The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1404 page)

 
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(Heb., ‘Story Book’; Yid., Mayse Bukh). A collection of anonymous Jewish folk tales. The
Ma‘aseh Book
was first publ. in
Yiddish
in 1602 and contains 254 stories, including
Talmudic
aggadah
,
midrash
, legends, jokes, and oral traditions.

 
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see
TITHE(S)
.

 
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(
c.
300–
c.
390)
. One of the
Desert Fathers
, also known as ‘the Great’. At about the age of 30 he founded a settlement of monks in the desert of Scetis (Wadi al-Natrun), which became an important centre of Egyptian monasticism.
The
Macarian Homilies
traditionally ascribed to him seem to come rather from a writer in N. Mesopotamia in the 4th–5th cents. In modern times the
Fifty Spiritual Homilies
have been an influential mystical text (e.g. on John
Wesley
, who translated twenty-two of them into English).

 
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Maccabees, Books of
.

Jewish
apocryphal
and pseudepigraphical works containing the history of Simon the
Hasmonean
and Judah Maccabee.
1 Maccabees
, originally written in Hebrew, covers the period of Jewish history from the accession of King Antiochus Epiphanes (
c.
175 BCE) to the death of Simon the Hasmonean in 135 BCE.

 
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Machpelah, Cave of
.

Burial place of the Jewish
patriarchs
,
Abraham
,
Isaac
, and
Jacob
. The site of the Cave of Machpelah is identified with Haram el-Khalil in Hebron.

 
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