Matthew 18:3-9 to 2 Maccabees 7
Matthew 18:3-9 to 2 Maccabees 7
One last example, solely to make it an even dozen and not at all because I have run out of examples (there will be hundreds more below),[1] is from Matthew 18:8-9:
8Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. 9And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.
From the Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary:
The wording and meaning of [Matthew] 18:3-9 are very similar to 5:29-30, but the contexts are very different, in 5:29-30, the eye and hand are associated with temptation, particularly temptation to commit sexual sin. Here [18:3-9]… the context seems to refer to anti-Christian persecution that pressures a disciple to renounce his faith. Perhaps the hand, foot, or eye in this text causes someone to fall away in the sense that fear of dismemberment by persecutors enticed a person to renounce faith. Although such an interpretation may sound strange to the modern reader, it would not to Matthew’s original Jewish-Christian readers. Antiochus Epiphanes[2] had maimed the heroes of the Maccabean era in an attempt to coerce them to renounce their Jewish faith and to worship Zeus. Second Maccabees 7:4 records that the king ordered that one young faithful Jewish man have his tongue cut out, his scalp removed, and his hands and feet cut off, all while his family was forced to watch. … The third of the sons voluntarily stuck out his tongue and bravely extended his hands willingly offering them to the torturers and exclaiming, “I got these from Heaven, and because of his laws I disdain them, and from him I hope to get them back again” (2 Macc 7:11). Perhaps Jesus was calling his disciples to the same bold faith that characterized these Jewish martyrs since he foresaw that similar tortures awaited some of his own followers. If fear of being dismembered by persecutors prompted a disciple to renounce his faith, he would be wiser to cut off his own limbs. Suffering dismemberment was far better than being thrown into the eternal fire, the result of renouncing Jesus. Although the tortured believer would “enter life maimed or lame” or “with one eye,” the missing limbs and organs would be restored in the resurrection. Willingness to sacrifice the limbs of one’s body would ensure that the disciple fulfilled Matt 10-28: “Don’t fear those who kill the body but are not able to kill the soul; rather, fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” (p. 458).
They refer us to Craig S. Keener, past president of the Evangelical Theological Society:[3]
Here the image shifts from others as the cause of stumbling to personal responsibility. Because Judaism abhorred self-mutilation (Dalman 1929:227), this is an especially stark image of the cost one must be willing to pay to avoid spiritual death. … The language of losing limbs was reminiscent of the price martyrs paid for their devotion to God (2 Macc 7:11; 4 Масс 10:20[4])…
According to the Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary:
Keener’s view was influenced by William Lane, Mark, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 348, who wrote, “Conversely, concern for the preservation of a hand, a leg or a foot must not lead a man to the denial of the sovereignty of God or his allegiance to Jesus. This thought found heroic exemplification in the history of Jewish martyrdom (e.g. 2 Macc. 7:2-41, where the sacrifice of limbs and life is accepted in order to be true to God and to receive life from his hand) and was to play a crucial role in the martyr Church as well.”
My point with this particular example is that we need to consider how this relates to all the other evidence. So, we advance to August 1st of unknown year (around 400 AD), when Augustine gave a sermon on the feast day of the Maccabees. The sermon was devoted to explaining why Christians celebrate the Maccabean martyrs as martyrs for Christ:
…the Maccabees[5] really are martyrs of Christ. That’s why it is not unsuitable, not in the least improper, but on the contrary absolutely right for their day and their solemnity to be celebrated especially by Christians. What do the Jews know about such a celebration? Word is going round that there is a basilica of the Holy Maccabees in Antioch; in the very city, that is to say, which is called by the name of that persecuting king…the wicked king Antiochus, and the memory of their martyrdom is celebrated in Antioch … This basilica is owned by Christians, was built by Christians. It’s we who keep, we who celebrate their memory; it’s among us that thousands of holy martyrs throughout the world have imitated their sufferings.[6]
[From earlier in Augustine’s Sermon:] Some Jew steps forward and says to us, “How can you reckon these people of ours to be your martyrs? How can you be so unwise as to celebrate their memory? Read their confessions; see whether they confessed Christ.” To whom we reply, “It’s true, you are one of those who did not believe in Christ, and being broken off from the olive remained withered outside, when the wild olive took your place; what are you going to say, being one of those faithless people?”
The early Christians did not just repeatedly cite to 2 Maccabees as Scripture in their writings—they read it at Mass and preached Sermons on it. Rufinus notes that the Churches read 2 Maccabees[7] and Theophilus of Alexandria, in his Festal Letter of AD 404 (in Jerome, Letter 100, 9, not available online), says that the victories of the Maccabees are praised in the churches of Christ throughout the entire world.
In addition, we have three homilies from St. John Chrysostom when he was serving in Antioch (386 AD).[8] We have sermons from others, as well, including Oration 15 from Gregory of Nazianzus.[9] The basilica in Antioch is gone, but portions of the martyrs’ bodies (real or fake) were taken to churches in Istanbul, Cyprus, Rome, and Cologne.[10]
As for the Jews, we will see below that 200 years before Augustine, Origen noted that the Jews gave Maccabees some sort of status (exactly what it means we do not know, but it certainly was not completely rejected or treated as false). And it is not only the Gospel to the Jews that references 2 Maccabees. Earlier, we saw that the Epistle to the Hebrews also references the Maccabean Martyrs and 2 Maccabees.
The Gospel to the Jews and the Epistle to the Hebrews, I say again.
Of course, the modern Jewish canon does not include 2 Maccabees. This is used by some to claim that 2 Maccabees was never accepted by Jews or the early Christian Church as authentic Scripture.
However, I cited above to the Jewish Study Bible, which explained that their canon was finalized after Christ, e.g., after Christians had already embraced Daniel. They say that the Rabbis considered abandoning a book that many—if not all—Jews had accepted as Divinely-inspired prophecy and Scripture for centuries. They say that the Rabbis were focused on Christians and considered rejecting what Christians accept.
The early Church Fathers also repeatedly testified to such behaviors:
“…Such writers, like Matthew, feel that … the only real Jew is a Christian. “Israel” so-called is a nation of imposters …” (The Spirit and the Letter: Studies in the Biblical Canon, by John Barton, p. 27-28).
Justin Martyr (135 AD): “your teachers… have altogether taken away many Scriptures …”
Tertullian (208 AD): “It is necessary for me to lay claim to those Scriptures which the Jews endeavour to deprive us of, and to show that they sustain my view.”
Hippolytus (235 AD): “These things the rulers of the Jews wish now to expunge from the book, and assert that these things did not happen…”
Origen (248 AD): “the Jewish leaders “pretended to the Jews … deceived the wives of their countrymen. … hid from the knowledge of the people … took away from the people every passage … concealed and removed from the Scriptures…”
This leads us back to 2 Maccabees, and it is time to give you [please use your very best Paul Harvey voice impression here:] the rest of the story.
The Talmud, written centuries after Christ, did far more than simply exclude 2 Maccabees from the Jewish canon. It also replaced the Maccabean Martyrs with a fake copy of the story. The Rabbis who wrote the Talmud simply stole the plot and made for themselves a new story (“plagiarized it,” as we would say today).
“The Talmud tells a similar story, but with refusal to worship an idol replacing refusal to eat pork… the king is referred to as the Caesar.”
“… The Josippon [sort of a copy of Josephus, with other things like the story from 2 Maccabees added to it] “probably was paraphrased from a Latin version of 2 Maccabees, and was notable as the first major exposure of medieval Jewish audiences to the story.”[11]
In rabbinic literature the story undergoes some more meaningful changes, primarily a chronological shift, which now places the story … in the second century CE…[12]
“Chronological shift” is a brilliantly dismissive way of describing it. These are two completely different stories that share a plot, one ‘plagiarized’ from the other. The second version is clearly a fake, given by Rabbis in their Talmud as a replacement for 2 Maccabees. And they were successful: later Jews had to be re-exposed to 2 Maccabees and their former Jewish heroes.
Both the past president of the Evangelical Theological Society and the Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary give us the facts at the time of Christ: the Holy Maccabees were well-known heroes to the Jews. Both believe that Jesus Christ refers to 2 Maccabees Chapter 7. Above, we also saw that the KJV believes that the Epistle to the Hebrews refers to the Maccabean Martyrs in its list of sacred heroes, at 11:35.
And I repeat: these references are from (1) Jesus, (2) the Gospel to the Jews, and (3) the Epistle to the Hebrews.
Centuries later, the Rabbis created their own fake version of the story and inserted the fraud into the Talmud. They somehow eliminated the original story from Jewish memory—so much so that Jews had to be reintroduced to their ancestors’ heroes in the Middle Ages.
So the timeline is that 2 Maccabees was well known at the time of Christ (33 AD) and possibly referenced by Christ Himself, the Gospel to the Jews, and the Epistle to the Hebrews; then the Books of the Maccabees had some sort of status in Origen’s time (AD 240); at some point later, 2 Maccabees was completely gone—forgotten and replaced by the Talmud’s fake version.[13]
The Talmud is also the book which listed the modern Jewish canon—the list which excluded 2 Maccabees from the Books that the Jews claim are Scripture. Augustine, again:
It’s we who keep, we who celebrate their memory … Some Jew steps forward … To whom we reply… what are you going to say, being one of those faithless people?
The Bible is the evidence that the Jews of the Bible were linked to 2 Maccabees. The Talmud is the evidence that the Jews of the Talmud had changed; they were no longer linked to 2 Maccabees. The story the early Church told us has corroboration, and it comes from (1) the Bible and (2) the Talmud.
“…Such writers, like Matthew, feel that … the only real Jew is a Christian. “Israel” so-called is a nation of imposters …” (The Spirit and the Letter: Studies in the Biblical Canon, by John Barton, p. 27-28).
Justin Martyr (135 AD): “your teachers… have altogether taken away many Scriptures …”
Tertullian (208 AD): “It is necessary for me to lay claim to those Scriptures which the Jews endeavour to deprive us of, and to show that they sustain my view.”
Hippolytus (235 AD): “These things the rulers of the Jews wish now to expunge from the book, and assert that these things did not happen…”
Origen (248 AD): “the Jewish leaders “pretended to the Jews … deceived the wives of their countrymen. … hid from the knowledge of the people … took away from the people every passage … concealed and removed from the Scriptures…”
The only piece in dispute is the classification of “Scripture” and whether 2 Maccabees was seen as such at the time of Christ. Evidence that it was Scripture includes references from (1) Jesus, (2) the Gospel to the Jews, and (3) the Epistle to the Hebrews.
Whereas those who claim that 2 Maccabees was not seen as Scripture at the time of Christ cite to the Talmud’s list as their evidence.
[1] And notably, all eight Apocrypha have a possible reference in at least one Gospel. See below.
[2] See the earlier discussion of John Chapters 9-10 and the references to Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, and Antiochus Epiphanes.
[3] InterVarsity Press New Testament Commentary Series – Matthew, 1997, p. 285.
[4] 4 Maccabees is an elaboration of the story in 2 Maccabees, written after Christ (and, thus, is not the source of any reference Jesus was making). In fact, Eusebius and Jerome thought Josephus wrote 4 Macc, but that is almost certainly not correct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_Maccabees
[5] A colloquial reference to the Maccabean martyrs, the unnamed mother with seven sons.
[6] The Works of Saint Augustine, A Translation for the 21st Century, Part III Sermons, Volume 8: Sermons 273-305A, Sermon 300.
[7] www.bible-researcher.com/rufinus.html, 38
[8] One at www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2018/08/homily-on-holy-maccabees-and-their.html, two more in the book Homilies on the Maccabees, available on Amazon at https://a.co/d/be3ORon.
[9] www.iconandlight.wordpress.com/2021/01/24/in-praise-of-the-maccabees-saint-gregory-the-theologian-nazianzus/
[10] There are also many allusions and references to the Maccabean Martyrs in all the Martyrologies. E.g., the very first martyr document we have is for Polycarp, whose last words (d. 155 AD) before being sentenced to death include “What are you waiting for?” (2 Maccabees 7:30; Martyrdom of Polycarp 11, 2 (and see 22, where Irenaeus is alleged to have written it—Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp and Bishop of Lyon; both will be discussed at length below): www.newadvent.org/fathers/0102.htm). Regarding the martyrs of Lyon (177 AD; Irenaeus was in Rome delivering a letter. When he returned to Lyon, the original Bishop, Pothinus, had been martyred, so he became the second Bishop of Lyon), Eusebius records that “the blessed Blandina … having, as a noble mother, encouraged her children and sent them before her victorious to the King, endured herself all their conflicts and hastened after them, glad and rejoicing in her departure as if called to a marriage supper, rather than cast to wild beasts.” (Eusebius, Church History 5, 1, 55). www.newadvent.org/fathers/250105.htm. Etc.
[11] Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman_with_seven_sons. The Talmud story is at www.sefaria.org/Gittin.57b.15?lang=bi. Another plagiarization appears in the Jewish Lamentations Rabbah. I compare the Talmud story with the Maccabean Martyrs in the 2 Maccabees section below.
[12] https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/hannah-mother-of-seven
[13] There is also evidence of intermediate stages in this progression. E.g., a first century Jewish author took Chapters 6-7 out of 2 Maccabees and recast them as 4 Maccabees: a standalone story. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_Maccabees.
