1 Maccabees
It describes the promulgation of decrees forbidding traditional Jewish practices by King Antiochus IV Epiphanes and the formation of a rebellion against him by Mattathias of the Hasmonean family and his five sons.
The author is anonymous, but he probably wrote in the newly independent Hasmonean kingdom after the success of the Maccabean Revolt in the late 2nd century BC.
The book is not part of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and is not considered canonical by Protestant denominations nor in any of the major branches of Judaism.
1 Maccabees is best known for its account of the recapture of Jerusalem in the year 164 BC and rededication of the Second Temple: the origin behind the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.
[6] The entire work is generally considered to be a unity composed by a single author on both philological and thematic grounds, although there are occasional short passages sometimes contested as potentially being added at a later date.
Judas's Maccabee title is generally tied to the Aramaic word maqqaba ("makebet" in modern Hebrew), "hammer" or "sledgehammer".
[26] The narrative is primarily prose text, but is interrupted by seven poetic sections, which imitate classical Hebrew poetry.
[22] The vast majority of scholars and bible translations divide the book into four or five sections by the leader of the rebellion:[28] 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 had been divided so that Judea had become 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 the Maccabean Revolt.
Among other effects, this discouraged the Jewish rite of circumcision even further, which had already been officially forbidden; a man's state could not be concealed in the gymnasium, where men trained and socialized in the nude.
The narrative reports that news of the desolation reaches Mattathias and his five sons, a priestly family who live in Modein.
[31] Mattathias calls upon people loyal to the traditions of Israel to oppose the invaders and the Jewish Hellenizers, and his sons begin a military campaign against them.
There is one complete loss of a thousand Jews (men, women, and children) to Antiochus when the Jewish defenders refuse to fight on the Sabbath.
[35] After the death of Judas and a period of lawlessness,[36] he is succeeded by his brother Jonathan Apphus, whose battles with the Greek general Bacchides are recounted in chapter 9.
The author seeks to promote the view that the Hasmoneans were indeed God's new chosen and would-be rulers in line with heroes of the Hebrew Bible.
Antipathy toward the Seleucid-friendly Hellenizing Jews is unsurprising, as they were enemies in war, but 1 Maccabees extends criticism to internal Jewish opponents of the Hasmoneans as well.
[46] The book dismisses a defeat suffered by other commanders named Joseph and Azariah as because "they did not listen to Judas and his brothers.
In Chapter 2, there is a line from a dying Mattathias who tells his sons to always listen to Simon and that "he shall be your father", seemingly praising him even over Judas.
[48] Rather, the author interprets events as God using the military genius of Judas Maccabeus and his brothers as the instrument to achieve the liberation of Judea.
It has traditionally been considered highly trustworthy, although it is to some extent the "official" version of history according to the Hasmoneans and from the Maccabean point of view.
[59] He also cites the fact that it makes various "admissions against interest" such as openly describing rebel military defeats, unlike 2 Maccabees which obscures or omits such matters.
Jonathan A. Goldstein argues that the book was imitative of older scriptures not merely in linguistic style, but also in content; that is, the author adjusted or invented events to make them fit Biblical parallels better.
[60] Pope Damasus I's Council of Rome in 382, if the Gelasian Decree is correctly associated with it, issued a biblical canon identical with the list given at Trent including the two books of Maccabees.
Later Jewish leaders thought poorly of the rule of the Hasmonean dynasty for several reasons, and a document so openly celebratory of them was problematic.
Even in stories set during the Maccabean period, references to Judas by name were explicitly removed to avoid hero-worship of the Hasmonean line.
He extensively uses the first thirteen chapters of it in Books 12 and 13 of his work Jewish Antiquities, paraphrasing it directly in parts, although supplementing it with other Greek histories such as Nicolaus of Damascus.
It is not known whether Josephus's copy of 1 Maccabees was missing the final three chapters, or he simply found a better source for that era of history.
[75] Admired crusaders such as Baldwin I and Godfrey of Bouillon were explicitly compared to Judas Maccabeus, and material from 1 Maccabees was quoted in regards to their deeds.
[78] With regard to Anglicanism, in the Church of England's lectionary of 1922 in the Book of Common Prayer, 1st Maccabees is appointed annually to be read in late summer/early autumn.
[80][81] With the advent of the printing press that obviated the need for scribes to manually and repeatedly copy such works, 1 Maccabees became more widely available.
