In Protestant Bibles, history seems to leave off with the return of the exiles from Babylon in 539 BC to rebuild Jerusalem in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah and then skips ahead five centuries to the birth of Jesus in the gospels, leaving readers to wonder what happened in between. The period included massive change as Alexander the Great overthrew the Persian Empire whose territories, including Judea, were contested by his successors, the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids of Syria, leading ultimately to Roman conquest and dominion. In the interim, a priestly Judean family known alternatively as the Hasmoneans or the Maccabees led a successful revolt and established a relatively short-lived independent kingdom. The story of their revolt and their kingdom is told in no less than nine books of the Maccabees. While none of these were included in the Jewish or Protestant Bibles, the 1st and 2nd books of the Maccabees are included in the Catholic and Orthodox canons, while the Orthodox church also recognizes 3rd and 4th Maccabees as scripture. And while the 5th and 6th books of Maccabees are not considered scripture by any church, the Ethiopian Bible includes three unique Ethiopic books of Maccabees. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will lead a deep dive into the many texts that attempt to tell the story of the Maccabean revolt and consider how each compares with the rest of the historical record.