1. Two of the Hyrcanus sons were never heard from again. Eusebius Polymocrates posits that they were killed not by Aristobulus, but rather by Aristobulus's successor, the third son Alexander, nom-de-guerre Yannaius, whom, having lived through Greek civil wars of intrigue and many Hasmonean deaths, greatly feared their rival claims to succession.
2. By the Book of Maccabee's narrative, Alexander married Salome Alexandra, who was also the wife of Aristobulus before his tragically premature demise. While Eusebius Polymocrates mentions Salome Alexandra, he does not mention marriage to Aristobulus. In the Chronicle of Ancient Infamies, Salome Alexandra is described as an insatiable older temptress who took young Alexander Yannaius as lover even while she married his older brother, and when Alexander was imprisoned, machinated for his freedom under the belief that Alexander would marry her and make her his queen were the unstable Aristobulus to fall from his throne. However, in this account, Alexander Yannaius did not marry Salome Alexandra. Instead he married Chana Yocheved, lady of virtue true from the Rabbinical House of Shetah, an indication to posterity of a return to Maccabeean rectitude after the Greek licentiousness of his brothers.
The Annointing Ceremony of The Sixth Liberator, Alexander of Hasmonea, nom-de-guerre Yannaius, of the Maccabee Dynasty: 103 BC, 626 Ab Urbe Conditia, 3634
3. "Repeat after me. Baruch..." "Baruch..." "Ata..." "Ata..." "Adona""PROVE YOURSELF!" (general scandalized whispers) "Adonai" "Adon""PROVE THYSELF O LIBERATOR OF DUST!" Alexander: "Oh good, another false prophet...." "THERE IS NOT ONE MACCABEE THAT DOETH GOOD! NO NOT ONE! PROVE THYSELF WORTHY OF OFFICE FOR WHICH ALL MACCABEES ARE SO UNFIT! AND PROVE THYSELF NOW!" (scandalized gasps and yells) "REPENT THEIR MISDEEDS! REPENT NOW OR GREAT EVIL WILL BESET THE LAND!!" Alexander: "Ladies and Gentlemen, we seem to have one of Jerusalem's many meshuggoyim who think that they alone carry the word of God. If our guards can just see to escorting him off the premes.." "HEAR ME PRETENDER! ISRAEL HAS BECOME UNCLEAN IN PROSPERITY! REPENT AND SOON! PROVE THYSELF WORTHY FROM THE FIRST MINUTE OF THE FIRST DAY OR FACE FATE FAR WORSE THAN YOUR BROTHERS!" (The false prophet sees the guards coming up to him and runs through the crowd to the bimah, lunges at the chalice of office containing oil meant for Yahweh's Holy of Holies) "TAKE AWAY THIS CUP OF HOLY OIL FROM THE ERRANT WEED!" (Alexander grabs the cup in defense, in the struggle the oil spills on Alexander Yannaius's breastplate, to the consternated gasps of all present.)
4. (other men in the crowd) "That oil was meant for ELOHIM'S SACRED MENORAH!" "This is proof Alexander is no Liberator." "The prophet is right. The true anointed would never spill." "Woe is Israel, "It wasn't his fault!" "The prophet said he must prove himself from the first minute or else horrible evil would befall us, and the Liberator spilled oil from the holy grail!" "But the prophet caused the grail to spill!" "If he were the true anointed he would have stopped the prophet!" "If the prophet were a true prophet he would not have caused the grail to spill!" "But Alexander fulfilled his office, there's nothing which says he has to use ALL the oil to light the sacred Menorah." "If he were the true servant why would the prophet decry him?" "Perhaps the prophet is false." "If the prophet were false why would Hashem allow him to speak at such a holy ceremony?" "There are many corrupt people here. Why does Hashem permit them to be at this ceremony?" "All men in this temple are holy or else they would not be allowed." "If all men in this temple were holy why is the prophet permitted to say that the Liberator is not holy?" "Are you saying that Hashem is not holy?" "Are you saying that I'm not holy?" "Are you comparing yourself to the Holy One on High?" "ASTONISHMENT!" "CURSE!" "REPROACH!" "EXECRATION!" "GONIF!" "KADOKHES!" "KHAZER!" "KHALERYEH!" "NAFKEH!" "KORVEH!" "PROTSHAK!" "PUTZ!" "SHAAAAAAAAAAYGETZ!" (the assembled crowd breaks into a fistfight, which goes into the street, which leads to more fighting, which leads to deaths in the streets, and soon all of Jerusalem riots).
5. The riots raged on for six weeks, and Alexander had no choice but comb the world for hearsay of gentile soldiers to set down his insurrection, because his predecessor Aristobulus had not paid the Judean army for the entire year of his reign, and so the soldiery willingly disbanded (more on that anon). He therefore settled upon the Isle of Rhodes, where was said to live the greatest mercenary soldiers in the world, trained upon the Peninsula of Italia. And near the heels of Rhodes's most famous ruin, Alexander Yannaius guaranteed the price of 30 shekels each of gold and founding a settlement at Stratonos Pyrgos, upon the Mediterranean coast halfway between Acre and Jaffa. 300 of the world's greatest soldiers sailed back with Alexander, and within three days of landing in port, 6,000 Jerusalemites were slain.
6. The soldiers of Italia effected such terror that by putting down a rebellion they caused another rebellion. Over the next ten years the soldiers of Italia besieged rebellions in Jerusalem, Emmaus, Hebron, Jericho, Lower Beit-Horon, Bethany, Nazareth, Bethlehem, Capernaum, and even the ancestral Hasmonean seat of Modi'in. With each rebellion, Alexander had to go back to Rhodes and promise more spoils for more soldiers to fight against the Judean peoples, who seemed all too happy to sacrifice seven of themselves for every mercenary. By such time of Alexander's victory, 50,000 more Jews were slain.
93 BC, 636 Ab Urbe Conditia, 3644-5
7. After ten years, a negotiated peace was procured by Alexander Yannaius's probable brother-in-law, Rabbi Shimon-ben-Shetah. The surviving Italian soldiers were so wealthy and so maddened by the Judean people that upon the resumption of peace, they simply went back to Rhodes. There was great pomp and ceremony at which Pharisee rebels were welcomed from all around Judea, and each local general signed the document, and yet at the final signature, General Z'vulun of Zelah refused to sign until one last term was procured: Alexander's death.
8. At that moment, a herald arrived to the hall with announcement that 43,000 Greek soldiers had crossed into Benjaminite territory, and they proclaim Z'vulun of Zelah the new King of Judea. All the rebel forces met the Greeks at the Battle of Sheol. 21,000 Judean soldiers perished upon the field, and Alexander Yannaius was reduced to pitiable wandering. In Jerusalem he happened upon his own funeral, and when he protested that he was Alexander Yannaius in the flesh, none believed him.
95 BC, 638 Ab Urbe Conditia, 3646-7
9. Amid his wanderings he came at last to the one true rebel stronghold left in Judea, the Hill People of Ephraim. They took pity upon their king, and organized a force of 6,000 with only the most fragile flint spears. And these six thousand hill people pushed out all the Greek soldiers with all their tens of thousands in all their finery, their polished weapons of metal, their shields and breastplates, their swordplay, their chariots.
10. And thus said Alexander the Hasmonean, nom-de-guerre Yannaius, High Priest and Sixth Liberator of the Maccabee Revolution, butcher of Jerusalem, ignominious vanquished at the Battle of Acre, liberator then slaughterer of Gaza, scourge of Emmaus, Hebron, Jericho, Lower Beit-Horon, Bethany, Nazareth, Bethlehem, Capernaum, and Modi'in:
"6000 shepherds of Ephraim have effected all that which the soldiers of Italia could not. What profit has a nation in all its fighting when the least worldly inherit the earth for which all worldly men strive? What profit it a liberator to work for his people when by liberating he sentences them to die?
I have striven for Israel yet I am now the butcher of all Jewish history. No enemy to Judea could slay all that I have slain; not Moses nor Elijah nor Yoab nor Nebuchadnezzar not nor Pharaoh himself. By my reign's end, shall I have killed every Jew by accident? Wherefore is the end to all which I have done?
I am the only liberator for whom righteousness illumined my every deed, yet all my deeds are bloody. Yet sinfulness was with my predecessors, yet goodness followed them all the days of their lives. My father Hyrcanus was called 'Holy John', yet he imprisoned me for thinking me ruthless, then let his favored sons burn the Idumeans as though in ovens and circumcised them into Judaism's covenant from the virtue of their incestuous sheets. He swore a blood oath with the Greeks not to attack after Antiochus the Pious's death yet the pious king was not dead a month before he took the Heights of Golan; military necessity, he said. Simon before him breaking treaties to colonize Jaffa, Jonathan before him killing an entire bridal procession of 300 so he might seize the treasure. Judah before him, a fanatic like his father, willing to burn all the all the beneficial works of Greece and kill all tempted to call it progress in the name of that Yahweh, for whom all horror is perpetrated without blemish.
I endeavor to liberate and they call me pretender. I intend to defend and they call me vanquished, I intend to unite what they divide. My sole purpose was to secure Judea, and at the crossroads of all paths: ancient and modern, the Jewish people choose uncertainty.
400 years of slavery, 400 years of exile, civil war upon civil war; history written in innocent blood by the goblet. The very golden ages of our people are murder: the burning of Sodom, Joseph dreaming famine, Moses murdering at the Golden Calf, Joshua killing all the tribes of Canaan, Saul cleansing the world of Amalek, the families of David and Solomon leading their people to slaughter for their own glory. Is this our covenant? Is this the nature of Yahweh for whose worship so much is laboured? And what did the Greeks try to give us but paths from out this two thousand years of darkness?
What would be lost by our loss? Who among all the earth shall mourn us? What suffering yet untold may be prevented by ending us all? My deaths are mercy compared to what has come and what may come yet. And so perforce we must declare war without reconciliation on the Divine Seat, and shake its very throne.
For there is one god, and His name is Death."
Alexander then conceived a plan with which he could affect the destruction of the Jewish people for all time.
11. In the northern town of Metulla, bordering upon Seleucid Greece, there were reports of insurrection with the aid of Greek weapons and soldiers. Were there a rebellion, it was very small indeed and may in fact be the mere subsidy of a local watch and police. But Alexander chose to believe it a rebellion. He came with his soldiers to Metulla, and within the city walls he watched as the men of Metulla were put to the cross, Jew and gentile alike; and as the men of Metulla groaned their weight, slaves of all genders administered sodomous services to Alexander Yannaius and fed him pork.
12. Hearing tale of Metulla's barbarous fate, the Canaanites of Acre - a northern city called by themselves as Ptolemais, were in a panic, and they beseached an Egyptian prince, notorious for his vile savagery, Ptolemy Lazarus (later Pharaoh "Ptolemy the Savior"), to save them from the same fate. Lazarus was then at civil war with his mother Cleopatra III, and very glad for chance for conquest to the North. He sent no less than 50,000 troops to face Acre, and when he came to Acre he put the entire Jewish population to the sword.
13. Lazarus then did the same in all the port towns of Judea: Shikmona, Certa, Dor, Tel-Michal, Jaffa, Yavneh, Ashdod, Ashkelon, and against all protestations, entreaties and suits, Alexander Yannaius did nothing.
14. In panic, the town of Gaza opened its doors to Ptolemy Lazarus so that they might be granted quick and painless death, and for their cooperation, Lazarus announced clemency, and if Alexander Yannaius agreed to meet with him, the Jews' of Gaza sentence would be commuted to lifetime slavery.
15. Ptolemy Lazarus then sued for meeting, but Alexander Yannaius did not respond. Ptolemy Lazarus sued a second time for a second meeting, Alexander Yannaius did not respond. Ptolemy Lazarus sued for a third meeting, Alexander did not respond. And so, with only a minimal delegation from his army, Lazarus made the journey to Jerusalem so he might deliver the Egyptian suit for a meeting himself. When Ptolemy Lazarus arrived in Jerusalem, Alexander Yannaius had no choice but meet with him.
16. And this is when Lazarus finally revealed his own plan: to conscript every Jew of Israel under Egyptian yoke, town by town, and bring them back to Egypt as conscripted soldiers to battle against his mother, Cleopatra III. And then Lazarus revealed his full motive: to reverse a thousand years of Egyptian to the days of its highest Pharaohnic glory, made possible by four hundred years of Hebrew slaves.
17. Alexander surprised Ptolemy Lazarus by saying that this plan was extremely amenable to him. They drew up a document and Alexander was on the verge of signing when a letter arrived from Cleopatra.
18. At the command of two defected Judean generals from the unpaid days of Aristobulus, Cleopatra sent an army of 250,000 to meet Lazarus's 50,000 at Gaza with orders to kill every one of them as justice for the murder of our Jewish bretheren. "You know as well as I do Lazzy that I don't really care what you do with Jews, but our Minister of Coin, Visere Lowenstein of Memphis, is very particular that Jewish lives be spared. He has close connections to the finance minister of Armenia and if I don't support him the Armenians can call in my gambling debts to King Tigranes. By the time you read this, you won't have an army. Just come home Lazzy, we'll act as though this never happened, and you can just do what you're supposed to, wait patiently for your time to become Pharaoh." And so Ptolemy Lazarus went back to Egypt, and the people of Gaza demanded that Alexander Yannaius dispose of 50,000 Egyptian corpses.
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