Texts in Conversation
In 2 Maccabees, the third of seven brothers holds out his tongue and hands and says he hopes to get them back from God. 4 Maccabees retells his death with his hands and feet torn from their sockets, but leaves out any hope of getting them back.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
2 Maccabees 7:11
Deuterocanon
9 When he was at the last gasp, he said, “You, miscreant, release us out of this present life, but the King of the world will raise us who have died for his laws up to an everlasting renewal of life.” 10 After him, the third was made a victim of their mocking. When he was required, he quickly put out his tongue, and stretched out his hands courageously, 11 and nobly said, “I got these from heaven. For his laws’ sake I treat these with contempt. From him, I hope to receive these back again.” 12 As a result, the king himself and those who were with him were astonished at the young man’s soul, for he regarded the pains as nothing.
Date: 160–63 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
4 Maccabees 10:5
Pseudepigrapha, Wisdom and Poetry
1 When he too had endured a death worthy of praise, the third was brought forward, and many people urged him to taste the meat and save himself. 2 But he shouted, “Don’t you know that the same father who fathered those who died fathered me, that the same mother bore me, and that I was brought up in the same teachings? 3 I do not renounce the noble kinship of my brothers.” 5 Angered by the man’s boldness of speech, they dislocated his hands and feet with instruments made for wrenching joints, and prying his limbs out of their sockets, they dismembered him. 6 They broke his fingers, his arms, his legs, and his elbows. 7 When they could not break him in any way, they removed the instruments and tore away his skin along with the tips of his fingers. 8 Then they immediately took him to the wheel, where his spine was pulled out of joint, and he saw his own flesh torn to pieces and drops of blood flowing from his insides. 9 As he was about to die, he said, 10 “We, wicked tyrant, are suffering this for the sake of God’s teaching and virtue, 11 but you, for your impiety and bloody murder, will endure torments without end.” 12 When he too had died in a way worthy of his brothers, they dragged forward the fourth, saying,
Date: 19–100 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
“... Comparing these two accounts of the final destiny of the righteous and the wicked, it becomes clear that the main emphasis of the author of 4 Maccabees seems to be the reward in store for the righteous (see the Introduction and Philosophical Remark section). Similarly, it should also be noted that the mother’s two speeches in 2 Maccabees 7 also focuses on the reward in store for the righteous. The most significant change relevant for this study is the systematic modification made to the dialogues, turning the martyrdom account in 2 Maccabees from a bodily resurrection text into an account which has no need for a resurrection since the soul of the righteous and the wicked receives its deserved destiny upon death. Hugh Anderson observes: “His [the author’s] espousal of the Greek doctrine of the immortality of the soul is clear-cut and striking; he consistently omits the passages in his primary source, 2 Maccabees, that testify unreservedly to the Jewish belief in the resurrection of the body (7:9, 11, 14, 22f.).” ...”
Jan A. Sigvartsen, “The Afterlife Views and the Use of the TaNaKh in Support of the Resurrection Concept in the Literature of Second Temple Period Judaism: The Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha” (diss., Andrews University, 2016), 353–354.
* 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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