Judas Maccabee

• heroic exploits

121:2.7The Jew­ish peo­ple of this time, al­though un­der Ro­man su­zer­ainty, en­joyed a con­sid­er­able de­gree of self-gov­ern­ment and, re­mem­ber­ing the then only re­cent heroic ex­ploits of de­liv­er­ance ex­e­cuted by Ju­das Mac­cabee and his im­me­di­ate suc­ces­sors, were vi­brant with the ex­pec­ta­tion of the im­me­di­ate ap­pear­ance of a still greater de­liv­erer, the long-ex­pected Mes­siah.

• restoration of Mosaic services by

123:3.5Hav­ing met John, who came from near Je­ru­sa­lem, Je­sus be­gan to evince an un­usual in­ter­est in the his­tory of Is­rael and to in­quire in great de­tail as to the mean­ing of the Sab­bath rites, the syn­a­gogue ser­mons, and the re­cur­ring feasts of com­mem­o­ra­tion. His fa­ther ex­plained to him the mean­ing of all these sea­sons. The first was the mid­win­ter fes­tive il­lu­mi­na­tion, last­ing eight days, start­ing out with one can­dle the first night and adding one each suc­ces­sive night; this com­mem­o­rated the ded­i­ca­tion of the tem­ple af­ter the restora­tion of the Mo­saic ser­vices by Ju­das Mac­cabee. Next came the early spring­time cel­e­bra­tion of Purim, the feast of Es­ther and Is­rael’s de­liv­er­ance through her. Then fol­lowed the solemn Pass­over, which the adults cel­e­brated in Je­ru­sa­lem when­ever pos­si­ble, while at home the chil­dren would re­mem­ber that no leav­ened bread was to be eaten for the whole week. Later came the feast of the first-fruits, the har­vest in­gath­er­ing; and last, the most solemn of all, the feast of the new year, the day of atone­ment. While some of these cel­e­bra­tions and ob­ser­vances were dif­fi­cult for Je­sus’ young mind to un­der­stand, he pon­dered them se­ri­ously and then en­tered fully into the joy of the feast of taber­na­cles, the an­nual va­ca­tion sea­son of the whole Jew­ish peo­ple, the time when they camped out in leafy booths and gave them­selves up to mirth and plea­sure.

• disappointment of reign

136:8.8Je­sus por­trayed to all the worlds of his vast uni­verse the folly of cre­at­ing ar­ti­fi­cial sit­u­a­tions for the pur­pose of ex­hibit­ing ar­bi­trary au­thor­ity or of in­dulging ex­cep­tional power for the pur­pose of en­hanc­ing moral val­ues or ac­cel­er­at­ing spir­i­tual prog­ress. Je­sus de­cided that he would not lend his mis­sion on earth to a rep­e­ti­tion of the dis­ap­point­ment of the reign of the Mac­cabees. He re­fused to pros­ti­tute his di­vine at­tri­butes for the pur­pose of ac­quir­ing un­earned pop­u­lar­ity or for gain­ing po­lit­i­cal pres­tige. He would not coun­te­nance the trans­mu­ta­tion of di­vine and cre­ative en­ergy into na­tional power or in­ter­na­tional pres­tige. Je­sus of Naz­a­reth re­fused to com­pro­mise with evil, much less to con­sort with sin. The Mas­ter tri­umphantly put loy­alty to his Fa­ther’s will above ev­ery other earthly and tem­po­ral con­sid­er­a­tion.

• Jews removed from Perea in times of

165:0.3Perea at this time was about equally gen­tile and Jew­ish, the Jews hav­ing been gen­er­ally re­moved from these re­gions dur­ing the times of Ju­das Mac­cabee. Perea was the most beau­ti­ful and pic­turesque prov­ince of all Pales­tine. It was gen­er­ally re­ferred to by the Jews as “the land be­yond the Jor­dan.”