2 Maccabees Commentaries on Early Jewish Literature (CEJL)
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Daniel R. Schwartz 2 Maccabees Commentaries on Early Jewish Literature (CEJL) Edited by Loren T. Stuckenbruck and Pieter W. van der Horst · Hermann Lichtenberger Doron Mendels · James R. Mueller Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York Daniel R. Schwartz 2 Maccabees Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York Ü Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schwartz, Daniel R. 2 Maccabees / Daniel R. Schwartz. p. cm. – (Commentaries on early Jewish literature (CEJL)) Includes an English translation of the text of 2nd Maccabees. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-3-11-019118-9 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Bible. O. T. Apocrypha. Maccabees, 2nd – Commentaries. I. Bible. O. T. Apocrypha. Maccabees, 2nd. English. Schwartz. 2008. II. Title. III. Title: Two Maccabees. IV. Title: Second Maccabees. BS1825.53.S39 2008 229’.73077–dc22 2008038566 ISBN 978-3-11-019118-9 Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at <http://dnb.d-nb.de> © Copyright 2008 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, 10785 Berlin, Germany All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in Germany Cover Design: Christopher Schneider, Berlin Typesetting: Dörlemann Satz, Lemförde Printing and binding: Hubert & Co GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen Preface V Preface In the 1980s my late teacher, Prof. Menahem Stern of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, best known for his Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Ju- daism, was among the main movers of a project to publish a series of anno- tated Hebrew translations of Jewish literature of the Second Temple period. Stern himself undertook to prepare the volume on the Second Book of Mac- cabees, one of the central works of Hellenistic Judaism – but he was murdered a few months later (22 June 1989), at the age of sixty-four, in the context of what came to be known as “the first Intifada.” This brutal act, which snatched him from his family, his friends, his colleagues and his students, denied the world the opportunity of seeing both his History of the Second Temple Period, of which many incomplete drafts were found, and his analysis and interpre- tation of this central work of Hellenistic Judaism, of which only a short draft was found (published below, in my translation, as Appendix 7). May he rest in peace, and may the memory of him long continue to be a blessing. Eventually, the publisher transferred the project to me, unprepared though I was. True, I was not unfamiliar with the book; already in the mid- seventies it had been one of the major texts upon which Prof. Stern had tested me in my M.A. examinations. Nevertheless, during the next decade my work had focused on later sources – Josephus, Philo, and the New Tes- tament. Stern’s death brought me back to the Hasmonean period – first to editing, from some of the drafts for his projected History of the Second Temple Period, a volume entitled Hasmonaean Judaea in the Hellenistic World: Chapters in Political History (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar, 1995 [in Hebrew]), and then to work on Second Maccabees. Numerous responsibilities at the Hebrew University ensured that the pro- ject would take much longer than ever expected. The fact that it was event- ually completed, with the publication of my Hebrew translation and com- mentary in 2004, is due to the support of many institutions and individuals. I am very grateful, first of all, to Hebrew University’s Institute of Ad- vanced Studies, at which I was able to spend two fruitful years of research and writing. A semester at Yale University’s Dept. of Religious Studies, to- ward the end of the project, allowed me the leisure to bring it to completion. Besides such institutional help, there are many colleagues and friends. Here, pride of place goes to two: Dr. Emmanuelle Main, with whom I went VI Preface over, in detail, my Hebrew translation of every verse of the book, and Prof. Joseph Geiger, who wrote a detailed critique of the original Hebrew manu- script. Although I did not always accept their advice, all of it was invalu- able; it is a privilege to have such support and to receive such input. Dr. Noah Hacham, Dr. Daniel Stoekl-Ben Ezra, and Dr. Amram Tropper also spent many hours going over the Hebrew translation – and all of that im- pacted, very directly, on this English version as well. Others who generously proffered advice, about one or another historical or literary problem or about how to render this or that word, include Profs. Robert Doran, Erich Gruen, Galit Hasan-Rokem, Jan Willem van Henten, Moshe David Herr, Avi Hurvitz, Lee Levine, Hermann Lichtenberger, Doron Mendels, Joseph Mélèze Modrzejewski, Tessa Rajak, David Satran, Israel Shatzman, Avig- dor Shinan, Adiel Shremer, and Uri Rappaport; and my special debt to Prof. Bezalel Bar-Kochva should be obvious from the multitude of my references to his Judas Maccabaeus. And there were many others as well; above all – my students. The many years I spent on this project afforded several oppor- tunities to give seminars on Second Maccabees, and thereby to run up many flags and see who salutes; ,lvkm rtvy ydymltmv ,ytlk>h ydmlm lkm. I hope I have not stolen too many ideas without proper acknowledgement. The present English volume is, to a large extent, the product of several extended stays at the Department of New Testament Theology at the Uni- versity of Munich, courtesy of a prize from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and of the outstanding hospitality of the Department’s director, Prof. Jörg Frey, and his staff. These stays supplied ideal working conditions that allowed the project to move forward. In this connection, a special word of thanks to two assistants, Tanja Schultheiß and Eva Preuß, who helped with the proofreading in Munich. Back in Jerusalem, grants from Hebrew University’s Charles Wolfson Fund and from Scholion (Hebrew University’s Interdisciplinary Research Center in Jewish Studies) allowed for proof- reading by Deenah Pinson, Yonatan Miller, Nadav Sharon and Maya Sher- man; Scholion also provided me with superb working conditions for this project. Professor Loren Stuckenbruck of Durham read through the entire manuscript, and my friends Michael Blaustein and Judy Klitsner read through my translation of the Greek text and helped weed out translatio- nese and other problems. My sincere thanks to all of them – as well as to the editors of CEJL for their invitation to me to participate in this series. Although this volume is based, to a significant extent, on the Hebrew one, there are various differences. Apart from adding general Comments before the verse-to-verse commentary on each chapter, from replacing ci- tations of Hebrew bibliography with references to works in western lan- guages, from eliminating various comments relevant only to the Hebrew Preface VII used in my translation (such as citations to demonstrate the existence of some odd word I felt compelled to use or to inform the reader that it was from Menahem Begin’s memoirs that I picked up the phrase I used at 7:3 to describe how a prisoner might infuriate his interrogator), from citing and using some new publications (and especially – a newly-discovered and very apposite Attalid inscription – see Appendix 2), and from integrating various second thoughts, corrections, and revisions, including corrections and sug- gestions by some reviewers of the Hebrew version, the most important change relates to the fact that the English translation is not only new but also qualitatively different from the Hebrew one. Namely, while my Hebrew translation strove to render Second Maccabees’ Greek diction as closely as possible, even at the expense of readability, my Eng- lish translation of the Greek is freer and, consequently, more idiomatically English. That is, if it is impossible to read even a few lines of my Hebrew trans- lation without realizing that it is a translation, this should not be the case with the present English translation. The reason for this difference derives from the chasm between Hebrew vocabulary and syntax and their counterparts in Greek, which ensures that any idiomatic Hebrew translation would be very far-removed from the Greek original. Given the facts that the book’s author invested such an effort (with sweat and tears – 2:26) into his work, and that the result is often quite impressive, I was loath to replace it with something far- removed. I wanted, rather, to reveal– as best I could – the beauty and the struc- ture of the Greek to my students; for it was my students I saw in my mind’s eye while I wrote, and most of them cannot read the Greek themselves. Accord- ingly, I rendered the text fairly literally, referring readers who want something more readable to other Hebrew translations of the work. Thus, for Hebrew readers I chose to do what Brock calls “bringing the readers to the book.”1 For the present English translation, however, I allowed myself more free- dom, for two reasons: (1) I contemplate more readers who know Greek (and assume that those who do not will, by and large, go on reading the standard translations in their Catholic Bibles or Protestant Apocryphas); (2) because English is much closer to Greek than Hebrew is, with regard to vocabulary and syntax, so the moves that allow for more idiomatic English usually en- tail less deviation from the Greek.