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The Christian theologian Ambrose of Milan tells the story from 1 Maccabees about Eleazar Avaran, who attacked a war elephant carrying the king and was crushed when it fell. Ambrose uses 1 Maccabees as a reliable source for teaching and theology.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
1 Maccabees 6:43
Deuterocanon
43 Eleazar, who was called Avaran, saw one of the animals armed with royal breastplates, and it was taller than all the animals, and the king seemed to be on it. 44 He gave his life to deliver his people, and to get himself an everlasting name. 45 He ran upon him courageously into the midst of the phalanx, and killed on the right hand and on the left, and they parted away from him on this side and on that. 46 He crept under the elephant, and stabbed it from beneath, and killed it. The elephant fell to the earth upon him, and he died there. 47 They saw the strength of the kingdom and the fierce attack of the army, and turned away from them. 48 But the soldiers of the king’s army went up to Jerusalem to meet them, and the king encamped toward Judea and toward mount Zion.
Date: 134–63 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Ambrose, On the Duty of the Clergy 1.198
Early Christian
198 Mark the courage of the leader, Judas Maccabæus, as exemplified in the character of one of his soldiers. Eleazar, meeting with an elephant higher than all the rest, and with all the royal trappings upon it, and thinking that the king was on it, ran hastily and threw himself into the midst of the legion; and, casting away his shield, with both hands he slew those opposed to him until he reached the beast. Then he got beneath it, thrust in his sword and slew it. But the beast in falling crushed Eleazar and so killed him. What courage of mind was his then, first, in that he feared not death, next because, when surrounded by enemies, he was carried by it into the thickest of his foes and penetrated the very centre! Then, despising death, and casting away his shield, he ran beneath the huge beast, wounded it with both his hands, and let it fall upon him. He ran beneath it so as to give a more deadly blow. Enclosed by its fall, rather than crushed, he was buried in his own triumph.
Date: 390–395 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Treatments of 1 Maccabees in patristic writings highlighted the religious and moral virtues of Judas Maccabeus. Tertullian (Adversus Judaeos 4.1–11) and Victorinus (Routh: 3.451–483) praised Judas Maccabeus for legitimately breaking the observance of the Sabbath in order to fight his enemies. Origen, who supposedly still had access to the Hebrew original, criticized the zeal of the Jews in his Commentary on Romans 8.1, yet he emphasized the zeal and jealousy of Mattathias as being righteous and according to knowledge (8.1.2). A shift in perception is evident in Cyprian’s Testimoniorum Libri Tres, his collection of biblical passages on the moral duties of the Christian life, in which he praises the virtue and courage of Judas Maccabeus. Similarly, Ambrose of Milan stressed the courage and bravery of Judas Maccabeus ... Augustine cites 1 Maccabees 2:69 as part of an argument that righteousness does not depend on circumcision. Jerome, who primarily translated the Vulgate, was also responsible for the inclusion of 1 Maccabees ..."
Jens Kreinath, “First Book of Maccabees,” in Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, ed. Hans-Josef Klauck (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2019), 324–332.
* 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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