Prologue, a reflection on 2 Maccabees 2:19-32

These verses are a preface to the story of Judas Maccabeus and his brothers, their efforts at protection and defense from foreign intrusion. Whereas another author has published a five-volume work containing a flood of statistics, this document is intended to be easy to read and to memorize. Abbreviating is hard since it involves a lot of choices. The original historian had to include discussion of matters from every side. In this work, the goal is brevity so some details are omitted.