The Ptolemies and the Antiochi for centuries fought for Gaza, whose inhabitants had a greater taste for the mart than for the sword, and when the Maccabees were carrying a victorious war through Philistia, the people of Gaza bought off Jonathan, but the Jews occupied the city itself about a century before the Christian era.

[Footnote 66: That this appellation of Maccabee was not first of all given to Judas Maccabæaus, nor was derived from any initial letters of the Hebrew words on his banner, Mi Kamoka Be Elim, Jehovah?

Only we may note, by the way, that the original name of these Maccabees and their posterity was Asamoneans, which was derived from Asamoneus, the great-grandfather of Mattathias, as Josephus here informs us.]

The story of the brave Maccabee was already, you may be sure, familiar to me in all its parts.

In this way died one valiant Maccabee; Brutus feigned madness; prudent Solon hid His sense; and David, when he feared Gath's king.

The heroic ages of Jewish history passed away when ships navigated by Phoenician sailors brought gold from Ophir and silver from Tarshish, and did not return until the Maccabees rallied the hunted and decimated tribes of Israel against the armies of the Syrian kings.

Herod, the great historic king of the Jews, though passionately in love with his wife Mariamne, sacrifices her brother Aristobulus to his suspicions, fearing that this young prince, the last of the Maccabees, may supplant him on the throne.

It is a history in sippets: the English Iliads in a nutshell: the apocryphal Parliament's book of Maccabees in single sheets.

Not only Homer has made use of it, but we find the Jewish Hero in the Book of Maccabees, who had fought the Battels of the chosen People with so much Glory and Success, receiving in his Dream a Sword from the Hand of the Prophet Jeremiah.

So again in the time of the Maccabees.

But like a second Maccabee, "his right arm abandons him not, and his courage, inflamed by so many perils, came to his aid."

Even the comparatively late Jewish tradition reflected in the opening chapters of II Maccabees attributes to Nehemiah the re-establishment of the temple Service and the collection of the sacred writings of his race.

For the latter half he draws largely from the apocryphal book of I Maccabees and from the writings of contemporary Greek and Jewish historians.

Notwithstanding all of its obvious faults, II Maccabees has preserved many important historical facts.

Where its testimony differs from that of I Maccabees, the latter in general should be followed, but its account of the events which led to the Maccabean uprising are much more detailed than those of I Maccabees, which it supplements at many important points.

Where its testimony differs from that of I Maccabees, the latter in general should be followed, but its account of the events which led to the Maccabean uprising are much more detailed than those of I Maccabees, which it supplements at many important points.

All the evidence found in the two books of Maccabees indicates that he was inspired by the noblest patriotism.

The first book of Maccabees records in detail the repeated blows that Judas struck against his heathen foes.

The First Book of Maccabees.

It doubtless fed the forces of that glorious revolt that shortly thereafter burst forth under the heroic Maccabees.

About 600 A.D. 2 Maccabees ii.

ASMONÆ`ANS, a name given to the Maccabees, from Asmon, the place of their origin.

MACCABEES, a body of Jewish patriots, followers of Judas Maccabæus, who in 2nd century B.C. and in the interest of the Jewish faith withstood the oppression of Syria and held their own for a goodly number of years against not only the foreign yoke that oppressed them, but against the Hellenising corruption of their faith at home.

MACCABEES, BOOKS OF, two books of the Apocrypha which give, the first, an account of the heroic struggle which the Maccabees maintained from 175 to 135 B.C. against the kings of Syria, and the second, of an intercalary period of Jewish history from 175 to 160 B.C., much of it of legendary unreliable matter; besides these two a third and a fourth of a still more apocryphal character are extant.

MACCABEES, BOOKS OF, two books of the Apocrypha which give, the first, an account of the heroic struggle which the Maccabees maintained from 175 to 135 B.C. against the kings of Syria, and the second, of an intercalary period of Jewish history from 175 to 160 B.C., much of it of legendary unreliable matter; besides these two a third and a fourth of a still more apocryphal character are extant.