מקבים ג' ומקבים ד' והמשבר בימי המקבים

It has been claimed that III and IV Maccabees, which were directed towards diaspora communities, were inappropriately named. The present article seeks to demonstrate that such is not the case, for there are strong links between those two works and II Maccabees, a book which explicated the events of the Maccabean crisis for Jews in the diaspora. Linguistic correspondences, similarities and differences in events between II and III Maccabees are discussed as well as the attitude of each author towards politics and theodicy. The conclusion drawn is that the two works have much in common but that the author of III Maccabees made changes which he considered appropriate in the light of the history of the Jews in Egypt. The only theological aspects of II Maccabees which the author of III Maccabees does not touch on are the questions of vicarious suffering and divine justice after death: the very questions which IV Maccabees adopts and considers at length, in the mode of the Greek philosophers. His political outlook is demonstrated to be similar to that of II Maccabees. Both III and IV Maccabees thus adopt elements of II Maccabees in overt and covert ways. The events of the Maccabean crisis described therein doubtless made each author aware of the need to uphold faith in God and to demonstrate that fidelity to His Torah, even in the face of adversity, brought its own reward. An Appendix discusses the date of the three works, placing II Macabees in the late second century B.C.E., III Macabees ca. 100 B.C.E., and IV Macabees between 18 and 54 C.E.