Fourth Maccabees and the Promotion of the Jewish Philosophy

Rhetoric, Intertexture, and Reception

David A. deSilva

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781725270701
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

Fourth Maccabees is a superbly crafted oration that presents a case for the Jewish way of life couched almost entirely in terms of Greek ethical ideals. Its author delights in the Torah, the Law of Moses, as the divinely given path to becoming our best selves now. In this collection of essays spanning two decades of study, David deSilva examines the formative training that produced such an author, the rhetorical crafting and effect of his work, the author's creative use of both Jewish and Greek literary resources, and the book's enduring message and legacy in the Christian church.

1

The Author of 4 Maccabees and Greek Paideia

Facets of the Formation of a Hellenistic Jewish Rhetor

The author of 4 Maccabees famously praises education in and practice of the Jewish Torah as the kind of παιδεία (4 Macc 1:15–17; 5:23–24) that produces people of the highest moral caliber, people who embody the Greek ideal of the virtuous and honorable person—the person of καλοκἀγαθία (1:10; 3:18; 11:22; 13:25; 15:9) and ἀρετή (1:8, 10; 7:22; 9:8, 18, 31; 10:10; 11:2; 12:14; 13:24, 27; 17:23), the person who walks in line with the cardinal virtues of justice, courage, moderation, and prudence (1:18; 5:23–24). But what was the author’s own experience of παιδεία? What training—aside, no doubt, from being educated in and formed by the practice of the Torah—contributed to the formation of this skilled preacher and orator? This study seeks out the “effects” visible in the text known as 4 Maccabees that plausibly point to a “cause,” namely the Jewish author’s experience of a formal education reflective of the curriculum typical of Greek education in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. It seeks to create a profile of the author in terms of his level of education as a case study in the degree to which one member of an ethnic subculture was formed by the kind of training associated with the formation of citizens of a Greek city while still remaining explicitly committed to the convictions, practices, and cultural knowledge of his ethnic subculture.

Mastery of the Greek Language

The author of 4 Maccabees has had enough training in Greek grammar and syntax to demonstrate absolute mastery of the language. He does not write as one who has acquired Greek as a second language. His Greek is free from Semitisms, the exception being “giving glory” (δόξαν διδοὺς) in 1:12, a Septuagintalism and an echo of Jewish liturgical expression.2 His writing exhibits the complex subordination of clauses rather than the paratactic sentence structure typical of those who lack facility in Greek or have acquired it imperfectly as a second language.3 His text includes a striking number of hapax legomena (e.g. μιαροφαγῆσαι, 5:3; ἀντιρρητορεύσαντα, 6:1; περιαγκωνίσαντες, 6:3; παθοκρατεῖσθαι, 7:20; προσεμειδίασεν, 8:4; ἀντεφιλοσόφησα, 8:15) many of which may be neologisms as they reflect common patterns of formulating new compound words, demonstrating again his level of facility in Greek.4 He also uses poetic forms (like προυφάνησαν for προεφάνησαν in 4 Macc 4:10), and makes frequent use of the optative mood against the general trend of moving away from such forms in favor of the subjunctive mood.5 Dupont-Sommer could therefore justly claim that “Our author expresses himself in Greek and he thinks in Greek.”6 The level of his language suggests that he had not only successfully undertaken primary and secondary studies in grammar, but also engaged in extensive reading of Greek literature, such that its subtleties were internalized through broad acquaintance with its exemplary writers. This is not to suggest that the author is himself a model stylist, by any means, but rather that he has learned to imitate a broad array of linguistic skills and syntactic structures from model stylists.

Mastery of Elementary Exercises in Composition

The author gives evidence of having been trained in the elementary exercises in composition that were introduced toward the end of secondary education and the beginning of tertiary education.7 The details concerning these elementary exercises survive in several training manuals (Progymnasmata), notably those of Aelius Theon (a rhetor from Alexandria active in the late 1st century) and Hermogenes (a rhetor from the late 2nd-century CE).8 These manuals incidentally correspond quite closely to the descriptions of the elementary exercises found in Quintilian, Inst. 2.4, suggesting a c...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Author of 4 Maccabees and Greek Paideia
• Chapter 2: Honor and Shame as Argumentative Topoi in 4 Maccabees
• Chapter 3: Fourth Maccabees as Acculturated Resistance Literature
• Chapter 4: The Strategic Retelling of Scripture in 4 Maccabees
• Chapter 5: Engagement with Greco-Roman Intertexture
• Chapter 6: “Father Knew Best”
• Chapter 7: The Human Ideal, the Problem of Evil, and Moral Responsibility in 4 Maccabees
• Chapter 8: Fourth Maccabees and Early Christian Martyrdom
• Chapter 9: Ambrose’s Use of 4 Maccabees in De Jacob et Vita Beata
• Chapter 10: Beyond the Eclectic Text of 4 Maccabees
• Conclusion
• Bibliography