4 Maccabees
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The book of 4 Maccabees is a homily or philosophic discourse praising the supremacy of pious reason over passion. Among churches other than the Orthodox Church, it has always been regarded as apocryphal.
While once accepted as a deuterocanonical book by the Orthodox, it is increasingly relegated to an appendix of apocryphal works, one of the pseudepigrapha. The reasons for this include its inclusion of pagan thought and the differences between the its version of the dialog of the Maccabean martyrs that it portrays and a similar one in 2 Maccabees.
Synopsis
The work consists of a prologue and two main sections. The first main section advances the philosophical thesis that "right thinking" alone can control temptation, while the second illustrates this idea using examples drawn from 2 Maccabees, principally, the martyrdom of Eleazer and the Maccabeean bother and their mother under Antiochus IV Epiphanes. However, the writer often places words in the mouths of the martyrs which are not found in 2 Maccabees illustrating his point. The last chapters concern the author's impressions drawn from these martyrdoms, again emphasizing the point that "thinking clearly" is the necessary and sufficient guarantee to prevent one from sin, even in the face of the cruelest torture.
Authorship and criticism
According to some scholars, the last chapter (18) shows signs of later addition to the work, though this was disputed on the basis that the change of direction from chapter 17 fits with the view of the work as a homily read to a Greek-speaking Jewish audience on the feast of Hanukkah, where this shift would be a rhetorical element to conclude and draw the listeners into the discourse. Others hold that a homily would be based more directly on scriptural texts.
In style, the book is oratorical, but not so much as 3 Maccabees. A good amount of Stoic philosophy is cited by the author, though there is little original philosophical insight in the text. The writer appears to be an Alexandrian Jew who applied the philosophical ideas of the time to his religious ideas. This characterization is cited as the best example of syncretism between Jewish and Hellenistic thought. However, it should be noted that the book also constitutes an adamant rejection of Jewish compromise with Hellenistic culture in terms of religious practice.
The book is anonymous, but was ascribed to the first century CE Jewish historian Josephus by Eusebius and Jerome. This opinion was accepted for many years, leading to its inclusion in many editions of Josephus' works. Modern critical scholarship, however, points to great differences of language and style, so that this identification is largely abandoned today. The book is generally dated between the first century B.C.E. and the first century CE, due to its reliance on 2 Maccabees and use by Christians. It was probably written before the persecution of the Jews under Caligula, and certainly before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E.
Doctrinal content
The writer believes in the immortality of the soul, but does not affirm the Pharisaic belief in the resurrection of the body, as does 2 Maccabees. Good souls are said to live forever in happiness with the patriarchs and God, but even the evil souls are held to be immortal. The suffering and martyrdom of the pious Maccabees is seen by the author to be vicarious for the Jewish nation, and the author portrays martyrdom in general as bringing atonement for the past sins of the Jews. Little is said of the military exploits of the Judah Maccabeus and his brothers, which occupies the central focus in 1 Maccabees and, to a lesser extent, 2 Maccabees.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- DeSilva, David Arthur. 4 Maccabees. Guides to apocrypha and pseudepigrapha. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998. ISBN 9781850758969
External links
- Greek text from Septuaginta: Id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interpretes (Stuttgart: Privilegierte württembergische Biblelanstalt, 1935), via The Online Pseudepigrapha.
- English text from The Apocrypha, New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).
- Jewish Encyclopedia: IV Maccabees
- Encyclopedia Britannica: Books of the Maccabees
- An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek, Henry Barclay Swete, Cambridge University Press, 1914, page 280
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