III. A iifhor, Bate, and original Language. — The com- piler of this book distinctly declares that the original author of it, or of the " five books" from which he con- densed the narrative before us, was " Jason of Cyreiie" (ii, 23). Herzfeld thinks that this Jason is the same as Jason, the son of Eleazar, whom Judas Maccabajus sent with Eupolemus as envoy to Rome after the defeat of Nicanor to conclude a treaty with the Romans (1 Mace, viii, 17 ; Josephus, Ant. xii, 10, 6) ; because it is only a Hellenistic Jew who, being master of the Greek lan- guage, would be qualified for such a mission to a foreign coint. This hypothesis, moreover, explains the other- wise anomalous circumstance that this book, which re- cords the MaccabiEan struggles, goes no further in its history than the victory over Nicanor, inasmuch as up to this point Jason was an eye-witness to the exploits of Judas, and was sent to Rome after this most important event; and it is confirmed by the accurate knowledge which the writer displays of the events (iv, 21 sq. ; viii, 1 sq. ; ix, 29 sq. ; x, 12, 13 ; xiv, 1 ; Herzfeld, Geschichte d. Volkes Israel, i, 445 sq.). Accordingly, the original work must have been written about B.C. 160, immedi- ately after the victory over Nicanor, and prior to the defeat and death of Judas (1 Mace, ix, 16-18), which brought new calamities upon the Holy City, and again transferred the power to the heathenishly-mclined Jews under the pontificate of Alcimus (1 Mace, ix, 23-29). The errors in the order of the events and of history must be ascribed to the epitomator, whose great object was not to narrate history faithfully, but to make the facts harmonize with his design.
As a C3'renian Jew, Jason most naturally composed his -work in Greek ; and Jerome's testimony, " Secundua [Machabaeorum liber] Grsecus est, quod ex ipsa quoque phrasi probari potest" {Prol. Gal.), is fully borne out by the style of the epitome. (See below.) The epitoma- tor or compiler of the present book was a Hellenistic Jew, residing in Palestine, and must have lived a con- siderable period after the events transpired. The date of the compilation is put within the limits B.C. 150-124. The two epistles with which the book begins do not proceed from Jason, and are of a much later date, though the first purports to have been written B.C. 124, or 188 of the Seleucidaj; and the second, by mentioning a re- cent deliverance from great perils, evidently implies that it was written after the news of the death of Anti- ochus Epiphanes, i. e. 148 of the Seleucida3. The orig- inal language of these letters seems to be Hebrew. In- deed, Geiger shows that the difficult passage, d^' oO cnziarT] 'laaiov Kai ol hit' avTov aTTo r/;e ayiaq yrig Kcd rJ/t,' jSamXeiag (i, 7), which is ambiguous, and, as commonly understood, represents Jason and his com- panions as apostatizing from the land and the kingdom, is, when retranslated iiito Hebrew, '('IDX'' ^O T\'ST2
nDib^am 'ijipn n?3'is-a irx T>rxi, showi to mean,
from the time that Jason and those who sided tviih him from the holy land ami the kingdom, apostatised ; n21P!3rt either standing for ilZi'ib'Zil "'IT, ?-oi/al descent (comp. 2 Kings XXV, 25 ; Jer, xli, 1 ; Ezek, xvii, 13 ; Dan, i, 3), or referring back to H-TX in the sense of !'i'Z''?'>Zi^ T^S (2 Sam. xii, 26), i, e, those who call themselves after the sacred ground of the royal residence. The same is the
MACCABEES, BOOKS OF 610 MACCABEES, BOOKS OF
case with i, 0, 18, where the Feast of Dedication is most extraordinarily called the Feast of Tabernacles, which can only be explained when the passages are retranslated into Hebrew. Now the Hebrew for 'iva dyrjri tuq I'lfiipuQ Trie (JKijVOTniyiaQ tov XaaiXtu /.irjvo^ (i, 9) is 11^03 'Oin 5n "w"^ Ijnn "STCP ; and for (Va Kai avTol ayi]Tt tIJc aKijvoTnjyiag (Kai) tov wpog (i, 18) is
y;itn jn rx nrx ds isnn yob. When it is borne
in mind that the expression SPI, which is the general term for feast in earlier Hebrew (Exod. x, 9 ; xii, 14 ; Lev. xxiii, 39), was afterwards used for the feast of tabernacles (1 Kings viii, 2 ; 2 Chron. v, 3 ; Josephus, Ant. viii, 4, 1), it will at once be seen that the translator of these epistles, instead of rendering the word in ques- tion simply hy feast, attached to it the later sense of the specific festival, which he was evidently led to do by the fact that both these festivals are of eight days' duration, and that the feast of tabernacles is mentioned in X, 6. So also Siavoi^ut t))v KagSiav vfiwv iv t(ij v6fi(f> avTou (i, 4) is a translation of DD3? nrS"!
The style of the book is extremely uneven. At times it is elaborately ornate (iii, 15-39; v, 20; vi, 12- 16, 23-28 ; vii, etc.), and, again, it is so rude and broken as to seem more like notes for an epitome than a finished composition (xiii, 19-26) ; but it nowhere attains to the simple energy and pathos of the first book. The vocab- ulary corresponds to the style. It abounds in new or unusual words. INIany of these are forms which belong to the decay of a language, as aWofvXtcTfioc, iv, 13; vi, 24; 'E\X?;)'((Tjttoc, vi, 13 {ti.ifavifffuig, iii, 9); traafioc, vii, 37; S'tiipaK'KT/toc, v, 3 ; (TTrXayxi'iffjUOf, vi,7, 21 ; vii, 42 ; or compounds which betray a false pursuit of em- phasis or precision : ^(£jU7rijU7r\?/jKi, iv, 40; fTrevXafStia- ^ai, xiv, 18; kotivBiktui', :^iv, -iS; TrpoffavaXsyidSrai , viii, 19; 7rpo(Ti»7ro^(/ti'//ff/c(t), xv, 9; (Tvi'tKKevTeh',y,'26. Other words are employed in novel senses, as cevTepo\o- ytTj^, xiii, 22 ; fiVicii/cXtTcrSoi, ii, 24; tvaTTc'tvTijroc, :s.iy, 9; :rf 0p£i'wjU£voe, xi, 4 ; »pi;\((C(Sc,iv, 37; xiv, 24. Oth- ers bear a sense which is common in late Greek, as aKXtpttv, xiv, 8 ; avaZvyt), ix, 2 ; xiii, 26 ; hd\r]\pic, iii, 32; ii'mrtpiiSd), ix, 4; ^poacrffo/tat, vii, 34; TTtpt- aKvBi^w, vii, 4. Others appear to be peculiar to this book, as cin(TTa\(nc, xiii, 2o ; cv(nveT7]i.ia, v, 20 ; Trpoff- TTVpoiiv, xiv, 11; TruXtfioTOO^ilv, x, 14, 15; ottXoXo- ytlv, viii, 27, 31 ; o7rfi'^«i'nr(^£i)', vi, 28; So^tKog, viii, 35 ; dvSpoXoyia, xii, 43. Hebraisms are verj"^ rare (viii, 15; ix, 5; xiv, 24). Idiomatic Greek phrases are much more common (iv, 40 ; xii, 22 ; xv, 12, etc.) ; and the writer evidently had a considerable command over the Greek language, though his taste was deformed by a love of rhetorical effect.