Maccabee, Maccabees

(from the Aramaic — hammer, mallet). Being weak, the Jews suffered greatly at the hands of neighboring peoples. The most cruel persecution they endured was from the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes, who sought to introduce pagan worship among them and to set up an idol in the Jerusalem temple itself. The family of the Maccabees, of priestly lineage — the children of the priest Mattathias (1 Macc 2:4, 66) — rose up in defense of the true faith and the fatherland (in 167 B.C.). They restored worship according to the Law of God, defended their fatherland against its enemies, and became leaders of the Jews. Before his death, the priest Mattathias, of his five sons (John, Simon, Judas, Eleazar, Jonathan), entrusted to Judas (Maccabeus) command of the army for the defense of the faith and fatherland against their enemies.

Taking up this command, Judas and his brothers gradually defended their fatherland, restored to it freedom and independence, and at last became its sovereign rulers, uniting in their own hands both civil and spiritual authority — thus, as zealous defenders of the faith, throwing off the pagan yoke from Judea. Afterward the Jewish king Herod, son of Antipater, utterly destroyed the ruling line of the Maccabees (in 37 B.C.). Their memory is kept by the Church on August 1.