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Aristeas and III Maccabees

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

Moses Hadas
Moses Hadas
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Extract

A certain affinity between Aristeas and III Maccabees is to be expected, for both books derive from a single environment — the Jewish community of Alexandria, both have a major purpose in common — that of setting forth the relations of the Jews to their non-Jewish rulers in as favorable a light as possible, and, most important, both are Greek books, written according to Greek canons of form; they are not, like other books on the periphery of Scripture with which they have been associated, translations from Hebrew or Aramaic, nor do they follow the forms of such works. Each is what would be called in the progymnasmata or curriculum of the rhetoricians διήγησις or narratio. Theon declares (70.25) that the canon is to be followed not only by intending rhetors but by writers in various categories; the διήγησις he defines (78.15) as λόγος ἐκθɛτικὸς πραγμάτων γɛγονότων ἢ ὡς γɛγονότων. Cicero, again without doubt following ancient principles of criticism, sets forth the difference between a continuous chronological history and a narratio in his invitation to Lucceius to write a treatise on his life (Ad Familiares 5.12). Whereas history serves veritas and utilitas, a narratio may supply delectatio also. The ancient canon of veracity for such treatises is clearly stated by the grammarian Asclepiades of Myrlea, in Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Grammaticos 252.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , July 1949, pp. 175 - 184
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1949

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References

1 On the whole subject see Reichel, G., Quaestiones Progymnasmaticae (Leipzig, 1909)Google Scholar. Most of what we know of progymnasmata derives from the rhetorician Theon, who lived in the second century A.D. but who is surely retailing traditional material. Theon is cited by page and line of Finckh, C. E., Theonis Sophistae Progymnasmata (Stuttgart, 1834)Google Scholar.

2 Cf. Reitzenstein, R., Hellenistische Wundererzählungen (Leipzig, 1906), 84 ffGoogle Scholar.

3 E.g., in Emmet, C. W.'s Introduction to III Maccabees and H. T. Andrews' to Aristeas in Charles, The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1913)Google Scholar, and in the editions and translations of Aristeas by Meecham, H. G. (The Letter of Aristeas, Manchester, 1935Google Scholar; The Oldest Version of the Bible, London, 1932Google Scholar) and Tramontano, R. (La Lettera di Aristea a Filocrate, Naples, 1931)Google Scholar.

4 Tracy, Sterling, “III Maccabees and Pseudo-Aristeas,” Yale Classical Studies 1 (1928), 293–252Google Scholar.

5 Translation of Meecham, H. G., The Oldest Version of the Bible (London, 1932), 18 fGoogle Scholar.

6 Aegyptus 16 (1936), 257–291.

7 Archiv für Papyrusforschung 12 (1937), 221 ff.

8 In G. Plaumann's publication of P. Gradenwitz, 1, Sitzungsber. Heid. Akad., ph.-hist. Kl. 5 (1914).

9 “Enslaved Persons Who Are Free,” American Journal of Philology 59 (1938), 1–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 In making this point Westermann, op. cit. 28, cites “the preamble to the prostagma of the king in P. Teb. III, 1, 700, 11.22–36, which contained the reasons for the enactment.”

11 See Bickermann, E., “Zur Datierung des Pseudo-Aristeas,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 29 (1930), 280–296CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Tarn, W. W., in “The Milindapanha and Pseudo-Aristeas,” an appendix to his The Greeks in Bactria and India (Cambridge, 1938), 414–436Google Scholar, shows the relationship of this section to the numerous treatises πɛρὶ βασιλɛίας written by philosophers of all schools in the Hellenistic age to provide a rationale for the institution of kingship.

12 Op. cit., 24 f. The second document is P. Gradenwitz 1, republished by Westermann in his Upon Slavery in Ptolemaic Egypt (New York, 1929), 33 f.

13 Westermann, op. cit. 25 f.

14 The connections of the disparate sections with one another and their historical validity are examined in Cohen, J., Judaica et Aegyptiaca: De Maccabaeorum Libro III Quaestiones Historicae (Groningen, 1941)Google Scholar.

15 Translation of C. W. Emmet (London, 1918).

16 Ca. 100 B.C., in Pauly-Wissowa 14.797–800.

17 See Cohen's monograph, as cited in Note 14 above.

18 See Note 4, above.

19 Views in regard to dating and the arguments upon which they are based are rehearsed in the editions of Meecham and Tramontano (see Note 3) and the work of Février (see Note 21).

20 Schürer, E., Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi4 (Leipzig, 1909), 612Google Scholar. Schürer is followed by, among others, Tramontano and Cahana, A., Hasepharim Hahizonim (Tel Aviv, 1937), 1–71Google Scholar.

21 The ‘separatist’ view and the arguments for late dating are most fully set forth in Février, J. G., La date, la composition, et les sources de la Lettre d'Aristée à Philocrate (Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes 24: Paris, 1925)Google Scholar.

22 See especially Bickermann, as cited in Note 11; Tarn (as cited in the same note) agrees, as do Meecham and now Kahle, P., The Cairo Geniza (London, 1947), 132 ffGoogle Scholar.

23 See Note 16.

24 Tcherikover, V., The Jews in Egypt in the Hellenistic-Roman Age in the Light of the Papyri (Hebrew, with English summary; Jerusalem, 1945), 91 ffGoogle Scholar.