2 Maccabees, also known as the Second Book of Maccabees, Second Maccabees, and abbreviated as 2 Macc., is a deuterocanonical book which recounts the persecution of Jews under King Antiochus IV Epiphanes and the Maccabean Revolt against him. It concludes with the defeat of the Seleucid Empire general Nicanor in 161 BC by Judas Maccabeus, the leader of the Maccabees.
A Byzantine-style fresco at the Santa Maria Antiqua church in Rome, likely painted around 650 AD. It depicts the woman and her seven sons (here named Solomne) and Eleazar, their teacher. The story of their martyrdom is the most famous part of 2 Maccabees.
The Triumph of Judas Maccabeus, a 1630s work by Peter Paul Rubens. The scene depicted is from 2 Maccabees: After a campaign in Idumea, some Jews fell against Gorgias's forces. According to the epitomist, these Jews died because they had idols on them; Judas makes a sin offering in recompense. This offering would become cited in the 1400s and 1500s as a defense of Catholic doctrine on purgatory and indulgences.
The deuterocanonical books, meaning "Of, pertaining to, or constituting a second canon," collectively known as the Deuterocanon (DC), are certain books and passages considered to be canonical books of the Old Testament by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Assyrian Church of the East, but which modern Jews and Protestants regard as apocrypha.
Copies of the Luther Bible include the deuterocanonical books as an intertestamental section between the Old Testament and New Testament; they are termed the "Apocrypha" in Christian Churches having their origins in the Reformation.
