Yehud was absorbed into the subsequent Hellenistic kingdoms that followed the conquests of Alexander the Great, but in the 2nd century BCE the Judaeans revolted against the Hellenist Seleucid Empire and created the Hasmonean kingdom.

The Hasmonean kingdom at its largest extent

At first relations between the Seleucids and the Jews were cordial, but the attempt of Antiochus IV Epiphanes ( 174 – 163 ) to impose Hellenic culture sparked a national rebellion, which ended in the expulsion of the Syrians and the establishment of an independent Jewish kingdom under the Hasmonean dynasty.

In the early part of the 2nd century BCE, a revolt against the Seleucids led to the establishment of an independent Jewish kingdom under the Hasmonean dynasty.

Following the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid empire, the Second Temple was rededicated and became the religious pillar of the Jewish Hasmonean kingdom, as well as culturally associated with the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.

The people of the Decapolis cities welcomed Pompey as a liberator from the Jewish Hasmonean kingdom that had ruled much of the area.

Their decree became the basis of the Hasmonean kingdom.

Shortly after, the Roman senate renewed its alliance with the Hasmonean kingdom and commanded its allies in the eastern Mediterranean to do so also.

In 110 BCE John Hyrcanus carried out the first military conquests of the newly independent Hasmonean kingdom, raising a mercenary army to capture Madaba and Schechem, significantly increasing his regional influence

* Antigonus II Mattathias ( died 37 BC ), the last ruler of the Hasmonean kingdom of Judea

* 110 BCE: John Hyrcanus carries out the first military conquests of the independent Hasmonean kingdom, raising a mercenary army to capture Madaba and Schechem, significantly increasing the regional influence of Jerusalem

In this view, the place names of the Hebrew Bible actually allude to places in southwest Arabia ; many of them were later reinterpreted to refer to places in Palestine, when the Arabian Hebrews migrated to what is now called Eretz Israel, and where they established the Hasmonean kingdom under Simon Maccabaeus in the second century B. C.

Since the theory casts no doubt on the existence, location or legitimacy of the Hasmonean kingdom, nor rewrites in any way the history of Palestine in the last 2200 years or more, it can only have that implication for those who take literally the divine award of the Promised Land to Abraham and his successors.

The Maccabean revolt resulted in an independent Jewish kingdom under the Hasmonean family in 142 BC.

* Hasmonean kingdom

After some early expeditions to Galilee to save the Jews there from attack, the Hasmonean rulers conquered Galilee and added it to their kingdom.

Some scholars argue that a " Jewish biblical canon " was fixed by the Hasmonean dynasty.

Their mother was an aristocratic woman who descended from the royal and formerly ruling Hasmonean dynasty.

Their temple was built at Mount Gerizim in the middle of fifth century BC and was destroyed by the Macabbean ( Hasmonean ) John Hyrcanus late in 110 BC, although their descendants still worship among its ruins.

Some scholars argue that the Jewish canon was fixed by the Hasmonean dynasty ( 140-37 BCE ).

The city appears to have long resisted Hasmonean dominance, however, and indeed as late as the First Jewish – Roman War was still considered Idumean.

Aristobulus III ( 53 BC – 36 BC ) was the last scion of the Hasmonean royal house, brother of Herod the Great's wife Mariamne, and paternal grandson of Aristobulus II.

Recent scholarship, however, is inclined to think that the real schism between the peoples did not take place until Hasmonean times when the Gerizim temple was destroyed in 128 B. C.

The Jewish victory in what was later called the Battle of Emmaus led to greater Jewish autonomy under Hasmonean rule over the next century.

The internal situation in the Seleucid domains was so convoluted, and Diodotus was so eager to gain allies, that in 143 BC Hasmonean rule was reinstated in Judea in exchange for aid.

The Hasmonean court in the Land of Israel, presided over by Alexander Jannaeus, king of Judea until 76 BC, followed by his wife, was called Synhedrion or Sanhedrin.

The Hasmonean dynasty (; Hashmonayim ; Audio ), was the ruling dynasty of Judea and surrounding regions during classical antiquity.

Next, Bacchides was sent with Alcimus and an army of twenty thousand infantry and two thousand cavalry, and met Judah at the Battle of Elasa ( Laisa ), where this time it was the Hasmonean commander who was killed.

Aristobulus was the first Hasmonean to take the title basilieus, asserting the new-found independence of the state.

Joppa was restored to the Hasmonean domain, Judea was granted freedom from all tribute and taxes to Rome, and the independence of the internal administration was guaranteed.

Antipater the Idumean was assassinated by a rival, Malichus, in 43 BCE, but Antipater's sons managed to kill Malichus and maintain their control over Judea and their father's puppet Hasmonean, Hyrcanus.

While there are some references to maintaining the tribal separation among Israelites during the Hasmonean period, the dominant position of the tribe of Judah as well as nationalistic policies of Hasmoneans to refer to residents of Hasmonean Judea as Jews practically erased the tribal distinction, with the exception of the priestly orders of Levites and Kohanim ( tribe of Levi ).

The name Maccabee is often used as a synonym for the entire Hasmonean Dynasty, but the Maccabees proper were Judah Maccabee and his four brothers.

Most prominent of the rebel groups were the Maccabees, led by Mattathias the Hasmonean and his son Judah the Maccabee.

Judah was the third son ( Josephus ) of Mattathias the Hasmonean, a Jewish priest from the village of Modiin.

In music, almost all the compositions inspired by the Hasmonean revolt are primarily concerned with Judah.

The first was his uncle Titus, who was blamed for the destruction of the Second Temple ; the second was the seer Balaam, hired by Balak king of Moab to curse Israel ; and the last was Yeshu, a name used for those who sought to lead Jews astray to idolatry, in particular an idolatrous former student of Rabbi Joshua ben Perachiah in the Hasmonean period as well as king Manasseh of Judah.

When Bacchides and his army returned to Antioch, the Hasmonean Judah Maccabee attacked and overcame Alcimus, and drove him also to Syria.

A native of Idumaea, southeast of Judea between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba, which during the time of the Hebrew Bible had been known as the land of Edom, Antipater became a powerful official under the later Hasmonean kings and subsequently became a client of the Roman general Pompey the Great when Pompey conquered Judea in the name of Roman Republic.

The dramatic murder of Aristobulus III in a swimming pool in Jericho, as told by the Roman Jewish historian Josephus, took place during a banquet organized by Herod's Hasmonean mother-in-law.

The Babylonian Jewish community, though maintaining permanent ties with the Hasmonean and later Herodian kingdoms, evolved into a separate Jewish community, which during the Talmudic period assembled its own practices ( the Babylonian Talmud, slightly differing from the Jerusalem Talmud.

* In Robert Graves's novel King Jesus, Pilate is an unscrupulous opportunist who tries to prevent Jesus ' death by convincing Jesus to become the King of the Jews ( in reality a puppet monarch of Rome ) because, in the novel, Jesus is the son of Mary, who is of a royal Jewish line and the daughter of the last Hasmonean and Antipater, the son of Herod the Great.

They founded the Hasmonean dynasty, which ruled from 164 BCE to 63 BCE, reasserting the Jewish religion, expanding the boundaries of the Land of Israel, by conquest, which included instances of forced conversion, reducing the influence of Hellenism and Hellenistic Judaism.

In the narrative of I Maccabees, after Antiochus issued his decrees forbidding Jewish religious practice, a rural Jewish priest from Modiin, Mattathias the Hasmonean, sparked the revolt against the Seleucid Empire by refusing to worship the Greek gods.

He made several raids into the territories of the Jewish Hasmonean kings, and tried to check the rise of the Nabataean Arabs.

The other primary source for the Hasmonean dynasty is the first book of The Wars of the Jews by the Jewish historian Josephus, ( 37 – shortly after 100 CE ).

Simon, having made the Jewish people semi-independent of the Seleucid Greeks, reigned from 142 BCE-135 BCE and formed the Hasmonean dynasty.

In c. 87 BCE, according to Josephus, following a six-year civil war involving Seleucid king Demetrius III Eucaerus, Hasmonean ruler Alexander Jannaeus crucified 800 Jewish rebels in Jerusalem.

Many scholars believe the location to have been home to a Jewish sect, the Essenes being the preferred choice ; others have proposed non-sectarian interpretations, some of these starting with the notion that it was a Hasmonean fort which was later transformed into a villa for a wealthy family or a production center, perhaps a pottery factory or similar.

De Vaux divided this use into three periods: Period I, the Hasmonean era, which he further divided in two, Period Ia, the time of John Hyrcanus, and Period Ib, the latter Hasmoneans, ending with an earthquake and fire in 31 BCE ( this was followed by a hiatus in de Vaux's interpretation of the site ); Period II, the Herodian era, starting in 4 BCE on up to the destruction of the site apparently at the hands of the Romans during the Jewish War ; and Period III, a reoccupation in the ruins.

Robert Cargill argues that the theory suggesting Qumran was established as a Hasmonean fortress is not incompatible with the theory proposing that a group of Jewish sectarians reoccupied the site.