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", "
", "center", "70", "0", "0", "[Book Cover]") ?>
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", "
", "center", "70", "0", "0", "[Frontispiece]", "THE CAVE AMONG THE MOUNTAINS") ?>
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", "
\n", "center", "70", "0", "0", "[Title Page]") ?>
is not so very long since the Apocrypha was found in
almost every copy of the English Bible, but in the
present day it is seldom printed with it, and very
seldom indeed read. One or two of the writings included
under this name are trivial and even absurd; but on the
whole, the Apocryphal books deserve far more attention
than they receive. Among the foremost, in point of
interest and value, must be placed the First Book of
Maccabees. Written within fifty years of the events
which it records, at a time, it must be remembered,
that
was singularly barren of historical literature, it is a
careful, sober, and consistent narrative. It is our
principal, not unfrequently our sole, authority for the
incidents of a very important period, a period that was
in the highest degree critical in the history of the
Jewish nation and of the world which that nation has so
largely influenced. It is commonly said that the great
visitation of the Captivity finally destroyed in the
Hebrew mind, the tendency to
idolatry. But the
denunciations of Ezekiel prove to us that the exiles
carried
into the land of their captivity the evil which they
had cherished in the land of their birth, and it is no
less certain that they brought it back with them on
their return. It grew to its height in the early part
of
the Second Century along with the increasing
influence of Greek civilization in Western Asia. The
feeble
Jewish Commonwealth was more and more dominated by the
powerful kingdoms which had been established on the
ruins of the empire of Alexander, and the national
religion was attacked by an enemy at least as dangerous
as
the Phœnician Baal-worship had been in the earlier
days, an enemy which may be briefly described by the
word
Hellenism. The story of how Judas and his brothers led
the movement which rescued the Jewish faith from this
peril is the story which we have endeavoured to tell in
this volume. Our plan has been to follow strictly the
lines of the First Book of Maccabees, going to the
Second, a far less trustworthy document, only for some
picturesque incidents. The subsidiary characters are
fictitious, but the narrative is, we believe, apart
from
casual errors, historically correct.
We have to acknowledge special obligations to Captian
Conder's "Judas Maccabæus," a volume of the series
entitled "The New Plutarch." We also owe much to Canon
Rawlinson's notes in the "Speaker's Commentary on the
Bible," to Canon
Wescott's articles in the "Dictionary
of the Bible," and to Dean Stanley's "Lectures on the
Jewish Church."
If any reader should be curious as to the literary
partnership announced on the title-page—a
partnership that
has grown, so to speak, out of another of many years'
standing, shared by the writers as author and
publisher—he may be informed that the plan of the
story and a detailed outline of it have been
contributed by
Richmond Seeley, and the story itself written for the
most part by Alfred Church.
Sept. 3, 1889
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", "", "center", "70", "0", "0", "[Contents Page 1 of 2]") ?>
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", "", "center", "70", "0", "0", "[Contents Page 2 of 2]") ?>
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", "", "center", "70", "0", "0", "[List of Illustrations]") ?>