Day 32 The Maccabean books end with two bizarre installments. Third Maccabees has nothing to do with Judas Maccabeus or his relatives and Fourth Maccabees is a ponderous philosophical treatise on the merits of martyrdom. Third Maccabees deals with the Ptolemaic Dynasty in Egypt, specifically the reign of Ptolemy IV Philopator. Now, before reading this […]
Day 31 If First Maccabees was Braveheart…then Second Maccabees is Braveheart + Monty Python + Gladiator. This book pulls out all the stops. It basically tells the same story as 1 Maccabees with a few additions and embellishments. Some of the characters change, but the basic structure remains: action packed warfare. The interesting thing here, […]
Day 30 I present to you, the Braveheart of the Apocrypha. That’s really what this book felt like. The main character, at least for the first 3/4 of it, is Judas Maccabeus — a warrior who, with his brothers, helps lead a revolt against the foreign powers occupying Israel and defiling their temple. The story […]