1 Maccabees is the principal historical account of the Jewish revolt against Antiochus IV Epiphanes (167–134 BC). It tells of the priest Mattathias raising the standard of resistance, his son Judas "Maccabeus" winning improbable victories, the cleansing and rededication of the Temple (commemorated by Hanukkah), and the long careers of his brothers Jonathan and Simon. A defining story of faithful resistance under religious persecution.
Originally written in Hebrew (lost); preserved in Greek translation. A sober, restrained chronicle in the style of OT historical writing.
1 Maccabees is part of the Apocrypha, so the reader opens in KJVA by default — KJV doesn't include it.
Our cross-reference dataset comes from OpenBible.info (CC-BY) — a community-curated resource that covers the Old and New Testaments only. The Apocrypha isn't yet in their dataset, so we don't have an arc-map for 1 Maccabees on this page.
1 Maccabees is still richly connected to the rest of Scripture — the early church quoted it, later writers built on it, and scholarly cross-reference editions (e.g. the Jerusalem Bible, the Nova Vulgata) catalogue those links. We're tracking the gap and will add Apocrypha cross-references when a permissive open dataset becomes available.
“God forbid that we should forsake the law and the ordinances.”
“For the victory of battle standeth not in the multitude of an host; but strength cometh from heaven.”
“Moreover Judas and his brethren with the whole congregation of Israel ordained, that the days of the dedication of the altar should be kept in their season from year to year by the space of eight days.”