Texts in Conversation
Hebrews 11 praises heroes from Israel's past for their faith and includes a mother and son who endure torture with hope in resurrection. Their story comes from Maccabean traditions, showing the author viewed these writings as part of Israel’s history.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
2 Maccabees 7:23
Deuterocanon
22 “I don’t know how you came into my womb. It wasn’t I who gave you your spirit and your life. It wasn’t I who brought into order the first elements of each one of you. 23 Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the first origin of man and devised the first origin of all things, in mercy gives back to you again both your spirit and your life, as you now treat yourselves with contempt for his laws’ sake.” 24 But Antiochus, thinking himself to be despised, and suspecting the reproachful voice, while the youngest was yet alive didn’t only make his appeal to him by words, but also at the same time promised with oaths that he would enrich him and raise him to high honor if he would turn from the ways of his ancestors, and that he would take him for his friend and entrust him with public affairs. 25 But when the young man would in no way listen, the king called to him his mother, and urged her to advise the youth to save himself. 26 When he had urged her with many words, she undertook to persuade her son. 27 But bending toward him, laughing the cruel tyrant to scorn, she spoke this in the language of her fathers: “My son, have pity upon me who carried you nine months in my womb, and nursed you three years, and nourished and brought you up to this age, and sustained you. 28 I beg you, my child, to lift your eyes to the sky and the earth, and to see all things that are in it, and thus to recognize that God made them not of things that were, and that the race of men in this way comes into being. 29 Don’t be afraid of this butcher, but, proving yourself worthy of your brothers, accept your death, that in God’s mercy I may receive you again with your brothers.”
Date: 160–63 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Hebrews 11:35
New Testament
33 Through faith they conquered kingdoms, administered justice, gained what was promised, shut the mouths of lions, 34 quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, gained strength in weakness, became mighty in battle, put foreign armies to flight, 35 and women received back their dead raised to life. But others were tortured, not accepting release, to obtain resurrection to a better life. 36 And others experienced mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. 37 They were stoned, sawed apart, murdered with the sword; they went about in sheepskins and goatskins; they were destitute, afflicted, ill-treated 38 (the world was not worthy of them); they wandered in deserts and mountains and caves and openings in the earth. 39 And these all were commended for their faith, yet they did not receive what was promised.
Date: 80–90 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Compared to 1 Maccabees “there is much evidence for Christian interest” in 2 Maccabees. This is mainly due to the text’s accounts about the violent death of several Jewish righteous like Eleazar (2 Maccabees 6:18–31) and the seven sons and their mother (2 Maccabees 7). Although we do not have explicit citations of 2 Maccabees in the New Testament, the evidence for the book’s use is quite clear. Gerbern Oegema, again, sees the use of key terms like (“way of life”) and (“Judaism”) in Galatians 1:13–14 as possibly influenced by concepts used in 2 Maccabees. The first quite clear allusions may be seen among the examples of belief in Israel’s history put together in Hebrews 11. It is mainly Hebrews 11:35–36 and 38 with both its descriptions of “women who received their dead by resurrection” (verse 35: possibly 2 Maccabees 7:29) and its overview of different tortures (verses 35b–36: possibly 2 Maccabees 6:19, 28; 7:7) plus, finally, the idea that some had to withdraw “to deserts, mountains, and caves” (verse 38: 2 Maccabees 10:6), where these possible allusions can be found ..."
Tobias Nicklas, “The Apocrypha in the History of Early Christianity,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Apocrypha, ed. Gerbern S. Oegema (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 52–73.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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