Thursday August 05, 2004

The Seven Maccabees, their Mother Solomonia and Eleazar the Priest (Part I)

On August 1, as the Orthodox Church enters the Dormition Fast, we remember the Jewish martyrs known as "The Seven Maccabees, their Mother Solomonia and Eleazar the Priest."

From "The Prologue from Ochrid" (select August 1):

They all suffered for the purity of the faith of Israel under King Antiochus, called by some "Epiphanos," the "enlightened one" and by others "Epimanis" the "insane one." Because of the great sins in Jerusalem and especially the vying over priestly authority and crimes committed during the occasion of this struggle, God permitted a great calamity on the Holy City. After that, Antiochus wanted by any means to impose upon the Jews the idolatry of the Hellenes in place of their faith in the one living God and he did everything toward this goal. Assisting Antiochus in his intention were some treacherous high priests and other elders of Jerusalem. On one occasion, King Antiochus himself came to Jerusalem and ordered that all Jews eat the meat of swine, contrary to the Law of Moses, for eating pork was an apparent sign that one has disowned the faith of Israel. The elder Eleazar, a priest and one of the seventy translators of the Old Testament into the Greek language [the Septuagint] would not partake of pork. Because of that, Eleazar was tortured and burned. Returning to Antioch, the king took with him the seven sons called the Maccabees and their mother Solomonia. The seven Maccabean brothers were called: Avim, Antonius, Eleazar, Gurius, Eusebon, Achim and Marcellus. Before the eyes of their mother, the wicked king tortured the sons, one by one, ripping the skin from their faces and, afterward, casting them into the fire. They all bravely endured torture and death but they did not disown their faith. Finally, when the mother saw her last son, the three-year old in the fire, she leaped into the flames and was consumed in the fire rendering her soul to God. They all suffered honorably for the faith in the one living God about one hundred eighty years before Christ.

You can read the full account of their (prototypical) martyrdom in the apocryphal/deuterocanonical "2 Maccabees". 2 Maccabees does not appear in the Hebrew scriptures themselves (and thus does not appear in the Old Testament sections of most English bibles) as it was originally written in Greek, and first entered the biblical canon as part of the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures which was prepared for the Greek-speaking (i.e., no-longer-Hebrew-speaking) Jews of Alexandria about 250 B.C. According to the Prologue above, Eleazar helped to translate the Septuagint, being one of the "Seventy" Jewish scholars whose number gave it its name. You can find the account of the martyrdom in Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 of 2 Maccabees, and it is well worth your time to read.

One of the interesting things you'll notice, if you do, is that it is clear that by the time the events described took place (about 180 B.C., per the Prologue), the Jews had some conception of life after death, in which the righteous would be rewarded, and the unrightous, punished.

When the second son was put to the test, he replied to Antiochus, "You accursed wretch, you dismiss us from this present life, but the King of the universe will raise us up to an everlasting renewal of life, because we have died for his laws." (2 Maccabees 7:9)

The third son made it clear that he was expecting not just a spiritual, but a bodily resurrection: "When it was demanded, he quickly put out his tongue and courageously stretched forth his hands, and said nobly, 'I got these from Heaven, and because of his laws I disdain them, and from him I hope to get them back again.'" (vv. 10-11)

The fourth son 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!" (v. 14) Not quite the Johanine teaching that both the righteous and unrighteous will be raised ("The hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth--those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation." -- John 5:28-29), but it's not bad for 200 years before Christ.

The fifth and sixth sons warned of punishments for Antiochus and his progeny:

But [the fifth son] looked at the king, and said, "Because you have authority among men, mortal though you are, you do what you please. But do not think that God has forsaken our people. Keep on, and see how his mighty power will torture you and your descendants!"

After him they brought forward the sixth. And when he was about to die, he said, "Do not deceive yourself in vain. For we are suffering these things on our own account, because of our sins against our own God. Therefore astounding things have happened. But do not think that you will go unpunished for having tried to fight against God!"

2 Maccabees 7:16-19

Much more to say on this (are you surprised?!), but the hour is late. I'll come back and talk about Solomonia, their long-suffering mother, in the next installment.

(2004-08-05 19:20:53.0) Permalink