The Books of the Maccabees, four books, none of which is in the Hebrew Bible, whereas all of which appear in some manuscripts of the Septuagint. The I & II Maccabees only are part of canonical Scripture in the Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate (hence are canonical to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy) and usually are included in the Protestant Apocrypha.
First & Second Maccabees
First Maccabees was written about 100 B.C., in Hebrew, but the original has not come down to us. Instead, we have an early, pre-Christian, Greek translation full of Hebrew idioms. The author, probably a Palestinian Jew, is unknown. He was familiar with the traditions and sacred books of his people and had access to much reliable information on their recent history (from 175 to 134 B.C.). He may well have played some part in it himself in his youth. His purpose in writing is to record the deliverance of Israel that God worked through the family of Mattathias (5:62)—especially through his three sons, Judas, Jonathan, and Simon, and his grandson, John Hyrcanus. The writer compares their virtues and their exploits with those of Israel’s ancient heroes, the Judges, Samuel, and David.
There are seven poetic sections in the book that imitate the style of classical Hebrew poetry. Second Book of Maccabees focuses on the Jews’ revolt against Antiochus and concludes with the defeat of the Syrian general Nicanor in 161 BCE by Judas Maccabeus, the hero of the work. In general, its chronology coheres with that of I Maccabees. An unknown editor, the “Epitomist,” used the factual notes of a historian, Jason of Cyrene, to write this historical polemic. Its vocabulary and style indicate a Greek original.
Purgatory and 2 Maccabees 12:39-45
All who die in God’s grace, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven (CCC, n. 1030). Scripture is very clear when it says, “But nothing unclean shall enter [heaven]” (Rev. 21:27). Hab. 1:13 says, “You [God]… are of purer eyes than to behold evil and cannot look on wrong…” How many of us will be perfectly sanctified at the time of our deaths? I dare say most of us will be in need of further purification in order to enter the gates of heaven after we die, if, please God, we die in a state of grace.
In II Maccabees 12:39-46, we discover Judas Maccabeus and members of his Jewish military forces collecting the bodies of some fallen comrades who had been killed in battle. When they discovered these men were carrying “sacred tokens of the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbids the Jews to wear” (vs. 40), Judas and his companions discerned they had died as a punishment for sin. Therefore, Judas and his men “turned to prayer beseeching that the sin which had been committed might be wholly blotted out… He also took up a collection… and sent it to Jerusalem to provide for a sin offering. In doing this he acted very well and honorably… Therefore he made atonement for the dead, that they might be delivered from their sin.”
This deuterocanonical passage has often been used as a biblical underpinning for belief in purgatory. The Catholic doctrine of purgatory teaches that people who die while in God’s grace but who are not sufficiently purified of their sinfulness to enter God’s presence must undergo a time of purification through temporary suffering in the torments of purgatory. Unlike hell, purgatory is not a final judgment on the wicked but rather a finite period of purging for the insufficiently righteous. It is a place where one suffers for one’s own remaining sin before entering into heavenly bliss.
Third & Fourth Maccabees
III Maccabees has no relation to the other three books of Maccabees, all of which deal with the revolt of Judaea against Antiochus IV Epiphanes. It purports to be a historical account of the repression and miraculous salvation of Egyptian Jewry during the reign (221–205 BC) of Ptolemy IV Philopator. Ptolemy supposedly threatened the Jews with loss of citizenship after Palestinian Jews refused to permit him to enter the sanctuary of the Temple of Jerusalem. He relented after angels intervened on behalf of the Jews.
IV Maccabees has scanty historical information and belongs to the Maccabees series only because it deals with the beginning of the persecution of Jews by Antiochus IV Epiphanes. It possibly was written during the reign of the Roman emperor Caligula (37–41 AD). Throughout the early Christian period, IV Maccabees was wrongly attributed to Josephus. The work’s main religious theme is that the martyr’s sufferings vicariously expiated the sins of the entire Jewish people.
The Maccabees books were preserved only by the Christian church. St. Augustine wrote in The City of God that they were preserved for their accounts of the martyrs. This suggests that in antiquity, IV Maccabees, dealing almost exclusively with martyrdom, may have been the most highly regarded.
Nature and dignity 