4 Maccabees

The work is largely an elaboration of the stories of martyrdom in the book 2 Maccabees: that of the woman with seven sons and the scribe Eleazar, who are tortured to death by Seleucid King Antiochus IV Epiphanes in an attempt to make them renounce their adherence to Judaism.

4 Maccabees recasts the story as one of reason and logic: the martyrs will be rewarded in the afterlife, so it is rational to continue to obey Jewish law, even at the risk of torture and death.

I could prove to you from many and various examples that reason is dominant over the emotions, but I can demonstrate it best from the noble bravery of those who died for the sake of virtue, Eleazar and the seven brothers and their mother.

[3][4] The martyred woman calmly debates her captors, explaining why her actions are rational given God's promise of rewards in the afterlife, using arguments akin to those favored by Stoic philosophy.

[6] The author has the clear rhetorical intent of arousing admiration and emulation of these examples of devotion to the Jewish law.

[7][8] Harry Orlinsky describes it as "an elaborate variation, in philosophical and highly dramatic vein, of the theme" of 2 Maccabees 6:18–7:4.

[14][13] Moses Hadas suggests that Antioch in Roman Syria was a more likely site for composition: a thoroughly Hellenized and Greek-speaking city with a large Jewish minority that revered the martyrs, judging by later Christian churches dedicated to the "Maccabean martyrs" in Antioch, as well as certain word usage that was rare among Alexandrian works such as 3 Maccabees.

[15] This title would be consistent with the conventions of Greek philosophical and ethical works of the period (e.g., Seneca's "On Anger", "On Benefits", "On the Constancy of the Wise Person").

[21] The change of direction with chapter 17 supports the view of the work as a homily held before a Greek-speaking audience on the feast of Hanukkah, as advanced by Ewald and Freudenthal, where this would be a rhetorical element to draw the listeners into the discourse.

[22] In terms of genre, the book resembles both the panegyric or encomium (speeches in honor of a particular person or subject) as well as the philosophical diatribe.

[7][23][2] The work has a clearly Stoic stamp as the thesis it seeks to demonstrate is that "pious reason exercises mastery over the emotions" (4 Maccabees 1:1).

The adjective "pious," however, is critically important: the author is altering the common topic ("reason can master the emotions") in order to suggest that it is the mind that has been trained in the piety and exercises in the practices of the Jewish Law that is equipped to exercise the mastery that Greek ethicists praise.

[3] While the setting of the book is during the Seleucid and Maccabee period of Judea, it is generally believed that the author intended to apply the lessons from this era in his current time.

The book thus functions as an endorsement of fidelity to Jewish customs and law and against assimilation to Gentile practice where this conflicted with the Torah.

The book seems to have been reasonably esteemed in the early Christian church: sermons and works of John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Ambrose evince familiarity with 4 Maccabees.

[31][33] Despite circulating among early Christian communities who used versions of the Septuagint that included 4 Maccabees, church councils were generally more skeptical.

There survives a complete Syriac translation, as well as a Latin adaptation under the title Passio Sanctorum Machabaeorum (Suffering of the Holy Maccabees).

[35][37] The Latin text was made around the same time as Ambrose's De Jacob et vita beata (388), which includes an independent partial translation of 4 Maccabees.

[35] Erasmus published at Cologne in 1517,[39] expanded in 1524, a very free Latin paraphrase of 4 Maccabees, possibly based on the Passio.