 This peaceful meeting between the Nabataeans and two brothers in the first book of Maccabees seems to contradict a parallel account from the second book where a pastoral Arab tribe launched a surprise attack on the two brothers.Despite open contradiction between the two accounts, scholars tend to identify the plundering Arab tribe of the second book with the Nabataeans in the first book.They were evidently not Nabataeans, for good relations between the Maccabees and their "friends", the Nabataeans, continued to exist.