Andrew > Recent Status Updates

The trouble really starts when a bloke named Jason becomes high priest and sets up a gymnasium near the temple where the gym bunnies wear hats and the priests end up playing discus more than attending to their duties. 2 Maccabees isn't a sequel to 1 Maccabees, but a different, more narratively adroit and dramatically compelling telling of the intrigues and exploits of Judas Maccabeus against the powers of the Greeks.

First book of Maccabees read, the exploits of Judas and his brothers in resisting the Greek Seleucid Empire. Machinations, intrigues, deceptions, thousands of horsemen and foot soldiers moving back and forth, and people getting burnt in strongholds. Violence times for the Jewish Hasmonean dynasty and their campaigns for independence and religious purity. One book to go.

Have just read the short exilic texts - extra bits of the Book of Daniel plus one - Song of the Three Holy Children (the song purportedly sung in the fiery furnace), History of Susanna (in which Daniel first receives public notoriety by bringing two old pervy lechers to justice) and Bel and the Dragon (when Daniel brings down a couple of Persian gods). Also, the Prayer of Manasses, King of Judah, captive in Babylon.

Have just read Baruch. Baruch being Jeremiah's scribe, the book deals with the new context of exile under Nebuchadnezzar. I think of all the books I've read so far from the Septugent Apocrypha, this is the one that sounds most like the canonical books, in terms of content and quality.