2. The basis for the characterization will be examined in more detail in various places below. Briefly,
These points will be discussed in detail with appropriate references as
this study proceeds.
3.
Sebastian Brock, "Dramatic Dialogue Poems" IV Symposium Syriacum 1984:
Literary Genres in Syriac Literature, Orientalia Christiana Analecta
229
(Rome: Pontifical Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, 1987) 136, 143.
4.
Robert A. Kraft, Barnabas and the Didache, vol. 3 of Robert M.
Grant,
Ed., The Apostolic Fathers; a new translation and commentary
(NY: T. Nelson, 1965) 1.
5.
In SyrMacc and most of the later Syriac literature about the martyrdoms,
the mother of seven sons is given the name Shamuni, perhaps derived from
Hashmonai. She is termed Martha Shamuni in another Jewish Syriac poem
found in Bensly-Barnes, which most clearly designates her as "the
Hasmonean Lady."
6.
Antiochus Epiphanes enters the scene at this point, in 2 Macc, while he
has been present all along in SyrMacc and 4 Macc. The CNT is common only
to SyrMacc and 4 Macc, however.
7.
The point about rhyme scheme here is that the device of a repeated end
rhyme, like verses in Rap music, continues through all of the material
related to the second son, from the speech of his mother, Martha Shamuni,
through his torture and dialogue with AE, to his death. The segment spans
lines 261--291. Thus one function of rhyming may be to serve as a
coherence device for the separate perspectives of the poem. This point is
discussed further below.
8.
Bensly-Barnes, Fourth Macc, xxi.
9.
These references are inadequate as indicators of the congruence between
the two texts, nor do they indicate exact correspondence with the Peshitta
translation of 4 Macc (PeshMacc). Barnes translated the piece from
Bensly's text.
10. Bensly-Barnes, Fourth Macc, xxiv f.
11.
The earliest of these known to us are 2 Macc, 4 Macc, and SyrMacc.
However, the picture of the development of the text given by SyrMacc, and
the other "kindred documents" from Bensly-Barnes, together suggest there
would have been many more texts adapting the story to specific purposes,
ideologies, and communities.
12. Dropsie College
Edition, Jewish Apocryphal Literature. Ed. and tr. by Moses
Hadas (New York: Ktav, 1976). Reprinted from the 1953 ed. in the series
Jewish Apocryphal Literature (New York: Harper).
13. Gerson D. Cohen, "Hannah and Her Seven Sons in Hebrew
Literature," Studies in the Variety of Rabbinic Cultures, JPS
Scholar of Distinction Series (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication
Society, 1991) 39-60.
14. Les livres des
Maccabees, Traduction de F.-M. Abel ; introduction de F. M. Abel et
Jean Starcky ; notes de Jean Starcky. 3. ed. rev. Bible de
Jérusalem. La Sainte Bible, traduite en francais sous la direction de
l'Ecole biblique de Jerusalem. (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1961).
15.
Downey, Glanville, A history of Antioch in Syria: from Seleucus to the
Arab conquest (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1961) @@@.
16. "The `Woman with the Soul of Abraham': Traditions
about the Mother of the Maccabean Martyrs," in "Women Like This": New
Perspectives on Jewish Women in the Greco-Roman World, ed. by Amy-Jill
Levine, SBL Early Judaism and Its Literature 01, series ed.
William Adler (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1991) 67-81.
17.
See the text above at note 4.
18. This is my
observation, based on a number of examples of the prosody of Late
Antiquity, in Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Greek, and Latin. Articles that
were specifically informative on this point follow. More such articles are
listed in the bibliography on poetry, below in Section 2, note @@. I am
indebted to David Stern for allowing me to sit in on his course on Siddur
and Piyyut, in the Autumn of 1997 at the University of Pennsylvania. The
first two of the following references came from discussions with him at
that time. Jefim Schirmann, "Hebrew Liturgical Poetry and Christian
Hymnology" JQR XLIV, 123-161. Articles "Piyyut," "Poetry,"
and "Prosody" in Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem:
Encyclopaedia Judaica [New York], Macmillan, 1971-72). Paul Maas "Das
Kontakion" Byzantinische Zeitschrift 19 (1910), 285--306.
Sebastian Brock, "Syriac and Greek Hymnography: Problems of Origin"
Studia Patristica XVI, ed. E. A. Livingstone. Texte
und Untersuchungen 129 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1985) 77-81.
Reprinted in Sebastian Brock, Studies in Syriac Christianity: History,
Literature, Theology. Collected Studies Series CS357
(Hampshire, UK: Variorum ed. from Ashgate Publishing, 1992) VI. Same
pagination in both editions. Comparative examples of Late Antique and
Byzantine poetry exist in immense variety. I have identified prosodic
elements in the piyyutim of Yannai and others in the Jewish liturgy for
the Ninth of Av; the Syriac poetry of Babai, Jacob of Serug, and Ephraim;
and the Syriac poetry in The Acts of Thomas and Odes of Solomon. I have
closely examined all of the Psalms of Solomon, and the Hebrew of Ben Sira
44. In addition, I have looked at the Greek of Peri Pascha, and am aware
that Augustine was fond of rhyming in Latin. I have failed to find
dialogue partners for any discussion of this material. From the criteria I
have been able to glean, SyrMacc is Jewish poetry--hence the similarity to
Hebrew and Aramaic piyyutim--based on either hexameter that has
been adopted from the Greeks and put into rhyme, or on an early form of
the dodecasyllabic meter primarily known to have been used by Jacob of
Serug (451--521), a Syriac Christian writer following Ephraim by a
century. The problem is that, according to Sebastian Brock's article on
Hymnography referenced above, Syriac writers tended to canonize the meters
used by Ephraim at the end of the fourth century CE, and Ephraim did not
use dodecasyllabic meters.Jacob of Serug, therefore, was going his own
way. SyrMacc could not, however, be from the pen of Jacob of Serug as R
or, more likely, P, since Jacob wrote in a floridly and explicitly
Christian imagery. His poetry lacks the ambiguity of SyrMacc, and is much
smoother in overall effect.
19.
See F. Fallon, OTP II, 861-872, for an introduction and ET
of the surviving fragments of Eupolemus.
20.Sebastian Brock, "From Antagonism to Assimilation:
Syriac Attitudes to Greek Learning," in Syriac Perspectives on Late
Antiquity, Variorum Reprints Collected Studies Series (London:
Variorum Reprints, 1984) V:17-34
21. Bensly-Barnes, Fourth Book. The Syriac text
of SyrMacc is a true eclectic text, with variant readings given. Bensly
developed the critical text, however, from three mss that do not,
apparently, show a great deal of variation. However, since only one of the
mss used by Bensly was located by Barnes, we do not know exactly what
governed Bensly's selection of variants.
22. I appreciate Bob Kraft's comment as a reader that the dilemmas of the
text fit well with its character, and preservation, as a liturgical work.
23. Sigrid Peterson, "Fourth Maccabees and the Asia
Minor Hypothesis," paper presented to the Hellenistic Judaism Section of
the Society for Biblical Religion, Chicago, November 1994. Available
electronically at the following URL:
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~petersig/macc4sbl.htm
24. Robert A. Kraft, Barnabas, 2.
25. Alexander Rofé, Joshua, paper presented at the University of
Pennsylvania (@@).
26. Such literal translation is quite apparent in the Greek of First
Maccabees (1 Macc), where few would dispute that the Greek represents a
translation from a Semitic original. It is a somewhat different phenomenon
from the repeated poetic use of "and" to begin a line, found in the
poetry of The Acts of Thomas, as well as SyrMacc. Such a repetition seems
to be related to a Greek rhetorical device that flourished during the
Second Sophistic.
27. This is quite apparent in the history Eupolemus
gives of Solomon in his History of the Kings of Israel (@@).
28. Eupolemus (ca. 160 bce) termed God as
Hypsistos (perhaps) and Megistos, 'the greatest or mightiest
god, and often added the phrase "who created Heaven and Earth." The
sections of Syriac Macc which show the earliest poetic style also show a
consistency and terminology in the designation of God that is similar to
that of Eupolemus. Such regularity of referencing is not found in other
authors. @@ (From research using the Thesaurus Linguae Grecae CD Rom.
29. Assuming the analysis of Doran that 2 Macc was
constructed as Temple Propaganda, and following the reasoning given here;
that is, underlying the sequence in 2 Macc, where Antiochus Epiphanes
suddenly appears to preside over the second set of martyrdoms, would be
two hypotheses. First, that the actual story is a reflex of an oppression
carried out by Antiochus Epiphanes in Antioch, either affecting resident
Jews, as Eleazar was known to the soldiers/officials conducting his
torture, or those captives who were carried away with the army that
plundered Jerusalem, or both. Second, one would have to suppose that the
propagandistic intent of those who fashioned 2 Maccabees required that
they appropriate Eleazar, a name associated with priests, by associating
him with events taking place in Jerusalem, carried out by deputies of
Antiochus Epiphanes. The non-Jerusalem origins of the story would then be
indicated by the notation that those conducting the torture were known to
Eleazar, which would presumably not be the case in Jerusalem.
30. This characterization of the language of SyrMacc is
commentary on its text from Michael Sokoloff (Personal Communication,
December 1995). I understood him to mean that the poem is in idiomatic
Syriac, without mannerisms that betray translation Syriac.
31. Schirmann and Maas articles cited in note 18 above.
32. The Historical Dictionary of the Hebrew
Language. The Book of Ben Sira: Text, Concordance, and an Analysis of the
Vocabulary (Jerusalem: The Academy of the Hebrew Language and The
Shrine of the Book, 1973) 53.
33. Han W. Drijvers, @@.; Segal, Edessa@@.
34. For editions, see bibliography.
35. Sebastian Brock, Antagonism to Assimilation, 17-18;
Han J. W. Drijvers, "Apocryphal Literature in the Cultural Milieu of
Osrhoëne," Apocryphe. Le Champ des Apocryphes I: La Fable
Apocryphe (Turnhout: Brepols, 1990). Reprinted as III in H. W.
Drijvers, History and Religion in Late Antique Syria. Collected
Studies Series CS464 (Aldershot, Hampshire, UK: Variorum Reprints
of Ashgate Publishing, 1994). Both are paged 231--247.
36. Jonathan A. Goldstein, I Maccabees: A New
Translation with Introduction and Commentary. The Anchor Bible
41 (NY: Doubleday, 1976) and II Maccabees: A New Translation with
Introduction and Commentary. The Anchor Bible 41A (NY: Doubleday, 1983).
37. See among others Albert I. Baumgarten, The
Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era: An Interpretation.
Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism, Formerly Studia
Post-Biblica, ed. by J. J. Collins (Leiden: Brill, 1997) and
George W. E. Nickelsburg, Jr., Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal
Life in Intertestamental Judaism. Harvard Theological Studies
XXVI (Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 1972).
38. See Baumgarten, Jewish Sects, 88-91.
39. SyrMacc 54 and 57. See also 4 Macc @@. In fact, the Syriac referring to
Jason as "This man changed the Jews' religion," is identical in SyrMacc 57
and Pesh4Macc.
//END//