Maccabees /

The Maccabees (Hebrew: מכבים‎ or מקבים, Makabim or Maqabim; Greek Μακκαβαῖοι, /makav'εï/) were a Jewish rebel army who took control of Judea, which had been a client state of the Seleucid Empire. They founded the Hasmonean dynasty, which ruled from 164 BCE to 63 BCE, reasserting the Jewish religion, expanding the boundaries of the Land of Israel and reducing the influence of Hellenism. In the 2nd century BCE, Judea lay between the Ptolemaic Kingdom based in Egypt and the Seleucid empire based in Syria, kingdoms formed after the death of Alexander the Great (336–323 BCE). Previously under the Ptolemies, Judea had fallen to the Seleucids in ca.200 BCE. Since the rule of Alexander in the near east, there had been a process of Hellenization, which affected Judea. Some Jews, mainly those of the urban upper class, notably the Tobiad family, wished to dispense with Jewish law and to adopt a Greek lifestyle. According to the historian Victor Tcherikover, the main motive for the Tobiads' Hellenism was economic and political. Hellenizing Jews had built a gymnasium, competed internationally in Greek games, "removed their marks of circumcision and repudiated the holy covenant". When Antiochus