Alexander's empire had shattered into the kingdoms of his generals, and Judea lay under the Seleucids who ruled the East from Antioch. When Antiochus the Fourth outlawed the Law, forced Greek ways on Jerusalem, and raised an altar to Zeus on the altar of the LORD, a priest's family in the hills rose in revolt. The war that followed pitted farmers and their sons against the Seleucid phalanx and its armored war elephants, and it ended with the temple cleansed and rededicated, a rising Jewish state, and envoys sent to a distant new power named Rome. This is the world between the Testaments, the fight that set the stage on which the Gospels open.