This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
View text chunked by:
[265]
NOW at this time there was one whose name was Mattathias, who dwelt
at Modin, the son of John, the son of Simeon, the son of Asamoneus, a priest
of the order of Joarib, and a citizen of Jerusalem. He had five sons; John,
who was called Gaddis, and Simon, who was called Matthes, and Judas, who
was called Maccabeus, 1
and Eleazar, who was called Auran, and Jonathan, who was called Apphus.
Now this Mattathias lamented to his children the sad state of their affairs,
and the ravage made in the city, and the plundering of the temple, and
the calamities the multitude were under; and he told them that it was better
for them to die for the laws of their country, than to live so ingloriously
as they then did.
1 That this appellation of Maccabee was not first of all given to Judas Maccabeus, nor was derived from any initial letters of the Hebrew words on his banner, "Mi Kamoka Be Elire, Jehovah?" ("Who is like unto thee among the gods, O Jehovah?") Exodus 15:11 as the modern Rabbins vainly pretend, see Authent. Rec. Part I. p. 205, 206. Only we may note, by the way, that the original name of these Maccabees, and their posterity, was Asamoneans; which was derived from Asamoneus, the great-grandfather of Mattathias, as Josephus here informs us.
Flavius Josephus. The Works of Flavius Josephus. Translated by. William Whiston, A.M. Auburn and Buffalo. John E. Beardsley. 1895.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.