1 Maccabees is a book written in Hebrew by a Jewish author after the restoration of an independent Jewish kingdom, about the latter part of the 2nd century BC. The original Hebrew is lost and the most important surviving version is the Greek translation contained in the Septuagint. The book is held as canonical scripture by the Catholic, Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox churches (except for the Orthodox Tewahedo), but not by Anglican and Protestant denominations. Such Protestants consider it to be an apocryphal book (see also Deuterocanon). In modern-day Judaism, the book is often of great historical interest, but has no official religious status.
The setting of the book is about a century and a half after the conquest of Judea by the Greeks under Alexander the Great, after Alexander's empire has been divided so that Judea was part of the Greek Seleucid Empire. It tells how the Greek ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes attempted to suppress the practice of basic Jewish law, resulting in a Jewish revolt against Seleucid rule. The book covers the whole of the revolt, from 175 to 134 BC, highlighting how the salvation of the Jewish people in this crisis came through Mattathias' family, particularly his sons, Judas Maccabeus, Jonathan Apphus, and Simon Thassi, and Simon's son, John Hyrcanus. The doctrine expressed in the book reflects traditional Jewish teaching, without later doctrines found, for example, in 2 Maccabees. The First Book of Maccabees also gives a list of Jewish colonies scattered elsewhere through the Mediterranean at the time.
The Maccabees, also spelled Machabees (Hebrew: מכבים or מקבים, Maqabim; Latin: Machabi or Machado; Greek: Μακκαβαῖοι, Makkabaioi), were the leaders of a Jewish rebel army that took control of Judea, which at the time had been a province of the Seleucid Empire. They founded the Hasmonean dynasty, which ruled from 164 BCE to 63 BCE. They reasserted the Jewish religion, partly by forced conversion, expanded the boundaries of Judea by conquest and reduced the influence of Hellenism and Hellenistic Judaism.
In the 2nd century BCE, Judea lay between the Ptolemaic Kingdom (based in Egypt) and the Seleucid empire (based in Syria), monarchies which had formed following the death of Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE). Judea had come under Ptolemaic rule, but fell to the Seleucids around 200 BCE. Judea at that time had been affected by the Hellenization begun by Alexander. Some Jews, mainly those of the urban upper class, notably the Tobiad family, wished to dispense with Jewish law and to adopt a Greek lifestyle. According to the historian Victor Tcherikover, the main motive for the Tobiads' Hellenism was economic and political. The Hellenizing Jews built a gymnasium in Jerusalem, competed in international Greek games, "removed their marks of circumcision and repudiated the holy covenant".
Maccabees were Jewish rebels against Hellenization in the 2nd Century BC.
Maccabees may also refer to:
The Books of the Maccabees are books concerned with the Maccabees, the leaders of the Jewish rebellion against the Seleucid dynasty, or related subjects.
The term mostly refers to two deuterocanonical books contained in some canons of the Bible:
The term also commonly refers to two further works:
The term may also refer to:
Look at you with slimmer lines
Dirty toes un-showered
Unholy sight the state of you
And every sign that you're wired again
Just look at you in the trolley line
Wild eyed you're still flying
A little less and a little more
In the middle ground is still miles away
So hold me close don't let me go
I need you so
Tell me something I don't know
That I need to know
Hold those arms around my neck
I need you so
Somewhere sunk behind those eyes
a man I've always known
And if you go to sea again
We'll see it out to horizons
To see it all it's a little late
And better never but it's happening
So hold me close don't let me go
I need you so
Somewhere sunk behind those eyes
A man I've always known
That never went away
Hold me close don't let me go