Most modern scholars argue that King Antiochus reacted to a civil war between traditionalist Jews in the Judean countryside and Hellenized Jews in Jerusalem, though the king's response of persecuting the religious traditionalists was unusual in antiquity, and was the immediate provocation for the revolt. According to Joseph P. Schultz, modern scholarship "considers the Maccabean revolt less as an uprising against foreign oppression than as a civil war between the orthodox and reformist parties in the Jewish camp", but John J. Collins writes that while the civil war between Jewish leaders led to the king's new policies, it is wrong to see the revolt as simply a conflict between Hellenism and Judaism, since "he revolt was not provoked by the introduction of Greek customs (typified by the building of a gymnasium) but by the persecution of people who observed the Torah by having their children circumcised and refusing to eat pork." In the conflict over the office of High Priest, traditionalists with Hebrew/Aramaic names like Onias contested with Hellenizers with Greek names like Jason and Menelaus. Some scholars point to social and economic factors in the conflict. What began as a civil war took on the character of an invasion when the Hellenistic kingdom of Syria sided with the Hellenizing Jews against the traditionalists. As the conflict escalated, Antiochus prohibited the practices of the traditionalists, thereby, in a departure from usual Seleucid practice, banning the religion of an entire people. The motives of Antiochus remain unclear: he may have been incensed at the overthrow of his appointee, Menelaus, or – encouraged by a group of radical Hellenizers among the Jews, he may have been responding to an orthodox Jewish revolt that drew on the Temple and the Torah for its strength. Other scholars argue that, while the rising began as a religious rebellion, it was gradually transformed into a war of national liberation.