Texts in Conversation
In 2 Maccabees, a mother urges her son to accept death, saying the God who made the world from nothing can restore him. The Shepherd of Hermas begins its commandments with a similar belief in one God who made all things from nothing.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
2 Maccabees 7:28
Deuterocanon
24 But Antiochus, thinking himself to be despised, and suspecting the reproachful voice, while the youngest was yet alive didn’t only make his appeal to him by words, but also at the same time promised with oaths that he would enrich him and raise him to high honor if he would turn from the ways of his ancestors, and that he would take him for his friend and entrust him with public affairs. 25 But when the young man would in no way listen, the king called to him his mother, and urged her to advise the youth to save himself. 26 When he had urged her with many words, she undertook to persuade her son. 27 But bending toward him, laughing the cruel tyrant to scorn, she spoke this in the language of her fathers: “My son, have pity upon me who carried you nine months in my womb, and nursed you three years, and nourished and brought you up to this age, and sustained you. 28 I beg you, my child, to lift your eyes to the sky and the earth, and to see all things that are in it, and thus to recognize that God made them not of things that were, and that the race of men in this way comes into being. 29 Don’t be afraid of this butcher, but, proving yourself worthy of your brothers, accept your death, that in God’s mercy I may receive you again with your brothers.”
Shepherd of Hermas 26:1
Early Christian
1 “First of all, believe that God is One, the One who created all things and set them in order, and brought all things from non-existence into being, who contains all things, but alone is not contained. 2 Therefore believe Him, and fear Him, and in this fear be self-controlled. Keep these things, and you will cast off all wickedness from yourself, and will clothe yourself in every virtue of righteousness, and will live for God, if you keep this commandment.”
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Notes and References
“... The Mandates open with a very brief but very significant introduction that affirms the centrality of monotheistic faith as the foundation of all faithful living, a statement that endeared this section to later heresiologists. [...] God is affirmed as creator of all things out of nothing, a familiar Hellenistic Jewish creedal formula. [...] E.g., God as creator of all: Eph 3:9; from nothing: 2 Macc 7:28; Wis 1:14 (but cf. 11:17); Philo Spec. leg. 2.225; 4.187; Vit. Mos. 2.267; Rom 4:17; 2 Clem. 1.8. ...”
* 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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