likely legitimate and matched what would be expected of such Seleucid negotiations. Archaeological evidence supported many of the references made to Seleucid leadership, causing historians to think that Jason and the epitomist must have had better knowledge of internal Seleucid affairs than the author of 1 Maccabees. As an example, 2 Maccabees appears to be more reliable and honest on the date of the death of Antiochus IV. Archaeological evidence supports the claim in 2 Maccabees he died before the cleansing of the Temple, while 1 Maccabees moves his death later to hide the fact that Lysias abandoned his campaign in Judea not due to the efforts of the Maccabees at the Battle of Beth Zur, but rather to respond to political turmoil resulting from Antiochus's death. 2 Maccabees writes that Antiochus's decrees were targeted against Judea and Samaria, which historians find more likely than the claim in 1 Maccabees that he demanded religious standardization across the entire empire. Even to the extent that 2 Maccabees is still distrusted as history to a degree, the fact that it is a genuinely independent source is considered invaluable to historians. Many events in the Hellenistic and Roman periods have only passing mentions that they occurred; those that do have a detailed source often only have a single such detailed source, leaving it difficult to determine that author's biases or errors. For example, the Great Revolt against the Romans in 64–73 AD is only closely recorded by Josephus's The Jewish War. The Maccabean Revolt having two independent detailed contemporary histories is a rarity. Manuscripts Early manuscripts of the Septuagint were not uniform in their lists of books. 2 Maccabees is found in the 5th century Codex Alexandrinus which includes all of 1, 2, 3, and 4 Maccabees, as well as the 8th century Codex Venetus. 2 Maccabees is missing from the Codex Vaticanus (which also lacks 1 Maccabees) and the Codex Sinaiticus (which also lacks 3 Maccabees). Additionally, other ancient fragments have been found, albeit with some attributed to Lucian of Antioch who is considered to have "improved" some of his renditions with unknown other material, leading to variant readings. Pre-modern Latin, Syriac, and Armenian translations exist, as well as a fragment in Akhmimic Coptic, but they mostly match the Greek, or the Lucianic renditions of the Greek in the case of the Syriac versions. Robert Hanhart created a critical edition of the