Maccabeanadj.n.

1609 B. Jonson Key Keeper in M. Butler Re-presenting Ben Jonson (1999) 138 I could make ye more vpward allusions, as to the foure monarchies which wer a machabean, with an Alexandrian, & with a Cesaryan beard.

1632 W. Lithgow Totall Disc. Trav. vi. 243 The Machabean Princes of Iury were onely foure.

1821 R. Laurence Bk. of Enoch 207 Between the period of the captivity, and the rise of the Maccabæan dynasty.

1840 J. H. Howlett Metrical Chronol. (ed. 3) 16 Under the Maccabaean princes, what did the Jews become?

1890 A. J. Church & R. Seeley (title) The hammer, a story of Maccabean times.

1920 Q. Rev. July 4 His [sc. Disraeli's] party reaped the benefit of his Maccabean courage.

1952 H. H. Gerth & D. A. Martindale tr. M. Weber Anc. Judaism iv. xiv. 360 The high priest Onias, who in the confusion of Maccabean party struggles had escaped to Egypt..had not scrupled to build a temple there.

1965 N. Frye in C. F. Klinck Lit. Hist. Canada 829 I use a Jewish metaphor because there is something Hebraic about the Canadian tendency to read its conquest of a promised land, its Maccabean victories of 1812,..as oracles of a future.

1991 Classical Rev. 41 424 That Pharisaism existed long before the Maccabean era is evident from a number of texts, preserved as authoritative in rabbinic literature.

a1831 Encycl. Metrop. (1845) IX. 643/2 Hence, all who fought under that standard were called Maccabees, or Maccabeans.

1949 A. Koestler Promise & Fulfilm. i. xiii. 146 It was Jewry's V-day—the first since the time of the Maccabeans.