The Perfection of 'Love for Offspring': Greek Representations of Maternal Affection and the Achievement of the Heroine of 4 Maccabees

Updated by: 
Shlomi Efrati
Research notes: 
reader checked 02/06/2014 SE
Reference type: 
Journal Article
Author(s): 
DeSilva, David A.
year: 
2006
Full title: 

The Perfection of 'Love for Offspring': Greek Representations of Maternal Affection and the Achievement of the Heroine of 4 Maccabees

Journal / Book Title || Series Title: 
New Testament Studies
Volume: 
52
Issue / Series Volume: 
2
Pages: 
251-268
Abstract: 

A close comparison with Plutarch's De amore prolis and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics shows the author of 4 Maccabees to have used common topics from Greek ethical reflection on love for offspring as a means of commending Torah-observance as the means by which one is enabled to secure one's children's eternal well-being, fulfilling the natural goal of love for offspring more completely. The author shows how trust in God's future enables the mother to view even the death of her children as the fulfillment rather than the negation of her maternal investment, as in the laments of Euripides's heroines in Trojan Women and Hecuba, from which the author explicitly distances her, enabling her exemplary courage.

Alternative title: 
NTS
Primary Texts: Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha: 
Composition / Author: 
4 Maccabees
Passage: 
14^15
URL: 
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=439951&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0028688506000154
Label: 
21/07/2008NS
Record number: 
2 689