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Maccabeans

The Holy Maccabees
Stattler-Machabeusze.jpg
Wojciech Stattler's "Machabeusze" ("The Maccabees"), 1844
Born 2nd century BCE
Judea (modern-day Israel)
Died 167–160 BCE
Judea
Venerated in Roman Catholic Church
Eastern Orthodox Churches
Canonized Pre-Congregation
Feast August 1

The Maccabees, also spelled Machabees (Hebrew: מכבים or מקבים‎‎, Maqabim; Latin: Machabaei or Maccabaei; Greek: Μακκαβαῖοι, Makkabaioi), were the leaders of a Jewish rebel army that took control of Judea, which at the time had been a province of the Seleucid Empire. They founded the Hasmonean dynasty, which ruled from 164 BCE to 63 BCE. They reasserted the Jewish religion, partly by forced conversion, expanded the boundaries of Judea by conquest and reduced the influence of Hellenism and Hellenistic Judaism.

In the 2nd century BCE, Judea lay between the Ptolemaic Kingdom (based in Egypt) and the Seleucid empire (based in Syria), monarchies which had formed following the death of Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE). Judea had come under Ptolemaic rule, but fell to the Seleucids around 200 BCE. Judea at that time had been affected by the Hellenization begun by Alexander. Some Jews, mainly those of the urban upper class, notably the Tobiad family, wished to dispense with Jewish law and to adopt a Greek lifestyle. According to the historian Victor Tcherikover, the main motive for the Tobiads' Hellenism was economic and political. The Hellenizing Jews built a gymnasium in Jerusalem, competed in international Greek games, "removed their marks of circumcision and repudiated the holy covenant".


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