What's MACCABEES about?

Summary

About 200 years before Jesus, the Greek empire was in control of the Jewish land and was forcefully imposing Greek culture and religion on their territories, including on the Jews. A high priest of the temple, Mattathias, defied the Greek orders to abandon Judaism, and began a revolt which was led by brothers whose name was Maccabee. The two books of Maccabees describe this revolt from different perspectives.

The First book of Maccabees is a relatively accurate historical account of how the revolt began and how it was violently suppressed by the Greek army. The Second book of Maccabees presents a more emotional account with dramatic embellishments and much theological material, and covers a much shorter period of time during the revolt.

At the time of Jesus there was speculation about what God would do for the faithful committed young men who were killed by the Greeks for defending the right to worship their God of justice. One theory was that God would give those young men the rest of their lives that they would have lived and this idea of resurrection for the just young men may have influenced early Christian Jews as they tried to describe the resurrection of Jesus.