Numerous scholars anxious to explain the background and contributory factors that led to the religious persecution and the Hasmonaean Revolt are of the opinion that Antiochus Epiphanes established a military settlement in Jerusalem composed of soldiers of the Seleucid garrison stationed in the Akra, the local citadel. The military settlers were given allotments (klēroi) confiscated from residents of the city. Tcherikover even made this view the keystone of his well-known theory stipulating that the coercive laws were in fact a response to a general revolt of the Jewish population. In his opinion the uprising came in the wake of the confiscations of land which usually preceded the establishment of a military settlement. Some scholars even attempted to explain that the citadel people later on held their own logistically, despite the protracted rule of the Hasmonaean brothers in the city, because their supplies were based on the agricultural produce of the settlement.

This opinion about the change in the agrarian and municipal position of Jerusalem is based not only on considerations of historical probability, but also on two sources which seem to imply that a military settlement of Seleucid soldiers was founded in the city (I Macc. 1.38) and that land was confiscated and allocated to the troops (Daniel 11.39). Before examining the theory as such, it would be advisable to have a close look at these sources.

In the course of the lament on the bitter fate of Jerusalem after its capture by Apollonius, the Mysian commander, and the assignment of soldiers in the citadel, the city is said to have become an ἀλλοτρίων κατοικία (‘katoikiaof foreigners’, 1.38).