Judas fell in battle in 161 BC, but his brothers carried the cause to victory. Jonathan (160–143 BC) rebuilt the movement and was made high priest; Simon, the last surviving son of Mattathias, won full independence, in 142 BC the tribute to Syria ended, and in 141 BC a great assembly declared Simon high priest and leader "for ever, until there should arise a faithful prophet" (1 Maccabees 14:41, quoted in both the ISBE and the Jewish Encyclopedia). That resolution founded the Hasmonean dynasty, a line of priest-kings, named for an ancestor, Hashmon, who ruled an independent Jewish state for about eighty years, the only Jewish self-rule between the exile and the modern age.
The Jewish Encyclopedia lays out the dynasty cleanly: Simon (142–135), then John Hyrcanus (135–104), who expanded the kingdom by conquest; his son Aristobulus I, who took the actual title of "king" (104 BC); Alexander Jannaeus (103–76), a warrior-king whose reign turned bloody at home; his widow Salome Alexandra (76–67); and finally her two sons, Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II, whose civil war for the throne would, the Jewish Encyclopedia notes, end "with the forfeiture of the freedom of the Jewish people" (Jewish Encyclopedia, "Hasmoneans"). The honest verdict the ISBE reaches is that the family's glory was real but brief: "an extremely warlike family" that "never, in all their history… had a united people behind their backs" (ISBE, "Asmoneans"). Independence was won by heroes and lost to a family feud.