§ 1. CONTENTS AND CHARACTERISTICS

2 Maccabees is the anonymous ἐπιτομή (2:26, 28) or digest of an earlier Maccabaean history which had been composed by a Hellenistic Jew called Jason of Cyrene. The writer condensed Jason’s five books into one. It is unnecessary to hold that his statements to this effect are simply a literary device, as though he were a Jewish Defoe who thus attempted to gain the fictitious authority of age for his own composition (so e.g. Kosters in Theolog. Tijdschrift, 1878, 491 f., and Kamphausen). Had this been the case, the contents would have been more of a unity than they are, and the lacunae would have been fewer. Besides, more than once, the style (e.g. in 13:22 f.) suddenly corresponds to that of an historian who is hurriedly compressing as well as popularizing some earlier source. Upon the whole the materials, the contents, and the style of the book answer fairly to the writer’s account of his own method and aims (in 2:19–32, 6:12–17, 15:37–9). His work is an abridgement and at the same time more than an abridgement. He must have omitted large sections of Jason’s treatise and summarized even what he took over, but, instead of preserving invariably either the language or the shape of his selections, he embellished the former to suit the popular taste and enlarged the latter, for the sake of edification, with pious amplifications of the miraculous element.

The outline of the epitome is thus characterized by a unity of religious feeling, rather than by any historical sequence. The introductory documents of 1:1–2:18, containing two letters, are followed by a naïve preface (2:19–32), after which the epitome proper begins, with five successive pauses (3:40, 7:42, 10:9, 13:26, 15:37, perhaps after Jason). The only formal interruption is a short passage upon the doctrine of retribution as the clue to Jewish history (6:12–17). Judas Maccabaeus comes on the scene in 5:27, and, once his story is resumed (in 8:1 f.), it runs on to the end, the only digression being the highly-coloured tale of Antiochus’ death (9:1–29; 10:1–8 resumes the narrative dropped at 8:33). The epilogue (15:37–9) echoes the prologue. Indeed the aim of even the prefixed letters corresponds to the general purpose of the book, which is to magnify the two festivals of the Ḥanukka and Nicanor’s day,1 as the ceremonial glories which recall the heroism of Judas Maccabaeus.2

2 Maccabees is not a sequel to 1 Maccabees. It is, in Luther’s words,3 a second book upon the Maccabaean struggle, not the second book. As the period of its narrative (175–161 b.c.) coincides with part of 1 Maccabees, a comparison of the two books might be expected therefore to clear up the problem of their relative value, and furnish a standard for valuating the second. To some extent this expectation is realized. But critical opinion has swayed curiously between an undue depreciation of 2 Maccabees as an historical document and an exaggerated claim on its behalf. The former tendency is represented by modern critics like Willrich and (especially) Kosters; the latter by Niese (Kritik der beiden Makkabäerbücher, 1900), who not only succeeds in vindicating the trustworthiness of the book at several points, but attempts to prove that it is older and more authentic than 1 Maccabees—an attempt which has failed to carry conviction (cp. e.g. the articles of Lévi in Revue des études juives, 1901, 222–30, Abrahams in Jewish Quarterly Review, 1901, 508–19, Kamphausen in Theolog. Literaturzeitung, 1901, 287–90, and Wellhausen in Nachrichten der kgl. Gesellsch. d. Wiss. zu Göttingen, 1905, pp. 117–63). The parallel narratives of the two books are as follow:—

A broad survey of the two documents puts it beyond reasonable doubt that upon religious questions like the resurrection of the body (e.g. 7:11, 14:46) and the prohibition of warfare on the sabbath (8:27, 15:1 f.), 1 Maccabees is decidedly more primitive than 2 Maccabees. It is probably the latter interest, among other things, which led the anti-Hasmonean epitomist to omit all reference to Mattathias (cp. 1 Macc. 2:39 f.; also 2:49 with its absence of any allusion to the resurrection). Niese (pp. 45 f.) attempts to turn the force of this argument against the accuracy and impartiality of 2 Maccabees by ascribing the introduction and prominence of Mattathias in 1 Maccabees to tendency—i.e. to the desire of glorifying the later Hasmoneans through Simon his son. But the probabilities are against this theory. It is incredible that Jewish traditions went wrong in glorifying the rôle of Mattathias; ‘the Rabbinic tradition (which is independent of both books of the Maccabees) recognized Mattathias as the principal figure in the struggle for religious liberty’ (Abrahams, op. cit. 516), and this consideration corroborates the impression that it is the omission of Mattathias in the epitome, not his rôle in 1 Maccabees, which is secondary.

The chronological disorder of 2 Maccabees, as has been already noted, further tells against the hypothesis of its superiority to 1 Maccabees. The first part of the epitome closes with the feast of the purification (10:1–8), the second with the feast of Nicanor’s day (15:36). The former feast is apparently4 dated after the death of Antiochus Epiphanes; but there is really no sound reason for doubting that 1 Maccabees has preserved the correct tradition in the reverse order of these events (4:36 f., 6:1 f.) as well as in its description of the manner in which Antiochus died, while the entire account of Lysias’ subsequent actions (in 2 Macc. 11:1 f.) shows that the writer, or the sources on which he relied, must have confused the two defeats of Lysias. It is not possible, with Niese, to establish the historical inferiority of 1 Maccabees on the basis of these incidents.

The historicity of the Roman correspondence in 11:34 f. is also supposed to be corroborated not only by the fact that, in keeping with contemporary usage, the cognomen is omitted (Niese, 31), but by the likelihood that the Romans would no more hesitate to negotiate with the Jews against Demetrius at this juncture than they hesitated to deal with Timarchus who was in arms against the same opponent (Diod. Sic. 31:27 a; cp. Niese 63 f., 88 f., and, for a more cautious statement, Laqueur, op. cit., pp. 30 f.). Still, these considerations do not amount to more than the possibility that such documents (as e.g. the letters from Antiochus III in Josephus, Antiq. 12. 3) were composed at an early period by some Alexandrian writer who possessed good knowledge of the situation. At most they may reflect an historical nucleus, but in their present form the epistles of 11:16 f. are almost certainly manufactured documents, like those in 1–2.

Here, as elsewhere, Niese’s arguments and researches prove that the sources (i.e. especially Jason) used by the epitomist evince a knowledge of the age which is hardly likely to have been possessed by a Jewish writer after the second century b.c. There are vivid touches which are more than circumstantial, and independent notices which point upon the whole to the information of eye-witnesses and contemporaries behind some of Jason’s narratives. Upon the other hand, 2 Maccabees exaggerates numbers generally (cp. e.g. 14:1 with 1 Macc. 7:1) and horrors invariably, abounds in confused and contradictory notices (cp. e.g. on 1:17, 9:18, 11:5, 13:23), and is repeatedly unhistorical (see on 4:21, 9:2, 9, 10:11, 13:22, 15:33), besides containing some references (e.g. to the vicarious suffering of the martyrs, 6:28, and to sacrifices for the dead, 12:43) which at any rate suggest that it is less primitive than its predecessor.1 The result is that Niese must be pronounced more successful in establishing afresh the historicity of some details which are peculiar to Maccabees, in opposition to ultra-scepticism, than in depreciating 1 Maccabees in favour of the general trustworthiness of the epitome. The epitomist, in fact, has the artistic temperament as well as the pious aim of edification; on both grounds he is naturally careless of the exact accuracy which an historian pursues, and satisfied if he can produce his effects in a picturesque manner. The relative position of the two Maccabaean books may be, therefore, summed up in Wellhausen’s verdict (Geschichte4, p. 246): ‘Niese’s criticism of the two Maccabean books has taught me a great deal, but it has not convinced me that the second book is older than the first and that it deserves preference.… We must not indeed look at everything through the spectacles of the first book. Nevertheless we have no alternative but to make it our basis.’