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1 Maccabees 2:39-41
New Catholic Bible
1 Maccabees 2:39-41
New Catholic Bible
39 Mattathias Organizes the Resistance.[a] When Mattathias and his friends were informed of this, they grieved deeply for them. 40 “If we all do as our kindred have done,” they said to one another, “and refuse to fight against the Gentiles in defense of our lives and our traditions, they will soon wipe us off the face of the earth.” 41 On that day they formulated this decision: “Let us fight against anyone who attacks us on the Sabbath, so that we will not all be killed, as happened to our kindred who died in their hiding places.”
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- 1 Maccabees 2:39 Mattathias is joined by the Hasideans, the “pious,” a group of fervent Jews who would give rise to the Pharisees (and probably the Essenes). At first they had resisted passively (1 Mac 1:62f; 2:37), but now they turned to active resistance. They would later oppose the Maccabean movement as too political.
