1. maccabees, books of two books of the Apocrypha which give, the first, an account of the heroicstruggle which the Maccabees maintained from 175 to 135 B.C. against the kings of Syria, and the second, of an intercalary period of Jewish history from 175 to 160 B.C., much of it of legendary unreliable matter; besides these two a third and a fourth of a stillmore apocryphal character are extant.
Definitions of maccabees, books of
