foreign ways because of the surpassing wickedness of Jason, who was ungodly and no high priest. (2 Macc 4:13) Things came to a head after 168 B.C. in Egypt when, after intervention against him by the Romans, Antiochus was ignominiously forced to withdraw. He was angered to find numbers of the people of Israel still loyal to the Ptolemies, their previous masters. Thereafter events swiftly took their course. Antiochus IV decided to abolish Jerusalem as a temple-state and redesignate it as a Greek city-state,