Chapter I: Preface

It is not so very long since the Apocrypha was found in almost every copy of the English Bible, but in the present day it is seldom printed with it, and very seldom indeed read. One or two of the writings included under this name are trivial and even absurd; but, on the whole, the Apocryphal books deserve far more attention than they receive. Among the foremost, in point of interest and value, must be placed the First Book of Maccabees. Written within fifty years of the events which it records, at a time, it must be remembered, that was singularly barren of historical literature, it is a careful, sober, and consistent narrative. It is our principal, not unfrequently our sole, authority for the incidents of a very important period, a period that was in the highest degree critical in the history of the Jewish nation and of the world which that nation has so largely influenced. It is commonly said that the great visitation of the Captivity finally destroyed in the Hebrew mind the tendency to idolatry. But the denunciations of Ezekiel prove to us that the exiles carried into the land of their captivity the evil which they had cherished in the land of their birth, and it is no less certain that they brought it back with them on their return. It grew to its height in the early part of the Second Century B.C., along with the increasing influence of Greek civilization in Western Asia. The feeble Jewish Commonwealth was more and more dominated by the powerful kingdoms which had been established on the ruins of the empire of Alexander, and the national religion was attacked by an enemy at least as dangerous as the Phœnician Baal-worship had been in earlier days, an enemy which may be briefly described by the word Hellenism. The story of how Judas and his brothers led the movement which rescued the Jewish faith from this peril is the story which we have endeavoured to tell in this volume. Our plan has been to follow strictly the lines of the First Book of Maccabees, going to the Second, a far less trustworthy document, only for some picturesque incidents. The subsidiary characters are fictitious, but the narrative is, we believe, apart from casual errors, historically correct.

We have to acknowledge special obligations to Captain Conder’s “Judas Maccabæus,” a volume of the series entitled “The New Plutarch.” We also owe much to Canon Rawlinson’s notes in the “Speaker’s Commentary on the Bible,” to Canon Westcott’s articles in the “Dictionary of the Bible,” and to Dean Stanley’s “Lectures on the Jewish Church.”

If any reader should be curious as to the literary partnership announced on the title-page—a partnership that has grown, so to speak, out of another of many years’ standing, shared by the writers as author and publisher—he may be informed that the plan of the story and a detailed outline of it have been contributed by Richmond Seeley, and the story itself written for the most part by Alfred Church.

LONDON, _Sept. 3, 1889._

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE
I. A NEW ORDER OF THINGS 1
II. ANTIOCHUS 19
III. MENELAÜS 37
IV. AT ANTIOCH 49
V. THE WRATH TO COME 68
VI. THE EVIL DAYS 79
VII. THE DARKNESS THICKENS 90
VIII. SHALLUM THE WINE-SELLER 101
IX. THE PERSECUTION 113
X. IN THE MOUNTAINS 124
XI. NEWS BAD AND GOOD 135
XII. THE PATRIOT ARMY 148
XIII. GUERILLA WARFARE IN THE MOUNTAINS 159
XIV. THE BURIAL OF MATTATHIAS 171
XV. THE SWORD OF APOLLONIUS 184
XVI. NEWS FROM THE BATTLE-FIELD 193
XVII. THE BATTLE OF EMMAUS 208
XVIII. THE BATTLE OF BETH-ZUR 225
XIX. IN JERUSALEM 235
XX. THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE 242
XXI. THE DEDICATION OF THE TEMPLE 254
XXII. WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS 263
XXIII. MORE VICTORIES 274
XXIV. THE SABBATICAL YEAR 284
XXV. REVERSES 294
XXVI. LIGHT OUT OF DARKNESS 304
XXVII. A PEACEFUL INTERVAL 314
XXVIII. HOPES AND FEARS 323
XXIX. CIVIL WAR 331
XXX. NICANOR 339
XXXI. THE FALLING AWAY 352
XXXII. THE LAST BATTLE 362
XXXIII. THE HOPE OF ISRAEL 368

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE CAVE AMONG THE MOUNTAINS _Frontispiece_ ANTIOCHUS IN THE TAVERN 32 THE PERSECUTION 118 THE LAST CHARGE OF MATTATHIAS 168 THE SWORD OF APOLLONIUS 192 FAREWELL TO THE MOUNTAINS 232 THE DEATH OF ELEAZAR 302 THE BOY KING 314

THE HAMMER