Brenton's Septuagint · Under the Greeks
4 Maccabees 11
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1And when he had , disfigured in his torments, the fifth leaped forward, and said, 2I intend not, O tyrant, to get excused from the torment which is in behalf of virtue. 3But I have come of my own accord, that by the of me, you may owe a punishment for more crimes. 4O thou hater of virtue and of men, what have we done that thou thus revellest in our ? 5Does it seem evil to thee that we the Founder of all things, and live according to his surpassing law? 6But this is worthy of honours, not of torments; 9As he said this, the spearbearers bound him, and drew him to the catapelt: 10to which binding him at his knees, and fastening them with iron fetters, they bent down his loins upon the wedge of the wheel; and his body was then dismembered, scorpion-fashion. 11With his breath thus confined, and his body strangled, he said, 12A great thou bestowest upon us, O tyrant, by enabling us to manifest our adherence to by means of nobler sufferings. 13He also being , the sixth, quite a youth, was brought out; and on the tyrant asking him whether he would eat and be , he said, 14I am indeed younger than my brothers, but in understanding I am as old; 15for having been born and reared unto the same end, we are bound to also in behalf of the same cause. 16So that if thou think proper to torment us for not eating the ;—torment! 17As he said this, they brought him to the wheel. 18Extended upon which, with limbs racked and dislocated, he was gradually roasted from beneath. 19And having heated sharp spits, they approached them to his back; and having transfixed his sides, they burned away his entrails. 20And he, while tormented, said, O period good and , in which, for the sake of religion, we brothers have been called to the contest of pain, and have not been conquered. 21For religious understanding, O tyrant, is unconquered. 22Armed with upright virtue, I also shall depart with my brethren. 23I, too, bearing with me a great , O deviser of tortures, and enemy of the truly pious. 24We six youths have destroyed thy tyranny. 25For is not your inability to overrule our reasoning, and to compel us to eat the , thy ? 26Your is cold to us, your catapelts are painless, and your harmless. 27For the guards not of a tyrant but of a divine law are our defenders: through this we keep our reasoning unconquered.
Sir Lancelot Brenton's 1851 English translation of the Greek Old Testament, public domain. Used here for books received in Orthodox canons that the other editions do not carry. Notes and cards are EKLI’s own.
The world at this moment · Under the Greeks, 332 BC to 63 BC ›
Alexander's conquest and the kingdoms of his successors. Greek language and custom press in everywhere, and the crisis under Antiochus IV provokes the Maccabean revolt.
- The successors
- Alexander dies at thirty-two and his generals carve up the empire. Judea sits on the border between the Ptolemies in Egypt and the Seleucids in Syria, and is fought over by both for a century and a half, which is the ordinary condition of the corridor.
- Hellenism
- Not just conquest but a culture: the gymnasium, the theatre, Greek names, Greek dress, Greek as the language of anyone with ambitions. Some Jews embraced it, some resisted it, and the argument between them is the real subject of the Maccabean books. In Alexandria the Hebrew scriptures are translated into Greek, producing the Septuagint, which is the Bible most New Testament writers quote.
- The crisis
- Antiochus IV bans the practice of Judaism, plunders the temple, and sets up a pagan altar in it in 167 BC. The revolt under the Maccabees wins, the temple is rededicated in 164 BC, which is the origin of Hanukkah, and Judea has about eighty years of independence under the Hasmoneans before Rome arrives.
- Further afield
- Rome fights Carthage three times and ends up master of the Mediterranean. Euclid writes the Elements and Archimedes does his work at Syracuse. In China the Qin unify the country in 221 BC and the Han follow, opening what becomes the Silk Road.