Texts in Conversation

2 Maccabees describes Antiochus Epiphanes being struck with worms and consumed alive, language that echoes Isaiah’s description of the fate of the rebellious whose bodies are devoured by fire and maggots.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE

Isaiah 66:24

Hebrew Bible
22 “For just as the new heavens and the new earth I am about to make will remain standing before me,” says the Lord, “so your descendants and your name will remain. 23 From one month to the next and from one Sabbath to the next, all people will come to worship me,” says the Lord. 24 “They will go out and observe the corpses of those who rebelled against me, for the maggots that eat them will not die, and the fire that consumes them will not die out. All people will find the sight abhorrent.”
Date: 740–450 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)

2 Maccabees 9:9

Deuterocanon
7 But he in no way ceased from his rude insolence. No, he was filled with even more arrogance, breathing fire in his passion against the Jews, and giving orders to hasten the journey. But it came to pass moreover that he fell from his chariot as it rushed along, and having a grievous fall was tortured in all of the members of his body. 8 He who had just supposed himself to have the waves of the sea at his bidding because he was so superhumanly arrogant, and who thought to weigh the heights of the mountains in a balance, was now brought to the ground and carried in a litter, showing to all that the power was obviously God’s, 9 so that worms swarmed out of the impious man’s body, and while he was still living in anguish and pain, his flesh fell off, and by reason of the stench all the army turned with loathing from his decay. 10 The man who a little before supposed himself to touch the stars of heaven, no one could endure to carry because of his intolerable stench. 11 Therefore he began in great part to cease from his arrogance, being broken in spirit, and to come to knowledge under the scourge of God, his pains increasing every moment.
Date: 160–63 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References

#2660
"... A final function of intertextuality is the artful allusion to an earlier work but without exegetical repercussions. Sommer labels this type “echo,” although he deviates from Richard Hays’s use of the same term. For Sommer, an echo evokes an earlier text in the mind of the reader or listener and nothing more. They have “the pleasure of recognition” but are not guided in any way to proceed further; they merely appreciate the literary artistry in its own right. The audience therefore moves through steps one and two of the intertextual process, recognizing the marker and the evoked text, but they stop before proceeding to step three since there is no discernible significance beyond the echoing of the earlier text. The intertextual link is not a coincidental resemblance to an earlier text, for it meets several or all of the criteria enumerated above for proving author-oriented intertextuality, but it does nothing to elucidate or react against the antecedent text. It is merely there for the audience’s enjoyment. A possible example of such an echo is Judith’s exclamation that God will punish Israel’s gentile foes and “will send fire and worms into their flesh” (Judith 16:17), echoing Isaiah’s description of the horrid state of those who rebel against Yahweh, where “their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be extinguished” (Isaiah 66:24). Apart from the skillful borrowing of these Isaian images, there is probably no clear purpose to the intertextual connection. (Although Judith 16:17 employs prophetic language, there may be an allusion to the fate of Antiochus Epiphanes, struck with worms as a divine punishment in 2 Maccabees 9:9) ..."
Geoffrey David Miller, “Methodological Reflections for Future Intertextual Studies,” in Intertextual Explorations in Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature, ed. Jeremy Corley and Geoffrey David Miller (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2019), 319–343.

* 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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