In the series of the "Cambridge Bible for Schools" (Cambridge
University Press), we have received The First Book of Maccabees, edited by W. Fairweather, M.A., and J. Sutherland Black, LL.D. We are glad that this book has been taken in hand. Apart from its canonical position, it is of great historical value. After all, the Maccabean period was the heroic age of the Jewish people, and a period also of great literary fertility, though, probably, recent criticism has gone to extremes in attributing to this time writings, that were really earlier. The book itself the editors assign to the "first or second decade of the 1st century B.C." They speak strongly of its general trustworthiness. Some inter- esting observations are made on the religious reticence" of the writer, who never introduces the name of God. We have not had opportunity to examine the annotation in detail. It is always safe, however, to take the excellence of the "Cambridge Bible for Schools" as granted.
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