Antiochus Epiphanes

The Old Testament Apocrypha relates the account of Emperor Antiochus Epiphanes' persecution of the Jews.

http://www.drshirley.org/hist/hist07.html

Tradition has it that many Jews fled to Mumbai in India, where descendants remain, to this day. They are called B'Nai Israel.

http://www.jewishtribune.ca/TribuneV2/content/view/722/53/

The Hindus graciously accepted them, and created a place for them in the complex caste system, calling them "The Saturday Oil-bearers".

http://www.hinduunity.org/jewsofindia.html

On days such as Yom Kippur, then Hindus would milk the goats and cows of the Jews, and quietly set the pails of milk on their porches. (A cow must be milked each day, or it suffers pain. In Normandy, after D-Day soldiers noticed cows in pain, left untended, unmilked).

Around 1994, I was working for Guttman Institute on 5th avenue, as a programmer. I often walked to the subway along 12th street, and passed by the "Village Temple" Reform Synagogue. I was passing by on Yom Kippur, and noticed a sign in the door that members of B'nai Israel were observing there that day. I entered and spent several hours. Fifty people from the surrounding states had come together for Yom Kippur. They were quite Indian in appearance. Some even wagged their heads back and forth slightly, after the fashion in India.

I was happy to be able to spend some time with this very ancient group.

I remember the first time I ever visited the "Village Temple." The Hispanic janitor was opening it up, and graciously allowed me to visit. I entered the empty hall, and proceeded to the front, where the Torah Scrolls are stored.

As I sat, in that silence and solitude, I heard my inner voice say something quite unusual:

"Nothing is more palpable or real than a memory in the mind of God."

Next, I heard : "You shall be remembered after the fashion and manner in which you cast yourself by your freewill choices."

I heard nothing further.

I once found a religious leaflet by that dreadful Tony Alamo, entitled "God remembered Noah."

http://bible.cc/genesis/8-1.htm

Genesis 8:1 And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged;


I mused that if God could remember Noah, then, God must have forgotten him.

But then, if we are ever remembered, surely we are remember for who we were, and we became who we were by what we chose to say and do, as well as by our choices of silence or inaction.

Sow a thought; reap an action.
Sow an action; reap a habit.
Sow a habit; reap a character.
Sow a character; reap a destiny.

That is why so often we are called an old "so and so."

One sleepy Sunday afternoon in the 1980's, I was sitting alone in the office of Holy Transfiguration Monastery, when Deacon Fr. Barsanuphius entered to commence his "door duty" of answering the phones and greeting an occasional visitor.

Fr. Barsanuphius told me a delighful story about Antiochus Epiphanes. It seems he had wage a battle with the Jews and suffered great losses in his retreat. Yet some of the Jews had fallen in battle. Antiochus thought "Surely God is with these Jews to grant them such victory! Yet why did some Jews fall?" Antiochus sent spies into the battlefield who examined the bodies and discovered that the slain Jews had concealed pagan amulets in their clothing. Antiochus later took ill, but, upon his death-bed declared that "The God of the Jews is the one true God."

Now, the Book of Jonah tells us that, after Jonah was cast overboard, and the stormy seas grew calm, the sailors of many nationalities and religions exclaimed "Great is the God of Jonah." They acknowledged the God of the Jews, but did not acknowledge as sole God.

The Eastern Orthodox Christians consider Antiochus Epiphanes to have made a death-bed confession of faith, and become a true believer.