are still celebrated by Jews as the holiday of Hanukkah (“rededication”) on the twenty-fifth day of Kislev. The sequence and the timing of those events appeared to be linked to the prophecies about the End of Days. Of those prophecies, as we have seen, the ones that offered specific numerical clues in regard to the ultimate future, the End of Days, were conveyed by the angels to Daniel. But clarity is lacking because the counts were enigmatically expressed ei- ther in a unit called “time,” or in “weeks of years,” and even in numbers of days; and it is perhaps only in respect to the latter that one is told when the count does begin, so that one could know when it would end. In that one instance, the THE END OF DAYS