WORDS OF WISDOM, WORDS OF WAR: A STUDY OF TERMS AND CONCEPTS IN IV MACCABEES

Gerhard Swart

doi:10.25159/1013-8471/3449

Authors

Gerhard Swart University of Pretoria

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25159/1013-8471/3449

Abstract

In the words of Jan Willem van Henten (1997:296), the fourth book of Maccabees â€œpresents itself to the reader, from the very beginning of the work, as a philosophical discourse about the dominance of devout reason over the emotionsâ€. Despite the fact that the terminology and phraseology employed in this initial portrayal keeps recurring at various points throughout the book, several scholars have noticed a disturbing mismatch between the prologue and the main body of the work. This paper addresses the question whether or not IV Maccabees is structured according to a thematically unified plan, and attempts to find an answer by focusing on some philosophical terms and concepts and the ways in which these feature in the composition as a whole.

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