Daniel (9:27, etc.). Persecution resulted in resistance, eventually led by Mattathias and his sons, notably Judas Maccabaeus. From repeated wars emerged an embattled but independent Jewish kingdom until, in the last century BC, Rome’s power totally supplanted the collapsing realm of the Seleucids of Syria, and in time replaced the Maccabees by a new ruler over Judea—Herod the Idumean, ‘Herod the Great’, from 40/37 to 4 BC. Thereafter, Palestine was divided into fiefs among his sons into the first