2 Maccabees 6-10
Gruesome Tortures Aplenty.
Welcome to the next instalment of An Atheist Explores
Sacred Texts (Apocrypha version).
In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through
the Old Testament Apocrypha, commenting on it from the point of view of the
text as literature and mythology.
For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/3aEJ6Q5
For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP
2 Maccabees 6
“For the temple was filled with riot and revelling by the Gentiles,
who dallied with harlots, and had to do with women within the circuit of the
holy places, and besides that brought in things that were not lawful.”
I thought at the end of the last chapter that the
“Abomination” of Antioches Epiphanes was somewhat different in 2nd
Maccabees, but this chapter lays out all the sacrileges in remorseless detail.
Antioches sends “an
old man of Athens” to compel the Jews to abandon their religion, converting
the Temple into one for Jupiter Olympias, filling it with prostitutes and putting
“profane things” on the altar. There
are further repressions on the Jews – they are forced to partake in the
Bacchanalia, forced to eat sacrificed meats, can’t keep the Sabbath and can’t
even refer to themselves as “Jews”, all under pain of death.
The author of this chapter gives a couple of grim
examples – a woman who has her children circumcised is forced to throw them
from the city walls; a group of people who gather in a secret cave to
commemorate Sabbath are burned to death. Finally the chapter ends on the case
of Eleazar the Scribe.
But before we get to that, the text goes off into a
little digression – “Now I beseech those that read this book, that they be not
discouraged for these calamities, but that they judge those punishments not to
be for destruction, but for a chastening of our nation”. Here the author
tries a bit of sophistry to try to argue that when God punishes the Jews, He
does so before they get too sinful, as a warning to them, whereas with other
nations He allows them to go far ahead in their sin so as to be able to punish
them fully. In other words, if the Gentiles seem to be flourishing despite
oppressing the Jews, that’s all okay and according to God’s plan. I’ll let you
decide how comforting that is.
So, Eleazar the Scribe is force-fed “swine’s flesh” but spits it out. When his friends beg him to
reconsider to save his life, Eleazar points out that he’s 90 years old, and
what kind of man would he be to throw away a lifetime of piety at this point in
his life; not only that, he wants to set an example to the young, and at 90
he’s not likely got long left anyway, so he may as well spend it according to
his conscience and faith. He gets beaten to death, but lives on as an example
–“And thus this man died, leaving
his death for an example of a noble courage, and a memorial of virtue, not only
unto young men, but unto all his nation.”
2 Maccabees 7
“It came to pass also, that seven brethren with their mother were
taken, and compelled by the king against the law to taste swine's flesh, and
were tormented with scourges and whips.”
Some good old gruesome torturing now, as a mother and her
seven sons are forced to eat the flesh of swine, but refuse, and so one by one
the sons are killed. The first one gets a pretty detailed description of how
Antiochus cuts out his tongue, then cuts off his “extremities” (which I take to
mean hands and feet), and then cooks him alive. Lovely.
The next son gets scalped as well as the same punishments
as his older brother, then the descriptions become less detailed, thankfully.
Each time a son is killed, it doesn’t deter the next one, who holds to his
faith and refuses to accede to Antiochus’ demands. Finally the mother is killed
as well.
What’s interesting here, though, is how the victims tell
Antiochus that, in effect, they pity him because “For our brethren, who now have suffered a short pain, are dead
under God's covenant of everlasting life: but thou, through the judgment of
God, shalt receive just punishment for thy pride”. This covenant of
“everlasting life” is not something
that really comes across elsewhere in the Old Testament; dead tends to be dead
with no concept of afterlife or anything like that. People tend to be
remembered through their legacy, not because they get some kind of heavenly
existence. Considering that Maccabees is quite a late tale (I don’t know when 2
Maccabees is thought to have been written but I’ll look it up), it’s
interesting to me that there seem to be similar concepts given here to those
espoused by Jesus, implying to me that this was a perhaps relatively new idea
in the Jewish world that was doing the rounds (and really found eventual root
in the followers of Jesus). The deaths of the Seven Sons are also remniscient
of the fates of Christian martyrs, the eldest son “fried in a pan” reminding me of St. Lawrence cooked on a barbecue
grill.
Otherwise, it’s pretty grim reading, and as the final
verse of this chapter says, “Let this be enough now to have spoken concerning the idolatrous
feasts, and the extreme tortures.”
2 Maccabees 8
“Then Judas Maccabeus, and they that were with him, went privily
into the towns, and called their kinsfolks together, and took unto them all
such as continued in the Jews' religion, and assembled about six thousand men.”
The Maccabees strike back. Judas Maccabeus summons a
force of six thousand soldiers, firing his troops up to “remember the wicked slaughter of harmless infants, and the
blasphemies committed against his name; and that he would shew his hatred
against the wicked”, and they set about making
mainly night-time guerrilla attacks on strongholds of the enemy.
The local ruler, Philip, sends to Ptolemy for
help, who sends his generals Nicanor and Gorgias along with twenty thousand
troops, with the intent to sell the Jews as slaves and raise money (and also,
incidentally, as a tribute to the Romans).
Maccabeus, however, manages to persuade his
army to take on the superior force by regaling them of previous times that God
has helped His chosen people against overwhelming odds from, for example, the
Babylonians. It’s notable that the Second Maccabees has a lot more reference to
the favour of God working one way or another, whereas First Maccabees gave
pretty much raw historical detail without the theology. I mentioned long, long
ago (back when I was reading the likes of Joshua and Kings) that it’s very easy
to get tripped up when bringing God into the equation, because the writer has
to justify why a force with God on its side doesn’t always win.
Anyway, here they do, handily defeating
Nicanor’s army. Spoils are given each time to the widows, orphans, maimed and
the elderly, and the rest is stashed near Jerusalem. Nicanor ends up fleeing
with nothing to Antioch, with stories of how the Jews have God on their side.
There’s also a bit of poetic justice where somebody called Philarchus (whom I
don’t think we’ve heard of before) gets burned alive hiding in a house, because
he burned down the gates of the Temple.
Round Two here goes to the Maccabees.
2 Maccabees 9
“But the Lord Almighty, the God of Isreal, smote him with an
incurable and invisible plague: or as soon as he had spoken these words, a pain
of the bowels that was remediless came upon him, and sore torments of the inner
parts;”
The writer of Second Maccabees really does like a bit of
gore and body horror! Here, Antiochus Epiphanes, smarting from a loss against
the Persians, decides that he’s going to take out his frustrations on the Jews,
with the defeat of Nicanor as an excuse.
God, however, has other plans, and strikes Antiochus with
some kind of rotting bowel disease, so that Antiochus suffers constant pains
and begins to stink so much that even he can’t stand his own smell. The chapter
juxtaposes how Antiochus once thought to command the sea and is now in a state
where “his flesh fell away”.
Antiochus repents, stating that “It is meet to be subject unto God, and that a man that is mortal
should not proudly think of himself if he were God.” He declares the Jews to be free to worship at their
Temple and even offers to become a Jew himself. But God isn’t having any of it,
and his illness doesn’t go away.
Which does raise the question of why God is doing this. I
mean, yes, Antiochus has done some terrible things to the Jews, and some
retribution is probably in order, but isn’t the lesson a better one if he
repents and becomes a better person? I guess a believer would answer that God
knows that Antiochus would backslide again, but it still seems over the top to
me, more like a revenge fantasy by the author.
On his deathbed, then, Antiochus writes a letter to the
Jews as some form of reconciliation, although I note that he doesn’t formalise
any of the promises that he makes to God while dying of stink. Worse, he rather
unabashedly declares “Therefore I pray and request you to remember the benefits that I
have done unto you generally, and in special, and that every man will be still
faithful to me and my son”. Benefits like killing and enslaving
people and looting the Temple? Yes… I think the people of Jerusalem may well
remember that.
As mentioned in that quote, Antiochus Junior is made heir
when his father dies “a miserable death
in a strange country”.
2 Maccabees 10
“And having cleansed the temple they made another altar, and
striking stones they took fire out of them, and offered a sacrifice after two
years, and set forth incense, and lights, and shewbread.”
Judas Maccabbeus cleanses the Temple, clears out any
pagan shrines and reconsecrates the Temple. The date, the 25th
Chislev, becomes a festival (which is Hannukah, but this isn’t mentioned here,
nor is the legend about there being enough oil to keep the lamps miraculously
burning for eight days. Which is kind of an odd detail to leave out, so I’m
guessing that this comes from a later tradition than when Second Maccabees was
written).
Maccabeus prays to God that nothing like the conquest of
Antiochus Epiphanes happens again, and that if God wants to punish the Jews
that He “chasten them with mercy”.
That went well, then.
Meanwhile, the son of Epiphanes, Antiochus Eupater,
continues to make trouble for the Jews by appointing Gorgias as governor over
them, whereby he “nourished war
continuously with the Jews”. Some people called the Idumeans take a couple
of castles. Maccabeus’ son Simon besieges them, some of his men take bribes to
let a few Idumeans escape, but in the end the Idumeans are defeated and the
bribe-takers punished.
Then Timotheus, general of Antipater, brings in a massive
army to fight the Jews. The Maccabees pray before the altar and then attack
Timotheus at dawn. Unlike First Maccabees, here a miracle occurs where “there appeared unto the enemies
from heaven five comely men upon horses, with bridles of gold, and two of them
led the Jews”. These celestial riders throw lightning at the Seleucid
forces, with the result that the Jews win, whilst the Seleucids have 20,500
dead footmen and 600 dead horsemen.
Later, the Maccabees take a city called Gawra, fired up
by religious zeal, and Timotheus, “that
was hid in a certain pit” is killed.
So far, the Maccabees are winning. But we know from First
Maccabees not to expect this to last.
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