Prof. Daniel Schwarez - Maccabees 1 & 2 | The Lecture in Full

things not as good as it used to be or what's easy yours did Tamar say I'm going to be speaking about the book of macabees of Maccabee more the books so one of the main points I have to make tonight if you remember nothing else is that although you always hear people speaking about the book of Maccabees or sit for a Maccabean there there's no such thing if you want to be accurate and I hope to show you tonight if you want to have something interesting to say there are interesting differences among the four books of Maccabees I'll be speaking tonight about the first two of them but the Septuagint the Greek translation of the Bible is preserved by Christians and since antiquity and came down until today and therefore the basis of the Christian Canon which happens to preserve a number of Jewish books that the Jews didn't bother to preserve perhaps for good reason you tell me at the end of the lecture included four books of Maccabees of which the first two are roughly parallel in terms of their topics and I'll discuss that in some detail as we go on the third one has nothing to do with the Maccabees at all it has to do with an event which occurred in Egypt or didn't occur in Egypt fifty years before the time of the Maccabees and whoever gave it the name just aside it was ancient history so that's like books of Maccabees when there's nothing to do with our topic and the fourth book of Maccabees is something of a rewriting of the second book of Maccabees a philosophically minded writer took the second book of Maccabees focused on the stories it has about martyrs like the stories you know of Hana and her seven children and the old man Eleazar and turned it into an essay about the relationship of human will and human suffering and I'm not going to speak about that book either I'll speak about the first two books of Maccabees tonight and if you remember nothing else then remember that they are two different books in Hebrew we call them set from alchemy of Ephraim al-kabun bet in the standard Hebrew Edition one of them is green and one of them is is blue and I'll show you there are some other differences as well to illustrate what I'm talking today I brought two editions this is a Greek edition of first Maccabees this is a Greek English edition of second Maccabees I'll simply use them sometimes when I want to illustrate the difference between the two books I hope you all have the handout and I'll just go from the beginning to the end on the handout so I'll start with some basic data about the two books comparing them they're both books of history they deal with overlapping periods of history very exciting periods of history and formative periods of history from the point of view of the Jews in antiquity the period which saw the rise of the only sovereign Jewish state since the time of the first Temple period and until 1948 the husband Ian State which was founded in a process which began most directly in the 160s and came to fruition in the 140s BCE and lasted until the 60s when the Romans took over that state came to be in the course of events which are described in both books of Maccabees but as you see first Maccabees deals with a much longer period a period of about 40 years it takes the story down from 175 BCE when Antiochus Epiphanes became king of Syria and different things started happening as opposed to what had been happening until then and it takes it down to 134 BCE with the rise to power of the person we know as scientist - excuse me as Mattathias grandson so you know the name was Mara thises somebody was starting the revolt against the sorry Assyrian Kingdom and his grandson John Haqqanis Johan hor kunos known in the rabbinic sources as Johan Kohen Gadol came to power in 134 BCE and that's a good place for the author of first Maccabees to end his story for a very particular reason that we'll see as we go on whereas the author of second Maccabees who wrote a book of about the same size nevertheless devoted it to a much shorter period it begins again with the rise of Antiochus Epiphanes to the throne in 175 BCE but goes only down as far as Judah Maccabees last victory in 161 BCE he defeated a general of the Seleucids named Nicanor as a result of this the Jews established a holiday which was celebrated in antiquity for a long time called Yom Nicanor on the 13th of Adar and if you're wondering how could we now have a fast day on the 13th of Adar instead of a holiday celebrating a victory it has something to do with the general way the Jews forgot the husbands and the Maccabees for reasons that you'll probably see as we go on tonight had second Maccabees gone one page further it would have told us about the death of Judah Maccabee in the field of battle a year later but it didn't it ended with a happy ending Judah Maccabee defeated Nicanor Jerusalem was freed from that threat and a holiday was established and as we see it maybe the book was written to explain that holiday let's go on first Maccabees was composed in Hebrew we know that first of all because st. jerome says so he says he found a copy of it in hebrew which is good evidence he was involved in Bible translations he had lots of manuscripts at his disposal and he says he had a copy in Hebrew in the 4th century CE II but even without that probably everybody would agree that 1st Maccabees was written originally in Hebrew because the Greek in which it's written his translation 'yes you read the greek of 1st Maccabees and if you don't know Hebrew you were really lost several years ago I had a seminar of graduate students and we were reading first and second Maccabees and I had in a seminar a bunch of Israelis who had taken one or two years of elementary and perhaps intermediate Greek and I had some Greeks in the class some people from Greece and the way it went was the Israelis were very very happy reading first Maccabees because they realized what you have to do basically is translated back into Hebrew and once you've done that you know what it's saying whereas the Greeks were saying what kind of a book is this it's it's very hard to read on the other hand second Maccabees was composed in Greek it was composed in good Hellenistic Greek of the second century BCE and the Greeks loved reading it and the Israelis barely could make any progress in it at all because was written in idiomatic natural Greek of the second century BCE I translated second Maccabees into Hebrew and then into English years ago and I found that the best tool for looking up the nuances of words and establishing exactly what the text means was to use a special dictionary somebody made for the Greek historian Polybius who wrote in the middle of the second century BCE and was using the nuances of the words as they were used in that time and that was the best guide for the meaning of second Maccabees as well I move again to the left-hand column not only as a matter of the original language but it's also the matter of the original style first Maccabees is full of biblical language writing things the way things would be written in the Bible the very first words of the text if I were to revert them from the Greek into Hebrew or retro over time from the Greek into Hebrew would be something like Bahia haha coat Alexander MacDonald I'll show you at Psalm 8 oh it's key team now nobody in the Second Temple period wrote sentences that started with waha har har coat but if you want to imitate the Bible you did nobody in the Second Temple period called Macedonia its hockey team but the Bible speaks about Greece or Macedonia or the Greek islands someplace out there in the West as key team and the author first Maccabees uses that word as well in chapter 5 of first Maccabees he talks about the war of the B'nai I saw vanzara Yaakov literally in the Greek that's what the words mean nobody called the sons of Esau in the Second Temple period but if you're writing something that it imitates biblical you than you will it talks about Kanaan Kanan talks about Zahra Yaakov the seed of Jacob these are all biblical phrases and just every place you go in first Maccabees it's using biblical phrasing biblical terminology the order of words in the sentences follows the order which is typical in Biblical Hebrew so for example when you're having us a verse which reports consecutive actions it will go like Biblical Hebrew by yo Kaaba yes by Yaakov a saw by Eve as a Sabbath of Ahura so similarly you have the verb coming at finite verb coming before the subject in the Greek of first Maccabees whereas the Greece and Greek it would be the other way around second Maccabees hardly uses byblos I think language at all if you read second Maccabees very carefully you will hardly find any place you will find a couple of very important places but you'll hardly find any place in which you will have the author quoting or playing with biblical passages on the other hand you does it quite a lot with Greek literature the author is at home in Greek language and the author's at home in Greek literature so just to give you one example in second Maccabees chapter 5 the author is very angry about just how arrogant Antiochus Epiphanes is and it says that he was so arrogant he thought he could walk on the sea and sail on the land now anybody who knows Greek literature knows that is a very very common scene from Herodotus's account of Xerxes who wanted to invade Greece and therefore he tried to make a bridge across the Hellespont so he could walk across the Hellespont and he tried to make a big canal across one of the peninsula's in Greece so he could go through with his ships and not have to go around it in both cases that's taken to be an example of just how arrogant and oriental tyrant can be and here the author second Maccabees is using that or do you get closer to something we'll talk about later you have in second Maccabees chapter six an account of an old man who refuses even to pretend he's giving in to antiochos degrees decrees and he would rather die than have anybody think that he took such a dishonorable way out and the language which is used in that account and the scenes which appear in that account are meant to remind readers of the way Plato describes the death of Socrates whose disciples tried to get him to agree to let them bribe his way out of prison so he wouldn't have to die and he refused because he's an honorable person and the next chapter has the story of the mother with the seven children and the mother stands up to the tyrant very proudly and refuses to knuckle under and the language is drawn from Sophocles account of Antigone standing up to a Greek tyrant in her day that was the cultural world of the author second Maccabees a Jewish author as we will see when he's writing in Greek just like we're all familiar with Jewish authors writing in English who will use English style and allusions to things which are familiar to English readers one particular point I'll emphasize is that the author of first Maccabees as part of his biblical style is very restrained he doesn't go into histrionics to explain what makes people do what they do or how people feel what they feel people do things just like that passage I quoted before about Esau we all understand he's very angry but the text doesn't even say he's angry just suppose it wasn't already did he got up he ate he drank he walked out and maybe he slammed the door but it doesn't even say that and that's the way biblical stories are second Maccabees on the other hand is part of a style of Greek literature which is popular in the period it wrote the second say it was written in the second century BCE in which one of the things you do is you try and make readers feel what is happening you try and tell a story in such a way that it's on a stage it's what's called typically or pathetic or tragic history pathetic not in the sense we use it in English today but rather we put imparts the pathos of the story to the reader so for example I have a footnote on the bottom here which illustrates something from second Maccabees chapter 3 when somebody a Greek general wanted to enter the Temple of Jerusalem in chapter 3 of second Maccabees because he wanted to take out money which was stored there he thought illicitly and had to revert to the royal treasury everybody was up in the city was upset so one could say everybody was upset but the author of second Maccabees goes on and on for about ten verses like if you hear three or three or so women bound around with sackcloth under their breasts congregated in the streets and of the closed-in virgins some ran together to the gates and some to the walls while yet others peeked out through the windows imagine that these virgins who were supposed to be shut up in their houses so nobody sees them they even went as far as the windows imagine that all of them making their entreaty their hands stretched out to heaven and anyone who saw the frustration of the entire community all mingled together and the anxiety highly anguish high priests had to be moved to pity this is a style which reminds readers you should be feeling pity at this point you should be upset so it's a different style and the author second Maccabees uses it part of the stories using women to arouse passion in in the readers and the author 1st Maccabees has nothing like that ok so there's some basic data and if it I had to summarize what we did so far we say ok we have a Hebrew book here and a Greek book there and the periods they discuss are somewhat different I'll go on where does one write Hebrew books in the Second Temple period it's not impossible that a Jew in the Diaspora would write a Hebrew book but normally we assume a Hebrew book is written in Judea where does one write a Greek book where did you write a Greek book in Second Temple period it's not at all impossible to be written in Judea or elsewhere in Palestine but we normally assume that the place where people had a greater Greek culture was abroad may Center of Hellenistic culture for Jews and Antiquities in Egypt Alexandria was the main center where 500 eventually would be the big name it's the main center of Jewish culture and now we usually assume things are coming from there and we'll take it at this point just as a working hypothesis are you raising your hand yeah take that as a working hypothesis and look at some items in the contents which indeed will bolster that assumption that first Maccabees is a book from Judea probably from Jerusalem we're second Maccabees is a book from the Diaspora probably from Ptolemaic Egypt Egypt as it was ruled by hunters tick dynasty in the second century BCE first of all the structure and the focus of first Maccabees and this is an opportunity just to give it too I don't have a blackboard or a PowerPoint now but I can just tell you and it's very easy to understand the structure of first Maccabees first Maccabees has 16 chapters the first chapter tells you that there is a problem with a capital P things are very bad Palestine Judea have been conquered by the Helena by the Hellenistic kingdoms first by Alexander the Great then by a hundred fifty years of his followers who all multiplied evil in the earth that's how the author summarizes 150 years Hellenistic kings are bad out of them arose Antiochus Epiphanes he's really bad and he makes various decrees against the Jews forbids them to observe Judaism kills people who do so things are really bad and by the end of the chapter all the author can say is that people are getting killed women are being killed because they're found to have circumcised their babies are found with circumcised babies other people are killed because they refuse to eat unco sure food and the last words of the for chapter 1 are things were very very bad and then chapter 2 begins with what we would do in English has meanwhile on the other side of town somebody by the name of Meredith is left Jerusalem went to live in Bowdoin and he had five sons and we all realized when a story is told like that oh we just heard of a big problem and now we have something which is not at all directly or explicitly connected but we understand it's going to be connected and what happens in first Maccabees is that beginning in Chapter two we hear about the solution chapter one is the problem Hellenistic rule Seleucid rule chapters 2 to 16 or the solution which is putting an end to Seleucid rule and establishing Judean home rule by heroes who are willing to put their lives on the line in order to do so and the basic structure of the book is simply this chapter 2 tells about how Mattathias begins the rebellion chapters 3 to 9 tell about how his son Judah continues the rebellion until he does chapters 9 to 12 or about Hell Judas brother Jonathan continues the rebellion after Judas dies chapter 12 to 16 about how Simon continues the rebellion and successfully establishes autonomy first of all which is granted to him by the services and then independence which is proclaimed by the Jews and his dynasty is established as the ruling dynasty so when Simon dies is assassinated in the very last chapter of the book chapter 16 he is succeeded by his son John her CONUS and you understand that when the son succeeds a father you have a stable dynasty when brothers succeed brothers like Jonathan succeeded Judas and Simon succeeded Jonathan you don't have a stable dynasty because they're all these cousins around who wanted to rule after their father and they find themselves being excluded by the next one not long so the book ends when the what we call the Simon I'd dynasty is established when the son of Simon John her Cunha succeeds to the throne and it indeed became the beginning of the stable husband Ian state because John her Candice remained in rule for 30 years and when he died he was succeeded by his sons first by one of his sons are established the first who died after a year then by another son Alex had the young I who ruled for 26 years and when he died he was succeeded by his widow and then by his sons so it was - I'm annoyed line which successfully established rule in Judea who had been granted autonomy by the services they've been granted ruled by the Judean population and that's the story the book tells so again first Maccabees tells a story which is a very Judean story it's the history of rule in Judea from the terrible times portrayed in chapter 1 when they were ruled by a Hellenistic king Antiochus Epiphanes and the story of how it came to be and why it was justified to be that the husband Ian's in general and the Simon I divine in particular were able to come to rule that's a very Judean story which sort of bolsters our assumption that the book was written in Judea it actually suggests to us that the book was written by somebody who was in the court of John her CONUS because the book mentions the rise to power of John her kindness well who's interested in a book that explains that and justifies that John her CONUS the Simonides in general it's a court history a dynastic history one which tells the story and makes it palatable explains to the population of Judea why it's OK and justified that we all be ruled by this particular family that's something which wasn't self understood because there were other candidates around the husband Ian's came to power high priest before had that there been other high priest of the ania divine coño Petronio people who had been ruling as high priests for centuries and they were thrown out by the husband's their remnants went to Egypt and set up another community maybe some of the remnants went to Qumran well whether they did or not there were other people in the opposition in Qumran who were complaining about this or that and we'll see some of what they were complaining about the Pharisees people who eventually turned into the coming the sages and the rabbis they also had their complaints about the husband at some point in the period of the husband Ian rule and there was a need for a court history and first Maccabee he seems to have been an attempt to answer that need whereas second Maccabees is a whole different story second Maccabees does not focus on rule in Judea doesn't focus on Judea at all nor does it focus on rule it focuses on the history of Jerusalem and if you look on the back page back of the page just for a minute I'll give you an example of each of these things if you skip to the second level of cubbyholes text number 2 which will look out for another reason later you'll see first Maccabees begins with just how bad things were under Greek rule this is what I called about the problem 1st Maccabees chapter 1 after Alexander the son of Philip the Macedonian who came from the land of ki team had defeated King Darius he succeeded him as king he fought many battles conquered strongholds and slaughtered the kings of the earth when you get to that word you realize the author doesn't have a great opinion about him to say that the King slaughters kings he advanced to the ends of the earth and plundered there we go again many nations when the earth became quiet before him he was exalted and his heart was lifted up which is a biblical way of saying he became arrogant he did this and that and as you see after he finally died they all put on crowns after his death and did so and so did their descendants after them for many years and they caused many evils on the earth that's the way 1st Maccabees begins second Maccabees has two introductory chapters which I'll say something about later but the real story begins at the beginning of chapter 3 once upon a time the holy city being inhabited in complete peace and the laws being observed optimally due to the high priest or diocese piety and hatred of evil it happened that the Kings themselves honored the place and events respect for the temple with the most outstanding gifts just as clinkz locus of asia which is a way of saying syria or greater syria supplied out of his own income all the expenses incurred for the sacrificial offices so write down this point the story begins with the story of the city what was the city like in that once upon a time when everything was fine before things went wrong that's where the focus of the book is and the very end of the book comes in chapter 15 at the very end of the book after Judah Maccabee his last victory over Nicanor chapter 15 ends like this this then is how matters turned out with Nicanor and from that time the city has been in the possession of the Hebrews so here I will end my story which means that I have told you a story about the history of the city it began once upon a time things were fine and once upon time things are fine and my point right now is that if you go to the Bible and ask about the status of cities you won't found find much cities exists but they're not really a category to interest the Bible who's interested in a city for whom is police the central bearer of civilization the Greeks and the author has written a story about the Jewish city which fits in with writing in Greek and having all sorts of Hellenistic values and allusions like I said before he's telling us a story about the history of the Jewish police and the story eventually will turn into one about and then this tyrant came and tried to change the pilita the constitution of our police of our city and any drink reader who reads that is supposed to be horrified because that's not the way things should be so the author is using these categories because it fits into his world okay moreover the author of second Maccabees gives a name to that Constitution what is this set of laws that the Jews live according to according to second Maccabees he uses a word for the first time in Greek and far before the first time in Hebrew he says well what what it actually was that the Greek king tried to abolish with his decrees was you die is most Judaism he tried to impose upon us a loaf Uli's most foreign ISM but the good guys adhered even at the cost of their lives to you des is most to Judaism that's the story which he tells it's a story not about Judea it's a story about an ism which is somehow related to Judea but the point of isms what makes isms isms is that they are artificial they are things which you distill out of something real and make them something which is not real but rather a set of ideas who needs to do that Jews who live in the Diaspora need to do that because if a Jew in the Diaspora thought that being Jewish meant being a Jew daeun there'll be something very anomalous about being a Jew in the Diaspora if being a Jew in the Diaspora means living according to those ideas and values which true began in Judea are still typical for Judea but we can distill them out of Judea and live a live according to them someplace else as an ism then we are doing something which makes our lives meaningful where we are so the fact that this book therefore talks about the city and focuses on the city makes it a Greek and Hellenistic book the fact that it focuses on an ism makes it one which is very compatible with being a book of the diaspora because in Judea they didn't need that as we will see next category this is an easy one first Maccabees has lots of detail about Palestinian geography it mentions lots of place names which means that the author is familiar with these place names and assumes that the readers are as well and that the readers will find them interesting as well I have here chapter 9 for example at first Maccabees after Judah Maccabee dies things get really bad for a while and we hear that Jonathan fled into the wilderness of Toccoa and camped by the water of the pool of us far well that apparently the author thought that was meaningful to somebody you want to know that you don't want to know the us went to the desert and camp someplace he went to Toccoa that rings some bells for people and then we hear that the Greek general ba Cletus returned to Jerusalem and built strong cities in Judea the fortress and Jericho and a mouse and bait her own and beta L and team nut and Farah tone and Tiffin and I bet many of us like me don't know where those places are many of us probably not really very interested to know where they are as well but the author thought they were interesting and we can see this in lots of ancient books you can locate the author by saying the degree of geographical detail which is meaningful for the author in second Maccabees there's nothing like this at all there are some bad mistakes about Palestinian geography but by and large they're just similar simply a lack of detail about Palestinian geography years ago I was invited once to speak on Hanukkah I think and kyboots Keva and I asked the guy in the front excuse me where's keep would scare but he said it's not no problem at all it's near far you Hesco and which places him in that part of the world and me certainly not right but that's the type of thing which I'm pointing to here and when you do that type of analysis of the toponyms the names of places mentioned in second Maccabees as opposed to first Maccabees it very clearly supports the assumption the second Maccabees has worked from the Diaspora and first Maccabees is a Judyann work correspondingly first Maccabees is not familiar with Hellenistic geography and terminology and he's not interested in either when first Maccabees tells us that a pretender to the Syrian throne landed in theory says he came to a some City the author of second Maccabees in a very parallel section says he came to three police that was interesting for him and he doesn't bother to tell us that's a city in Syria everybody's in his world - supposed to know where she police's cheap police by the way is a another one of those polish words it's a combination of three places the author first Maccabees is not aware that when a Greek king called somebody his kinsmen it's an honorific title the author first Maccabees thinks it means he's a member of family in the normal physical sense the author second Maccabees knows very well that that's not the case and there are lots and lots of things like that where the author first Maccabees gets his terminology for the Seleucids wrong or just doesn't bother trying to get it right and the author second Maccabees uses things the way we can see them being used in contemporary literature in contemporary inscriptions and papyri the author of second Maccabees mentions various individuals in the Seleucid hierarchy by name people who are mentioned in inscriptions that are survived like the Greek general I mentioned before who wanted to enter the temple take out money he's called Helia Doros he's not mentioned in first Maccabees and second Maccabees he's mentioned he's mentioned in a couple of inscriptions from that period with the same title in his rank maybe some of you heard a couple of years ago a big splash when an inscription was found in a couple of pieces near Mary Shaw in the border between Judea and I do Mia and it mentions it's a bunch of letters written by Haley Oh Doris giving orders to officials in the region 1st Maccabees has some interest in the temple cult I write that carefully it has some interest in the temple cult and will give I'll give you an example a moment second Maccabees has little interest in the temple cult which makes sense because a Jew in the Diaspora had better not think that he's missing much by not participating in the temple because he can't participate in the temple I remember reading a Catholic scholar many years ago who writing in contexts like this saying we're used to assuming the Jews of the Hellenistic diaspora assumed that they were second-class Jews because they couldn't participate in the temple cult and I read that and I said I don't know many people who are happy being second-class anything if they have a way of being first-class something and Jews in the Hellenistic Diaspora had a way of being first-class Jews and that was by saying time and again that God lives in heaven and in the Second Temple period we find the term Elohim I mean they use frequently of God the God of heaven being used frequently for you don't find it in the first temple period with perhaps one exception you find it a lot in the Second Temple period and the reason is because there's a diaspora in the Second Temple period and there isn't a diaspora in the first temple period and who needs God to be in heaven and not in Jerusalem Jews and diaspora so they could have direct access to him via their prayers and they're not missing shall I say anything or that much it doesn't really matter by not participating in the temple call so if you go to the other side of the page see an example of this at the very first chapter of first Maccabees on the left part of the problem Antioch was not only decrease decrease against Judaism and punishes people who violates them he also Rob's the temple he arrogantly entered the sanctuary and took the golden altar the lamp stand for the light and all of its utensils he also took a took also the table for the bread of the presence become America the cups for drink offerings the bowls the golden sensors the curtain the crowns and the gold decoration on the front of the temple we stripped it all off he took the silver and the gold to the costly vessels he took also the hidden treasures that he found and when I read the sentence about he took the golden altar the lampstand for the white and all its utensils he also took the table for the bread two cups the bowls the golden centers the curtains the crowns that's like mentioning Judy and toponyms persons who people who list all of those details must be those details mean something to them they know what these things are they the author is bemoaning the theft of each one of them we can see them before our eyes it means something to him go to the right hand side of the page the way the same story is told by the author of second Maccabees in Chapter five not satisfies by that killing lots of people in the preceding verse he also dared to enter into the most sacred temple of the whole world having many valves a Jew who the author calls that traitor to the laws and the fathers as his guide taking the holy vessels with his defiled hands and seizing with his profane has the dedications which have been given by other Kings for the aggrandizement honor and respect of the place I'll talk about the Kings a minute but right now simply will point out what did he steal holy vessels killing Kiyoshi holy vessels which ones I don't know maybe the author had some idea and spared his readers for the details maybe he didn't care either but I'm just pointing out for the author of second Maccabees it was good enough to say sacred vessels because they give a list would like to be giving a list of Judi and toponyms it wouldn't speak to his audience whereas it does speak to the author of first Maccabees we'll be back to this text in a moment I go back to the table on the other side go to the next line non-jewish reader rulers are all bad they're all wicked is the presumption of first Maccabees that's a very functional presumption because if the problem you're trying to deal with in the course of your book is how to get rid of Hellenistic rule and how to set up instead home rule it must be that home rule is something you really need it's not as if some other foreign ruler would be better so far rulers are all terrible whereas for the author of second Maccabees Jews have generally good relations with their non-jewish sovereigns Jews generally do fine with their non-jewish sovereigns go back to the other side text number 2 we already looked at briefly before in first Maccabees where we saw that Alexander the Great is somebody who's characterized by people or somebody who slaughters other people he plunders he becomes arrogant and when he dies he's succeeded by other rulers after him and the author summarizes what they did as they caused many evils on the earth that's a summary of Hellenistic history from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 until the rise to power of Antiochus Epiphanes in 175 that's almost a whole hundred fifty years is 148 years if you want summarized as they made multiplied the they caused many evils on the earth so that's what you can expect from Hellenistic kings and if somebody grows out of them like Antiochus Epiphanes you can imagine it's in his genes it's in his blood to be that way as opposed to the author second Maccabees way this story is one that begins with once upon a time everything was fine and part of that everything being fine was it happened that the Kings themselves honored the place an event is respect for the temple with the most outstanding gifts just as Kings Seleucus of Asia the older brother of Antiochus Epiphanes supplied out of his own income all the expenses incurred for the sacrificial offices in other words basically Jews get along fine with their non-jewish roars now and then something goes wrong because we have our bad apples and they have there been apples that's true that happens but and basically it's not the case so if I just go back to the first page the table according the first Maccabees not only is it the case that our kings by and large or foreign kings as a rule are terrible our neighbors are as well Gentiles are wicked they all hate us which means whom can we depend upon only on ourselves whereas the author second Maccabees holds that Jews have generally good relations with their non-jewish suburbs now where is it that Jews would rather believe that it's good to be ruled by a dot that it's okay to be ruled by a non Jewish sovereign and by and large they're okay and they respect us and we respect them where would you rather believe that in diaspora because if you don't believe that your life is a mess because you can't do anything about it yes if you're living in a diaspora you're being ruled by the temporal rulers wherever you happen to be and you would rather believe that in fact it's okay you're living next to lots and lots of people who are not Jewish your neighbors greatly outnumber you you would rather believe that that's okay and as a matter of fact if you go through the sources relating to the history of the Jews in Hellenistic Egypt where I think this book was written second Maccabees it is terribly difficult to find any evidence at all produce having bad relations with their neighbors or with the ruiers they were doing just fine they have lots of privileges they're being protected they have good relations as you see there evidently going to the right schools to pick up Greek culture and they're picking up sports and you can see that with five-o as well so it's not just a pose I would I would emphasize they would rather believe it's the case but it seems to be that it was the case to large measure it's a very typical thing when you're giving a lecture like this to Israelis for them to start smirking about these people who were trying to fool themselves but I grew up where I wasn't fooling myself that way in America and I don't think that these people were fooling themselves either in any case look let's look on the other side of the page text number three have some examples of this in first Maccabees you have two scenes which the bottom line of them is the same but they each begin very very differently so here you have in first Maccabees chapter 5 which comes right after the first Maccabees chapter 4 first Maccabees chapter 4 tells about Judah Maccabee having won some victories retaking Jerusalem and establishing the temple and setting up the temple cult again and establishing the holiday of Hanukkah in memory of that event if you want to read about the establishment that holiday of Hanukkah its first Maccabees chapter 4 and also second Maccabees chapter 10 let's talk now about first Rebecca B's chapter 4 Judah Maccabee has his victories restores the temple cult sets up a holiday in honor of that everything is fine the book could end there but it doesn't end there because chapter 5 says when the Gentiles all around heard that the altar had been rebuilt in the sanctuary dedicated as it was before they became very angry and they determined to destroy the descendants again else of Jacob Genesis the Greek there who lived among them so they began to kill and destroy among the people these Gentiles they all decide to attack us why did we do anything to them the way the story is told these Gentiles are attacking us because we're doing well and that's really nasty a notes are rubbish of a cave-in that's what they're doing they don't like us being successful when they come and try and destroy us in Chapter 12 on the other hand first Maccabees as the story goes on Jonathan who has been the Jewish leader falls into a trap one of the pretenders to the throne of the Seleucid kingdom by the name of Truffaut t ry pho takes him as a captive along with his sons and a chapter later kills them as well but right now he's a captive and things are really terrible and everybody in Jerusalem is depressed about this and the very end of chapter 12 is and all the nations round about them tried to destroy them for they said they have no leader or helper now therefore let us make war on them and blot out the memory of them from among men which means that for the author of first Maccabees Gentiles trying destroy us whether we're doing well or whether we're doing poorly that's what they're always like whereas from the author of second Maccabees Gentiles buying arts are just fine they respect us if you want to know why here's the passage which makes very clear why that is the case in second Maccabees chapter 4 a Jewish high priest has gone to Antioch the Syrian capital in northern Syria to make an appeal to the king about something but the King wasn't there that's part of the story the king had gone into Asia Minor Turkey of today to deal with an insurrection there and on the other hand some wicked Jews from Jerusalem would rather that this high priest were dead so own is the high priest goes to er and the wicked Menelaos who we heard about before from second back please send some people to kill oh nice and he does so Elias is killed and but the King gets out of the city that's part of the story obviously if the Good King were there nothing like this would have happened because Kings are good but he was out of the city so bad things could happen the story then says in second Maccabees 4 verse 35 for this reason not only Jews but also many of other nations were outraged and vexed about the unjust murder of the man and that word man is a very heavy word we probably would have expected the author to write the unjust murder of Aeneas cono that we know the author we know his name we've been told his name where he could have said the unjust murder of the high priest or of a Jew but instead he said they were all upset about the unjust murder of the man and if you ask why are they upset the prison is because he is a man and they are too and we all have this in common that we are all human being so why shouldn't they be upset when something terrible like this happens and he goes on so when the King returned from solution region siliceous south eastern Asia Minor when the King returned from the Cilician regions he was petitioned by the Jews of the city joined by the Greeks who hated evil concerning the unreasonable murder of Aeneas and the king in fact gets very upset and he orders to execute the people who had killed own eius because the king is very good King because Greek Kings are good kings and they also are upset when somebody does now I'm going to illustrate this point in a couple of ways now first of all look at the language what happened is something which was unjust and it was also unreasonable justice and reason are universal categories the type of thing which we ascribe to the realm of morality or ethics and not to the realm of law law is the any particular nation particular Rises the universal values of reason and justice and when the author writes this way saying we all share the same basic values and therefore we're all equally upset when something somebody violates these shared universal values you achieve this also by using the word man this is something there's a long history I'm going to illustrate it in another way now one of the more famous texts from antiquity is in the New Testament the Acts of the Apostles chapter 10 and 11 tells a story about how it happens that the Church of Jerusalem became open to non-jews until chapter 10 which is years after Jesus was crucified the Church of Jerusalem was only accepting Jews and as the story goes Peter has a vision in chapter 10 God tells him you go to court you go to Caesarea and there's a god-fearing Gentile there by the name of Cornelius was in the Roman army it was a really non Jewish non Jew and baptized him and Peter says I can't do that he's not Jewish and God says I'm telling you to do it you tell me you can so he goes he does it and then the people in the church in Jerusalem Robb said how come you're doing this he tells them the story and they all agree oh if it's that way then I guess this is the way it have to be and they proclaim from that point on that non-jews too can be accepted into the church the point I want to make to you is the whole story begins with a man there was in Caesarea whose name was Cornelius chapter 10 verse 1 of the Acts of the Apostles it introduces the person who is the star of the story as a man and once it does that it already guarantees to readers how the story is going to end because if what's important about him is he's a man well he's a man and we're men which means people doesn't have to do with men and women has to do with matters opposed to animal if he is a man and we're men so everything which is accessible to us is accessible to him so to hear to come back to second Maccabees the author is emphasizing what we all have in common this is something which goes very well together with the notion that we are all basically the same we have our national differences but they're basically trivial what we have in common is much more important and when push comes to shove and somebody is murdered everybody knows what the right side of the case to be on is finally I'll point out why is it the Greeks joined everybody else because they hate evil well we had that before at the very beginning of chapter 3 in the previous cubbyhole one cubbyhole up why were things going so well in Jerusalem the high priest on Isis piety and hatred of evil as a matter of fact later in the book we hear that God too hates evil they all share this same virtue hatred of evil is another one of these universal things and all good people of the world share them ok I go back to the table the last one in this second major category of at home versus diaspora first Maccabees has no qualms or hesitation about telling us there are lots of Jewish villains lots of wicked Jews and our heroes the husband Ian's hate them and they killed lots of them or make others of them flee he has no compunctions about talking about division among the Jews arguments among the Jews serious armies of two's warfare among the Jews the good guys are the husband's the bad guys collaborate with the Syrians and we kill them or we drive them out and he has all sorts of terrible names for them you go to second Maccabees and there is no hint whatsoever that there's anything like that there are no Jewish parties there are no inner Jewish disputes there are some individuals who are wicked I called them here bad apples a Sevilla show team it happens yeah we have them when the author introduces Menelaos was one of the evil people we've seen him twice already says there was a man named Menelaos and he doesn't use the word master doesn't use man there was somebody named Manaus it was this guy Minoo vows had a brother who was also bad somebody named Lisa mohos in Chapter 7 of 1st Maccabees hmm in Chapter 7 of 1st Maccabees we hear of a delegation of Jews who go to King Demetrius the first to urge him to move against Judah Maccabee always 1st Maccabees chapter 7 verse 5 then there came to him to the king all the renegade and godless men of Israel they were led by Alchemist who wanted to be high priests in the parallel story in second Maccabees 14 alchemist somebody named alchemist went all by his lonesome to the king but here in 1st Maccabees chapter 7 we hear about all of the renegade and godless men of Israel why did I put this into category of at home versus in the Diaspora probably many of you are familiar with diaspora and Jewish newspapers in the vernacular and familiar with Israeli newspapers in Hebrew where does one read about divisive 'no sabang jews more where does one read about party politics among jews more where is one less concerned about hanging out our dirty laundry in public in hebrew yeah when you go to a diaspora jewish community and it has its party disputes and its antagonisms when the community and their writing and newspaper which everybody else can read as well there are constraints people are more restrained about these things one doesn't go in for that which is why I put this here as well so basically what I've done until now talking about the first two categories I gave you some external data about the two books which say this is a Hebrew book and this is a Greek book and that suggests that one of them is from Judea and one of them is from the Diaspora then I went on to give you a number of characteristics of the values which the two books we speak which bolster that assumption that first Maccabees was produced in Judea probably into Judea in court today we would say was produced by the public relations department of the ruling party and second Maccabees was produced in a diaspora community where Greek was spoken and the values which are typical of a diaspora community which is doing well are the values which will be spoken by the book and now I move to the third section of the page which is the heaviest section at least for me in first Maccabees there is no sense whatsoever no mention whatsoever of Jews being sinful sin is not a category that operates in the book there are bad Jews their wicked Jew so will we kill them where we get rid of them we forced them to flee but the problem is that the Jews have in this world are caused by their wicked neighbors and their wicked rulers that's what first Maccabees says the notion of sin is absent from the book the notion of atonement is absent from the book if there's no sin there's no need for atonement whereas for second Maccabees as the Jews sins that cause their problems and what is needed to resolve their problems therefore is atonement the pivotal passage of the book probably I should have put it on the handout but I want to keep the handout small it is in chapter 4 of 1st Maccabees where having given us a description of Jewish heaven eyes errs in Jerusalem and you've all heard of these stories they set up a gymnasium in Jerusalem they set up sports field in Jerusalem and lo and behold the author complains that Jews in Jerusalem and particularly priests were supposed to be working in the temple and learning how to work in the temple find themselves being attracted more to the Greek sports and to the Greek school than to the traditional Jewish values so the author writes in chapter 4 verse 14 the priests were no longer intent upon their service at the altar despising the sanctuary and neglecting the sacrifices they hurried to take part in the unlawful proceedings in the wrestling arena after the signal for the discus throwing yes sport disdaining the honors prize by their ancestors and putting the highest value upon Greek forms of prestige now listen carefully for this reason heavy disaster overtook them and those whose ways of living they admired and wish to imitate completely became their enemies and punished them for it is no right thing to show a reference to the divine laws a fact that later events will make clear so the author tells us in Chapter three things were hunky-dory with the Greeks the Greek kings respected us in Chapter four Jews started heaven izing this is the story of second Maccabees Jews started giving up their interest in their ancestral values and their ancestral cult and this is no right thing because it involves violating the divine laws and bad things will happen to them as the continuation of the story will show and yes it's true the continuation of the story shows us antiochos attacking the city killing people robbing the temple things like that but we all understand that that's happening because the Jews sinned and we have then in second Maccabees a very typical example of the biblical notion of what the scholars call dual causality namely the way things happen in this world has two sorts of reasons as the real reason which is the Jews relationship with their God and has the way things work out circumstantially which has to do with how things happen on the ground so if Nebuchadnezzar destroys the first temple it's because he's a wicked person but of course the God of Israel wouldn't let him do that were not the case that the Jews had been sinful by maintaining a sacrificial cult or as I wrote here more generally the zoo sins caused their trouble the whole book is built around chapter 32 of Deuteronomy the hozy new song ha Zeno is a story which presents itself as being you want to understand history you read this book Sequoia moto Lombino sh'not Ovid or you want to understand history I'll tell you and the whole story is a story of Jews who are sinful which causes God therefore to say I'll show them and what does he do he hides his face turns away you know if you're walking with a with an infant or a child in the park you better watch all the time if you turn your face away bad things can happen to you and you won't notice so God turns away his face mr. Putnam bad things happen but eventually we'll get to this in a moment on the page when enough Jewish blood is spilled dumb of a dog you comb God steps back into the story and he says okay enough is enough and especially he's upset by the notion that these Gentiles think that they're getting away with what they're getting away because it's their power and not because of his lack of interference so he has to step back into the story all of that is written in large letters through the course of second Maccabees so a first Maccabees a story of nasty Gentiles who heroic Jews have to overcome to set up home rule second Maccabees is a story of sinful Jews whose sins have to be atoned for and they are atoned for by martyrdom so I move to the next line of this page first Maccabees I was being nice and restrained when I wrote here first Maccabees thinks that martyrs are perhaps worthy of some respect but they don't get anything done they just die so for example it's not a good idea to allow yourself to be killed rather than violate the Sabbath because all the results of that is you get yourself killed I'm alluding to the well-known story cited many times in Israeli publications in second chapter first Maccabees there are people who go down into the Judean Desert to hide from the Seleucids and the army catches up with them on the sabbath and the army has to enforce a decree which forbids them to obey listen to to observe the sabbath but these jews refused to defend themselves and they all died thousand people and then the story goes right out to say that women when Mattathias and his men heard this they decided that if anybody tax us on the sabbath we will defend ourselves because otherwise we'll also clean die or I remind you about the very end of first Maccabees I referred to it before the very end of first Maccabees chapter 1 people are being killed because they refused to eat non-kosher food women are being killed because they are being found with circumcised children circumcision had been forbidden and things were very very bad and what happens next is meanwhile on the other side of town there was a guy named mattifies and his five sons and what did they do when the Syrian officer comes and requires them to sacrifice they killed him and they started a rebellion so we have then again there's the martyrs way of doing things and it doesn't do anything it just gets them killed and there's our way of doing things which is to fight whereas for second Maccabees the pivotal movement in the book from the situation of being sinful and suffering and from the situation of being successful is told that great weight in chapter 6 and 7 of second Maccabees martyrdom referred before to Eleazar in chapter 6 and to the mother and her seven children in chapter seven which is the origin of the story which later turned into the meat rush on Cana and her seven children the stories are told at great length each of the sons who was being executed has a prayer about how because of my blood God is going to step in and you're going to be punished and we are going to be redeemed and at the very end of that the mother dies as well and after that Judah Maccabee and his men get together in chapter 8 and they pray to God to hearken unto the blood which is crying out to him from the ground and a chapter 8 verse 5 is the pivotal verse of the entire book as soon as Maccabees got his army organized the Gentiles could not withstand him for the wrath of the Lord had turned to mercy book has 15 chapters at the very beginning of chapter 8 the middle of the book the wrath of the Lord turns to mercy why does it turn to Mercy because chapter six in Chapter seven are full of Jewish blood being spilled which turns out then to be part of the solution and not just illustrating the problem that's the basic difference between first Maccabees and second Maccabees for first Maccabees martyrs are they do nothing for second Maccabees they are the heroes a friend of mine who a big book on second Maccabees also on fourth Maccabees what he told you is based on it wrote his book is about second and fourth Maccabees and the title of book is the Mecca being martyrs as saviours of the Jewish people for the author first Maccabees martyrs are not saviors of anybody this is again a difference between Judea and the Diaspora where can you have military heroes among Jews quad shoes you could have military heroes here and there and non-jewish armies abroad but a Jewish army of heroes or heroes in the Jewish army is something which you can only have in Judea where can you have martyrs anywhere and just like the Christians who didn't have a state made a big deal about their martyrs and attributed them central roles in constructing the church and the blood of the martyrs was that which watered the ground on which the cryptic Church grew so - for Jews of the Diaspora they could have murders they couldn't train their children to grow up and be fighters in the Army in into Jewish army because they have no Jewish army they could train their children with models of heroes that if it push comes to shove and somebody puts a knife at your throat and says are you going to observe Jewish law or not and you should realize it's respectable to be a hero it goes together with other things you see it's respectable to be a martyr and as we'll see you later don't worry that kind of death is not the final act of life because there is immortality we'll get to that in a very few minutes so I move to the last category on the on the sheet first Maccabees accordingly usually ignores God as just about nothing to say about God I'll give you detail about this as we go on I asked before about who is that we can depend upon the corner first Macky reason probably on somebody's tips of somebody's tongue somebody was thinking of anyone wrong Lucia a novena Sebastian lying or something like that first Maccabees we can depend on the husband Ian's that's what the book is about rather history is divided into Cairo moments and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose and if you win it's because you've got heroic people brave people wise people clever people and also luck is on your side and sometimes you lose cuz luck isn't on your side look on the back of the page the bottom cubbyholes text number four I gave you three cases of this in first Maccabees chapter 9 Judah Maccabee is on his last battlefield and his men realized that they are gravely outnumbered by the enemy this is the vicinity of Ramallah not far north from Jerusalem and they're very gravely outnumbered and his men urge him let us flee let's run away and we can fight some other time but Judah said far be it from us to do such a thing as to flee from them if our time Kairos has come let us die bravely for our kindred and leave no cause to question our honor this is a very Greek sentiment this is the kind of thing you can find all over Homer men don't flee the field of battle we don't want to leave any cause you might even say the proper translation is stain - on our to question our honour honour is what's important here and if our time has come let us die a couple chapters later things are going well for the Jews beginning of chapter 12 I told you before the end of chapter 12 Jonathan is already a prisoner and things are going terribly but the reading of chapter 12 things are going fine when Jonathan saw that the time Kairos was favorable for him he chose men and sent them to Rome to confirm and renew the friendship with them so basically means Jonathan saw he was on a roll things are going fine and let's see if we can press our luck some more or at the very end of the page left I bring a passage which is very frequently cited in Israeli political parlance what happened in chapter 15 is that the Syrian King and co-host the 7th in around 135 436 BCE sent a an emissary to Simon and demanded that the Osmo nians withdraw their forces from pices that they had conquered in Judea Jaffa gazer and the Seleucid fortress in Jerusalem which people think they found and maybe they did find near the key fatty parking lot there was a big survey of said fortress there in all 3 of those places Gaza and Yafo and that fortress had been taken by the husband Ian's in one set of circumstances or another and he's requiring them to give them back and Simon said to him in reply we have neither taken foreign land nor seized foreign property but only the inheritance of our ancestors which at one time had been taken by our enemies now that we have the opportunity Cairo's we are firmly holding the inheritance of our ancestors so the claim is made these are jewish national properties which one time or other we lost and when time was going our way when the kairos is going our way in chapter 12 the verb which is used as synergetic in greek sin are gay what they translated here is was favourable and when things are going our way we took it back and the way the world works is you win some and you lose some in' and this is our property and go away hmm an award develops out of that and Simon wins you go to second Maccabees everything is different second Maccabees not only the big things like who wins Wars but even the individual fate of people is dependent on their sins and what divine providence does regarding the merits or sins of the individual so for example in chapter 12 of second Maccabees when there was a battle near Yavne and the Jews won the battle but nevertheless a few the Greek says teenis some Jews died why should choose die in town in battle so after the battle they were collecting the dead and they found under the tunic of each of the Jewish dead an object dedicated to the idols of yom nia Yavne which the law torah owned almost the law prohibits to jews every single person who fell on the c feet of field of battle had his own personal sin thus it became clear to all that was for this reason that those soldiers had fallen and after all bless the Lord who judges righteously who makes it hidden things visible they went under whatever they did so they bless God who is a righteous God and made two hidden things visible by allowing them to discover what was the sins of these what were the sins of these people the Justice of God has become a bell now you tell me where can one make this statement to any Jewish soldier who dies in battle must have been sinful because otherwise he wouldn't have died who can have a such such a statement certainly not people whose children go into a Jewish army yes because we all know that that doesn't things don't work that way in war who can make such a statement people whose children do not go into such an army they can push their belief in Providence to this extreme because it doesn't cost them anything in their own lives and the point I'm making to you is the author of first batteries has gone to the other extreme when things go wrong it's because our enemies are wicked and sometimes we have bad luck as well well what we didn't say is that sometimes things go wrong is because the providential God is letting us being punished for our sins I began this third category pointing out that there is no notion of sin and therefore of Providence or divine retribution for sin in first Maccabees I go back to the first side of the page oh you think and the other passage this was just to show you something of the bible-- assessing nature first Maccabees and this happens all the time I'm finishing a commentary in first Maccabees now and all over the place that if passages were sounding like the straight out of the Bible or something has been tweaked something has been left out something has been changed to make it fit what first Maccabees holds to be valuable as opposed to what the Bible in his original version held I think it's pretty clear that Simon's response to the emissary of the Seleucid king in chapter 15 is somehow modeled on gift ox response to the emissary which is reported in judges chapter 11 where again he has been attacked as holding on to territory which belongs to other people and he responds the Lord the God of Israel has conquered the AMA rights for the benefit of his people Israel do you intend to take their place should you not possess what your God shamash gives you to possess and should not we be the ones to possess everything that the Lord our God has conquered for our benefit that's the way the Bible reports such diplomatic dealings and first Maccabees has something like this but God doesn't play any role he's been substituted for by Kairos sometimes we went sometimes you would that's the way it is I can tell you there any number of Jewish religious rewritings the first Maccabees out there and they've usually put God into Simon's statement yeah but he's not there in the text if we have time I'll tell you something about Winston Churchill let's let's keep going first Maccabees points out three times that there are no prophets when they dedicate the temple they have these stones which have become impure because they were used by the civilians for for pagan offerings what shall we do with these things and they put them aside until a prophet shall come and tell them what to do with them it's sort of like the story in Nehemiah chapter 2 where they don't know what to do about people who can't prove that their Kohanim or not so they say well wait until a priest comes to tell us that type of story in chapter 9 when Judah Maccabee dies the author says it's the worst time that ever came upon Israel since the end of prophecy and there's another passage as well there's no prophets which means God doesn't talk to us there are no miracles this might surprise you people know about Hanukkah know the story of what's called a Shem in that the oil lasting for eight days that's a rabbinic story you find it in the Talmud there's no miracles at all in first Maccabees there's no resurrection or belief in resurrection in first Maccabees we're an immortality people die and that's that and I mentioned before that goes together with the lack of martyrdom because typically belief in the efficacy and the value of martyrdom go together with the consoling belief in life after death and first Maccabees you have neither this nor that there are no angels in first Maccabees a little bit more subtly there's no tit-for-tat in first Maccabees or maybe there's one exception we can talk about one but basically there's no tit-for-tat in first Maccabees now what does tit for tat mean it means that the way things happen in the world suggests to people that somebody's pulling the strings even if he isn't mentioned literally it can't be by chance that this happened precisely that way that the punishment fits the crime just that way I'll come back and talk about second Maccabees a minute references to God and to prayer basically disappear after the first few chapters I'll be precise the first four chapters in the first four chapters you have several prayers you have a few references to God will they'll never by name he's referred to as heaven typically in the Hebrew Bible and the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible we hear about Hashem and we hear about Elohim which would come out in Greek as kurios and Talos neither of them appear at all in first Maccabees and while some people think that this is because of great reverence the author doesn't want to refer to God because he's afraid of using the Holy Name my impression is the people who want to refer to who are interested in God and irreverent about his name find other ways of indicating interest in him and the author 1st Maccabees doesn't after the first four chapters the first four chapters take us down to the dedication of the temple by Judah Maccabee I suspect that there was a different source which was put together at that point before I said maybe the book originally ended at the end of chapter 4 but certainly this is a story which has to do with the 160s if the book was written in the days of John Herc and has thirty forty years later the author needed some source for the early period and my impression is the author of those first four chapters of the original source for those four chapters had more interest in God it was closer to the way the Bible does its business than the author of the rest of the story who I would say by that time was running an independent state and had little use for God go to the right-hand column everything is different in second Maccabees I said before the book is built about house II know there are several explicit references to us you know there's one explicit citation from Haseeno in chapter getting tired chapter 7 but there are allusions to it as well in other places in the book which means that if god's providentially taking care of us things go fine if he decides because of our sins two things go terribly if we atone you will return back the Providence back on and things will go fine again there are numerous epiphanies in the story though this is something neat epiphanies you know means a an appearance of something from heaven and the author explicitly refers to numerous appearances in heaven in beginning of chapter 5 for 40 days there are armies fighting in the sky above Jerusalem and horses in formation and armies doing demonstrations and in heaven and people had to worry about what that means in chapter 15 of the book jeremiah appears in heaven and gives judah maccabee a sword which is a real sword which he uses them to fight Nicanor and win his final battle there are lots of apparitions in chapter 11 an angel appears in heaven to lead the army to the right place when they're going out to look for where the Syrians are near cleveroad you're across the map now what's neat about that is the book is about the Jews fight against the Greek king whose name is Antiochus Epiphanes and what the book is saying is you guys have European s and we have our epiphanies and our God who does the epiphanies turns out to be stronger than your king there's a lot of angelic intervention we mentioned before the Greek general who wanted to go into the temple he does go into the temple but too strong young men come down from heaven riding on a horse and a horse kicks a MINUSTAH and the young men start beating him and then the young men disappear again and obviously those young men are angels they're other angels as well in the book in chapter 10 Judah Maccabee is surrounded by angels when he's in in a place where he's in danger angels come down from heaven and surround him so the enemy can't get close to him second Maccabees believes very firmly in tit-for-tat and looks at it as being an implicit way of saying that God is pulling the strings things don't happen by chance if in chapter 4 min allows defiles the altar of the temple where their sacred fire in chapter 13 he is executed by a Greek king who understands that Menelaos is a villain and the Greek King execute him by putting entrances infernal machine which rolls him down into burning coals so he dies by fire just like he sinned by fire and the author very heavy handedly points out that this has to be it was that happened because he sinned that way if we see Michaels Rob's from Rob's money from the Treasury of the temple he is killed by an angry Jewish mob by the Treasury of the temple and the author says because that's where he did the sin that's where it had to happen many cases like that in second Maccabees and they all are meant to say that they were they're meant to teach us to indicate to us that things in this world don't happen by chance now chance is simply another way of saying Kairos and the author of second Maccabees are saying it doesn't work that way it works by Providence second Maccabees points very explicitly to the belief in resurrection its basis for urging martyrdom is its belief in resurrection on the back of the page in text number four on the right I said that after they discovered that all of these people had died because they had some amulet under their tunic it goes on to say in the passage I didn't quote that they collected money to bring sacrifices of atonement for these people so that they too should be able to be resurrected they were sinful we have to atone for their sins if they couldn't do it in their lifetime themselves we can do it for them by bringing a sacrifice and then they can be resurrected there are many many prayers and second Maccabees some of them are indirect speech some of them are summarized in indirect speech but sometimes somebody is said to be praying and they pray and the prayers are answered somebody prays anyway until I said before there's very little detail about geography in second Maccabees so if you go for example to chapter 8 and chapter 15 the main battlefields of second Maccabees there are long chapters and you wonder what are they full of they don't tell you about where these things happen I don't tell you about where the armies came from like 1st Maccabees would they're full of prayers they're full of Judah Maccabee giving pep talks which have biblical precedence for God intervening in history to save his his people so those are the differences between first and second Maccabees and if I began the first two categories by saying I'm going to show you this is a Hebrew book which probably means it's from Judea and I'm indicating by values this is a Judean book on the one hand first Maccabees and on the other hand this seems like this is a Greek books that probably comes from diaspora and it has Greek value so probably that's another reason to believe it comes from diaspora what this comes down to you is suggesting to you that if you look at the evidence of first and second Maccabees then Judaism is something of the Diaspora and not of Judea which is a kind of bothersome conclusion probably for a lot of people in this room it certainly is for me but it's not an alpinist conclusion you see in front note one I wrote a book about this a couple years ago where I described the things I saw in antiquity and poured out my heart of it of about the things I see in the world around us today well almost end us up with two passages from commentaries the first Maccabees Kahana are from Kahana it is the one who put - he was a librarian in Tel Aviv any one of the old-time weren't his people he put out the collection of Apocrypha Nero's fine in 1936 1937 included first and second Maccabees of course in the second volume of the Apocrypha and his introduction he wrote among other things what I quoted here he wrote the book in Hebrew that's his emphasis and particularly in the style of the Bible he was running home in it and full of its spirit mauvais it Ruffo on that basis he knew how to write a book which is like another link in the chain of the holy book itself that's what Kahana wrote and I would agree with the first part of the first sentence the author did write in Hebrew he was very very well home in the Bible all over the places biblical language but I would put a serious question mark along the assertion alongside the assertion that he was full of the Spirit of the Bible as the Bible as I understand that is this two-layered story talked before about dual causality where God plays a very serious role and people's behavior is measured by God and has everything to do with how the stories turn out and it's not that way in first Maccabees rather I prefer an older German Protestant commentator whose text I wrote I brought here in German in his introduction grim Carlota Grimm in 1853 wrote among other things since the character and tone of the narrative are just as simple and I'll testamental Old Testament dish as its language the book is from this point of view usually compared with the books of Samuel and kings and definitely you can if you take all the phrases in Samuel and kings which are quoted in first Maccabees you could probably put together most of Samuel and kings because they're books about building state building a state and then he says I would love to see his face when he wrote the following statement or said the folk say I would like to know how far back in his cheek his tongue was only in one not in significant respect nor an initial investment in puncta in one not insignificant respect does this book differ from ancient Israelite historiography namely that in contrast to the old theocratic understanding of events it no longer illuminates events in a supernatural light allowing God who Criss crosses through a natural causality to direct events according to a fixed plan and he calls that a not insignificant point and I agree with him it is not insignificant it is a very major difference and if I were to write that sin side my tongue would be very far back in my cheek and that's basically what I'm suggesting you to you is the difference between first Maccabees and second Maccabees and what we're left with then to conclude is if you ask about first Maccabees second Maccabees and the Bible I would say that second Maccabees is definitely not a biblical book because it's in Greek and style is definitely not a biblical book once a book which inherited and preserved enough of the values of the Bible that we could call it what we call books that inherit the values of the Hebrew Bible namely it's a jewish book whereas first Maccabees is a book which is using biblical language to do something which is neither Jewish nor biblical and that's what I'm left with thank you after questions yes please poacher chill yes I can illustrate something in May of 1940 maybe some of you saw the film darkest hour last year I remember the story from our youth in May of 1940 the Germans were besieging the Perdition Dunkirk and the British brand-new British prime minister had to give speeches in his first public speech in this in his first public speech Winston Churchill called upon everybody to be strong and and to be willing to suffer and things are going to be hard before they become simple again and we got done doing all of that he in his own words he ended up the speech by saying by quoting simply three verses out of first Maccabees I think I should have it here in a minute yes Phil here hemming the army by the hand of your people Israel and let them be ashamed of their troops and their cavalry filled them with cowardice melt the baldness of their strength let them tremble in their destruction strike them down with the sword of those who love you and let all who know your name praise you with hymns in the King James Version God has mentioned twice in those lines and that's the way Churchill quoted them in his speech and as you know Church was very successful in bolstering the spirit of the English and they went and they did their thing at Dunkirk and they went on to win the war as well King James Version had God all over the place in its translation of 1st Maccabees just like the Luther translation 1st Maccabees has got all over because people who are religious and have this book as part of their sacred scripture want God to be there even if he's not there in the Greek text Churchill grew up on the King James Version a few years before Churchill gave the speech know excuse me few years after Churchill gave the speech the Council of Churches sat down to the Revised Standard Version and eventually the New Revised Standard Version and they were a little bit more disciplined in their work as translators and they eliminated all references of God to all references to God from first Maccabees because he's simply not there in the Greek text interesting question Howard world war ii a' turned out had churchill been brought up on the Revised Standard Version and given a speech which is much less rousing and inspires a whole lot less confidence because God is not there I wonder if you're going to you

Channel: בית אבי חי

Views: 29,433

Keywords: Hasmoneans, Maccabees, Maccabees 1, Maccabees 2, מכבים, המכבים, חנוכה, בית אבי חי, בית אביחי, Hannukah, חשמונאים, החשמונאים, הרצאה, דניאל שוורץ., Daniel Schwarez, Jewish History, היסטוריה, מחשבת ישראל, בית שני, Second Temple, Hellenism, הלניזם, יוונים

Id: 5RQhysxU2GU

Length: 90min 59sec (5459 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 28 2018