Heliodorus (minister)
Encyclopedia
Heliodorus was a minister of Seleucus IV Philopator
Seleucus IV Philopator
Seleucus IV Philopator , ruler of the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire, reigned from 187 BC to 175 BC over a realm consisting of Syria , Mesopotamia, Babylonia and Nearer Iran . He was the second son and successor of Antiochus III the Great and Laodice III...

 ca. [187 BC - 175 BC]. According to some sources he is said to have assassinated Seleucus.

Biblical background

Around 178 BC Seleucus sent Heliodorus to Jerusalem to collect money to pay the Romans. This is mentioned in , "He will send out a tax collector to maintain the royal splendor". 2 Maccabees
2 Maccabees
2 Maccabees is a deuterocanonical book of the Bible, which focuses on the Jews' revolt against Antiochus IV Epiphanes and concludes with the defeat of the Syrian general Nicanor in 161 BC by Judas Maccabeus, the hero of the work....

  reports that Heliodorus entered the Temple in Jerusalem
Temple in Jerusalem
The Temple in Jerusalem or Holy Temple , refers to one of a series of structures which were historically located on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem, the current site of the Dome of the Rock. Historically, these successive temples stood at this location and functioned as the centre of...

 in order to take its treasure, but was turned back by three forms of God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....

. On his return, he killed the king and seized the throne for himself; but it was not long before Antiochus IV Epiphanes
Antiochus IV Epiphanes
Antiochus IV Epiphanes ruled the Seleucid Empire from 175 BC until his death in 164 BC. He was a son of King Antiochus III the Great. His original name was Mithridates; he assumed the name Antiochus after he ascended the throne....

, the brother of the late king, with the help of the Pergamon monarch, Eumenes II
Eumenes II
Eumenes II of Pergamon was king of Pergamon and a member of the Attalid dynasty. The son of king Attalus I and queen Apollonis, he followed in his father's footsteps and collaborated with the Romans to oppose first Macedonian, then Seleucid expansion towards the Aegean, leading to the defeat of...

, recovered it. There is a well-known Greek inscription on tablets at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem called "the Heliodorus inscription" which announces the appointment of Heliodorus as the viceroy of Seleucus in charge of all the temples in the kingdom.

2 Maccabees
2 Maccabees
2 Maccabees is a deuterocanonical book of the Bible, which focuses on the Jews' revolt against Antiochus IV Epiphanes and concludes with the defeat of the Syrian general Nicanor in 161 BC by Judas Maccabeus, the hero of the work....

  records that Heliodorus received "orders from God" to "proclaim to all men the majesty of God's power" .


Since you have been scourged by God, proclaim to all men the majesty of God's power - 2 Maccabees
2 Maccabees
2 Maccabees is a deuterocanonical book of the Bible, which focuses on the Jews' revolt against Antiochus IV Epiphanes and concludes with the defeat of the Syrian general Nicanor in 161 BC by Judas Maccabeus, the hero of the work....

 
.

Inscriptions

There is a Greek-language inscription in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, dated to 178 BCE in which Seleucus appoints Heliodorus as his viceroy in charge of the Temples in Judaea. While this part of the inscription comes from the trade of antiquities, in 2005 was found an additional fragment from the same inscription in an underground basement of an Hellenistic house in Maresha
Maresha
Tel Maresha , also Marissa, is an antiquity site in Israel's southern lowlands. The tel was first excavated by the British archaeologists Bliss and Macalister on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund...

.

Heliodorus in the Arts

During the Reformation
Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation was a 16th-century split within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin and other early Protestants. The efforts of the self-described "reformers", who objected to the doctrines, rituals and ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church, led...

 and Counter-Reformation
Counter-Reformation
The Counter-Reformation was the period of Catholic revival beginning with the Council of Trent and ending at the close of the Thirty Years' War, 1648 as a response to the Protestant Reformation.The Counter-Reformation was a comprehensive effort, composed of four major elements:#Ecclesiastical or...

, the episode of the The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple
The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple
The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple is a fresco of the Italian renaissance painter Raphael. It was painted between 1511 and 1512 as part of Raphael's commission to decorate with frescoes the rooms that are now known as the Stanze di Raffaello, in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican...

was taken in Roman Catholic apologetics as a symbol of the inviolability of Church property. For some time, it became a popular subject in works of artists, such as:
  • Raphael
    Raphael
    Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...

     (1512): Vatican
    Vatican City
    Vatican City , or Vatican City State, in Italian officially Stato della Città del Vaticano , which translates literally as State of the City of the Vatican, is a landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome, Italy. It has an area of...

    , Palazzi Vaticani
  • Wouter Crabeth (1566): Gouda
    Gouda
    Gouda is a city and municipality in the western Netherlands, in the province of South Holland. Gouda, which was granted city rights in 1272, is famous for its Gouda cheese, smoking pipes, and 15th-century city hall....

     (Holland), Sint Janskerk
  • Bertholet Flémal (1662), Brussels
    Brussels
    Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

     (Belgium), Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts
  • Giuseppe Tortelli
    Giuseppe Tortelli
    Giuseppe Tortelli was an Italian painter of painter of the late-Baroque period, active in Brescia.He received a broad education in writing and philosophy. He traveled to Naples to observe masters there, then to Venice. In Brescia, he painted for the church of San Pietro Oliveta. Giuseppe Zola was...

     (1724): Brescia
    Brescia
    Brescia is a city and comune in the region of Lombardy in northern Italy. It is situated at the foot of the Alps, between the Mella and the Naviglio, with a population of around 197,000. It is the second largest city in Lombardy, after the capital, Milan...

     (Italy), Musei civici di Arte e Storia
  • Francesco Solimena
    Francesco Solimena
    Francesco Solimena was a prolific Italian painter of the Baroque era, one of an established family of painters and draughtsmen.-Biography:Francesco Solimena was born in Canale di Serino, near Avellino....

     (1725): Naples
    Naples
    Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...

     (Italy), Gesù Nuovo
  • Giambattista Tiepolo (1727): Verona
    Verona
    Verona ; German Bern, Dietrichsbern or Welschbern) is a city in the Veneto, northern Italy, with approx. 265,000 inhabitants and one of the seven chef-lieus of the region. It is the second largest city municipality in the region and the third of North-Eastern Italy. The metropolitan area of Verona...

     (Italy), Museo di Castelvecchio
  • Serafino Elmo (1734): Muro Leccese
    Muro Leccese
    Muro Leccese is a town and comune in the province of Lecce in the Apulia region of south-east Italy....

     (Italy), Annunziata
  • Franz Sigrist (1760): Zweifalten (Germany), Klostenkirche
  • Eugène Delacroix
    Eugène Delacroix
    Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school...

    (1861): Paris (France), Saint Sulpice
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK