II.  Character and Contents of ii Maccabees.  In marked contrast with I Maccabees is the second book which bears this name.  The author states in 2:19-32 that it was based on an earlier five-volume history written by Jason, of Cyrene, in northern Africa.  The final epitomizer of this earlier work probably lived not long after 50 B.C.  Jason himself appears to have lived somewhere between 160 and 140 B.C. and to have written from northern Syria.  The language of the original was evidently Greek.  The aim of the author was didactic rather than historical, and he drew freely from popular tradition.  In general character it corresponds closely to the work of the Chronicler, who compiled the Old Testament books of Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah.  The miraculous element is prominent, numbers are frequently enlarged, and Israel’s disasters are minimized.  Notwithstanding all of its obvious faults, ii Maccabees has preserved many important historical facts.  Where its testimony differs from that of I Maccabees, the latter in general should be followed, but its account of the events which led to the Maccabean uprising are much more detailed than those of I Maccabees, which it supplements at many important points.  With the aid of these two histories it is possible to gain a remarkably vivid and detailed conception of the half-century that witnessed the reawakening of Judaism and the birth of a new national spirit.

III.  Aggressive Character of Hellenic Culture.  Jewish life and religion were at times almost uprooted, but never fundamentally transformed by the Babylonian and Persian conquerors.  Alexander, however, and those who followed in his wake introduced an entirely new and aggressive force into the life and thought of Palestine.  The centuries that began with 332 B.C. witnessed the most important struggle that the world has ever seen.  It was fought not on the open battle-field, but wherever in Palestine and the lands of the dispersion the currents of that ancient life and commerce met and mingled.  It was the age-long conflict between Hellenism and Judaism, those two mighty forces that had long been maturing in the coast lands of the northern and eastern Mediterranean.  The outcome of this contest was destined to affect the civilization and faith of all the world throughout the ages.

Judaism represented the life and faith of a peasant people, while Hellenism was born in the city.  Wherever Hellenism went, it found expression in civic life.  The heathen races of Palestine, the Phoenicians and Philistines on the coast, and the east-Jordan peoples readily welcomed the superior civilization of the conquerors.  It appealed powerfully to their intellectual, social, and aesthetic sense, and, in the debased form that it assumed in the East, to their passions.  Even the Samaritans readily accepted it; and the city of Samaria was settled by a colony of Macedonian soldiers.  The ancient cities of Gaza, Askelon, Accho under the