The dating of Lysias’ second expedition differs in the two principal sources. According to I Maccabees (6.20), it took place in the year 150 Seleucid era (S.E.). AS a date relating to Jewish matters, it must be set between April 162 and March 161 b.c. According to II Maccabees (13.1), the expedition took place in the year 149 S.E. AS that book uses only the Macedonian- Syrian variation of the Seleucid calendar, the count of which started in October 312, the reference is to the year between the autumn of 164 and the autumn of 163 b.c.

An examination of the possibilities based on II Maccabees’ chronology indicates that the beginning of the expedition must be dated later than midsummer 163 b.c., that is, close to the end of the year 149 in the Seleucid –Syrian calendar variation: Antiochus Epiphanes died at the end of 164 b.c., the Temple was purified, and then Judas Maccabaeus set out on protracted expeditions all over Eretz Israel. The only chronological clue regarding the end of those expeditions is the statement in II Macabees (12.31, 32) that the expedition to Transjordania ended on the eve of the Feast of Weeks-Shavuot (Sivan-June). According to I Maccabees, Judas Maccabaeus continued with his military operations in Mt Hebron and the coastal plain thereafter too (5.63–8). The siege of the Akra, which was the pretext for Lysias’ second campaign (I Macc. 6.20), began only after the completion of all these expeditions.