The Wars of the Maccabees

An “extraordinary” account of the wars conducted by and against the Maccabean family of rulers in Palestine in the second and first centuries BC ( Midwest Book Review ). By the early second century BC, Israel had long been under the rule of the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire. But the policy of deliberate Hellenization and suppression of Jewish religious practices by Antiochus IV, sparked a revolt in 167 BC which was led initially by Judah Maccabee and later by his brothers and their descendants. Re