to Alcimus suggest that the execution of the sixty was unlikely to be for no reason, and the Hasmoneans wished to sway the moderate Hasideans by portraying the executed as innocent moderates rather than Maccabee supporters. Pulling down the wall Temple architecture was deeply important in the era for its symbolism. The sources do not directly describe Alcimus's motive for pulling down the wall in the Temple, although the book of 1 Maccabees goes so far as to suggest that God struck down and killed Alcimus for the impious act. Taken literally, the passage suggests a return to the uncleansed Temple under Menelaus, where Greeks and Jews alike worshipped together. However, a full-scale revival of the syncretic cult Menelaus established does not appear to have taken place; whether that was due to Alcimus's death, or that the wall incident had nothing to do with such a plan, is not clear. Another possibility is that it may have been related to theological dispute of the era, and the barrier was intended to be between priests and common worshippers. Josephus, elsewhere in Antiquities of the Jews, describes "a wooden lattice around the altar and the sanctuary extending up the barrier" during the time of Hasmonean King Alexander Jannaeus; Alcimus's act may have been related to a dispute around a different such barrier that was interpreted in a hostile fashion by the Maccabees. A similar theological dispute, possibly a continuation, existed in the later Roman era - the Christian gospels describe the curtain of the Temple separating God from common people tearing in two on the day of Jesus's execution, and the Apostle Paul as getting in trouble at the Temple for bringing a Greek inside, suggesting that the matter of who is allowed into what parts of the Temple would continue to be contested. Alternatively, the meaning could be entirely reversed: that by removing the barrier, non-Zadokite priests, once able to approach the Inner Temple but not past the barrier, could no longer enter at all, making the Inner Temple more exclusive rather than more inclusive. A passage in the Middot tractate of the Talmud might refer to Alcimus as well. Chapter 2, Verse 3 says: "Within it [the Temple Mount] was the Soreg [latticed railing], ten handbreadths high. There were thirteen breaches in it, which had been originally made by the kings of Greece, and when they repaired them they enacted