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Maccabees   Listen
noun
Maccabees  n. pl.  
1.
The name given in later times to the Asmonaeans, a family of Jewish patriots, who headed a religious revolt in the reign of Antiochus IV., 168-161 b. c., which led to a period of freedom for Israel.
2.
The name of two ancient historical books, which give accounts of Jewish affairs in or about the time of the Maccabean princes, and which are received as canonical books in the Roman Catholic Church, but are included in the Apocrypha by Protestants. Also applied to three books, two of which are found in some MSS. of the Septuagint.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Maccabees" Quotes from Famous Books



... Authority of the Church of England. What Books these are, is sufficiently known, without a Catalogue of them here; and they are the same that are acknowledged by St. Jerome, who holdeth the rest, namely, the Wisdome of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Judith, Tobias, the first and second of Maccabees, (though he had seen the first in Hebrew) and the third and fourth of Esdras, for Apocrypha. Of the Canonicall, Josephus a learned Jew, that wrote in the time of the Emperor Domitian, reckoneth Twenty Two, ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... exist which are not posterior even to the Christian era, with the exception of those on the coins of the Maccabees, which are in the ancient or what is termed the Samaritan forms of the Hebrew letters. This coinage took place about B. ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho

... influence which not even the leprosy bred of centuries of European despotism and oppression can resist. I am not of those who view with apprehension or aversion the race of Christ, of David and of the Maccabees, of Disraeli and of Gambetta. There is no better class of citizens than the better class of Jews, and it would be a dishonorable day for our Republic should its gates ever be closed to the victims of religious intolerance, ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann

... interlacing and binding together in bonds of human brotherhood. A Methodist here bound to Methodists everywhere, Presbyterian to Presbyterian, Baptist to Baptist, Disciple to Disciple, Lutheran to Lutheran, Catholic to Catholic, Masons, Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, Red Men, Maccabees, Woodmen, Christian Endeavor Societies, Epworth Leagues, Y.M.C.A.'s, W.C.T.U.'s, and many other fraternities, making up an interdependent, together-woven, God-allied and God-saving influence ancient empires never dreamt of. These are the moral ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... round and round the wrecked crew; sideways churning the water in his vengeful wake, as if lashing himself up to still another and more deadly assault. The sight of the splintered boat seemed to madden him, as the blood of grapes and mulberries cast before Antiochus's elephants in the book of Maccabees. Meanwhile Ahab half smothered in the foam of the whale's insolent tail, and too much of a cripple to swim,—though he could still keep afloat, even in the heart of such a whirlpool as that; helpless Ahab's head was seen, like a tossed bubble which the least chance shock might burst. From the ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... dearth of copies after the time of Ezra will surprise no one who has read the 1st chapter of Maccabees, or Josephus's "Antiquities," Bk. 12, chap. 5. (119) Nay, it appears wonderful considering the fierce and daily persecution, that even these few should have been preserved. (120) This will, I think, be plain to even a cursory reader of the history ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza

... Place is divine, so by the way we may observe, that the bestowing on a Man who is favoured by Heaven such an allegorical Weapon, is very conformable to the old Eastern way of Thinking. 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. The following Passage, wherein Satan is described as wounded by the Sword of Michael, is ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... carry some little shadow of fear with it, I am ready to take my stand here and await alone, not only that Holy Brotherhood you talk of and dread, but the brothers of the twelve tribes of Israel, and the Seven Maccabees, and Castor and Pollux, and all the brothers and ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... never very numerous, that grew up on the soil of Judea about the time of the Maccabees, and had establishments in Judea when Christ was on earth, as well as afterwards in the time of Josephus; they led an ascetic life, practised the utmost ceremonial cleanness, were rigorous in their observance of the Jewish law, and differed from the Pharisees in that they gave to the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... temple of Ascalon!" she went on, with fury. "Thy other ancestors were shepherds, bandits, conductors of caravans, a horde of slaves offered as tribute to King David! My forefathers were the conquerors of thine! The first of the Maccabees drove thy people out of Hebron; Hyrcanus forced them to be circumcised!" Then, with all the contempt of the patrician for the plebeian, the hatred of Jacob for Esau, she reproached him for his indifference ...
— Herodias • Gustave Flaubert

... brother, and fairly understood the foundations of his faith. Poor boy, the check to his studies disappointed him, and he spent every leisure moment over his Latin accidence or in reading. Next to the stories in the Bible, he loved the Maccabees, because of the likeness to the persecuted state of the Church; and he knew the Morte d'Arthur almost by heart, and thought it part of the history of England. Especially he loved the part that tells of the Holy Grail, the Sacred Cup that was guarded by the maimed ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Wilderness-Tabernacle; no record of the conquest of Canaan written till long generations after the event; not much written record at all till Samuel; few, if any, Psalms before the age of the Captivity, if not before the age of the Maccabees; certainly two if not more Isaiahs, and probably hardly one Daniel; at least, that the book bearing his name dates from the second century before Christ, and is in fact a Palestinian story-book which has not, perhaps, even a nucleus of history within it. It ought to ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule

... the future. Whatever the cause, they adopted this conception, and probably through their influence it passed to, or was formulated by, the Jews, among whom it appears in the second century B.C. (in the Book of Daniel).[190] In Daniel and 2 Maccabees resurrection is confined to the Jews; in Enoch it is sometimes similarly confined, sometimes apparently universal.[191] In the New Testament also the same diversity of statement appears; resurrection seems to be confined to believers in some passages[192] and to be universal ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... the Maccabees,[336] the High-Priest Onias, who had been dead several years before that time, appeared to Judas Maccabaeus, in the attitude of a man whose hands were outspread, and who was praying for the people of the Lord: at the same ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... the morning star. It was truly, as Dean Stanley called it, "the Gospel of the age." Its story spread, and with it spread renewed patience and hope. It doubtless fed the forces of that glorious revolt that shortly thereafter burst forth under the heroic Maccabees. Thus it kept alive the vital spark in the nation, through a crucial hour, that else might have gone out before it had given birth to Christianity. Noble as the book of Daniel is in many ways, especially as the real father of "the philosophy of ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... laid him in his father's tomb, and then ended the work that he had begun; and when Simon died, the Jews, once so trodden on, were the most prosperous race in the East. The Temple was raised from its ruins, and the exploits of the Maccabees had nerved the whole people to do or die in defense of the holy faith of ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... an interesting subject for thought to inquire whether, if Daniel's weeks had run out in the times of the Maccabees, and the Messenger of the Covenant had then come suddenly into His Temple, Christ would not have found adoring worshippers instead of fierce persecutors—a throne instead of a cross? Would He not then have been welcomed by the heroes of Emmaus and Bethsura, instead ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker

... so unjustly, for fear of giving occasion to my real discredit: and therefore I was not only all the rest of the morning vexed, but so went home to dinner; where my wife tells me of my Lord Orrery's new play "Tryphon," [A tragedy, taken from the first book of Maccabees, and performed with great success.] at the Duke of York's house, which, however, I would see, and therefore put a bit of meat in our mouths and went thither; where, with much ado, at half-past one, we got into a blind hole in the 18d. place above stairs, ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... on the Feast of Haunkah (the anniversary of the victory of the Maccabees), at a discourse delivered by the spiritual head of the congregation, in the College of the Spanish and Portuguese Hebrew Community. The interest was greatly enhanced by the completion of the study of one of their theological books in the presence of all the students. The ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore

... resolved to break down religious barriers among his subjects, and, for this end, to exterminate Jewish worship. In 168 B.C. he set up an altar to Jupiter in the temple at Jerusalem, and even compelled Jewish priests to immolate swine. Then the revolt broke out in which the family of Maccabees were the heroic leaders. Judas Maccabees recovered the temple, but fell in battle (160. B.C.). Under his brother Simon, victory was achieved, and the independence of the nation secured. The chief power remained in the hands of this ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... about 430 years B. C. the Scripture history closes, and for the remaining particulars of the Jewish history recourse must be had to uninspired writers, particularly to the books of the Maccabees ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley

... lashing himself up to still another and more deadly assault. The sight of the splintered boat seemed to madden him, as the blood of grapes and mulberries cast before Antiochus's elephants in the book of Maccabees. Meanwhile Ahab half smothered in the foam of the whale's insolent tail, and too much of a cripple to swim, —though he could still keep afloat, even in the heart of such a whirlpool as that; helpless Ahab's head was seen, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... text taken with dual appropriateness from the Book of Maccabees. Fully one in ten of the Jewish volunteers, said the preacher, had gone forth to drive out the bold invader of the Queen's dominions. Their beloved country had no more devoted citizens than the children of Israel who had settled under her flag. They had been gratified, ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... all quarters of the earth, we should by no means necessarily behold a people of the same spiritual attributes and ideals as the Hebrews who built the Temple under Ezra, or who fought like lions under the Maccabees. As with the early Saracens, it is often some one great idea or principle which—for the time at least—determines the whole current of a nation's mental and spiritual being. But that idea may gradually lose its intensity and its energizing ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... as they have not failed in any country of the Diaspora, to arouse the mixed envy and dislike of the rude populace, and give a handle to the agitations of self-seeking demagogues. The third book of the Maccabees tells of a Ptolemaic persecution during which Jewish victims were turned into the arena at Alexandria, to be trodden down by elephants made fierce with the blood of grapes, and of their deliverance by Divine Providence. Some fiction is certainly mixed with this recital, but ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich

... which was, in fact, an oratorio designed to be staged and acted; in other words, a biblical opera. Of Israelitish race, the stories of the Old Testament appealed to him with intense force, and his "Tower of Babel," "The Maccabees," "Sulamith," "Paradise Lost," and, later, "Christus," were very important and ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews

... of whom we read In Maccabees; and as his king was pliant, So he who governs France shall be to ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri

... it is hurtful to drink wine or water alone; and as wine mingled with water is pleasant and delighteth the taste: even so speech, finely framed, delighteth the ears of them that read the story."—3 MACCABEES xv. 39. ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... lettuce on which a cat was sleeping. Shelves lined with red crepe paper which was now faded and torn and concentrically spotted. Flat against the wall of the second story the signs of lodges—the Knights of Pythias, the Maccabees, the Woodmen, the Masons. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... they had been anew conquered by Jehoshaphat, in whom the spirit of David had been revived anew; comp. 2 Chron. xx.; Ps. lxxxiii. A prelude to the fulfilment of the prophecy before us took place at the time of the Maccabees, comp. Vol. i. p. 467, 468. But as regards the fulfilment, we are not entitled to limit ourselves to the names here mentioned. These names are the accidental element in the prophecy; the thought is this: As soon as Israel realizes its destiny, it partakes of God's inviolability, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... which I was highly commended to him. By way of a joke he said that as it was Christmas Eve he supposed I should be going to rock the infant Jesus asleep, but I answered that I was come to keep the Feast of the Maccabees with him—a reply which gained me the applause of the whole family and an invitation to stay with them. I accepted the offer without hesitation, and I told my servant to fetch my baggage from the hotel. Before leaving the banker I asked him to shew me ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt



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