Heliodorus: Who Tried to Rob the Temple and Met a Shining Rider?

Heliodorus was a real official, chief minister of the Seleucid king Seleucus IV. 2 Maccabees 3 says that when he came to seize the Temple treasury, a horse with a terrible rider and two young men beat him down.

Heliodorus was a real official, chief minister of the Seleucid king Seleucus IV, who ruled Syria and Judea in the early second century BCE. According to 2 Maccabees 3, the king sent him to confiscate money deposited in the Jerusalem Temple, after a disgruntled Temple officer named Simon reported that the treasury held vast sums. The high priest Onias and the city begged him not to, and the people prayed.

When Heliodorus reached the treasury, "there appeared unto them an horse with a terrible rider upon him, and adorned with a very fair covering, and he ran fiercely, and smote at Heliodorus with his forefeet." The rider seemed to wear golden armor. "Moreover two other young men appeared before him, notable in strength, excellent in beauty, and comely in apparel; who stood by him on either side, and scourged him continually." Heliodorus collapsed and had to be carried out.

Onias offered a sacrifice for him, and the young men reappeared to tell Heliodorus he owed his life to the high priest. He went home and told the king that anyone he wanted destroyed should be sent to Jerusalem. In 2007 scholars published an inscribed stone known as the Heliodorus stele, a royal letter from Seleucus IV to Heliodorus from around 178 BCE, about appointing an official over the temples of the region. It confirms the man and the policy, though not the miracle. The scene was painted in the Vatican by the Renaissance artist Raffaello Sanzio.