The Syrian megalomaniacal king Antiochus Epiphanes (the word “Epiphanes” means “the divine manifestation”) tried to do to the Jewish nation what, as Saul’s father would remind him, the goyim always tried to do—choke the life out of the Jewish people and overthrow once and for all their perverse and antisocial belief in the One God. Only in this way could Antiochus turn the Jews into docile members of his own empire.
