One suggestion is that the name derives from the Aramaic maqqaba ("makebet" in modern Hebrew), "hammer" or "sledgehammer" (cf.

", the Maccabean battle-cry to motivate troops (Exodus 15:11) as well as a part of daily Jewish prayers (see Mi Chamocha).

[4] Mindful of the superiority of Seleucid forces during the first two years of the revolt, Judah's strategy was to avoid any engagement with their regular army and resort to guerrilla warfare to give them a feeling of insecurity.

At the battle of Nahal el-Haramiah (wadi haramia), he defeated a small Seleucid force under the command of Apollonius, governor of Samaria, who was killed.

Shortly after that, Judah routed a larger Seleucid army under the command of Seron near Beth-Horon, largely thanks to a good choice of battlefield.

Then, in the Battle of Emmaus, Judah proceeded to defeat the Seleucid forces led by generals Nicanor and Gorgias.

Upon hearing the news that the Jewish communities in Gilead, Transjordan, and Galilee were under attack by neighboring Greek cities, Judah immediately went to their aid.

[6] He then marched on the coast of the Mediterranean, destroyed the altars and statues of the pagan gods in Ashdod, and returned to Judea with many spoils.

In the Battle of Beth-zechariah, south of Bethlehem, the Seleucids achieved their first major victory over the Maccabees, and Judah was forced to withdraw to Jerusalem.

Lysias defeated Philip, only to be overthrown by Demetrius, son of the late Seleucus IV Philopator, who returned from years as a hostage in Rome.

The weaker Jewish army could not oppose the enemy and withdrew from Jerusalem, so Judah returned to wage guerrilla warfare.

After several additional years of war under the leadership of two of Mattathias' other sons (Jonathan and Simon), the Jews finally achieved independence and the liberty to worship freely.

In Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, he is enacted along with the other Nine Worthies, but heckled for sharing a name with Judas Iscariot.

Fernando Rodríguez-Gallego details its history in his critical edition: the play was performed in the 1620s in different versions and finally published as part of an anthology by Vera Tassis in 1637.

Following on its heels is El Macabeo (Naples, 1638), a Castilian epic by the Portuguese Marrano Miguel de Silveyra.

Giuda Macabeo, ossia la morte di Nicanore... (1839) is an Italian "azione sacra" based on which Vallicella composed an oratorio.

One of the best-known literary works on the theme is Judas Maccabaeus (1872), a five-act verse tragedy by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Two later 19th-century interpretations of the story are Judas Makkabaeus, a novella by the German writer Josef Eduard Konrad Bischoff, which appeared in Der Gefangene von Kuestrin (1885), and The Hammer (1890), a book by Alfred J.

In addition, the American writer Howard Fast penned the historical novel, My Glorious Brothers, which was published in 1948, during the 1947–1949 Palestine war.

During World War II the Swiss-German writer Karl Boxler published his novel Judas Makkabaeus; ein Kleinvolk kaempft um Glaube und Heimat (1943), the subtitle of which suggests that Swiss democrats then drew a parallel between their own national hero, William Tell, and the leader of the Maccabean revolt against foreign tyranny.

The late medieval French artist Jean Fouquet painted an illustration of Judah triumphing over his enemies for his famous manuscript of Josephus.

In the 19th century, Paul Gustave Doré executed an engraving of Judah Maccabee victoriously pursuing the shattered troops of the Syrian enemy.

This work, with libretto by Thomas Morell, had been written for the celebrations following the Duke of Cumberland's victory over the Scottish Jacobite rebels at the Battle of Culloden in 1746.

A Hebrew translation of Handel's Judas Maccabee was prepared for the 1932 Maccabiah Games and is now popular in Israel with the motif of "conqu'ring hero" becoming a Hanukkah song.