First and Second Maccabees.
The writer of 2 Maccabees may very well be right;
Books contain true accounts of things that actually occurred(1 Maccabees for example).
The Maccabees' descendants-
the Hasmonean dynasty- routinely violated their own Jewish law and tradition.
Maccabees 6:16 So king Antiochus died there in the hundred forty
and ninth year.
Some of these books contain true
accounts of things that actually occurred 1 Maccabees, for.
Some of these books contain
true accounts of things that actually occurred(1 Maccabees, for example).
Some of these books contain
true accounts of things that genuinely occurred(1 Maccabees for example).
Maccabees 13:52 He ordained also that that day should
be kept every year with gladness.
And others went there during the troubles of the Maccabees against the Seleucid kings.
See the article“ Who Were the Maccabees?” in The Watchtower of November 15, 1998.
From Genesis to the Second Book of Maccabees, all 46 books of the Old Testament are available below.
Even more significantly, the following centuries
witnessed the devastation that would be caused when Jews tried again to accomplish what the Maccabees had done.
Over two millennia,
Hanukkah has evolved to narrate the story of the Maccabees in ways that meet the distinctive needs of successive generations of Jews.
First Maccabees also relates that the Seleucids forbade the practice of brit milah(Jewish circumcision),
and punished those who performed it- as well as the infants who underwent it- with death.
According to the apocryphal book of 2 Maccabees, it caused considerable controversy when,
as a Hellenizing effort, the apostate high priest Jason proposed to build a gymnasium in Jerusalem. - 2 Macc.
The earliest version of this story appears in the Talmud, in a document completed in the sixth century A.D. From that period on,
rather than directly commemorating the Maccabees' victory, Hanukkah celebrated God's miracle.
The Jews and their priests have resolved that Simon should be their leader and high priest forever, until a trustworthy prophet should arise.” -
1 Maccabees 14: 38-
41 a historical book found in the Apocrypha.