2 Maccabees
Faithful martyrdom under persecution is not senseless loss but atoning suffering that God will vindicate through bodily resurrection, and this claim, not political success, is the true meaning of the Maccabean revolt.
- martyrdom as atoning and divinely vindicated suffering
- an explicit epitome of a longer lost history
- one of the clearest Second Temple statements of bodily resurrection
- written for a diaspora Greek-speaking audience
A condensed, theologically charged retelling, in polished diaspora Greek, of roughly the same revolt against Antiochus IV covered in 1 Maccabees, explicitly presented as an abridgment of a longer, now-lost work by one Jason of Cyrene. Where 1 Maccabees reads as sober political history, 2 Maccabees is openly didactic, dwelling at length on the graphic martyrdom of a mother and her seven sons who choose death over eating forbidden food, and it contains the clearest statement anywhere in Second Temple Jewish literature of belief in bodily resurrection as reward for faithful suffering. Its place of composition is not known; Alexandria is a conventional guess for a Greek-speaking diaspora setting, but Jason of Cyrene's own origin in Cyrenaica makes other diaspora centers equally plausible. Composed for a Greek-speaking diaspora audience rather than a Judean one, it also preserves the earliest datable references to Hanukkah as an annual eight-day festival.
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