All Maccabean Literature

Maccabean Literature, in the deuterocanonical sense used here, is the body of historical narrative recounting the second-century BCE Jewish revolt against Seleucid rule led by the Hasmonean family, transmitted through the Greek Septuagint tradition rather than the Hebrew canon. The Books of the Maccabees comprise 1 Maccabees, a sober historical account of the revolt and the establishment of Hasmonean rule, and 2 Maccabees, a theologically inflected retelling covering roughly the same events with an emphasis on martyrdom and divine intervention; both are deuterocanonical scripture in Catholic and Orthodox Christian Bibles. 3 Maccabees is a separate, later Greek composition set earlier in the third century BCE, recounting a legendary persecution of Egyptian Jews under Ptolemy IV Philopator rather than the Hasmonean revolt itself, and it is deuterocanonical in the Eastern Orthodox canon. Scholars group these works together as Maccabean literature because each narrates Jewish resistance or deliverance from Hellenistic persecution using the Maccabee name or setting, even though the events they describe span different periods and dynasties.