A focused, interdisciplinary examination of a tumultuous, history-making era The Middle Maccabees lays out the charged, complicated beginnings of the independent Jewish state founded in the second century BCE. Contributors offer focused analyses of the archaeological, epigraphic, numismatic, and textual evidence, framed within a wider world of conflicts between the Ptolemies of Egypt, the Seleucids of Syria, and the Romans. The result is a holistic view of the Hasmonean rise to power that acknowledges broader political developments, evolving social responses, and the particularities of local history. Contributors include Uzi ‘Ad, Donald T. Ariel, Andrea M. Berlin, Efrat Bocher, Altay Coşkun, Benedikt Eckhardt, Gerald Finkielsztejn, Christelle Fischer-Bovet, Yuval Gadot, Erich Gruen, Sylvie Honigman, Jutta Jokiranta, Paul J. Kosmin, Uzi Leibner, Catharine Lorber, Duncan E. MacRae, Dvir Raviv, Helena Roth, Débora Sandhaus, Yiftah Shalev, Nitsan Shalom, Danny Syon, Yehiel Zelinger, and Ayala Zilberstein. Features Up-to-date, generously illustrated essays analyzing the relevant archaeological remains A revised understanding of how local and imperial histories overlapped and intersected New analysis of the book of 1 Maccabees as a tool of Hasmonean strategic interest

This book explores the period from the 160s to 63 B.C.E., when the Maccabees ruled the Jews, up to the publication of the Mishnah in the second century C.E.

The Five Books of Maccabees in English is a comprehensive collection of the Maccabean texts, which chronicle the heroic struggle of the Jewish people against oppression and their fight for religious freedom. This volume brings together all five books, offering a complete account of the Maccabean Revolt and its aftermath. Henry Cotton's translation provides readers with an accessible and engaging introduction to these significant historical and religious texts.

Retelling of the story of Hanukkah, the festival that celebrates the victory of the Maccabees over the mighty armies of the Syrian king.

By the early second century BC, Israel had long been under the rule of the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire. But the policy of deliberate Hellenization and suppression of Jewish religious practices by Antiochus IV, sparked a revolt in 167 BC which was led initially by Judah Maccabee and later by his brothers and their descendants. Relying on guerrilla tactics the growing insurrection repeatedly took on the sophisticated might of the Seleucid army with mixed, but generally successful, results, establishing the Maccabees as the Hasmonean Dynasty of rulers over a once-more independent Israel. (It is Judah Maccabee's ritual cleansing of the Temple after his victories over the Seleucids that is celebrated by Jews every year at Hannukah). Internal disputes weakened the revived state, however, and it eventually fell victim to the Romans who replaced the Seleucids as the local superpower. John D Grainger explains the causes of the revolt and traces the course of the various campaigns of the Maccabees, first against the Seleucids and then the Romans who captured Jerusalem in 63BC and partitioned the kingdom. The last chapters consider the continued Jewish resistance to Roman rule and factional fighting, until the crowning of Herod, marked the end of the Hasmonean dynasty.

This is a book for anyone interested in the political and cultural results of the entry of the small state of Judah and its capital Jerusalem into the wider Hellenistic world in the second century BCE. In particular it forms a helpful introduction to the biblical writing called 1 Maccabees, which is preserved in the Apocrypha. 1 Maccabees is a history of the rebellion of the Jews against their Syrian rulers in the 160s BCE. The rebellion's leader was Judas Maccabee, and from his family and its success sprang a dynasty that ruled Judah for the century before the arrival of Herod the Great. The author of 1 Maccabees was a keen supporter of that dynasty, and saw their early rulers as made in the mould of the early kings of Israel. The present book introduces the student to modern scholarly research on 1 Maccabees and its author.

Understanding the Maccabean Revolt 167 to 63 BCE guides the reader through the main players and battles of this historic conflict. Antiochus Epiphanes IV's harsh decrees against the Jews had the opposite of his intended effect, as it accelerated Jewish resistance to being assimilated into Greek culture and religion. In his belief that the Jewish nation was ready for Hellenization, he had forbidden Jewish religious practice and had dedicated the Jewish Temple to a Greek deity. This and other acts of religious persecution led to the beginning of the Maccabean revolt in 167 BCE. The Greek Seleucids had counted on Mattathias, son of John and a leader of the community, to accept the king's rulings, but he refused. After seeing one of his own people offer a pagan sacrifice, he killed the blasphemer, thus starting the Jewish struggle for freedom that lasted for over two decades and ushered in the Hasmonean kingdom. Understanding the Maccabean Revolt 167 to 63 BCE tells this thrilling story with forty pages of clear text and full color maps, illustrations, and photographs.

In Jewish Education from Antiquity to the Middle Ages fifteen scholars offer specialist studies on Jewish education from the areas of their expertise. This tightly themed volume in honour of Philip S. Alexander has some essays that look at individual manuscripts, some that consider larger literary corpora, and some that are more thematically organised. Jewish education has been addressed largely as a matter of the study house, the bet midrash. Here a richer range of texts and themes discloses a wide variety of activity in several spheres of Jewish life. In addition, some notable non-Jewish sources provide a wider context for the discourse than is often the case.

Four books of Maccabees were ultimately added to the Septuagint, three in the 1st-century BC, and the 4th as an appendix in the 1st-century AD. No trace of these books have been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and they are generally thought to have been written in Greek. 1st and 2nd Maccabees do include several Aramaic loanwords that support an Aramaic source text. A different book of Maccabees has survived in the Arabic language, either called Arabic Maccabees, or 5th Maccabees. Three additional books of Maccabees have survived in the Ge'ez language in Ethiopia and are generally considered translations from either Syriac or Arabian sources. Additionally, several books of Maccabees are known to exist in Syriac, which are not the same as any of the above versions of Maccabees. One Yiddish book of the Maccabee surfaced in Europe during the Middle Ages which appears to have been translated from an Aramaic or Hebrew source. 1st Maccabees tells the story of the Maccabean Revolt against the rule of the Seleucid Empire in the 2nd-century BC. The content of 1st Maccabees appears to be a Sadducee text, as it clearly gives all credit to the self-declared high-priests that led the rebellion against the Greeks, and barely mentioned the sky-god Shamayim, or the earth-goddess Eretz. It also omits the names of the other gods that 2nd Maccabees and 3rd Maccabees mentions the Judeans worshiping, such as Dionysus, which supports its authorship in the Hasmonean Dynasty, when the other gods were no longer tolerated. 2nd Maccabees claims to be an abridged version of Jason of Cyrene's now lost five-volume version of Maccabees. Jason's books of the Maccabees were likely composed earlier than 1st Maccabees, as the story ends decades earlier, and contains many references to Sabaoth, translated into Greek as Dionysus, which are missing from the 1st Maccabees. While 1st Maccabees is a very secular version of the events that led to the creation of the Hasmonean kingdom, and was, therefore, almost certainly composed by a Sadducee, 2nd Maccabees claims that Judas the Hammer, the protagonist of both 1st and 2nd Maccabees was a Hasidean, suggesting that either Jason of Cyrene, or whoever abridged his work, was a Hasidean. 1st Maccabees mentioned the Hasideans joining Judas' forces, but did not claim he was one. 4th Maccabees is a philosophical interpretation of 2nd Maccabees. It was added to the Septuagint in the 1st-century AD, however, it could have been written anywhere between circa 100 BC and 100 AD. This text includes more details regarding the torture of the Hebrew youths from 2nd Maccabees, which may have come from Jason of Cyrene's original five-volume version of Maccabees. The author of 4th Maccabees accepts the flying horsemen of 2nd Maccabees as sky messengers, which implies the Phrygian imagery was widely accepted by Jews at the time and supports the Greek and Roman records that indicate the Phrygians and Hebrews worshiped the same god. Unlike 2nd and 3rd Maccabees, 4th Maccabees does not mention the god Dionysus/Sabaoth, indicating that the book was written in Hasmonean Dynasty or later. 4th Maccabees also does not have any Aramaic loanwords, indicating it was almost certainly written in Greek.