The revolt began in the village of Modin, when an aged priest named Mattathias refused to offer the king's idolatrous sacrifice, killed the Jew who stepped forward to do it and the royal officer beside him, and fled to the hills calling, "Whoever is zealous for the law, follow me!" (ISBE, "Maccabaeus; Maccabees," and "Asmoneans," restating 1 Maccabees 2). Mattathias died within the year (166 BC), leaving the fight to his sons, above all to Judas, surnamed Maccabeus. The name probably comes from the Hebrew for "hammer" (the ISBE compares the medieval "hammer of heretics"), and Judas earned it: against repeatedly larger Syrian armies he won a string of guerrilla victories at Beth-horon, Emmaus, and Beth-zur that "inspired the Syrians with awe" (ISBE, "Asmoneans").
In 165/164 BC Judas retook Jerusalem and cleansed the temple, tearing down the defiled altar, building a new one, and rededicating the sanctuary to the LORD, "just five years after its defilement," the ISBE notes. "Thus the Jewish 'Festival of Lights' came into existence" (ISBE, "Asmoneans"). That festival is Hanukkah, the Feast of Dedication, and it is the one moment of this whole period that steps directly onto the pages of the New Testament: "And it was at Jerusalem the feast of the dedication, and it was winter. And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon's porch" (John 10:22–23). When Jesus keeps Hanukkah, he is keeping the memory of the Maccabees.
1 Maccabees, Charles' editor observes, is "a sober and, on the whole, trustworthy account of the Jewish struggle for religious liberty and political independence during the years 175–135 BC", striking for the fact that, unlike the older Scriptures, it never mentions God by name and credits victory as much to courage and cunning as to heaven (Charles APOT, 1 Maccabees, Oesterley's introduction). It is history written close to the events, by a patriot proud of what his people had done.