On Christmas day, recall how light heralded the coming of Light to a world filled with darkness; darkness that can only be overcome by the clarity of God’s spirit among us – a babe who is Emmanuel.
If there was a ‘dark age’ in man’s past, the period of relative quiet between the writing of the last great biblical prophecies concerning Christ and the end of the age is probably the best candidate to retain the title, despite the fact that secular historians apply that appellation to the medieval period. In most translations of the Bible this interval of about 400 years, where the Jews awaited the messiah, lacks written accounts. There are, however, books that were penned during that time when Persia lost its empire to Alexander the Great, and then his divided conquests were swallowed up by Rome. Only a few of these books hold a place among Canon, whereas most have been allocated to a grouping of writings called Apocrypha. Among them are the chronicles of the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid Empire, one of the remaining thirds of Alexander’s realm.
