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I just read it the whole page. Old testament martyrs. Amazing story.
interesting.
Thanks for the post.
Catholic Ping!
Can some erudite person explain in simple terms why Maccabees is not in my current Bible, while it actually did appear in the original KJV Bible? Seems to me we’re missing some good stuff.
Thank you for posting, Cronos. The story is inspiring to anyone who takes a principled stand.
None of us knows, in this day and age, when our very lives may be required of us.
Can some erudite person explain in simple terms why Maccabees is not in my current Bible, while it actually did appear in the original KJV Bible? Seems to me we’re missing some good stuff.
The Seven Holy Maccabees, their mother Salome and their techer Eleazar
Synaxarion:
The names of the Holy Maccabees are Abim, Anthony, Guria, Eleazar, Eusebona, Achim, and Marcellus. They were Jews by race and exact keepers of the Laws of the Fathers. They lived during the reign of Antiochus, who was surnamed Epiphanes ("Illustrious"), the King of Syria and an implacable enemy of the Jews. Having subjugated their whole nation and done many evil things to them, not sparing to assail the most sacred matters of their Faith, he constrained them, among other things, to partake of swine's flesh, which was forbidden by the Law. Then these pious youths, on being apprehended together with their mother and their teacher, were constrained to set at nought the Law, and were subjected to unspeakable tortures: wrackings, the breaking of their bones, the flaying of their flesh, fire, dismemberment, and such things as only a tyrant's mind and a bestial soul is able to contrive. But when they had endured all things courageously and showed in deed that the mind is sovereign over the passions and is able to conquer them if it so desires, they gloriously ended their lives in torments, surrendering their life for the sake of the observance of the divine Law. The first to die was their teacher Eleazar, then all the brethren in the order of their age. As for their wondrous mother Solomone, "filled with a courageous spirit, and stirring up her womanish thoughts with a manly wrath" (II Macc. 7:21), she was present at her children's triumph over the tyrant, strengthening them in their struggle for the sake of their Faith, and enduring stout-heartedly their sufferings for the sake of their hope in the Lord. After her last and youngest son had been perfected in martyrdom, when she was about to be seized to be put to death, she cast herself into the fire that they might not touch her, and was thus deemed worthy of a blessed end together with her sons, in the year 168 before Christ.
Kontakion in the Second Tone
The Wisdom of God's own seven pillars are ye all, a seven-branched lamp that shineth with the Light Divine, ye Great Martyrs that were before the Martyrs, O all-wise Maccabees, with them pray ye the God of all that we who now sing your praises may be saved.
if there is no prophet there is no word from God
1 Machabees 9:27 And there was a great tribulation in Israel, such as was not since the day, that there was no prophet seen in Israel.