For Catholics and those in Orthodox
churches, no consideration of the relative value of the Apocryphal or
Deutero-canonical texts is necessary. Their episcopate takes a position on
their behalf and says to them, in effect, “Here’s your Bible.”
Protestants, on the other hand, have no
central governing body to decide such issues, and I have yet to come
across any local church’s statement of faith that addresses the canonicity or
non-canonicity of these “extra” books. Which means it’s up to us to either
evaluate them for ourselves, or else opt to put our trust in the folks who made
decisions about such things in years past.
Beyond the 66 books about which everyone seems to agree, it falls to each Christian to decide for
him- or herself if perhaps God may be speaking, or if honest historians have
merely recorded accurate history, or if the text in front of him is a fraud.
Sometimes those decisions are screamingly obvious. Other times, there is much
to commend in Apocryphal literature. But the question before us at all times is
not merely “Is it commendable?” or “Is it accurate?” or “Is it well written?”
The question is, “Is it the word of God?”
3. 1 Maccabees
A detailed and intriguing partial history
of the Greek occupation of the land of Judea in the 2nd century B.C. and
its consequences for the earthly people of God, you can read the New Revised
Standard text of 1 Maccabees here.
1 Maccabees opens with the Greek defeat of
the Medo-Persians by Alexander the Great in 331 B.C., followed almost immediately by the division of Alexander’s kingdom, and later by the
rise of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (215-164 B.C.), who
governed the Greek Seleucid Empire of which Judea was a part.
Priests with Swords
The book follows the exploits of a post-exilic Jewish family of fighting priests, the five sons of Mattathias from
the city of Modein. Mattathias was a Levite, arguably from the line of Aaron, who found himself politically pressured by Antiochus to abandon the worship of Jehovah and lead Israel into
the observance of Gentile customs. Antiochus had stripped the temple in
Jerusalem of its treasures (1:21-23), plundered the city, torn down its walls
(1:31), defiled the sanctuary (1:37) and built himself a garrison there. He
forbade circumcision and burnt offerings, put to death women who had their
babies circumcised, and hung their dead infants from their necks (1:61).
In short, not a nice fellow. The people of
Jerusalem were forced to take to the hills.
When the king’s emissary reached Modein,
Mattathias defied him, killed him and struck down any Jew who obeyed Antiochus’
orders (2:24-25). He tore down the pagan altars and instigated a revolt, which,
led in succession by three of his sons, Judas (surnamed Maccabeus), Jonathan
and Simon, would serve to transform the nation over a forty year period. The
‘Maccabees’ forcibly circumcised Jewish babies, fought pitched battles with the
occupying forces, and preserved the written law Antiochus was bent on
destroying. Their priestly authority and resolute defiance of the oppressor drew
other harassed Israelites to them.
The Hammer Falls
After the death of Mattathias, Judas Maccabeus took command of the resistance. Maccabee means “hammer”, and
Judas’ victories are often portrayed as hammerings. He put his enemies to the
torch (3:5). He defeated Apollonius in battle and killed him (3:11-12). He
rebuffed successive attacks by 47,000 and 65,000 Gentile troops with as little
as 10,000 men and a great deal of prayer. He marched on the citadel at
Jerusalem, cleansed the sanctuary, reconsecrated and rededicated the temple and
fortified the city. From there he made forays into Gilead and Galilee to take
back towns and villages under Gentile control.
With Rome on the verge of becoming a significant world power, Judas sent emissaries to make an alliance with them
against the Greeks. But shortly thereafter, he died in battle with the army of
Demetrius. His brother Jonathan became commander of Israel’s forces in his
place, and later his brother Simon, followed by Simon’s son John. The book ends
with John as high priest, his father and brothers betrayed and killed, and the
very Chronicles-like notation that:
“The rest of the acts of John and his wars and the brave deeds that he did, and the building of the walls that he completed, and his achievements, are written in the annals of his high priesthood, from the time that he became high priest after his father.”
The book makes heroes of a certain subset
of devout Jews while portraying their traitorous, collaborative brethren in a
much less flattering light. Not everyone in Israel was a fan of the Maccabees.
History and Transmission
The surviving copies of 1 Maccabees are in Greek, but show strong idiomatic indications of having been translated
from Hebrew. The book made it into the Septuagint, but was not considered among
the definitive 24 books of the Old Testament agreed upon by Jewish scholars in
the late first century A.D.
1 Maccabees reads as straight history: no
overt theology, doctrine, and definitely nothing certifiably miraculous. While
it is not unreasonable to attribute several of Judas’s unlikelier victories to
divine providence, none are so one-sided as to be outrageous. God has promised
to protect his earthly people when they obey him and call on his name, and that
is the level at which God’s involvement is evident here.
The history in Maccabees is regarded as “generally reliable“, though some of the details are
considered suspect as a result of the pro-Jewish perspective of
the author.
So Why Not a Larger Canon?
That brings up the obvious question: if
it’s legit history and if the theology isn’t a major problem, why isn’t
1 Maccabees part of the OT canon? The Jews themselves rejected it as
canonical, but should we?
Our look at the Book of Tobit showed us
that theological consistency with the rest of scripture is key to canonicity,
and Judith reminded us that historical consistency is just as vital.
1 Maccabees brings up an entirely different issue: the purpose of
the Old Testament canon. If the OT exists to serve as nothing more profound
than a series of ancient and carefully preserved writings pulled from various
periods in Israelite history to testify to their national history and religious
beliefs, then surely 1 Maccabees belongs.
But this is not the case at all. As Adrian Rogers points out here, and as others have pointed out throughout the
centuries, the books of the Old Testament canon are not just individual bits of
history, but part of a sustained spiritual narrative. Even non-believers like
Jordan Peterson, doing little more than a quick-and-dirty survey of the Bible,
recognize this:
“It’s a funny thing that the Bible has a story, because it wasn’t written as a book: it was assembled from a whole bunch of different books. The fact that it got assembled into something resembling a story is quite remarkable.”
Now, not everyone, religious or secular,
agrees about the finer details of what that narrative is actually saying, but
the Lord Jesus maintained it is all about him, and most Christians would agree.
The Theme of the Old Testament
Thus Genesis speaks of the Offspring of the woman who would one day “bruise the
head” of the serpent, and later of the “Lamb” God had promised to provide. Exodus provides evidence God wanted to take out of the world a people with whom he would establish a covenant relationship through a Mediator. In fact, every one of the 39 OT books in the Protestant canon advances the ongoing
narrative concerning the coming of the Christ in some relevant way, whether it is the
need for a Messiah, the
tribe from which Messiah would come, the
circumstances of his birth,
his character or
the nature of his work. Even the seemingly endless
genealogies with which the OT is rife provide evidence later used by the
writers of the gospels to establish that Jesus of Nazareth was the whole point
of the narrative.
With this in mind, any book for which
claims to a divine origin are made (none are made for Maccabees, so far as
I am aware) needs to contain more than accurate history and solid
theology: it needs to deliver to God’s people some aspect of his message
to man not found anywhere else, or else make a specific spiritual point more
convincingly than some part of the existing canon. There is no hint that
1 Maccabees gives the people of God (either Jewish or Christian) anything
of a spiritual nature than we do not have in spades elsewhere. Even the message
“God is able to preserve his people” is made more convincingly in Esther.
There, the threat to the Jews is more than dire; it is existential.
Besides, our Protestant Old Testament currently ends with Malachi, while our New Testament begins with Matthew. The
thematic flow from the end of Malachi 4 into the coming of John the
Baptist in the early chapters of Matthew is about as perfect a
segue as anyone could ask for. I’d hate to disrupt it with anything that didn’t
have an indisputable claim to a place in the canon.
The Value of 1 Maccabees
The immediate historical fulfillment of much of Daniel 8 is
found in greater detail in 1 Maccabees than almost anywhere else. That
alone makes it as useful a read as any other historical document of
its period.
Readability: 8/10
Plausibility: 7/10
Plausibility: 7/10
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