Gymnasium

, or a school for the bodily exercise of youths (1 Macc. 1:14; 2 Macc. 4:9–12). Among the ancient Greeks, a gymnasium was the name for a school, or institute, for physical wrestling and other bodily exercises. In these extensive educational establishments took place various contests in wrestling, running, horsemanship, and the like. The victor in these contests received a palm branch, was crowned with a wreath, and so on (1 Cor. 9:24, 25). The high priest Jason, who bought the high priesthood for himself from Antiochus Epiphanes for several hundred talents of silver, sought and obtained his permission to build in Jerusalem itself a Greek gymnasium, or palaestra, with all its pagan rites (2 Macc. 4:7–11).

It was built within the city, right beneath the citadel; here young men of the best Jewish families wrestled unclothed before spectators. The passion for such spectacles infected even the priests, who preferred to spend their time at the palaestra rather than at the altar. Thus, little by little, there developed among the Hebrews an assimilation to a foreign spirit and a departure from the laws of their fathers (1 Macc. 1 and 2; 2 Macc. 4:16, 17).