Second Maccabees?

Question

Theme of Second Maccabees, issues surrounding its acceptance, strengths, weaknesses, writing, purpose, arguments, conclusion...

Answer 1

It is an apocryphal writing.

Answer 2

Second Maccabees is a more mystical book than First Maccabees. Instead of concentrating on military campaigns, 2nd focuses on the spiritual dimension. There are visions and theophanic displays and every act is overlaid with spiritual significance. The martyrdoms of Eliezar and the woman with her seven sons are exhortatory. The lengthy exposition of their defiance of Antiochus was personally futile, but intented to inspire strong spiritual resistance to foreign coercion.

Ironically, 2 Macc shows that Greek thought did have its effect. The martyrs spoke of a conscious afterlife. And in chapter 12, Judas Maccabeus orders prayer and sacrifice for the sake of soldiers who had died wearing the emblem of a foreign god. This reflects a new understanding of the afterlife, intending to resolve the problem of good people who die poor and miserable, and bad people who don't.

As literature, it is less a story than a series of scenes intended to convey a spiritual message about loyalty and respect toward God. Historically, it offers insight into an under-documented part of Jewish history, the developing mindset of Jewish theology during the Antiochine oppression.

The famous council of Jamnia seemd to have rejected it for technical reasons, appearing only in Greek and obviously written after the time of Ezra, but its ideas continued to have currency at the time of the council. Martin Luther's rejection stems from the implications of intervention between souls and God and the efficacy of "works", both major doctrinal issues for him. The Catholic church embraced the text because it fit well with its theology, to the point that there was a feastday for the Maccabees in the Catholic calendar for centuries. The fact that the themes of 1 and 2 Maccabees is reiterated in the pseudepigraphical 3 and 4 Maccabees attests to its popularity if not its orthodoxy. That will be debated until the distant day of Christian reunification.

Answer 3

2nd Maccabees was part of the canon of Scripture that was used by the Apostles called the Septuagint. In 70 AD, as a reaction against the Christian movement, Jewish religious leaders set as canon of Scripture only those books that were written in Hebrew. books like 1st and 2nd Maccabees, Judith, Tobit, Wisdom, and others that had been written in Greek were discarded.

At the time of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, as a sign of his break from the Catholic Church, adopted the Jewish cannon of Scripture.

In doing so, he discarded the only book in the Old Testament that mentions the resurrection.

Answer 4

Not an issue for me. I don't read it.

Answer 5

2nd Macabees was never cannonized as Scripture.