Maccabee's Study Guide

[kicktom]

I participate in an ecumenical Bible Study with some of my colleagues at work. Some of my colleagues accepted an invitation to a luncheon where the speaker was Gary Michuta, the author of a new book, Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger. This prompted a discussion at our next gathering where we were trying to decide what to study next (we had just finished studying Galatians). The group decided to go forward and study Maccabees and ask me, the Catholic, to lead our group.

Our study group has used books (usually protestant authors) in the past that have a 8 to 12 short chapters to help guide and promote group discussion. Can someone suggest a good study guide for 1 Maccabees?

 

[mccorm45]

Well, to be honest there is not a lot out there.

However, some of these might help you lead the group:

The Navarre Bible: Chronicles to Maccabees
amazon.com/Navarre-Bible-Chronicles-Maccabees-Testament/dp/1889334847/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219840982&sr=1-1

or

If you have an edition of Oxford University Press Catholic Study Bible, they have a reading guide for each book of the Bible. I know that there is one there for both Maccabees.

or

Collegeville Bible Study Series
amazon.com/Maccabees-Second-Collegeville-Commentary-Testament/dp/0814614191/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219841188&sr=1-2

 

[juliamajor]

Look under Apocrypha(a term RC don’t use) but you’ll find more books listed that way. I used a book called:Introducing the Apocrypha:Message, context & significance" by David Desilva. the guy isn’t Catholic but it is not nasty toward Catholics and actually shows the usefulness of the Dueteros and importance. Lot’s of good info.Also anchor Yale Bible Commentary on Maccabees- on amazon Really expensive.I got mine at a book sale

 

[tobinatorstark]

I would look into the Haydock Commentary for answers

 

[Fidelis]

As you’re finding out,. there’s not much out there in the way of a ready-made Bible study for these books. You might have to make them up yourself, and style it upon the model of studies your group is used to doing (8–12 weeks).

It’s going to be kind of tough because the two books together are kind of long. Also, they are the same basic story told from two different perspectives and they also overlap somewhat as far as the period of time they cover.

What you’ll probably have to end up doing is taking a summary account of the main flow of the story, such as found here:

catholic.com/thisrock/1993/9301otg.asp

and use that as sort of the framework. You can then take the key events and theological concepts of the books and plug them into the storyline.I’m sure you can get 10–12 major segments that you can concentrate on each week. You don’t want to study the entire books verse by verse anyway because, frankly, there’s a lot of historical detail in these books (like there is in Kings and Chronicles) that can be too arcane to be studied in a group.

For reference resources, if you can get them, I’d recommend The Catholic Study Bible, the Navarre Bible, the Holman Historical Bible Atlas, and *Introduction to Scripture *(by Scott Hahn).

Good luck. Someone in my Bible Study group has asked me to consider leading a study on the deuterocanonicals when we finish our current study in October, so I’m in the same boat as you.