Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Ah, maybe 4 Maccabees 5:1-2:

"The tyrant Antiochus, sitting in state with his counselors on a certain high place, and with his armed soldiers standing about him, ordered the guards to seize each and every Hebrew and to compel them to eat pork and food sacrificed to idols."

"The book is generally dated between the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE, due to its reliance on 2 Maccabees and use by some of early Christians. It has been suggested that it was written before the persecution of the Jews under Caligula, and before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_Maccabees

However...

"Nothing can with definiteness be asserted as to the date of the book; it belongs probably to the period shortly before the fall of Jerusalem."

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/artic ... f#anchor17

And:

"...a date in the first half of the first century CE appears most likely."

https://books.google.com/books?id=zQ7pK ... ng&f=false

So this appears to be a first century CE issue.

The concept is found in 2 Maccabees, too, which is much earlier than 4 Maccabees:


I found this, as well, though of course 4 Ezra is late:

Hm. Okay. And it's also in Rev. 2:14 and 2:20 (along with fornication). So what do we have here. Paul, Acts, Revelation and the Didache, which are Christian. Then 4 Maccabees, which has some Christian interpolations and was known to Eusebius and Jerome and, as Wikipedia puts it, "is not in the Bible for most churches, but is an appendix to the Greek Bible, and in the canon of the Georgian Orthodox Bible." Same for 4 Ezra, which "did not survive within Jewish circles, but was transmitted within the Christian church..." https://books.google.com/books?id=Lx5vj ... an&f=false

And all these are from the first century CE or later.

2 Maccabees is earlier though, but it also ended up in Christian Bibles. And it is DSS-like (with respect to regarding the Temple as defiled and living in the wilderness), and Jewish Christian-like (with respect to vegetarianism, like James in Hegesippus and other Jewish Christians in the Clementine literature): "But Judas Maccabeus, with about nine others, got away to the wilderness, and kept himself and his companions alive in the mountains as wild animals do; they continued to live on what grew wild, so that they might not share in the defilement" (5:27), and is a possible precursor to the latter, as argued by Eisenman in "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the First Christians" (the one book of his I would recommend).

https://books.google.com/books?id=4PP-P ... AQ6AEIHDAA

In any event, all these things are in some way associated with Christianity. And then there is 4QMMT.

John2 wrote:In any event, all these things are in some way associated with Christianity. And then there is 4QMMT.

Florentino García Martínez & Eibert Tigchelaar render (what I take to be) the relevant bits of 4Q394 and 4Q395 (4QMMTa+b) as follows:

John2 wrote:In any event, all these things are in some way associated with Christianity.

Such language is a little bit fudgy when used of 2 Maccabees, is it not? Sure, it was transmitted by Christians, but if the purported date of composition is anywhere near correct, one should mount a specific argument for the passage in question actually being Christian in some way instead of part of the original (or at least pre-Christian) text.

Well, as a precursor to the DSS and Jewish Christianity is the argument, and I'll flesh that out when I get more time.

John2 wrote:Well, as a precursor to the DSS and Jewish Christianity is the argument, and I'll flesh that out when I get more time.

Fair enough.

Ben,

I found this book called "Idol Food in Corinth" by Alex T. Cheung yesterday (much of which is viewable here:
https://books.google.com/books?id=FsZac ... od&f=false), and it goes into all the particulars of this issue. Some things that stood out in my initial perusal was that neither Philo nor Josephus refer to eating food sacrificed to idols, though the author infers that they were opposed to it, plausibly enough, from other statements they make. Another thing is Mishnah Avodah Zarah 2:3 (though it is from the second century CE): "Meat that is entering [a place of] idolatry is allowed, but leaving, it is prohibited, because it is like sacrifices of the dead, according to Rabbi Akiva." http://www.sefaria.org/Mishnah_Avodah_Z ... l&lang2=en

Now, regarding 2 Maccabees, in the big picture, let's start with the fact that it is in a Christian, not Jewish, canon. So it is heretical according to Rabbinic Judaism. Same with 1 Maccabees, though when Hanukkah comes around they bring it out of the closet and downplay the revolutionary aspects of it and focus on the "miracle" of the oil (which is first mentioned in the Talmud). As the Jewish Encyclopedia notes, 1 Maccabees:

"...attaches primary importance to the founder of the dynasty, Mattathias. Mattathias is unknown to II Maccabees, though the latter is supposed by Geiger to be a Pharisaic counterblast to the Sadducean I Maccabees. Yet, strangely enough, in the Pharisaic tradition of the Talmud and Synagogue Mattathias plays a large part, so large that Judas is thrown into the background."

http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/ ... f#anchor14

Josephus too, who was a Pharisee, only used 1 Maccabees.

Eisenman argues that, "strangely enough," 2 Maccabees is more in line with the type of "Zadokites-in-the-wilderness" thinking found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. I've already cited 5:27 ("But Judas Maccabeus, with about nine others, got away to the wilderness, and kept himself and his companions alive in the mountains as wild animals do; they continued to live on what grew wild, so that they might not share in the defilement"), but there are other similarities, such as its general militancy, belief in the resurrection of the dead, and it ties Judas to Onias the Righteous (a zaddik, like James), whose relative Simon is extolled in Ben Sira (which is generally considered to be a Sadducaic writing and was found at Qumran and on Masada and with the Damascus Document and Karaite writings in the Cairo Genizah, and Karaites see themselves as latter-day Sadducees) and to Jeremiah (who wrote about the New Covenant, which is mentioned in the Damascus Document and Christian writings).

"And when he was near death, he said, "One cannot but choose to die at the hands of men and to cherish the hope that God gives of being raised again by him. But for you there will be no resurrection to life!" (2 Mac. 7:14-15); "...he acted very well and honorably, taking account of the resurrection. For if he were not expecting that those who had fallen would rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead" (2 Mac. 12:44-45).

"Then likewise a man appeared, distinguished by his gray hair and dignity, and of marvelous majesty and authority. And Onias spoke, saying, 'This is a man who loves the brethren and prays much for the people and the holy city, Jeremiah, the prophet of God.' Jeremiah stretched out his right hand and gave to Judas a golden sword, and as he gave it he addressed him thus: 'Take this holy sword, a gift from God, with which you will strike down your adversaries'" (2 Mac. 5:13-16).

It also refers to the Hasideans and that Judas was their leader, and, unlike in 1 Maccabees, they are never said to be willing to make peace with the Seleucids, and the word Hasideans is based on hesed, a word used throughout the DSS and in tandem with "righteous ones," or zaddikim (like Onias and James), such as in the messianic scroll 4Q521, which also mentions the "called by name" theme found in the Damascus Document and James 2:7 and Acts ("For the Lord will visit the Pious Ones [hassidim] and the Righteous [zaddikim] will He call by name").

"Those of the Jews who are called Hasideans, whose leader is Judas Maccabeus, are keeping up war and stirring up sedition, and will not let the kingdom attain tranquility" (2 Mac. 14:6).

But in 1 Maccabees they sue for peace with the Seleucids, like the Pharisees who later supported the Herodians and then proclaimed Vespasian as the Messiah (as did Rabbi ben Zakkai, who founded post-70 CE Rabbinic Judaism, and Josephus), which is something the DSS never do (whoever one supposes the foreign rulers were). So Eisenman argues that the Hasideans split in two, with one faction becoming the forerunners of the Pharisees (and bear in mind that the latter only use 1 Maccabees) and the other becoming the DSS sect.

"So the [Seleucid] king chose Bacchides, one of the king's friends, governor of the province Beyond the River; he was a great man in the kingdom and was faithful to the king. And he sent him, and with him the ungodly Alcimus, whom he made high priest; and he commanded him to take vengeance on the sons of Israel ... and he sent messengers to Judas and his brothers with peaceable but treacherous words ... Then a group of scribes appeared in a body before Alcimus and Bacchides to ask for just terms. The Hasideans were first among the sons of Israel to seek peace from them ..." (1 Mac. 7:8-13).

This webpage discusses the idea that the Hasideans split into two factions.

http://www.piney.com/PhariseeCE.html

"Historians tend to explain the disappearance of the Hasideans as a gradual merging with the Pharisees. The Hasideans may also have had a doctrinal influence on the Essenes, an early Jewish sect that flourished in Palestine."