Tales of Classical Perversion: The Labours of Alexander Yannaius

1. Two sons of Hyrcanus were never heard from again. Eusebius Polymocrates posits they were killed not by Aristobulus, but by Aristobulus’s successor, third son Alexander, nom-de-guerre Yannaius, who having heard tale of Greek civil wars of family intrigue, greatly feared rival claims to succession.

2. By Book of Maccabee’s narrative, Alexander married Salome Alexandra, who also was wife to 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 as 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. By Eusebius Polymocrates’s account, Alexander Yannaius did not marry Salome Alexandra, but rather Chana Yocheved, lady of virtue from the Rabbinical House of Shetah, an indication to posterity of return to Maccabean 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 NOW FOR WHICH ALL MACCABEES ARE UNFIT!” (scandalized gasps and yells) “REPENT THEIR MISDEEDS! REPENT OR GREAT EVIL WILL BESET US!!” Alexander: “Ladies and Gentlemen, we seem to have one of Jerusalem’s many meshuggoyim who think they carry the word of God. If our guards can just see to escorting him..” “HEAR ME PRETENDER! ISRAEL HAS BECOME UNCLEAN IN EASE! PROVE THYSELF WORTHY FROM THE FIRST MINUTE OR FACE FATE FAR WORSE THAN THY BROTHERS!” (The false prophet runs 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, the oil spills on Alexander Yannaius’s breastplate, all present issue consternated gasps.)

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. A true anointed would never spill.” “It wasn’t his fault!” “The prophet said he must prove himself from the first minute or else evil would befall us, and in the first minute the Liberator spilled…!” “But the prophet caused the grail to spill!” “If he were the true anointed he would have stopped the prophet!” “But Alexander fulfilled his office, there’s nothing which says he has to use ALL the oil to light the Menorah.” “If he were a true servant why would the prophet decry him?” “Because the prophet is false.” “If the prophet were false why would Hashem allow him to speak at ceremony?” “There are manifold corrupt. Why does Hashem permit them to be at this ceremony?” “All men in this temple are holy or else they would not be permitted.” “If all men in this temple were holy why is the prophet permitted to say that the Liberator is unholy?” “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, which leads to still more, and soon all of Jerusalem riots).

5.  The Jerusalem riot raged for six weeks, and Alexander had no choice but comb the world for hearsay of gentile soldiers to put down insurrections, for his predecessor Aristobulus left the Judean army unpaid for the entirety of his reign, and the soldiery willingly disbanded (more on that anon). He therefore settled upon the Isle of Rhodes, where was said to live the world’s greatest mercenaries, trained upon the Peninsula of Italia. And near the heels of Rhodes’s 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 with Alexander, and within three days of landing in port, 6,000 Jerusalemites were slain.

6. The soldiers of Italia effected such terror that each subjegation caused another rebellion. For ten years the soldiers of Italia besieged rebellions in Jerusalem, Emmaus, Hebron, Jericho, Lower Beit-Horon, Bethany, Nazareth, Bethlehem, Capernaum, even the Hasmonean seat of Modi’in. With each sprouted revolt, Alexander returned to Rhodes and promied spoils to more soldiers to subdue Judean peoples, who sacrificed 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 wealthy and so maddened by Judea that upon resolution of peace accords, they returned to Rhodes. There was great pomp and ceremony at signing for which Pharisee rebels were welcomed from all around Judea. Each each local general signed the document, yet at the final signature, General Z’vulun-ben-Zelah refused to sign until one last term was procured: Alexander’s death.

8. At the moment of his refusal, a herald arrived to the hall with the announcement that 43,000 Greek soldiers crossed Benjaminite territory, and they proclaim Z’vulun-ben-Zelah as 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 he was the living Alexander Yannaius, none believed him.

95 BC, 638 Ab Urbe Conditia, 3646-7

9. Amid his wanderings he came to the one place which wanted rebellion against King Z’vulun, the Hill People of Ephraim. They took pity upon their king and assembled a force of 6,000 with spears of only the most fragile flint. And these six thousand 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 Sheol, 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 soldiers of Italia could not. What profit has a nation in all its conflict when the least worldly inherit the earth for which all worldly men strive? What profit it a liberator to work for his people when through liberation he sentences them to die? I have striven for Israel yet am now the butcher of all Jewish history. No enemy to Judea could slay all that I have slain; not Nebuchadnezzar nor Shalmaneser nor Alexander nor Antiochus nor not Pharaoh himself. By reign’s end, shall I have killed every Jew by accident? Wherefore is the end to all I have done?

I am the only liberator for whom righteousness illumined every deed, yet all my deeds are bloody. 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 his favored sons and let them burn the Idumeans as though in ovens, then circumcised them into our covenant from the virtue of their incestuous sheets. Hyrcanous 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 a bridal procession of 300 so he might seize the treasure. Judah before him, a fanatic like his father, willing to burn all beneficial works of Greece and kill any tempted to call it progress in the name of their 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 slaying at the Golden Calf, Joshua massacring all the tribes of Canaan, Saul cleansing the world of Amalek, the children of David and Solomon leading their people to extermination 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 millenia of darkness?

What would be lost by our loss? Whom among 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 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, came reports of insurrection with the aid of Greek weapons and soldiery. It is probable there was no rebellion but rather the subsidy of a local watch and police.  Nevertheless Alexander chose to believe it rebellion. He came with soldiers to Metulla, and within the city walls he watched as all 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 – northern city called by themselves as Ptolemais, were in panic, and they beseached an Egyptian prince,  Ptolemy Lazarus (later Pharaoh “Ptolemy the Savior”), notorious for his vile savagery, to save them. Lazarus was then at civil war with his mother Cleopatra III, and very glad for conquest in the North. He promised no less than 50,000 troops to protect Acre, but when he came he put the entire Jewish population to the sword.

13. Lazarus marched upon all the port towns of Judea: Shikmona, Certa, Dor, Tel-Michal, Jaffa, Yavneh, Ashdod, Ashkelon, and in all towns he put Jews to the same. Against all protestations, entreaties and suits, Alexander Yannaius did not respond.

14. In panic, the town of Gaza opened doors to Ptolemy Lazarus so that they might be granted quick and painless death, and for their cooperation, Lazarus announced temporary clemency; and if Alexander Yannaius agreed to meet with him, the Jews’ of Gaza sentence would be commuted to lifetime slavery. But Alexander Yannaius did not respond.

15. Ptolemy Lazarus sued a second time for meeting, Alexander Yannaius did not respond. Ptolemy Lazarus sued a third time, Alexander did not respond. And so with minimal delegation from his army, Lazarus made the journey to Jerusalem himself so he might personally deliver Egyptian suit for a meeting. When Ptolemy Lazarus arrived in Jerusalem, Alexander Yannaius had no choice but meet.

16. And this is when Lazarus finally revealed his own plan: to conscript every Jew of Israel under Egyptian yoke, town by town, and reverse a thousand years of Egyptian decline to the days of its highest Pharaohnic glory by conscripting all Jews as slaves.

17. And Alexander surprised Ptolemy Lazarus by saying this plan was extremely amenable to him. They drew up a document and Alexander was on verge of signature when post 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 annihilate every soldier as justice for the murder of ‘our Jewish bretheren.’ “You know as well as I do that I don’t 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 my gambling debts to King Tigranes. I’m afraid that 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 go back to waiting 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.