4th Book of Maccabees

The present study explores the dynamic of persuasion and force in Acts within the context of Greco- Roman and Jewish political thought, with special reference to 4 Maccabees. It also constitutes a response to C. Kavin Rowe’s argument for two closely related points, namely, that Acts rejects statecraft and and that it leaves no room for coercion, which conflicts with the nature of Jesus as Lord. After first clarifying what is at stake for Rowe theologically (§1), I survey the themes of persuasion and force in Acts, arguing that the early Christian community is portrayed in terms of the ideal polity. A fundamental element of this portrayal is the fact that Acts shows the early Christian leaders to be extremely persuasive, divinely inspired, while Jewish, Greek and Roman leaders resort to force in an effort to stop the expansion of the gospel (§2.1). This is supplemented by a brief discussion of 4 Maccabees (§2.2). Finally, I demonstrate that Acts preserves a place for force within the context of the Christian community in the elements of divinely initiated force evident in the death of Ananias and Sapphira, among other events (§3). I conclude that the dynamic of persuasion and force, along with other civic themes, belies Rowe’s argument that Acts rejects “statecraft” and coercion, showing that both points are problematized rather than proven by the narrative Acts in its ancient context of Greco-Roman political thought.

In this book, Ari Mermelstein examines the mutually-reinforcing relationship between power and emotion in ancient Judaism. Ancient Jewish writers in both Palestine and the diaspora contended that Jewish identity entails not simply allegiance to God and performance of the commandments but also the acquisition of specific emotional norms. These rules regarding feeling were both shaped by and responses to networks of power - God, the foreign empire, and other groups of Jews - which threatened Jews' sense of agency. According to these writers, emotional communities that felt Jewish would succeed in neutralizing the power wielded over them by others and, depending on the circumstances, restore their power to acculturate, maintain their Jewish identity, and achieve redemption. An important contribution to the history of emotions, this book argues that power relations are the basis for historical changes in emotion discourse.

In this book, Ari Mermelstein examines the mutually-reinforcing relationship between power and emotion in ancient Judaism. Ancient Jewish writers in both Palestine and the diaspora contended that Jewish identity entails not simply allegiance to God and performance of the commandments but also the acquisition of specific emotional norms. These rules regarding feeling were both shaped by and responses to networks of power - God, the foreign empire, and other groups of Jews - which threatened Jews' sense of agency. According to these writers, emotional communities that felt Jewish would succeed in neutralizing the power wielded over them by others and, depending on the circumstances, restore their power to acculturate, maintain their Jewish identity, and achieve redemption. An important contribution to the history of emotions, this book argues that power relations are the basis for historical changes in emotion discourse.

Scholars since Dibelius have commonly characterized the Lucan Jesus as a “martyr,” an innocent man whose unjust death is exemplary but not atoning or salvific. This article first compares the Lucan passion narrative with selected Jewish texts that feature martyrdom or noble death, then considers parallels to the noble death of Socrates, the persecuted righteous person in Wisdom 2–3, and the violent death of the prophets. The study concludes that the Third Gospel’s portrayal of Jesus’ death shares more affinities with the violent deaths of the prophets and the persecution of the righteous than with Jewish martyrdoms or the death of Socrates.

The present paper sets out to analyze the extent to which the fifteenth funeral homily printed by Ioan Zoba in his sermon collection titled “The Golden Casket” (1683) is indebted to David Pareus’ commentary on Genesis printed in 1609 in Frankfurt. Far from being an original work, the sermon is suffused with exegetical observations which were made by the Heidelberg-based Reformed scholar, whose works were hugely influential among the Hungarian religious intelligentsia. The last section of the paper probes the influence which 4 Maccabees might have had on Zoba’s notion of στοργή.

Jewish observance of a set of legal practices constituted the most obvious distinction between Jew and Gentile in antiquity. Yet Jewish ritual practice did not only affect the ways in which Jews acted but also how they felt about their Jewishness and their connection to the wider culture. Law and emotion play mutually reinforcing roles in both shaping and reflecting a society's values, an observation that invites the following questions: how did observance of Jewish dietary laws make Jews feel, and which emotional norms were involved in the production of law? The emotions of those who observed the kosher food laws were variously characterized in ancient Jewish texts as hate, a self-controlled repudiation of negative emotion, or disgust. The various opinions about how to understand the emotions that animate the dietary laws were all attempts to define the power relations between Jews and the surrounding world and address the following question: did Jews enjoy the power to integrate into their Greco-Roman surroundings?

This paper aims to focus about differences in the use of biblical figure of Maccabees presented by chroniclers of “first crusade”. In particular, the analysis of Liber of Raymond of Aguilers, Historia Hierosolymitana of Fulcher of Chartres, and Dei Gesta per Francos of Guibert of Nogent allow an evaluation of devices of biblical tipology in the early twelfth century. The events of the “first crusade” (1095-1099) lead to a rethinking of Maccabees and their struggle against enemies of their people, suggesting medieval chroniclers to drew relationships between contemporaries crusaders and ancient Jewish warriors. Briefly, our analysis underscore the high flexibility and creativity of biblical exegesis to understanding the present.

Does the Gospel of John portray Jesus’ death as an atoning sacrifice? This paper offers a new approach to the revelation vs. sacrifice impasse in scholarship, arguing that Jesus’ atoning death in John should be understood with reference to the non-cultic atoning deaths of the Jewish martyrdom traditions. After critically engaging scholar- ship, I contextualize John within post-biblical debates regarding sacrificial martyrdom, focusing on the competing reconfigurations of non-cultic atonement in the Maccabean literature. I subsequently show how Jesus’ atoning martyrdom reveals his anti-violent way of the cross as the true martyrdom and atoning sacrifice accepted by God, thereby resolving key tensions within Johannine scholarship. I then demonstrate how this vision of atonement addresses John’s understanding of sin as ignorance and addresses an audience itself facing threats of martyrdom (John 16:2). I conclude with some reflections on how John’s vision of atonement critically differs from later theological theories, particularly penal substitution.

The present study explores the themes of persuasion and force in Greco-Roman political thought and their appropriation in 4 Maccabees. I argue that among Greco-Roman political writers, stretching from Plato to Plutarch, the problem of balancing persuasion and force and their relationship to civic virtues cut to the heart of the varied constitutional theories and proposals. While persuasion was preferred in ideal situations, force was recognized to be an important corollary for the masses (§1). Turning to 4 Maccabees, a good example of the Jewish appropriation of the dominant political philosophy, I demonstrate that the political persuasion/force dynamic is foundational both to the philosophical prologue and the martyr narrative (§2).

The Jewish-Hellenistic texts of 2 and (especially) 4 Maccabees and the Christian-Hellenistic Acts of the Apostles are generally considered to be disparate sources, and their similarities, which are rarely if ever discussed, have not been explored. However, a careful reading of an episode in each of these three texts reveals a shared use of an epiphany motif and invites a discussion of the intertextuality present between this canonical Christian source and the texts of 2 and 4 Maccabees. In this paper I will investigate the nature of 2 Maccabees 3’s and 4 Maccabees 4’s influence on Acts 9.1−̵̵̵̵̵9 and to ask what this influence indicates about the interaction of these sources.

The following syllabus was used for an advanced seminar on the flood narrative (Genesis 6-9) during the spring term of 2012. It was chosen because it is the only biblical narrative that has clear connections to all the major literatures relevant for the study of the Hebrew Bible: the ancient Near East, the Greco-Roman world, the Documentary Hypothesis concerning the composition of the Pentateuch, intertextual allusions within the Hebrew Bible, and all major postbiblical literature: apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, Josephus, rabbinic literature, the New Testament, the Nag Hammadi texts, the Church Fathers and the Qur’an. For each class students read a primary source and prepared brief introductions on that source, using suggested reference guides. As a final paper students were requested to choose a biblical story, and write a seminar paper following the same exercise, and searching for relevant material using suggested guides including Kugel’s book, Ginzberg’s Legends, and various indices of these ancient texts.

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In questo contributo cercheremo di mettere a fuoco come il processo di trasmissione della fede di generazione in generazione venga concepito e realizzato nel giudaismo antico. In relazione a questo tema, in particolare, faremo riferimento ad alcuni testi paradigmatici dell’Antico Testamento e della letteratura giudaica di epoca ellenistico-romana. In un primo momento ci soffermeremo brevemente su alcuni passaggi noti del libro del Deuteronomio e sul Salmo 78. In un seguito, analizzeremo alcune pericopi del libro del Siracide ed altri testi del IV libro dei Maccabei e delle opere di Flavio Giuseppe. Sebbene si tratti di scritti di origine, datazione e genere diverso, ciascuno nella sua specificità ci aiuterà ad acquisire una migliore conoscenza di alcuni aspetti fondamentali legati alla trasmissione della fede nella tradizione dell’antico Israele. In particolare si tenterà di interrogare i testi al fine di comprendere meglio: 1. Quali siano gli attori della trasmissione della fede e come questi concepiscano il loro ruolo all’interno della società giudaica; 2. Quali siano i contenuti trasmessi; 3. Quali siano le modalità e le circostanze storico-sociali in cui tale trasmissione si svolge.

In Jewish tradition the five books of Moses hold the place of honor in Israel's sacred writings as the Torah or "instruction" of God. Some people, even in ancient times, seemed to emphasize the legislative teachings or commandments, so the Greek translators chose the word "Nomos" or "Law" to render Torah. Indeed, laws provide the practical norms whereby people guide their lives and teach their offspring. However, in most cultures legislation has its complement in inspiring narratives. Heroes and heroines of times long past are presented as worthy of imitation. They exemplify the ideal that offers a synthesis about the meaning of life. Jews recognize that commandments offer a basis for halakhah, the way to go in life, which is completed by haggadah, a set of narratives presenting insights regarding imitation of God in the ambiguities of human life.

My study of edifying narratives will be divided into two parts: 1) developments of the Joseph narrative from the Book of Genesis; and 2) the accounts of martyrdom in the Second and Fourth Books of Maccabees.

The copyright is held by Peter Lang. Learn more about Of Scholars, Savants and Their Texts: Essays in Honor of Arthur Hymanat at http://bit.ly/19EUcU5.

This essay examines the contrasting ways in which the sacrifice of
children is portrayed in Jewish and Christian martyrologies. In these narratives of extreme persecution and suffering, death was often seen to be the way in which religious integrity and identity was preserved. It is argued that Jewish martyr narratives—for example, the First Crusade, Masada, and the Maccabees—reflect a developed notion of collective martyrdom, such that the deaths of children, even at the hands of their parents, are a necessary component in Jewish identity formation. By contrast, early Christianity martyr texts reflect an ambivalence towards
children, to the extent that they are viewed as a potential hindrance to the successful martyrdom of their Christian mothers. Children have to be abandoned for women to retain their Christian identity.

Suffering in Ancient Worldview investigates representative Christian, Roman Stoic and Jewish perspectives on suffering. Tabb presents a close reading of representative texts from Seneca's essays and letters, Acts, and 4 Maccabees in order to highlight the respective authors' understanding of suffering, working through their perspectives on God, humanity, the world's problem and its solution, and the future. All three authors are shown to both expect and accept suffering as a present reality governed by God's sovereign purposes, however defined.

Strikingly, all three of the authors affirm that suffering is not humanity's fundamental problem and it instead functions as a cipher for other things to be displayed. For Seneca, this means an opportunity for the sufferer to show virtue. For Luke and the author of 4 Maccabees this means suffering as an indication of the world's brokenness due to sin, which can then play a role in salvation. Luke presents the creator and covenant God of Israel acting through his suffering to accomplish salvation and restoration for the world marred by sin and suffering.