2 Maccabees 11-15
One Last Round Of Bloodshed
Welcome to the final 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 11
“Not long after the, Lysias the king's protector and cousin, who
also managed the affairs, took sore displeasure for the things that were done.”
Last time, the Maccabees had rousted the Seleucid forces, retaken
Jerusalem and invented Hannukah by rededicating the Temple. Now Antiochus’
cousin Lysias wants to take a crack at them, and gathers a force of ten
thousand foot soldiers, “thousands of
horse” and 80 elephants.
However, the Jews still have God on their side, and are once again
joined by an angelic saviour figure, in white on horseback “shaking his armour of gold”. And with
the help of Gandalf the White, they defeat Lysias’ forces, such that Lysias
changes his mind and decides to make peace with the Jews instead.
The rest of the chapter gives (or purports to give) the text of
several letters – from Lysias, Antiochus and the Roman ambassadors Quintus
Memmius and Titus Manlius, all giving various guarantees that the Jews are free
to worship as they wish and will no longer be attacked by anyone. Sh’yeah,
right.
2
Maccabees 12
“The men of Joppa also did such an ungodly deed: they prayed the
Jews that dwelt among them to go with their wives and children into the boats
which they had prepared, as though they had meant them no hurt.”
Despite the letters from the last chapter, there are still plenty
of rulers and generals who decide to continue to harass and persecute the Jews,
including Timotheus and Gorgias, and also the rulers of Joppa who trick a load
of Jews onto ships and then drown them.
For most of this chapter, Judas Maccabeus goes on a
Tarantino-esque revenge rampage, burning cities and massacring armies. I added
up the kill total where numbers are given, and made it 90,000 deaths, but this
doesn’t include the burning of Joppa, the burning of the Jamnite navy (whoever
the Jamnites are), which is seen 240 furlongs away (which if the Biblical
furlong is the same as the modern one, is only about half a kilometre), nor the
sack of Caspis that fills a two furlong lake with blood. The people of
Scythopolis escape, however, because they have treated the Jews within their
walls with respect.
At the end of this, Judas buries his fallen troops and sends a
booty of silver back to Jerusalem as a sin offering. There are some apparent
anachronisms at the end, which make me suspect that they were later additions.
For one thing, the Maccabees celebrate Pentecost, which I’m pretty sure is when
the Apostles began talking in tongues. Unless that was on an already existing
Jewish festival of Pentecost which occurs after Passover, which it could be
(I’d better look it up).
The other, though, is that Judas is “mindful of the resurrection”, “For if he had not hoped that they that were slain should have
risen again, it had been superfluous and vain to pray for the dead”.
Which, again, seems to me to be much more of a Christian concept than a Jewish
one. We also get a notion of holy warriors, where “there was great favour laid up for those that died godly, it was
an holy and good thought. Whereupon he made a reconciliation for the dead, that
they might be delivered from sin”.
(And I looked it up: Pentecost is the Jewish harvest festival
Shavout, that the Disciples were celebrating when their heads caught fire and
they could speak all languages. So I’ll let that one go).
2
Maccabees 13
“Now the king came with a barbarous and haughty mind to do far
worse to the Jews, than had been done in his father's time.”
Antiochus Eupater (who I’m sure was called Antipater earlier)
decides that he’s going to invade Judea because, I don’t know. Keeping treaties
and living peacefully doesn’t seem to be the done thing. With him go Lysias and
Menelaus, but there’s a bit of off-screen intrigue between the two, ending up
with Menelaus being executed for treason.
Antiochus has an impressive force, of 110,000 infantry, 5,000
cavalry, 22 elephants and 300 chariots “armed
with hooks”, which is an intriguing detail that I’d like to know more
about. For unseating horsemen, perhaps?
Judas learns of this, and musters the people of Jerusalem and
surrounding Judea, whereupon they go into a massive prayer session that lasts
three days, of weeping, fasting and lying on the ground. There’s a nice
inspirational speech hinted at in the text “So when he had committed all to the Creator of the world, and
exhorted his soldiers to fight manfully, even unto death, for the laws, the
temple, the city, the country, and the commonwealth, he camped by Modin”.
Maccabeus and a few hand-picked men perform a night raid on Antiochus’ army,
killing 4,000 soldiers and “the chiefest
of the elephants”.
Antiochus, having “tasted
the manliness of the Jews”, decides a better strategy would be to go around
the countryside besieging smaller fortified towns, except that he continues to
lose all the time despite treachery on behalf of a Jew called Rhodocus.
The end of the chapter is strangely formatted, almost as a bullet
point list of events, which makes it quite punchy to read. Considering it’s yet
more back and forth of battle, I personally think it’s a neat way of
summarising it – “The king
treated with them in Bethsum the second time, gave his hand, took their's,
departed, fought with Judas, was overcome;” and so on.
One other odd detail that occurs near the start of the chapter
gives a description of a tower near Berea, where Menelaus is put to death. It’s
a tower “of fifty cubits high, full of
ashes, and it had a round instrument which on every side hanged down into the
ashes”.
It’s not clear what the “round
instrument” is, but possibly some kind of cage, because condemned criminals
are lowered into the ash to be buried. The symbolism is two-fold. It’s for
blasphemers against the “altar whose fire
and ashes are holy”, and also burial in ash is not burial in earth and so
the criminal is denied a proper funeral rite. (I looked this up, and it sounds
like the “round instruments” were wheels that stirred the ash up, so that
Menelaus is stuck inside a room full of swirling ash until he suffocated.
Aren’t humans wonderfully inventive?)
2
Maccabees 14
“After three years was Judas informed, that
Demetrius the son of Seleucus, having entered by the haven of Tripolis with a
great power and navy”
Off-screen, in Antioch, Demetrius kills Antiochus Eupater (his
nephew, it would seem), and Lysias, and takes the Seleucid throne.
A former high priest called Alcimus, banished by Judas Maccabeus
for “mingling with the Gentiles”,
stirs up Demetrius against Judas so as to get his old position back. Demetrius
summons “master of the elephants”
Nicanor and makes him governer of Judea, sending him to sort things out.
Of note here, to me, are the hints throughout this chapter of Judas’
forces, here referred to as “Assideans”
(Hasidim?) being very strongly in favour of separating Jews from non-Jews. Even
having any kind of truck with the Gentiles seems to be grounds for banishment,
or punishment of some kind at the very least.
Be that as it may, in the end the armies of Nicanor and the
Maccabees meet and decide that it would be better to hold a peace conference
instead of fight, and as it turns out Nicanor and Judas become good friends,
Nicanor allowing Judas to continue to rule.
Until, that is, that Alcimus stirs up trouble again, so that
Demetrius commands Nicanor to send Judas to him as a prisoner. Nicanor,
although reluctant to do this, also doesn’t want to disobey his king, and so
whilst he bides his time, Judas notices his change in mood and the two men
distance themselves.
The author of Second Maccabees then leaves this main narrative,
full of fun intrigue, to indulge in his favourite hobby of gore. We follow the
fortunes of a man called Razis, a Gentile who is friendly to Jews and a
defender of their right to their religion (which rather contradicts what I said
earlier). Nicanor decides that arresting (or perhaps killing) him would send a
message to the Jews and sends a force of five hundred men to carry this out.
Razis retreats to a tower, and tries to commit suicide, botches
it, jumps from the battlements but survives this too. “Nevertheless, while there was yet breath within him, being
inflamed with anger, he rose up; and though his blood gushed out like spouts of
water, and his wounds were grievous, yet he ran through the midst of the
throng; and standing upon a steep rock, When as his blood was now quite gone,
he plucked out his bowels, and taking them in both his hands, he cast them upon
the throng, and calling upon the Lord of life and spirit to restore him those
again, he thus died.” And so the chapter
ends with a man throwing his intestines at a mob of attackers. I haven’t used the phrase “It’s all gone a bit
Game of Thrones” for a while. But this chapter has it all – plots, betrayals,
double-crossing and lashings of blood. No sex or dragons though.
2
Maccabees 15
“Maccabeus seeing the coming of the multitude,
and the divers preparations of armour, and the fierceness of the beasts, stretched
out his hands toward heaven, and called upon the Lord that worketh wonders,
knowing that victory cometh not by arms, but even as it seemeth good to him, he
giveth it to such as are worthy”
Nicanor decides to attack Jerusalem on the Sabbath; the Jews
within his forces try to talk him out of it, and it looks like they succeed
because Verse 5 says “Yet he obtained not
to have his wicked will done”. Interesting that, not only are there Jews
fighting on Nicoanor’s side (whom I guess would be a modernistic Hellenising
party compared to Judas’ strongly traditionalist party) but also that they
somehow have enough clout to talk Nicanor out of his plan.
Nevertheless, Nicanor comes to attack Jerusalem, but Judas rallies
his forces with a story about a dream wherein the prophet Jeremiah gives him a
golden sword. Besides, his forces care more about protecting the Temple than
they do their own families – “For the care that they took for their wives, and their children,
their brethren, and folks, was in least account with them: but the greatest and
principal fear was for the holy temple.”
In fairly short order, Judas’ forces win (matching the martial
music of Nicanor’s forces with prayers and invocations), and Nicanor is killed.
The author once again indulges his love of the gruesome by describing how
Nicanor’s corpse is treated. His head and right arm are cut off, then his
tongue is cut out, chopped up and fed to birds while the rest of his head is
hung up in front of the Temple.
And that’s pretty much where we leave the story, the author
telling us that, like strong wine, a little goes a long way. This book stands
in an interesting contrast to First Maccabees, which was a much more purely
historical narrative, and went further into the history of the Hasmoneans. This
one, on the other hand, dwells a lot more on the hand of God in proceedings,
and also on various martyrdoms, and so it’s a book with a more spiritual intent
than First Maccabees.
And that’s the end of the Apocrypha. On the whole I really enjoyed
them, probably because there were more with a narrative structure than there
were Wisdom books or poetry, and they make for easier reading. I’d be
interested in knowing more on why some books were included in some traditions
and not others. My understanding for the two books of the Maccabees is that
there were no extant Hebrew versions, only Greek, which counted for something
against their inclusion in the Tanakh (although it makes no sense for Christian
Bibles since much of the New Testament stems from Greek documents). My
assumption is that there were very technical reasons based on how reliable the
provenance of the texts were considered, but that’s just a guess.
As well as the end of the Apocrypha, that’s me finally done with
Near Eastern monotheism for a while as well. Maybe at some point I’ll tackle
the New Testament Apocrypha as they sound fun, but join me next time as I
embark on the Bhagavad Gita.
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