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Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary

ACRA*

Citadel of Jerusalem during the Seleucid and Hasmonean periods. The citadel was located on a high point near the temple. An exceptionally strong fortress, the Acra housed the garrison and controlled the city throughout the Maccabean wars. The Seleucid government considered the Acra a royal stronghold to be administered separately from the rest of Judea. At times, one armed force held the Acra and its opponent held the city itself, so that the fortress almost became an independent city. Josephus made mention of two forts called Acra. The earlier citadel was captured by Antiochus III in 198 BC. That Acra must be identical with the temple fortress of the Persian and Ptolemaic periods, the “castle” of Nehemiah 7:2 (rsv). The site later became the fortress called Antonia in the Roman period.

A new citadel, the Acra proper, was later built by the Seleucids. Antiochus IV Epiphanes (ruled 175–164 BC), after a humiliating defeat in Alexandria by the Romans, decided to abolish all Jewish worship practices. In 167 BC, he violated the most sacred Jewish laws by constructing an altar to the Greek god Zeus in the temple at Jerusalem and perhaps by sacrificing a pig on it (1 Macc 1:20-64; 2 Macc 6:1-6). The next year Antiochus sent a garrison to build the Acra and maintain his religious reforms, primarily to see that no aspect of the Jewish religion was practiced in the city. The Acra also served as a storehouse for food and loot plundered from the city. The Jews considered it “an ambush against the sanctuary, an evil adversary of Israel continually” (1 Macc 1:36).

Josephus reported that Simon, the second of the Maccabean brothers, captured the Acra in 142 BC and spent three years leveling both the fort and the hill on which it stood. Josephus’s account is questioned, however, because other accounts mention Simon as ritually cleansing the citadel and using it to maintain the city’s security (see 1 Macc 13:50; 14:37).