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. Ev