Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] And yet other apocrypha, second Maccabees and others, including psalm 151 by Bart D. Ehrman, read by John Paul Middlesworth.
[00:00:11] This will be my final post for now on the Old Testament apocrypha. In it I discuss the final and particularly intriguing book accepted in the Catholic Church and a few others accepted in orthodox christian circles. Again, all this comes from my textbook, the a historical and literary introduction. Oxford University Press, 2018.
[00:00:35] 2nd Maccabees the book known as Second Maccabees is another account of the history of the maccabean revolt. Its author did not have one Maccabees as a source but was writing independently of it. His interest is primarily with the events that transpired under the leadership of Judas Maccabeuse, so that the book overlaps mainly with one Maccabees. Chapters one through seven the author indicates that his work is in fact an abridgment of a much longer, five volume description of the revolt by someone named Jason of Cyrene. He has condensed Jason's work into a single volume. Unlike first Maccabees, this account was originally composed in Greek, where first Maccabees is a rather straightforward chronicle of what happened leading up to and during the revolt. Second Maccabees takes a more impassioned and theological approach to the task.
[00:01:28] After a lengthy two chapter introduction, which consists of two letters from jews in Judea to those in Egypt urging them to observe the celebration of Hanukkah, the author devotes four chapters to describing the events leading up to the revolt, and then chapters eight through 15 to narrating key moments during the revolt itself.
[00:01:47] Most famous, and justly so, are the stories told from the end of chapter six through chapter seven of jewish martyrs who refuse the demands of the tyrant Antiochus to eat pork and are willing to experience excruciating torture and death to remain faithful to the law.
[00:02:05] The narrative is powerful and moving. First there is 90 year old Eleazar, who dies on the rack rather than violate the dictates of God's law. Then there are seven brothers and their mother. The brothers are tortured one at a time in front of the others. The first has his tongue cut out and his hands and feet cut off, and then, still living, he is fried in a large pan over a raging fire until dead.
[00:02:31] The others follow suit, one after the other. To escape. All they have to do is to take a bite of pork. But they refuse, and the mother encourages them on. She too, then is tortured and killed.
[00:02:46] This is not simply a book designed to give a history lesson. It is meant to show what it means to stay true to the law of God to the very end, no matter what.
[00:02:56] For this author, the law is more important than life itself. And for these martyrs, the reason is there is to be a future resurrection of the dead, and if they are faithful now, they will be rewarded then forever, whereas those who are not faithful will experience severe punishment in the life to come.
[00:03:17] Other deuterocanonical books as I mentioned, four other books are considered deuterocanonical in the Greek orthodox and Russian orthodox churches, but not the Roman Catholic. These first esdras a kind of rewriting of the history recounted in the books of two chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah in the Hebrew Bible.
[00:03:39] The prayer of Manasseh a short one chapter account of the prayer for forgiveness that the wicked king of Judah, Manasseh, allegedly made while captive in Babylon. See two chronicles 33 psalm 151, a short seven verse psalm celebrating Davids life told in the first person, which is the final psalm of the psalter and the Septuagint.
[00:04:04] Third Maccabees, a book that is misnamed in that it is not a historical sketch of the maccabean revolt, but a work of fiction dealing with the interaction of Jews in Egypt with the pagan kingdom Ptolemy IV Philopiter, who reigned from 221 to 204 CE.
[00:04:22] These various books of the Apocrypha are a real treasure trove of ancient jewish literature, of various genres and various perspectives and emphases, quite apart from the question of whether they should be considered scripture or not. In the roman catholic and orthodox traditions, yes. In the jewish and protestant traditions, no. They are important literary and historical works that can help us round out our understanding of Judaism in that critical time in the centuries prior to the turn of the era when Jesus of Nazareth came on the scene and a new religious movement within Judaism emerged, one that would become its own religion, Christianity.
