2 Maccabees

Composed in the second century BCE, this Jewish text was later kept in circulation by the Church. It was written in Hellenistic Greek from a Jewish-Hellenistic standpoint, and it recounts and interprets a turbulent stretch of Jerusalem's history. The account covers the spread of Hellenizing policies and the city's establishment as a polis, the persecution carried out under Antiochus Epiphanes, including its well-known martyrdoms, and the uprising against Seleucid authority led by Judas Maccabaeus.

The work is valued as a historical source both for the events it describes and for the outlook of Judaism in the Hellenistic diaspora, which it reflects. Its perspective often differs markedly from that of 1 Maccabees, its rival account of the same period.