Judas Maccabees Series

Like Daniel, the Apocalypse of Weeks recounts world history up to the point of the persecution; it predicts that the righteous will eventually triumph and encourage resistance. Another section of Enoch, the "Book of Dreams," was likely written after the Revolt had at least partially succeeded; it portrays the events of the Revolt in the form of prophetic dream visions.

Nevertheless, a more uncertain work that has attracted much interest is the Qumran Habakkuk Commentary, part of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Qumran religious community was not on good terms with the Hasmonean religious establishment in Jerusalem and is believed to have favored the Zadokite line of succession to the High Priesthood. The commentary (pesher) describes a situation wherein a "Righteous Teacher" is unfairly driven from their post and into exile by a "Wicked Priest" and a "Man of the Lie" (possibly the same person). Many figures have been proposed as the identity of the people behind these titles; one theory goes that the Righteous Teacher was whoever held the High Priest position after Alcimus's death in 159 BCE, perhaps a Zadokite. If this person even existed, they lost their position after Jonathan Apphus, backed by his Maccabee army and his new alliance with Seleucid royal claimant Alexander Balas, took over the High Priest position in 152 BCE. Thus, the Wicked Priest would be Jonathan, and the Qumran community of the era would have consisted of religious opposition to the Hasmonean takeover: the first Essenes. The date of the work is unknown, and other scholars have proposed different candidates as possible identities of the Wicked Priest, so the identification with Jonathan is only a possibility, yet an intriguing and plausible one.

Later analysis and historiography

In the First and Second Books of the Maccabees, the Maccabean Revolt is described as a collective response to cultural oppression and national resistance to a foreign power. After the Revolt was complete, the books urged unity among the Jews; they describe little of the Hellenizing faction other than calling them lawless and corrupt and downplaying their relevance and power in the conflict. While many scholars still accept this basic framework, that the Hellenists were weak and dependent on Seleucid aid to hold influence, this view has been challenged. In the revisionist view, the heroes and villains were both Jews: a majority of the Jews cautiously supported Hellenizing High Priest Menelaus; Antiochus IV's edicts only came about due to pressure from Hellenist Jews; and the Revolt was best understood as a civil war between traditionalist Jews in the countryside and Hellenized Jews in the cities, with only occasional Seleucid intervention. Elias Bickerman is generally credited as popularizing this alternative viewpoint in 1937, and other historians such as Martin Hengel have continued the argument. For example, Josephus's account directly blames Menelaus for convincing Antiochus IV to issue his anti-Jewish decrees. Alcimus, Menelaus's replacement as High Priest, is blamed for instigating a massacre of devout Jews in 1 Maccabees rather than the Seleucids directly. The Maccabees themselves fight and exile Hellenists, most clearly in the final expulsion from the Acra and in the earlier countryside, struggles against the Tobias clan of Hellenist-friendly Jews.