1 Maccabees
The Hasmonean family earned the right to rule by armed defense of the law against forced Hellenization, so their dynasty's legitimacy rests on zealous action, not on royal or priestly bloodline alone.
- armed resistance to forced Hellenization as the founding Hasmonean act
- deliberate imitation of earlier biblical historiographic style
- the historical basis of Hanukkah, without the later miracle legend
- Hebrew original lost, preserved only through Greek translation
A sober, Deuteronomistic-style history of the Jewish revolt against the Seleucid king Antiochus IV, who outlawed Torah observance and desecrated the Jerusalem Temple, and of the guerrilla campaign led by the priest Mattathias and his sons, especially Judah "Maccabee" ("the Hammer"), that recaptured and rededicated it. Composed in Hebrew not long after the events, in a style deliberately echoing the earlier biblical historical books, it survives only in Greek translation as part of the Septuagint tradition, since the Hebrew original did not survive antiquity. Its account of the Temple's rededication is the historical basis for the festival of Hanukkah, though the book itself, focused on political and military history rather than any account of a miraculous oil lamp, reads closer to Chronicles or Kings than to later rabbinic legend.
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