Attitudes shift in
2 Maccabees, which Catholics and Orthodox Christians accept as a fully canonical but which Protestants see as apocryphal.
Dying for the faith, killing for the faith; Old-Testament faith-warriors (1 and
2 Maccabees) in historical perspective.
Abstract: Considered authoritative and useful by the sixteenth-century Anabaptists, 1 and
2 Maccabees played an important role in scripting the performance of defenseless resistance to their Protestant and Catholic persecutors.
In
2 Maccabees 10, verse 5 we find, "It happened that on the same day on which the sanctuary had been profaned by the foreigners, the purification of the sanctuary took place, that is, on the twenty-fifth day of the same month, which was Kislev." We might wonder what else in Frum's article is "pious fiction."
For
2 Maccabees, Johnson explores both how the narrative constructs the character of Onias III to promote irenic relations between Jews and Gentiles and how it suggests that increasing Hellenization among the Hasmoneans is not, as is sometimes argued, a sign of corruption but an indication of political acumen.
Jewish apostasy occurs in Palestine under Antiochus Epiphanes (1 and
2 Maccabees), in Alexandria (3 Maccabees, Tiberius Alexander in Josephus, Ant.
We're all familiar with the passage, I think it's in Leviticus, or maybe
2 Maccabees, that says, "When ye transmit the scripture ye shall bind it in cow's hide and adorn it with gold detail.
Two books from the period, I Maccabees and
2 Maccabees, provide historical details of military campaigns and dramatic battle actions.
The Hasmoneans came to power as defenders of the Temple and its purity from foreign cults, and this achievement played a central role in their court propaganda, as indicated by
2 Maccabees and the letters prefacing that book.
The Catholic Church regards as part of the Bible the books of Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus (Sirach), Baruch, 1 and
2 Maccabees, as well as some additional stories and verses in the books of Daniel and Esther.
Praying for the dead, one of several Catholic traditions that dance like angels on the head of a single scriptural pin, evolved from
2 Maccabees 12:43-46.
Luther, in addition to translating the Bible, also dropped some of the Old Testament books from his canon of scripture: Tobit, Judges, Wisdom, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch (including the Letter of Jeremiah), 1 Maccabees,
2 Maccabees, and parts of Esther and Daniel.
2 Maccabees - an Apocryphal book describing the life of Judas Maccabaeus