MACCABEES, two apocryphal books of scripture, containing the history of Judas and his brothers, and their wars against the Syrian kings in defence of their religion and liberties, so called from Judas Mattathias, furnamed Maccabæus, as some say from the word מַכְהֵי, כִּי נִכְהֶה אֶת־יִשְׂרָאֵל, q. d. Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? which was the motto of his standard; whence those who fought under his standard were called Maccabees, and the name was generally applied to all who suffered in the cause Maccabees, of the true religion, under the Egyptian or Syrian Macbeth, kings. The first book of the Maccabees is an excellent history, and comes nearest to the style and manner of the sacred historians of any extant. It was written originally in the Chaldee language, of the Jerusalem dialect, and was extant in this language in the time of Jerome. From the Chaldee it was translated into Greek, from the Greek into Latin. It is supposed to have been written by John Hyrcanus the son of Simon, who was prince and high priest of the Jews near 30 years, and began his government at the time where this history ends. It contains the history of 40 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 years 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. The first was written in the 160th year of the era of the Seleucidae, i.e. before Christ 144; and the second in the 188th year of the same era, or 125 before Christ; and both appear to be spurious. After these epistles follows the preface of the author to his history, which is an abridgement of a larger work, composed by one Jason, a Jew of Cyrene, who wrote in Greek the history of Judas Maccabeus and his brethren, and the wars against Antiochus Epiphanes, and Eupator his son. The second book does not by any means equal the accuracy and excellency of the first. It contains a history of about 15 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.

There are in the Polyglot Bibles, both of Paris and London, Syriac versions of both these books; but they, as well as the English versions which we have among the apocryphal writers in our Bible, are derived from the Greek. There is also a third book of the Maccabees, containing the history of the persecution of Ptolemy Philopator against the Jews in Egypt, and their sufferings under it; which seems to have been written by some Alexandrian Jew in the Greek language, not long after the time of Siracides. It is in most of the ancient manuscript copies of the Greek Septuagint; particularly in the Alexandrian and Vatican, but was never inserted into the vulgar Latin version of the Bible, nor consequently into any of our English copies. Moreover, Josephus's history of the martyrs that suffered under Antiochus Epiphanes, is found in some manuscript Greek Bibles, under the name of the fourth book of the Maccabees.