Timothy (Seleucid commander)

Timothy (Greek: Τιμόθεος Timótheos) was a military commander of the Seleucid Empire, active during the mid 2nd century BCE and probabaly a governor in the land of Ammon and Gilead.

According to these sources, Timothy hired mercenaries, both Arabs and Asian horsemen, and used those forces in a local struggle with the Jews of Ammon and Gilead.

In Chapter 8, the inclusion of the incident appears to be "associative writing" as both the Battle of Emmaus described earlier in the chapter, and the clash with Timothy, stress the noble behavior of the Jewish army: they stop plundering and divide the spoils equally between widows, orphans, and the wounded, hence being relevant to insert into the narrative.

Bar-Kochva notes that the Egyptian epitomist of 2 Maccabees does not appear very familiar with the geography of Coele-Syria, rendering such a mistake plausible.

[4] John D. Grainger is suspicious of the veracity of the accounts in the surviving sources, believing they probably exaggerated the Hasmonean's success.