Word: hasmoneans
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...cave by the highway thought they'd found just that sort of evidence. Inside the rocky opening, located about 20 miles northwest of Jerusalem, were 23 burial containers filled with bones. A hasty analysis seemed to show that letters on one stone box spelled out part of the name Hasmonean, a family of Jewish patriots, also known as the Maccabees, whose encounter with a miraculous oil lamp is now celebrated in the lighting of Hannukah candles...
...Milik's colleague, Frank Cross, holds that a more plausible Wicked Priest is Jonathan's brother Simon, who issued a decree (I Maccabees 14: 27-47) that established his descendants, the Hasmonean dynasty, as High Priests in perpetuity, also gave them permission "to stamp out, indeed to persecute, those who refuse to recognize the full legitimacy of his office. This program seems to give the appropriate occasion for the crystallization of the Essene sect." Cross finds further evidence for this identification in a Qumran document that quotes Joshua's curse upon Jericho and follows it with...