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Augustine appeals to the Maccabean martyrs to explain why the church accepts these books as scripture. For Augustine, their faithfulness in the time before Jesus links Jewish suffering for God’s law to Christian martyrdom.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
2 Maccabees 7:2
Deuterocanon
1 It happened also that seven brothers and their mother were arrested and were being compelled by the king, under torture with whips and thongs, to partake of unlawful swine's flesh. 2 One of them, acting as their spokesman, said, "What do you intend to ask and learn from us? For we are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our ancestors." 3 The king fell into a rage, and gave orders to have pans and caldrons heated. 4 These were heated immediately, and he commanded that the tongue of their spokesman be cut out and that they scalp him and cut off his hands and feet, while the rest of the brothers and the mother looked on. 5 When he was utterly helpless, the king ordered them to take him to the fire, still breathing, and to fry him in a pan. The smoke from the pan spread widely, but the brothers and their mother encouraged one another to die nobly, saying, 6 "The Lord God is watching over us and in truth has compassion on us, as Moses declared in his song that bore witness against the people to their faces, when he said, "And he will have compassion on his servants.' " 7 After the first brother had died in this way, they brought forward the second for their sport. They tore off the skin of his head with the hair, and asked him, "Will you eat rather than have your body punished limb by limb?" 8 He replied in the language of his ancestors and said to them, "No." Therefore he in turn underwent tortures as the first brother had done. 9 And when he was at his last breath, he said, "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."
Augustine, City of God 18.36
On the City of God Against the Pagans
Early Christian
From this time, when the temple was rebuilt, down to the time of Aristobulus, the Jews had not kings but princes; and the reckoning of their dates is found, not in the Holy Scriptures which are called canonical, but in others, among which are also the books of the Maccabees. These are held as canonical, not by the Jews, but by the Church, on account of the extreme and wonderful sufferings of certain martyrs, who, before Christ had come in the flesh, contended for the law of God even to death, and endured most grievous and horrible evils.
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Notes and References
“... The most significant support for a broader Christian canon comes
from the North African theologian Augustine of Hippo, whom we will
meet in more detail later.26 Of 1-2 Maccabees, Augustine writes: “These
are held as canonical, not by the Jews, but by the church, on account of the
extreme and wonderful sufferings of certain martyrs, who, before Christ
had come in the flesh, contended for the law of God even unto death, and
endured most grievous and horrible evils.” In his City of God he refers to
Tobit as scripture and also frequently defends the Wisdom of Solomon.
Augustine reveals no embarrassment for having a different canon than
his Jewish contemporaries and when we come to Augustine in Chapter 13,
we shall see that his own situation made him the Septuagint's most ardent
defender in the early church. ...”
Law, Timothy Michael
When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible
(p. 125) Oxford University Press, 2013
* 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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