"Maccabees" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this book was as the morning star. It was truly, as Dean Stanley called it, "the Gospel of the age." Its story spread, and with it spread renewed patience and hope. It doubtless fed the forces of that glorious revolt that shortly thereafter burst forth under the heroic Maccabees. Thus it kept alive the vital spark in the nation, through a crucial hour, that else might have gone out before it had given birth to Christianity. Noble as the book of Daniel is in many ways, especially as the real father of "the philosophy of history," it has a still deeper ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... inspiration to send Jesus to be tried by the ruler of the province to which He belonged, and so get rid altogether of the case.[2] He acted at once on this idea; and, under the escort of Pilate's soldiers, Jesus and His accusers were sent away to the ancient palace of the Maccabees, in which Herod used to reside on his visits to ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... peculiar customs and their religious separateness, did not fail at Alexandria, as they have not failed in any country of the Diaspora, to arouse the mixed envy and dislike of the rude populace, and give a handle to the agitations of self-seeking demagogues. The third book of the Maccabees tells of a Ptolemaic persecution during which Jewish victims were turned into the arena at Alexandria, to be trodden down by elephants made fierce with the blood of grapes, and of their deliverance by Divine Providence. Some fiction is ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... in bonds of human brotherhood. A Methodist here bound to Methodists everywhere, Presbyterian to Presbyterian, Baptist to Baptist, Disciple to Disciple, Lutheran to Lutheran, Catholic to Catholic, Masons, Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, Red Men, Maccabees, Woodmen, Christian Endeavor Societies, Epworth Leagues, Y.M.C.A.'s, W.C.T.U.'s, and many other fraternities, making up an interdependent, together-woven, God-allied and God-saving influence ancient empires never dreamt of. These are the moral lightning rods that avert from this ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... pensee should lie hidden in all minds—a holy reserve as to cases which may arise similar to such as HAVE arisen, where a merciful bloodshed [Footnote: "Merciful bloodshed"—In reading either the later religious wars of the Jewish people under the Maccabees, or the earlier under Joshua, every philosophic reader will have felt the true and transcendent spirit of mercy which resides virtually in such wars, as maintaining the unity of God against Polytheism and, by trampling on cruel idolatries, as indirectly ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... MSS. largely preponderate which read [Greek: kardiais] in H. E. Mart. Pal. cxiii. Sec. 6. See Burton's ed. p. 637):—Cyril in one place, as explained above:—and lastly, a quotation from Chrysostom on the Maccabees, given in Cramer's Catena, vii. 595 ([Greek: en plaxi kardiais sarkinais]), which reappears at the end of eight lines ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... because he prohibits learning and books." He characterises the Diurnal as "a puny chronicle, scarce pin-feathered with the wings of time; it is a history in sippets; the English Iliads in a nutshell; the Apocryphal Parliament's Book of Maccabees ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... her charge into the fifth heaven, that of Mars, revolved by Virtues and inhabited by transfigured martyrs, confessors, and holy warriors, such as Joshua, the Maccabees, Charlemagne, Orlando, Godfrey of Bouillon, and other men of note. These worthies form a part of the mystic cross, and each glows with transcendent light as Beatrice points them out one after another. Then Beatrice wafts ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... divine, so by the way we may observe, that the bestowing on a Man who is favoured by Heaven such an allegorical Weapon, is very conformable to the old Eastern way of Thinking. Not only Homer has made use of it, but we find the Jewish Hero in the Book of Maccabees, who had fought the Battels of the chosen People with so much Glory and Success, receiving in his Dream a Sword from the Hand of the Prophet Jeremiah. The following Passage, wherein Satan is described ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... admirably sustained this vocation. A series of pious men, Ezra, Nehemiah, Onias, the Maccabees, consumed with zeal for the Law, succeeded each other in the defense of the ancient institutions. The idea that Israel was a holy people, a tribe chosen by God and bound to Him by covenant, took deeper and firmer root. An immense expectation filled their souls. All Indo-European antiquity ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... Under the Maccabees, Palestine had struggled into being independent of Syria, but only by the help of the Romans, who, as usual, tried to ally themselves with small states in order to make an excuse for making war on large ones. There was now a great quarrel between two brothers of the Maccabean family, and ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... land which had pledged itself to grant equal opportunities to all men—his was the opportunity to show what the Jew was worth. He would teach Tim and his fellows that the descendants of David and the Maccabees were soldiers worthy ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... various stages of fulfilment. The relation between the two brothers during life; the loss of the birthright blessing and promises on the part of Esau; the temporary subjugation of his descendants to the Hebrews under David; their final and complete subjugation under the Maccabees; and especially their exclusion from the peculiar privileges of the people of God, through all the periods of their history, are included." Suppose all this to be true, what relation has it to the election of some individuals to eternal ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... Father, who did not like people to be too introspective and self-tormenting, said that they should, however, walk as it is written of the Maccabees, Caute et ordinate;[1] that is, with circumspection and order, or, to use a common expression, "bridle in hand." And one of the best proofs of our advancement in virtue is, he said, a love of correction and reproof; for it is a sign of a good digestion easily to assimilate tough and coarse ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... descending to the stream, he saw a figure flit by him through the covert; and this time a deeper fear entered into him; but he put away the thought, and prayed fervently for all souls in temptation. And when he spoke with the Wild Woman again, on the feast of the Seven Maccabees, which falls on the first day of August, he was smitten with fear to see her wasted looks, and besought her to cease from labouring and let him minister to her in her weakness. But she denied him gently, and ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... virtues and crimes, possesses not the wisdom which shows how pain and degradation produce sin. Israel! of you were born Moses, whose love was like the flaming bush, David with the golden harp, the beautiful Esther, weeping over the misery of her people. The Maccabees with their mighty swords came from among you, and the prophets who died for their faith. Whilst living happily in the land of your fathers, you loathed to bind a brother into slavery; upon your fields you left the tenth sheaf to the poor and needy, and gave a hearing ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... contained in our book, which were therefore extant before the date of the Chronicler.(4) Ecclesiasticus XLIX. 6-7 reflects passages of our Book, and of Lamentations, as though equally Jeremiah's, and Daniel IX. 2 refers to Jeremiah XXV. 12. A paragraph in the Second Book of Maccabees, Ch. II. 1-8, contains, besides echoes of our Book of Jeremiah, references to other activities of the Prophet of which the sources and the value are unknown to us. But all these references, as well as the series of apocryphal and apocalyptic works to which the ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... Third Book of Maccabees, which is not printed in our Apocrypha, but appears in the series in the Greek Septuagint, the author, in describing the persecution of the Jews by Ptolemy Philopater, B.C. 210, states that the king swore vehemently that ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... round the wrecked crew; sideways churning the water in his vengeful wake, as if lashing himself up to still another and more deadly assault. The sight of the splintered boat seemed to madden him, as the blood of grapes and mulberries cast before Antiochus's elephants in the book of Maccabees. Meanwhile Ahab half smothered in the foam of the whale's insolent tail, and too much of a cripple to swim,—though he could still keep afloat, even in the heart of such a whirlpool as that; helpless Ahab's head was seen, like a tossed bubble which the ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... the son of Simon, the high priest and governor of the Jews, was called Hyrcanus, Josephus no where informs us; nor is he called other than John at the end of the First Book of the Maccabees. However, Sixtus Seuensis, when he gives us an epitome of the Greek version of the book here abridged by Josephus, or of the Chronicles of this John Hyrcanus, then extant, assures us that he was called Hyrcanus from his conquest of one of that name. See Authent. Rec. Part I. p. 207. But of this ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... Then other sins can be forgiven in another world; there is no sin in heaven, in hell no forgiveness, consequently, there must exist a middle place, or, in other words, a purgatory. Florry, you smile, yet I assure you I have seen this advanced as unanswerable. In the book of Maccabees is a very remarkable passage authorizing prayers for the dead, and on this passage they build their theory and sanction their practise. Yet you know full well it is one of the Apocryphal books rejected by the Jews, because not originally written in their language. It was never quoted by our ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... insisting, had a strong sense for Righteousness, or Conduct; and they found happiness in pursuing it. The idea of Righteousness was their God, and the enjoyment of Righteousness their religion. This simple conception held its own for generations; but, by the time of the Maccabees, the Israelites had become familiar with the idea of a resurrection from the dead and a final judgment. "The phantasmagories of more prodigal and wild imaginations have mingled with the product of Israel's ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... drama of ambition versus love. Herod, the great historic king of the Jews, though passionately in love with his wife Mariamne, sacrifices her brother Aristobulus to his suspicions, fearing that this young prince, the last of the Maccabees, may supplant him on the throne. This sacrifice, prompted by evil counselors, results in a train of tragic episodes, including Mariamne's death and Herod's madness. The lines in which Herod speaks of thinking in gold and dreaming in silver call to mind ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... preserving Joash from the fury of Athaliah, as the Virgin afterwards saved Jesus from the wrath of Herod; Ruth personifying both the contemplative and the active life; Rebecca, Rachel, Abigail, Solomon's mother, the mother of the Maccabees, who witnessed the death of her sons; and again those whose names are inscribed under these arches; Judith and Esther, the first representative of courageous chastity, and the second of mercy ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... arranged thus: for Advent, Isaiah; Epiphany to Septuagesima, Pauline Epistles; Lent, patristic homilies (Genesis on Sundays); Passion-tide, Jeremiah; Easter to Whitsun, Acts, Catholic epistles and Apocalypse; Whitsun to August, Samuel and Kings; August to Advent, Wisdom books, Maccabees, Prophets. The extracts are often scrappy and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... were trained to war, moreover, and marshalled and led on by skilful and courageous chiefs. But the Waldenses were a primitive and simple people; they had neither king nor leader; their only sovereign was Jehovah; their only guides were their Barbes. The struggle under the Maccabees was a noble one; but it attained not the grandeur of that of the Vaudois. It was short in comparison; nor do its single exploits, brave as they were, rise to the same surpassing pitch of heroism. When read after the story of the Vaudois, the annals of Greece and Rome ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... a man who wrought his fame out of the material furnished him by the present; holding nothing sacred that did not contribute to the end, scorning nothing that did! How was it with Herod? How with the Maccabees? How with the first and second Caesars? Imitate them. Begin now. At hand see—Rome, as ready to help you as she was the ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... page, crowding out the news from Paris and Washington, displacing local Society "items," shoving the ordinary "obituaries" out of their hallowed corners, confiscating space that belonged to the Lady Maccabees and other lodges, supplanting thoughtfully prepared matter in the editorial column,—why, the next issue of the Banner would be a Jake Miller number from beginning to end. And Jake not ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... the Nabloos road, and crossing the upper portion of the valley which, lower down, after a curve becomes the valley of Jehoshaphat, we passed almost directly over the sepulchre of Simon the Just, of whom such "excellent things are spoken" in the books of the Maccabees, and in whose memory an annual festival is kept by the Jerusalem Jews on this spot on the day called [Hebrew text] rather more than a month after the passover. Two other saints are celebrated on the same day of the calendar—viz., R. Simeon bar ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... those of the Davidic reign. Even before the time of the Prophet, they had been anew conquered by Jehoshaphat, in whom the spirit of David had been revived anew; comp. 2 Chron. xx.; Ps. lxxxiii. A prelude to the fulfilment of the prophecy before us took place at the time of the Maccabees, comp. Vol. i. p. 467, 468. But as regards the fulfilment, we are not entitled to limit ourselves to the names here mentioned. These names are the accidental element in the prophecy; the thought is this: As soon as Israel realizes its destiny, it partakes ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... before Christ. In Jehoshaphat, Uzziah, and Hezekiah, the sceptre of Judah brought forth new leaves; after their return from the captivity, the place, at least, was pointed out by Zerubbabel, which the Davidic kingdom would, at some future period, again occupy. The victories of the times of the Maccabees, though they themselves were not of the tribe of Judah, served to manifest clearly that the lion's strength and the lion's courage had not yet departed from Judah. It is not without significance that Judas Maccabeus had his name thus. And ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... advantages, and involves none of the absurdity of that which would attribute the 'Ecclesiasticus' to the infamous Jason, the High Priest. More than one commentator, I find, has suspected that the Wisdom of Solomon and the second book of Maccabees were by the same author. I ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... religion more capable of giving a people true greatness and real heroism than any worldly excellence? Men of sound judgment will always find at least as much interest attached to the history of the first Maccabees as to that of Epaminondas; and the self-sacrifice of the Vendean Cathelineau, with his "beads" and his "sacred heart," will always appear to an impartial judge of human character more truly admirable than ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... enemies, as is mentioned in Ezra and Nehemiah, where we find, that while some worked, the others held the shield and spear. And even after finishing it, they were almost continually in trouble, and persecuted, as is evident from the books of Maccabees, and from Josephus. ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... the rate of 2 manehs 38 shekels or 23 14s. for each. On the whole, however, the average price seems to have been about 30 shekels. This, at any rate, was the case among the Israelites, not only in the Mosaic period (Exod. xxi. 32) but also in the time of the Maccabees (II. ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... Maccabees,[336] the High-Priest Onias, who had been dead several years before that time, appeared to Judas Maccabaeus, in the attitude of a man whose hands were outspread, and who was praying for the people of the Lord: at the same ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... window, black, overripe bananas and lettuce on which a cat was sleeping. Shelves lined with red crepe paper which was now faded and torn and concentrically spotted. Flat against the wall of the second story the signs of lodges—the Knights of Pythias, the Maccabees, the Woodmen, the Masons. ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... that Alexander ... had smitten Darius king of the Persians and Medes, that he reigned in his stead, the first over Greece." 1 Maccabees 1:1. ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... religious barriers among his subjects, and, for this end, to exterminate Jewish worship. In 168 B.C. he set up an altar to Jupiter in the temple at Jerusalem, and even compelled Jewish priests to immolate swine. Then the revolt broke out in which the family of Maccabees were the heroic leaders. Judas Maccabees recovered the temple, but fell in battle (160. B.C.). Under his brother Simon, victory was achieved, and the independence of the nation secured. The chief power remained in the hands of this family, the Asmonaean ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... the 50th degree of latitude over almost all the north of Europe. There is however reason to believe them of remote antiquity though inaccurately described; thus the following curious passage from the Book of Maccabees, (B. II. c. v.) is such a description of them, as might probably be given by an ignorant and alarmed people. "Through all the city, for the space of almost forty days, there were seen horsemen running in the air, in cloth of gold, and armed with lances, like a band of soldiers; and troops of ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... of Hebrew writing exist which are not posterior even to the Christian era, with the exception of those on the coins of the Maccabees, which are in the ancient or what is termed the Samaritan forms of the Hebrew letters. This coinage took place about ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... product of Jewish patriotism in the second century before Christ that drove M. Renan out of the Church of Rome. 'For the Catholic Church to confess,' he says in his Souvenirs, 'that Daniel is an apocryphal book of the time of the Maccabees, would be to confess that she had made a mistake; if she had made this mistake, she may have made others; she ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... services such as were rendered to England in the affair of Marconi, or to France in the affair of Panama, it must be admitted that these exhibit a humbler and more humdrum type of civic duty, and do not remind us of the more reckless virtues of the Maccabees or the Zealots. A man may be a good citizen of anywhere, but he cannot be a national hero of nowhere; and for this particular type of patriotic passion it is necessary to have a patria. The Zionists therefore are maintaining a perfectly ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... far the most interesting, not only as being the one Greek MS. of the whole Bible in the library, but also as surpassing all the other existing Greek fragments of the Scriptures in point of antiquity. The next earliest MS., containing the Books of Ruth, Kings, Esdras, Esther, and the Maccabees (1 D 2), is of the thirteenth century. The Books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon (1 A 15), are of the fifteenth century. Nearest in antiquity to the Alexandrian Bible in the British Museum is the Cotton MS. (Titus, C 15), the Codex Clarmontanus, ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... century, and is said to be used by some Arabians even at the present day. By the Jews it was called the Era of Contracts, because the Syrian governors compelled them to make use of it in civil contracts; the writers of the books of Maccabees call it the Era of Kings. But notwithstanding its general prevalence in the East for many centuries, authors using it differ much with regard to their manner of expressing dates, in consequence of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... said to have produced an opera, "Noah's Flood, or the Destruction of the World," in London in 1679, nor Seyfried, whose "Libera me" was sung at Beethoven's funeral, and who, besides Biblical operas entitled "Saul," "Abraham," "The Maccabees," and "The Israelites in the Desert," brought out a "Noah" in Vienna in 1818. Halevy left an unfinished opera, "Noe," which Bizet, who was his son-in-law, completed. Of oratorios dealing with the deluge I do not wish to speak further than to express my admiration ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... career in which ability and energy can be displayed. Till we have done this, let us not presume to say that there is no genius among the countrymen of Isaiah, no heroism among the descendants of the Maccabees. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... any remedy in general, nor ministers any hope to the individual. 2. In order to make itself endurable on scriptural grounds, it must so weaken the texts and authority of scripture, as to leave in scripture no binding ground of proof of any thing. 3. Take a pious Jew, one of the Maccabees, and compare his faith and its grounds with Priestley's; and then, for ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... destruction of books when the Buddhists were driven out of India. It would be as logical, it seems to me, to assign a post-Christian date to the Vendidad and Yasna because they had been lost and were collected anew under the auspices of a Sassanid king. We are told in the second book of the Maccabees that Antiochus Epiphanes burned the Hebrew Scriptures, and that Judas Makkabaeus made a new collection; yet nobody pretends that they ought to be assigned to the second century B.C. In fact, we must in due sincerity give some room ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... cruel persecution a rebellion flamed up under the leadership of a certain brave old priest named Mattathias. After his death his sons took up the cause. The greatest of them was Judas, who was surnamed Maccabeus, which some have thought meant the Hammerer. The whole family is known as the Maccabees. Under the skillful command of Judas victory after victory was won by his little band of Jewish warriors fighting against great armies of Greek hired soldiers. The city of Jerusalem was cleared of the detested oppressors, all except a garrison that ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... were thought miraculous and portentous in days of yore, what interpretation must needs have been put upon that vastly more picturesque phenomenon, the aurora? "Through all the city," says the Book of Maccabees, "for the space of almost forty days, there were seen horsemen running in the air, in cloth of gold, armed with lances, like a band of soldiers: and troops of horsemen in array encountering and running one against another, with shaking of shields and multitude of pikes, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Jehosaphat and Gehinnon, Mount Calvary, Mount Zion, and Mount Acre, stretched before me. The palace of King Herod, with its sumptuous halls of marble and of gold—the gorgeous Temple of Solomon—the lofty towers of Phaseolus and Mariamne—the palace of the Maccabees—the Hippodrome—the houses of many of the prophets—grew into existence again, beneath the creative force of fancy. I stood and wept. I knelt, and kissed the consecrated earth which once a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various
... B.C., passed with the rest of Judea under the rule of Syria. Antiochus the Great ruled it with mildness and justice, but the tyranny of his son, Antiochus Epiphanes, brought about the revolt, headed by the Maccabees, through which Jerusalem gained a brief independence. In 63 B.C., Pompey the Great took the city, demolished the walls and killed thousands of the people, but did not plunder it. However, nine years later Crassus robbed the temple of all its treasures. ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... a sermon—the text taken with dual appropriateness from the Book of Maccabees. Fully one in ten of the Jewish volunteers, said the preacher, had gone forth to drive out the bold invader of the Queen's dominions. Their beloved country had no more devoted citizens than the children of ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... humanizing influence which not even the leprosy bred of centuries of European despotism and oppression can resist. I am not of those who view with apprehension or aversion the race of Christ, of David and of the Maccabees, of Disraeli and of Gambetta. There is no better class of citizens than the better class of Jews, and it would be a dishonorable day for our Republic should its gates ever be closed to the victims of religious intolerance, ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann |
