Fundamentals of Self-Government in Ancient Jewish Writing 4 Maccabees

This paper discusses the fundamentals of self-government as presented in 4 Maccabees, a book deriving from a Jewish Diaspora community in ancient Syriaor Cilicia. The early Roman Empire allowed limited autonomy for Jewish communities in their urban environment. Their self-regulation was based on the arrangement of a politeuma, a quasi-autonomous civic body that enabled the Jews to live according to their ancestral customs based on Jewish laws. 4 Maccabees provides us within sight into how one of the Jewish Diaspora communities imagined its ideal way of life through the lens of the martyrdoms, which are highlighted in this work. The deeds and statements of the martyrs reflect key points of a proper Jewish life, which is based on faithfulness to God and his laws. The author argues that the martyrs restored a situation of eunomia – the people’s proper observance of Jewish laws –and enabled their fellow-Jews to return to their previous way of life (politeia) that took on the proper attitude to God and faithfulness to the Jewish laws within their minority community in one of the eastern cities of the Roman Empire

Jerusalem in 1 and 2 Maccabees:Perceived, Conceived, Biblicised and Personlised Space

This contribution on Jerusalem as space in 1 and 2 Maccabees is informed by narratology and theories of space, especially the distinction between perceived and conceived space as developed by Henri Lefebvre (Lefebvre 1974/1991). It focuses in particular on Jerusalem as perceived and conceived space. Jerusalem and Judah as its territory function as the main spatial setting in both narratives. The spatial information about Jerusalem in 2 Maccabees is striking because of its consistent lack of specificity in comparison to 1 Maccabees. Conceived space in 1 Maccabees is apparent from brief poetic sections in the first chapters of the book (1:24–28, 35–40; 2:7–13; 3:45) that offer reflection on the Seleucid capture and destruction of Jerusalem. They include spatial imagery that interprets the oppression and also evokes the sympathy of the narratees (1:27–28, 38–40). Jerusalem is personalised as a widow and depicted in the terms of Jewish Scripture. 2 Maccabees presents Jerusalem as a Greek style city-state, but Jerusalem and Judah together are at the same time a Jewish theocratic state whose fate is dependent on the faithfulness to God and the Jewish laws. Like 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees conceives Jerusalem as a person who has suffered (8:17), but it offers a second form of personalised space by expressing in a series of brief scenes the response of Jerusalem's inhabitants to a threat to the Temple by focusing on their actions and bodily gestures and appearances (3:14–21)