← All fourteen books

The most valuable of these books as history: a sober, careful account of the Seleucid persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes, the revolt of the Maccabees, the cleansing of the Temple (the origin of Hanukkah), and the rise of the Hasmonean house, 175–134 B.C. Indispensable for the four hundred 'silent years' between Malachi and Matthew — history to be thanked for, and its own pages never claim the Spirit's inspiration ('the prophets ceased,' 9:27).