Introduction to the Maccabean Revolt (with Jeff Cavins) - 2026

Fr. Mike Schmitz (0:04)

Hi, my name is Fr. Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to The Bible in a Year Podcast, where we encounter God's voice and live life through the lens of scripture. The Bible in a Year Podcast is brought to you by Ascension. Using The Great Adventure Bible Timeline, we'll read all the way from Genesis to Revelation, discovering how the story of salvation unfolds and how we fit into that story today. It is the introduction to the Maccabean Revolt, and we have with us, once again, it's super grateful, Jeff Cavins, once again, to give us some context when it comes to the Maccabean Revolt. We've just left the return after the exile, and now the people of Israel are back in the land of Judah, and there is a number of books that are during this time period, the Maccabean Revolt, that not a lot of the people who are in this Bible in New York community are familiar with. So, Jeff, welcome and man, what do we do now?

Jeff Cavins (0:51)

Well, we're actually entering, I think, one of the most underrated periods and one of the most important periods in setting the table for the Messiah, for Jesus to come on to the scene. And for our wonderful Protestant friends who have been joining us on this excellent adventure, they're running into a book now that might seem a little bit foreign, and I think it would be good to take just a couple of minutes to explain that book and where did it come from, what's it talking about, and this whole issue of being inspired or deuterocanonical or apocrypha.

Fr. Mike Schmitz (1:29)

No, exactly. In fact, we have four books during this time period. We have not only First and Second Maccabees, we also have Sirach and the Book of Wisdom that are going to be not necessarily familiar with everyone who's part of this community. And so I really am grateful. You know, we've talked about some of those other deuterocanonical books in the past when we read through Judith and we read through those parts of Esther and Daniel and Tobit and Baruch. This is really, I'm really grateful that we have this opportunity for you to introduce not only the time period, but also these books because, yeah, they can be one of those like, wait, do I, how do I listen to this one? I mean, do I listen to this in the same way that I listen to all the rest of the Bible?

Or is it a different kind of an ear? Or is this, what's the story even with how we got these books and how some people don't have these books?

Jeff Cavins (2:14)

Sure. Well, you know, when I first created the Great Adventure Bible study in the timeline chart, I was just a young 25 year old pastor. And when I came to this period of Salvation history, I had what was called 400 silent years. And I, that was it. I mean, it's silent, you know? And of course, when I came back to the Catholic Church, I was blessed by getting seven more books, which were not new, but they were actually quite old. But lo and behold, it filled in that 400 year gap. And that is the Maccabees and specifically some of the events in Second Maccabees. And I think it is worth noting that there are two different canons out there in Christianity today.

You have the Protestant canon, which has 66 books, and you have the Catholic canon, which has 73 books, one of which is the Book of Maccabees, first and second, in fact, those two books. And so we have to ask ourselves the question, which comes up so often, did we as Catholics add seven books, or did Protestants take away seven books? And the answer is neither.

Neither one, in that the early church, the church that the Catholic Church springs from, the early church used what was called the Septuagint. And the Septuagint is the Greek Old Testament. And that's the book that the early church used. In fact, the church used all of that, which had Maccabees and some of these others that we were talking about in there, it had them in there all the way till the Reformation. When in the Reformation, the Reformers decided not to go with that Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, but they decided to go to a different canon, which was the Jewish canon, and that did not have those seven books. And so it's not fair to say Catholics added, and it's not fair to say that Protestants took away. But what is fair is to say that the Bible we've been using for The Great Adventure, and Bible in a Year, is the Bible that the early Church used. And so I would encourage my Protestant friends not to get upset, but to be open and say, well, you know what, if this helps me understand salvation history, and the early Church used this as the inspired Word of God, I'm at least open to what God wants to do to help me become more like Jesus.