Anakalypsis / Unveiling the Word
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⚙ Annotations & References ▾
Events 1 ▾
The Maccabean Revolt 167–160 BC 1
Empires 1 ▾
Hasmonean Kingdom c. 140-37 BC 42
Manuscript witnesses 2 ▾
Codex Sinaiticus Aleph c. AD 330-360 Codex Vaticanus B c. AD 300-325
What is 1 Maccabees 2 about?

Grief over the desecration of Jerusalem drives an aged priest named Mattathias to withdraw with his five sons to the town of Modein. When a royal officer demands that he lead the town in pagan sacrifice, Mattathias refuses, kills both the apostate Jew who stepped forward to comply and the king's officer, tears down the altar, and flees with his sons to the hills, raising the standard of revolt. Gathering the pious and resolving that they may defend themselves even on the Sabbath, they pull down pagan altars and rally the faithful; the dying Mattathias then charges his sons, recalling the zeal of Phinehas and the fathers, and appoints Simon as counselor and Judas as commander before he dies and is buried at Modein. The chapter marks the human beginning of the resistance that will reclaim the temple and the nation's freedom.

Historical backdrop

Alexander's empire had shattered into the kingdoms of his generals, and Judea lay under the Seleucids who ruled the East from Antioch. When Antiochus the Fourth outlawed the Law, forced Greek ways on Jerusalem, and raised an altar to Zeus on the altar of the LORD, a priest's family in the hills rose in revolt. The war that followed pitted farmers and their sons against the Seleucid phalanx and its armored war elephants, and it ended with the temple cleansed and rededicated, a rising Jewish state, and envoys sent to a distant new power named Rome. This is the world between the Testaments, the fight that set the stage on which the Gospels open.

The Church Fathers on 1 Maccabees 2
Deuterocanon (Catholic & Orthodox) · Accepted as canonical Scripture by the Catholic and Orthodox traditions and included in the original 1611 KJV (between the Old and New Testaments). Not in the Protestant 66-book canon. Read with the same care you bring to other Scripture, conscious that Protestants and Catholics weigh its authority differently.

1 Maccabees 2

1 Maccabees Chapter 2
2
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What is 1 Maccabees 2 about?

Grief over the desecration of Jerusalem drives an aged priest named Mattathias to withdraw with his five sons to the town of Modein. When a royal officer demands that he lead the town in pagan sacrifice, Mattathias refuses, kills both the apostate Jew who stepped forward to comply and the king's officer, tears down the altar, and flees with his sons to the hills, raising the standard of revolt. Gathering the pious and resolving that they may defend themselves even on the Sabbath, they pull down pagan altars and rally the faithful; the dying Mattathias then charges his sons, recalling the zeal of Phinehas and the fathers, and appoints Simon as counselor and Judas as commander before he dies and is buried at Modein. The chapter marks the human beginning of the resistance that will reclaim the temple and the nation's freedom.