IN SEARCH OF THE OLD GREEK TEXT OF 4 MACCABEES Robert J. V. Hiebert 1. Introduction The story of the martyrdoms, during the reign of Antiochus IV Epipha- nes, of an elderly Jewish scribe (γραμματεύς—2 Macc 6:18) or priest and lawyer (ἱερεύς, νομικός—4 Macc 5:4) named Eleazar and of seven broth- ers and their mother is told in 2 Macc 6:18–7:42, and in a considerably expanded version, in 4 Macc 5–18. Antiochus and his officials are deter- mined to make the Jews “forsake their ancestral laws” (2 Macc 6:1), to force them “to renounce Judaism by tasting defiling foods” (4 Macc 4:26), to compel them “to taste pork and food sacrificed to idols” (4 Macc 5:2), and thereby to signal their willingness “to change over to Greek customs” (2 Macc 6:9). Antiochus orders that the most barbarous forms of torture should be inflicted upon the eight males, beginning with Eleazar, in his attempt to make them yield. When they do not, but instead they defy him boldly, he has them put to death. According to the 4 Maccabees version, the mother of the seven brothers is the last one of the group still alive, and she throws herself into the fire “so that no one might touch her body” (4 Macc 17:1).1 In both versions, the martyrs’ courage and faithful obedi- ence “to the holy God-given law” (2 Macc 6:23) are celebrated. In 4 Mac- cabees, their story is recounted in detail to support the author’s thesis in his philosophical treatise, i.e., that αὐτοδέσποτός ἐστιν τῶν παθῶν ὁ εὐσεβὴς λογισμός “pious reason is absolute master of the passions” (4 Macc 1:1; cf. vv. 7, 13, 30 passim). Greek 4 Maccabees is the only one of the four books that traditionally include the name Maccabees in the title for which to date there is no criti- cal edition in the Göttingen Septuaginta series. I am currently at work to remedy that lacuna, and a first draft of the critically-reconstructed text, 1 2 Macc 7:41 reports simply that “[l]ast of all, the mother died, after her sons,” without offering any details as to the circumstances of her death. Throughout this paper, English translations of Septuagint texts are, unless otherwise indicated, taken from A. Pietersma and B. G. Wright, eds., A New English Translation of the Septuagint (New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), commonly referred to as NETS. My own translations of texts are written in italics. 128 robert j. v. hiebert based on the manuscript evidence of more than 70 extant Greek man- uscripts along with the Syriac daughter version, is nearing completion. This is not to say that there have been no preliminary efforts to recover the wording of the original author. The first such undertaking was that of Otto F. Fritzsche, whose 1871 edition is based mainly on the great codi- ces Sinaiticus (S) and Alexandrinus (A)—dated to the fourth and fifth centuries, respectively—though variant readings from close to a dozen other manuscripts are recorded in the apparatus.2 A little more than two decades later, the first edition of Henry B. Swete’s The Old Testament in Greek according to the Septuagint appeared. Swete produced an essentially diplomatic edition of 4 Maccabees in which he relied primarily on A, but whose carelessly written text he corrected on the basis of S and Codex Venetus (V), an eighth or ninth century uncial.3 In Alfred Rahlfs’ edition of the Septuagint published in 1935, the text of 4 Maccabees is an eclectic one that is based on S and A, with preference frequently being given to S when the two diverge, and with substantive variants from V included in the apparatus as well.4 The German translation of 4 Maccabees by H.-J. Klauck, published in 1989, represents an advance in our understand- ing of the text of this book as it left the hands of the original author.5 He renders a Greek text that has benefitted from text-critical proposals communicated to him by Robert Hanhart, proposals that are based on collations that have been carried out at the Septuaginta-Unternehmen in Göttingen.6 The following list of Greek manuscripts and manuscript groups is based upon the work of Klauck and Hanhart, but it has also been modified in the light of my research and in consultation with Detlef Fraenkel of the Septuaginta-Unternehmen: Uncials: A S V A 542 (11:5 – fin libri) L: 236 491 534 728 q: 71 74 120 370 380 452 731 3002 2 O. F. Fritzsche, ed., ΜΑΚΚΑΒΑΙΩΝ ΤΕΤΑΡΤΟΣ, Libri apocryphi Veteris Testamenti graece (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1871), 351–386. 3 H. B. Swete, ed., The Old Testament in Greek according to the Septuagint, vol. 3: Hosea—4 Maccabees, Psalms of Solomon, Enoch, The Odes (3rd ed.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1894; 1905), vi. 4 A. Rahlfs, ed., Septuaginta: Id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interpretes (Stuttgart: Württembergische Bibelanstalt, 1935). 5 H.-J. Klauck, 4. Makkabäerbuch ( JSHRZ 3.6; Gütersloh: Mohn, 1989), 641–763. 6 Ibid., 678–679..