Cornelius a Lapide
This second book is like a continuous circular Epistle, by which the Jews dwelling in Judea write to the Jews living in Egypt about the disasters and calamities which they themselves suffered from Antiochus Epiphanes and his son Eupator; likewise, the victories which Judas, aided from heaven by Angels and by Onias and Jeremiah, reported concerning the same, and therefore they stir all to the praise of God and the giving of thanks. The whole of this book, then, is consumed in narrating the deeds of Judas Maccabeus and the Martyrs more extensively than in Book I.
Similar circular epistles were written by the Christians of Smyrna, Vienne, and Lyon, in which they recount the martyrdoms and afflictions of their faithful endured at the hands of tyrants, which survive in Eusebius, Hist. IV.xv, and Book V.I.
Concerning the author and authority of this book, and other matters relating to it, I have spoken in the Proem to Book 1. The reason for writing this epistle was that the schism between the Jews dwelling in Judea and those dwelling in Egypt might be removed, as I shall say at chapter 1, verse 1.