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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 came to pass that seven brothers and their mother were at the king’s command taken and shamefully handled with scourges and cords, to compel them to taste of the abominable swine’s flesh. 2 One of them made himself the spokesman and said, “What would you 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 commanded that pans and caldrons be heated. 4 When these were immediately heated, he gave orders to cut out the tongue of him who had been their spokesman, and to scalp him, and to cut off his extremities, with the rest of his brothers and his mother looking on. 5 And when he was utterly maimed, the king gave orders to bring him to the fire, being yet alive, and to fry him in the pan. And as the smoke from the pan spread far, they and their mother also exhorted one another to die nobly, saying this: 6 “The Lord God sees, and in truth is entreated for us, as Moses declared in his song, which witnesses against the people to their faces, saying, ‘And he will have compassion on his servants.’” 7 And when the first had died like this, they brought the second to the mocking; and they pulled off the skin of his head with the hair and asked him, “Will you eat, before your body is punished in every limb?” 8 But he answered in the language of his ancestors and said to them, “No.” Therefore he also underwent the next torture in succession, as the first had done. 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.”
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 did not have kings but princes; and the record 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. 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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