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3 Maccabees and the Jerusalem Temple

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3 Maccabees and the Jerusalem Temple Chapter 5 3 Maccabees and the Jerusalem Temple Another work relevant to this investigation of the place of the Jerusalem tem- ple in diaspora Jewish literature can be found in 3 Maccabees. Even though the diasporan origin of this text is not contested, there is less agreement about the date of the composition of 3 Maccabees, with most scholars placing it vari- ously from the late second century BCE to the mid-first century CE.1 Another area of disagreement in the scholarship on 3 Maccabees is the identification of the purpose(s) of the work. It has been suggested that the work serves as an ex- planation of the origins of a festival, a defense of the authenticity of diaspora 1 For indications within 3 Maccabees of a diasporan setting, other than its general focus on the Jewish community in Egypt, see 3 Macc 6:3, 10, 15. See also N. Clayton Croy, 3 Maccabees (Septuagint Commentary Series; Leiden: Brill, 2006), xiii; Sara Raup Johnson, Historical Fictions and Hellenistic Jewish Identity: Third Maccabees in Its Cultural Context (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 169; Joseph Mélèze Modrzejewski, Troisième livre des Maccabées (La Bible d’Alexandrie 15.3; Paris: Cerf, 2008), 87–113. Daniel Schwartz suggests that those who acquiesced to the pressure of Philopator to participate in the cult of Dionysus are understood as forsaking “the religion of their city” (2:31), that is of Jerusalem (“Temple or City,” 115–16). Such an interpretation of this difficult phrase would be further evidence of the diaspora consciousness of the author and attachment to Jerusalem. However, Johannes Tromp disagrees and rather suggests that this should be understood as a reference to the reli- gion of Alexandria (“‘Not Enough’: ΕΠΙΠΟΛΑΙΩΣ in 3 Maccabees 2:31,” JSJ 30 [1999]: 411–17; cf. Noah Hacham, “Is Judaism the ΕΥΣΕΒΕΙΑ of Alexandria? 3 Maccabees 3:21A Revisited” CP 109 [2014]: 72–79). For proposals of a late Hellenistic date, see H. Anderson, “3 Maccabees,” in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (ed. James H. Charlesworth; 2 vols.; New York: Doubleday, 1985) 2.509–29, esp. 2.510–12; C.W. Emmet, “The Third Book of Maccabees,” in Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (ed. R.H. Charles; 2 vols.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1913), 1.156–73, esp. 1.158; Noah Hacham, “The Third Book of Maccabees: Literature, History and Ideology,” (Ph.D. diss., The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2002), 221–43 (Hebrew); Johnson, Historical Fictions and Hellenistic Jewish Identity, 129–41; R.B. Motzo, “Il Rifacimento Greco di Ester e il III Maccabei,” in Saggi di Storia e Letteratura Giudeo-Ellenistica (ed. R.B. Motzo; Firenze: Le Monnier, 1924), 272–90. For a Roman date, see Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora, 448; Elias J. Bickerman, “Makkabäerbücher (III),” PWRE 27 (1928): 797–800; Collins, Between Athens and Jerusalem, 124–26; Moses Hadas, The Third and Fourth Books of Maccabees (New York: Harper, 1953), 19–21; Fausto Parente, “The Third Book of Maccabees as Ideological Document and Historical Source,” Henoch 10 (1988): 143–82, esp. 175–77; Victor Tcherikover, “The Third Book of Maccabees as a Historical Source of Augustus’ Time,” Scripta Hierosolymitana 7 (1961): 1–26. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004409859_007 164 Chapter 5 Judaism, an encouragement for orthopraxy among Egyptian Jews, or a polemic against the cult of Dionysus.2 This chapter will argue that, much like the Letter of Aristeas, the author of 3 Maccabees provides an example of a diasporan perspective which idealizes the ancestral homeland and its sacred center and makes use of temple ideol- ogy and constructions of “a common history” in order to argue in favor of “the possibility of a distinctive creative, enriching life” in the diaspora.3 In other words, the text attempts to legitimize life in the diaspora through its depiction of the Jerusalem temple. In distinction from the consistent attention given to the Jerusalem temple in 2 Maccabees, 3 Maccabees locates only one early episode in the temple (3 Macc 1:8–2:24). This narrative concerns the divine protection of the temple from the profanation of Philopator and provides the backdrop for the sub- sequent and more elaborate account of the deliverance of the Egyptian Jews from the annihilation ordered by Philopator in Alexandria. In order to under- stand the perspective of the author of 3 Maccabees on the Jerusalem temple, it will be necessary to focus specifically on the confrontation in the temple and the responses of the residents of the city as well as the implications of juxta- posing this narrative to the parallel account of the divine deliverance of the Jews in Alexandria. With regard to the latter part of our discussion, in the structure of 3 Maccabees some scholars perceive an attempt to correlate the status of the communi- ty of diaspora Jews to that of the Jerusalem temple, while others identify a 2 For those who suggest that 3 Maccabees is intended to explain the origins of a certain Egyptian Jewish festival, see Philip S. Alexander, “3 Maccabees, Hanukkah and Purim,” in Biblical Hebrew, Biblical Texts: Essays in Memory of Michael P. Weitzman (ed. Ada Rapoport- Albert and Gillian Greenberg; JSOTSup 333; London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 321–39; Bickerman, “Makkabäerbücher (III),” 797–800. Alternatively, 3 Maccabees has been under- stood to encourage general orthopraxy among diaspora Jews in J.R.C. Cousland, “Reversal, Recidivism, and Reward in 3 Maccabees: Structure and Purpose,” JSJ 34 (2003): 39–51. Other scholars propose this work was meant to function as a defense of Egyptian Jews in light of their perceived inferior status in relation to their brethren in Judea. For example, see Hacham, “The Third Book of Maccabees,” 65–106; idem, “Sanctity and the Attitude Towards the Temple in Hellenistic Judaism,” 155–79; Tuval, From Jerusalem Priest to Roman Jew, 59–60; David S. Williams, “3 Maccabees: A Defense of Diaspora Judaism?” JSP 13 (1995): 17–29. For a more re- cent literary analysis suggesting that 3 Maccabees is a satire of Dionysus, see J.R.C. Cousland, “Dionysus theomachos: Echoes of the Bacchae in 3 Maccabees,” Biblica (2001): 539–48. These various purposes need not be seen as mutually exclusive. 3 Cohen, Global Diasporas, 17. The most recent treatments of the place of Jerusalem and the temple in the Letter of Aristeas, see Church, Hebrews and the Temple, 44–55; McGlynn, “Authority and Sacred Space,” 126–29; Moore, Jewish Ethnic Identity, 204–54; Tuval, From Jerusalem Priest to Roman Jew, 78–81..
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