Encyclopædia Britannica, First Edition/Maccabees

MACCABEES, two apocryphal books of scripture; so called from Judas Mattathias, surnamed Maccabeus. The sirst book of the Maccabees is an excellent history, and comes nearest to the style and manner of the sacred historians of any extant. It contains the history of forty years, from the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes to the death of Simon the high priest; that is, from the year of the world 3829 to the year 3869, 131 before Christ. The second book of the Maccabees begins with two epistles sent from the Jews of Jerusalem to the Jews of Egypt and Alexandria, to exhort them to observe the feast of the dedication of the new altar erected by Judas on his purifying the temple. After these epistles follows the preface of the author to his history, which is an abridgment of a larger work, composed by one Jafon, a Jew of Cyrene, who wrote the history of Judas Maccabeus and his brethren, and the wars against Antiochus Epiphanes and Eupator his son. This second book does not, by any means, equal the accuracy and excellency of the sirth. It contains a history of about fifteen years, from the execution of Heliodorus's commission, who was sent by Seleucus to fetch away the treasures of the temple, to the victory obtained by Judas Maccabeus over Nicanor; that is, from the year of the world 3828, to the year 3843, 147 years before Christ.