While no other text can claim this same unique authority, Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal literature such as contained in the first volume of The Researchers Library of Ancient Texts (Volume One—The Apocrypha: Includes the Books of Enoch, Jasher, and Jubilees; also available on Kindle), provides literature that often precedes or follows the chronology of biblical texts, which frequently are used or assigned as supplemental works within academic settings to help students and scholars discover or better understand cultural and historical context within the Word of God. Whether or not the information contained in the apocryphal literature is entirely precise—as is the canon of Scripture—these ancient texts provide commentators’ valuable insight into what many ancient Jews and early Christians believed when, “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets” (Heb. 1:1).
"The First book of Maccabees is a book written in Hebrew by a Jewish author after the restoration of an independent Jewish kingdom, about the latter part of the 2nd century BC. The original Hebrew is lost and the most important surviving version is the Greek translation contained in the Septuagint... The setting of the book is about a century after the conquest of Judea by the Greeks under Alexander the Great, after Alexander's empire has been divided so that Judea was part of the Greek Seleucid Empire. It tells how the Greek ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes attempted to suppress the practice of basic Jewish religious law, resulting in a Jewish revolt against Seleucid rule. The book covers the whole of the revolt, from 175 to 134 BC, highlighting how the salvation of the Jewish people in this crisis came through Mattathias' family, particularly his sons, Judas Maccabeus, Jonathan Maccabaeus, and Simon Maccabaeus, and Simon's son, John Hyrcanus." "2 Maccabees is a deuterocanonical book of the Bible, which focuses on the Jews' revolt against Antiochus IV Epiphanes and concludes with the defeat of the Syrian general Nicanor in 161 BC by Judas Maccabeus, the hero of the work." --Wikipedia
The Books of Maccabees are available in The Researchers Library of Ancient Texts (Volume One—The Apocrypha: Includes the Books of Enoch, Jasher, and Jubilees; also available on Kindle), as well as The Book of Enoch, The Book of Jasher, The Book of Jubilees, 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, Tobias, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, Susanna, Prayer of Azariah, Prayer of Manasseh, Bel and the Dragon, and Laodiceans.
