in Books 12 and 13 of his work Jewish Antiquities, paraphrasing it directly in parts, although supplementing it with other Greek histories such as Nicolaus of Damascus. He may also have consulted it for Book 1 of The Jewish War. It is not known whether Josephus's copy of 1 Maccabees was missing the final three chapters, or he simply found a better source for that era of history. During the Crusades, Pope Urban II and other church leaders used 1 Maccabees 2 to justify the concept of holy war against the Muslim kingdoms controlling the holy city of Jerusalem. Liturgical usage The Roman Catholic Lectionary makes use of texts from 1 Maccabees 1 to 6, along with texts from 2 Maccabees 6 and 7, in the weekday readings for the 33rd week in Ordinary Time, in year 1 of the two-year cycle of readings, always in November, and as one of the options available for readings for the dedication of an altar and as one of the suggested readings at a Mass celebrated to honour persecuted Christians. In the Church of England's lectionary of 1922 in the Book of Common Prayer, 1st Maccabees is appointed annually to be read in late summer/early autumn. Manuscripts and publication history As noted above, if ancient manuscripts of the hypothesized original Hebrew version existed, they have been lost. The Greek text is extant in two of the three oldest codices of the Greek Septuagint: the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus. It is not in the Codex Vaticanus. Pre-modern translations of the work were made in Latin, Syriac, and Armenian. The Latin translation is sometimes useful to identify certain changes made by Lucian of Antioch to the Greek text. With the advent of the printing press that obviated the need for scribes to manually and repeatedly copy such works, 1 Maccabees became more widely available. It was included in standard printed Christian Bibles in the deuterocanon section. A Greek version of the text was printed for the first time in 1514–1517 in the Complutensian Polyglot Bible. published a critical edition of the Greek text in 1936, an eclectic compilation of the various surviving manuscripts and the best construction of the original text. More recent English language versions of the Bible which contain 1 Maccabees include the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), Good News Translation (GNT), New American Bible, Revised Edition (NABRE). and Knox Bible. Notes