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Begin Typing Vigil2 Maccabees is the anonymous ἐπιτομή (2:26, 28) or digest of an earlier Maccabaean history which had been composed by a Hellenistic Jew called Jason of Cyrene. The writer condensed Jason’s five books into one. It is unnecessary to hold that his statements to this effect are simply a literary device, as though he were a Jewish Defoe who thus attempted to gain the fictitious authority of age for his own composition. Had this been the case, the contents would have been more of a unity than they are, and the lacunae would have been fewer. Besides, more than once, the style (e. g. in 13:22f) suddenly corresponds to that of an historian who is hurriedly compressing as well as popularizing some earlier source. Upon the whole the materials, the contents, and the style of the book answer fairly to the writer’s account of his own method and aims (in 2:19-32, 6:12-17, 15:37-9). His work is an abridgement and at the same time more than an abridgement. He must have omitted large sections of Jason’s treatise and summarized even what he took over, but, instead of preserving invariably either the language or the shape of his selections, he embellished the former to suit the popular taste and enlarged the latter, for the sake of edification, with pious amplifications of the miraculous element.
The outline of the epitome is thus characterized by a unity of religious feeling, rather than by any historical sequence. The introductory documents of 1:1-2:18, containing two letters, are followed by a naive preface (2:19-32), after which the epitome proper begins, with five successive pauses (3:40, 7:42, 10:9, 13:26, 15:37, perhaps after Jason). The only formal interruption is a short passage upon the doctrine of retribution as the clue to Jewish history (6:12-17). Judas Maccabaeus comes on the scene in 5:27, and, once his story is resumed (in 8:1f), it runs on to the end, the only digression being the highly-coloured tale of Antiochus’ death (9:1-29; 10:1-8 resumes the narrative dropped at 8:33). The epilogue (15:37-9) echoes the prologue. Indeed the aim of even the prefixed letters corresponds to the general purpose of the book, which is to magnify the two festivals of the Hanukka and Nicanor’s day, as the ceremonial glories which recall the heroism of Judas Maccabaeus.
2 Maccabees is not a sequel to 1 Maccabees. It is, in Luther’s words, a second book upon the Maccabaean struggle, not the second book. As the period of its narrative (175-161 B.C.) coincides with part of 1 Maccabees, a comparison of the two books might be expected therefore to clear up the problem of their relative value, and furnish a standard for valuating the second. To some extent this expectation is realized. But critical opinion has swayed curiously between an undue depreciation of 2 Maccabees as an historical document and an exaggerated claim on its behalf.
These deuterocanonical books were received as scripture in many Greek-speaking Jewish and Christian communities.