Jason of Cyrene was a Hellenistic Jew who lived about 100 BCE and wrote a history of the times of the Maccabees down to the victory over Nicanor (175-161). This work is said to have been in five books and formed the basis of the present 2 Maccabees. The term Hellenistic (established by the German historian Johann Gustav Droysen) in the history of the ancient world is used to refer to the shift from a culture dominated by ethnic Greeks, however scattered geographically, to a culture dominated by Greek-speakers of whatever ethnicity, and from the political dominance... Centuries: 2nd century BC - 1st century BC - 1st century Decades: 130s BC 120s BC 110s BC - 100s BC - 90s BC 80s BC 70s BC 60s BC 50s BC Years: 105 BC 104 BC 103 BC 102 BC 101 BC - 100 BC - 99 BC 98 BC 97 BC 96 BC 95... The Maccabees were a Jewish family who fought against the rule of Antiochus IV Epiphanes of the Hellenistic Seleucid dynasty, who was succeeded by his infant son Antiochus V Eupator. ... 2 Maccabees is a deuterocanonical book of the Bible which focuses on the Jews revolt against Antiochus and concludes with the defeat of the Syrian general Nicanor in 161 BC by Judas Maccabeus, the hero of the work. ...

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