4. Book of the Maccabees
The fourth book of the Maccabees (or Of the Reign of Reason ) is an apocryphal book of the Old Testament . In many Orthodox churches it appears as an appendix to the Old Testament of the Bible , but it is usually not included in Western Bibles.
The book is divided into 18 chapters consisting of a total of 484 verses.
Emergence
Since Eusebius of Caesarea († 339 or 340) the book was assigned to Flavius Josephus . This assignment must be rejected for content and linguistic reasons. Rather, the book was written by a rhetorically educated Hellenistic diaspora Jew in Syrian Antioch towards the end of the first century AD.
content
The book is designed as a philosophical-ethical speech. It tries to prove the thesis that reason is ruler over the instincts and uses examples from the 2nd Book of Maccabees (Chapters 6 and 7), which is why it was added to the historical books of Maccabees. In verse 9 of the introductory part it says z. B. about Eleazar and the seven brothers: “Because they all ignored pain to the point of death, they showed that reason has power over instincts.” So it exhorts the Jews to be faithful to the law.
Although the book refers to events in Jewish history, it is generally very much influenced by Greek popular philosophy, especially the Stoa .
See also
literature
- Hans-Josef Klauck : 4th Book of Maccabees (Jewish writings from the Hellenistic-Roman period III / 6). Gütersloh 1989, ISBN 3-579-03936-9 .
Web links
- Stephanie von Dobbeler: Maccabees 1-4. In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen, Stefan Alkier (eds.): The scientific biblical dictionary on the Internet (WiBiLex), Stuttgart 2006 ff., Accessed on September 4, 2008.
Individual evidence
- ↑ On this in detail Klauck, pp. 665–669.