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The World of Jesus: Wisdom, Maccabees & Daniel
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Readings for Daily Mass in Weeks 32 - 34 of Ordinary Time, Year I
We end the lectionary year with scriptures written in the last two centuries before the birth of Christ. These books—as well as Tobit and Sirach, probably written around 200 BC—capture the streams of thought that permeated the mindset of Jews living within the Greco-Roman world at the time of Jesus' birth.
There are few written records from this era regarding the political situation in Judah, as neither Greeks nor Romans considered the affairs of Judah to be significant in the larger sweep of history. To skip over an extended explanation of the history of this period and go directly to the content of the scriptures, please click on the links below:
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Yehudah, Judah, Judea, or Judaea?
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Map of Roman Judaea (truncated) - Andrew c
The term “Judah” is the English form of the Hebrew name Yehudah, which refers to the mountainous sections in the southern part of the Holy Land. Judah/Yehudah was originally the name of one of the twelve tribes of Israel. It became the name of the southern kingdom formed by the civil war that erupted after Solomon’s death c. 930 BC. “Judah” is the term also used to refer to the vassal Jewish state formed by the Achaemenid (First Persian) Empire in 538 after the Babylonian exile. However, when discussing the region during the times of Greek and Roman rule, the region is usually referred to by its Greek or Roman name, Judea or Judaea.
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The Greek Period
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Between 332 and 110 BC, Judea was ruled by three dynasties of Greek leaders, although Greek control of Judea began to loosen around 167 as Jews gained more independence.
Alexander the Great - mosaic from House of the Faun, Pompeii
King Philip II of Macedon was assassinated by his son Alexander in 336, making Alexander king of Macedon and ruler of Greece. By 334, Alexander had begun an ambitious campaign to conquer the Persians. He conquered the Egyptian portion of the Persian Empire in 332, and in doing so, he came into power over Judah. People began referring to the region by the Greek name, Judea.
Map of the successor kingdoms before the Battle of Ipsus - William R. Shepherd
Alexander died in 323 and his empire collapsed into a civil war between two of his generals, Ptolemy and Seleucus. Over the next two decades, the rule of Judea changed hands five times, allowing the Judeans—led by their Levitical high priest—to have a fair amount of autonomy. In 301, the Egyptian-based Ptolemaic Kingdom took firm possession of Judea. The Ptolemies, like the Macedonians before them, allowed the Jews to continue their religious practices.
Antiochus IV
The control of Judea switched to the Seleucid Empire when the Seleucids soundly defeated the Ptolemies at the Battle of Panium in 202. The Seleucids were not tolerant of the Jewish religion, especially Antiochus IV, nicknamed both Epiphanes ("God Manifest") and Epimanes ("the Mad"), who came to the throne in 175. Antiochus tried to force all Jews to abandon their religious traditions in favor of Greek pagan practices. For example, he erected a statue of Zeus on the Temple Mount.
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The Maccabean Revolt & the Hasmonean Kingdom
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Judas Maccabeus Praying for the Dead (detail)
Peter Paul RubensIn 167-164, the Hasmonean priest Mattathias ben Johanan and his family led some of the Jewish people in a successful revolt against the Seleucids. His son Judas’ nickname, Maccabee (“the Hammer”), was eventually expanded to apply to Mattathias’ entire family and even to other Jews who resisted Seleucid rule. In succession, three of Mattathias’ sons ruled Judea semi-autonomously, both as military leaders and as high priests: Judas (167-162), Jonathan (161-143), and Simon (143-135). It was not until partway through the rule of Simon’s son John Hyrcanus I (134-101) that Seleucid rule diminished enough for the Hasmoneans to be considered independent kings. There was still acrimony among the Jewish people because some contended that the Hasmoneans were not the rightful heirs to the Levitical priesthood. During John Hyrcanus I’s reign, Judea conquered Edom and incorporated the Edomites into the Jewish nation and religion, allowing Edomites to serve in high political offices.
The Hasmonean dynasty ruled 167-37, but it was only in 110-63 that the Hasmonean Kingdom was considered a truly independent nation. This is the only time that Israel had political independence between the years 586 BC and 1948 AD!
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The Roman Period
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Pompey the Great - Science Photo Library
The relative independence of the Hasmoneans ended when two of Simon’s great-grandsons, Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II, began disputing the throne in 67 BC. The Roman generals Pompey and Julius Caesar exploited this dispute to turn it into a proxy war. Pompey conquered the region in 63, but he allowed the Hasmoneans to serve as client rulers.
Shortly after Pompey’s death, Herod convinced the Roman Senate to make him king of Judaea. (Herod was an Edomite convert to Judaism whose father had served as a high-ranking official in the Hasmonean kingdom and had good relations with Julius Caesar.) Herod conquered Judaea in 37 and married the Hasmonean princess Mariamne I, securing his legitimacy as king.
Massacre of the Innocents - Santa Maria della Scala, Siena
A ruthless leader, Herod was titled “the Great” because of his power in crushing any opposition and because of his political savvy. He executed Mariamne and the other prominent Hasmonean nobility c. 29. To display his power and to curry favor with the various contingencies in Judaean society, he sponsored many large building projects, including the expansion of the Jerusalem Temple. The Temple was built to such large proportions over the next several decades that it dwarfed the rest of the city. According to the Gospel of Matthew, Herod was still king at the time of the birth of Jesus.*
*See the final section below for information about other descendants of Herod.
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The Books Written During Greek & Roman Occupation
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Wisdom, 1 & 2 Maccabees, and portions of Daniel are Deuterocanonical Books. Written in Greek, they were widely used throughout the Jewish world at the time of Jesus. When Jews established their definitive scriptural canon around 100 AD, however, they chose to include only books written in Hebrew. Therefore, Catholics and Orthodox Christians include Wisdom, 1 & 2 Maccabees, and all of Daniel in their biblical canon, but Jews and Protestants do not include Wisdom, 1 & 2 Maccabees, or Daniel 3:24-90, 13:1-14:42 in their canons.
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Wisdom, Week 32
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We believe that around the year 50 BC, a Jewish scholar living in Alexandria, Egypt wrote the Book of Wisdom for young Jewish men engaged in scripture study. Similar in character and goals to the Book of Sirach written more than a century earlier, the author of Wisdom compiled the insights that he had gained from his extensive study of the Jewish scriptures. He combined these insights with consonant ideas in contemporary Greek and Egyptian wisdom literature. While the book is written in Greek, it is written in the style of Hebrew verse.
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Lady Wisdom - Kiernan Antares
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The Book of Wisdom’s dominant image is the personification of God’s wisdom as a woman. This image is also used in Proverbs (1:20-9:18, 31:10-31), Baruch (3:9-4:4), and Sirach (24:1-31). In scholarship, this woman is often called “Lady Wisdom” or “Sophia.” If the young men to whom these books are directed would befriend Lady Wisdom and treat her as a wife, argue the authors, they would be blessed by her abilities and companionship. For more on Lady Wisdom, we recommend the 2002 edition of Roland E. Murphy’s The Tree of Life: An Exploration of Biblical Wisdom Literature.
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Sophia Painting - Jane Shanahan
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As Christians, we have come to understand Lady Wisdom as another personification of Christ. This may sound odd to one who has never heard this argument before, so let us review some Christology:
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Christ is the totality of the second person of God. Christ was present with the Father and the Holy Spirit at the creation of the world. Christ is the Word (Greek: logos) through whom God created the world. St. Irenaeus suggested that Christ is the plan through whom the universe would be fully reconciled to God’s design.
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Jesus of Nazareth was a historical person who lived in a specific time and place. We believe that for those years, Christ was fully embodied in the person of Jesus. Therefore, Jesus was and is both true God and true human being.
So, to state it once again: Christians understand Lady Wisdom as a personification of Christ, the totality of the second person of God.
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The presence of Lady Wisdom at the parting of the Red Sea?
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The Book of Wisdom is traditionally divided into three sections:
1. The Rewards of Justice. The author exhorts his audience to befriend Lady Wisdom. Those who love God’s wisdom and justice will receive eternal life. Those who are wicked reject both justice and the promise of the afterlife with God. The author consolingly explains how God’s wisdom can work through certain types of tragedies most people erroneously regard to be signs of God’s disfavor: suffering (3:1-12), childlessness (3:13-4:6), and early death (4:7-19). Portions of the section on suffering are commonly proclaimed at Catholic funerals.
2. Solomon’s Praise of Wisdom. The author speaks as if he were Solomon, one of the two great kings of the ancient united kingdom, ruling approximately 900 years earlier. Considered the wisest person who ever lived (1 Kings 3:5-14), Solomon offers an extended poem on the gifts and counsel he received from Lady Wisdom. Solomon was merely a mortal, but through God’s wisdom, he became an articulate speaker, and he received riches, blessings, counsel, comfort, and a long life.
3. The Role of Wisdom in the Exodus. Lady Wisdom was present with God at the creation of the world. She walked with the Israelites through the Red Sea. The very elements of God’s creation that destroyed Israel’s Egyptian enemies—such as locusts, darkness, and water—were the very elements that delivered the Israelites to freedom. This section includes long digressions on the evils of idolatry, before concluding, “For every way, O LORD! you magnified and glorified your people; unfailing, you stood by them in every time and circumstance.”
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1 & 2 Maccabees, Week 33
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The Story of Hanukkah (detail) - Ori Sherman
The two books of Maccabees included in the Catholic Bible are two independent accounts of events surrounding the Maccabean Revolt. Because so few written records have survived from this period, it is difficult to assess the historical accuracy of 1 & 2 Maccabees. These books seem to be a hybrid of historical summary and religious commentary; some Catholic translations categorize 1 & 2 Maccabees as “historical” books, and others consider them “novellas.”
1 Maccabees is a Greek-language translation of a Hebrew text written around 100 BC. The author seems to have great familiarity with the events of 175-134, perhaps living through some of the events himself as a youth. His focus is on the great deeds of the Hasmoneans Judas, Jonathan, Simon, and John Hyrcanus, comparing them to the ancient judges, Samuel, and David. The text, as we have it in Greek, is full of Hebrew idioms that would be unfamiliar to a Greek reader.
The Martyrdom of Eleazar the Scribe - Gustave DoreThe author of 2 Maccabees is summarizing a 5-volume history about events in 180-160 written (in Greek) by Jason the Cyrene, a work that has been lost to us. It is clear that some portions of 2 Maccabees are the composition of the summarizer, but it is hard to determine what, if anything, is quoted directly from Jason. 2 Maccabees is more focused on the theological interpretation of the Maccabean Revolt than in relating the events accurately. Events are told out of chronological order, and certain details—such as the number of casualties in battle—have been exaggerated to make the Maccabees look especially heroic.
Judas Maccabeus Praying for the Dead (detail) - Peter Paul RubensNevertheless, 1 & 2 Maccabees provide us with historic details of the period and a sense of how Jewish theology was evolving in the Greek and Roman periods. The theological perspective of 1 Maccabees is very similar to that of the Deuteronomist in 1 & 2 Samuel and 1 & 2 Kings, interpreting the Hasmoneans as the successors of David. Probably most theologically notable is 2 Maccabees’ belief in the resurrection of the good (7:9-23), the intercession of the saints for the living (15:11-16), and the importance of living people offering prayers on behalf of the dead (12:39-46).
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Daniel, Week 34
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Daniel and His Three Companions - Thomas Bluemling
We do not know who wrote the Book of Daniel. While the events reported in Daniel take place during the Babylonian exile (586-538), it was written during the persecution of Antiochus IV (167-164). The protagonist, Daniel, is a young Judahite aristocrat taken into captivity by the Babylonians. He has a God-given talent for “the understanding of all visions and dreams,” and God has granted him and his three companions—named Hananiah, Mishael & Azariah—“knowledge and proficiency in all literature and wisdom” (1:17). It is not clear if Daniel and his companions were historic figures. Nevertheless, it seems likely that the legends about them had been passed down for generations before the book was written. While the author never says it explicitly, the implications are clear: since Daniel and his companions had remained faithful to God in the face of Babylonian imprisonment and torture, Jews oppressed by the Seleucids would also triumph over their enemies if they remained faithful to God, too.
Lion’s Den - Twin HicksIn their Bibles, Jews and Christians alike have included Daniel within the books of prophecy. However, Daniel is better understood as apocalyptic literature than as prophecy. Apocalyptic is a genre that flourished in the Judeo-Christian world from the end of the Babylonian exile (538 BC) until the early second century AD. It consoles those being persecuted for their faith by revealing new truths that God had not made known before the current moment. Apocalyptic is most fully developed in Daniel 7-12 and in the entire book of Revelation, but portions of apocalyptic can be found in at least 11 other books of the Old & New Testaments. Despite the use of the future tense, the visions in apocalyptic are new interpretations of the past or present, now revealed to have greater spiritual significance.
Belshazzar’s Feast - Rembrandt van RijnThe Book of Daniel is filled with many unusual names, including:
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Chaldeans—another name for the Babylonians
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Belteshazzar—Chaldean name given to Daniel
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Shadrach, Meshach & Abednego—Chaldean names of Daniel’s companions
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Belshazzar—son & successor of the King Nebuchadnezzar
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Darius & Astyages—two Median kings that the author incorrectly claims were the successors of Belshazzar, before Cyrus of Persia conquered Babylon
The statue (chapter 2) and the four beast (chapter 7)
The Book of Daniel consists of two major sections:
1. Daniel’s interactions with various kings in Babylon (chapters 1-6). Daniel and his companions are young Judahite aristocrats taken into captivity and designated to serve in the Babylonian court. While they are highly regarded by their captors, they refuse to engage in pagan practices ordered by the court. The four refuse to defile themselves by eating the food offered to them (chapter 1). Nebuchadnezzar orders the companions imprisoned in a furnace when they refuse to pay homage to a statue of him (chapter 3). Darius reluctantly orders Daniel thrown into a den of lions when he disobeys an order to pray only to the king (chapter 6). Each time, through the grace of God and sometimes through the intercession of angels, Daniel and/or his companions survive unharmed. In between these trials, Daniel successfully interprets three things that the Babylonian magicians and necromancers cannot comprehend: two of Nebuchadnezzar’s dreams (chapters 2 & 4) and a set of words mysteriously written on a wall during a religiously offensive feast held by Belshazzar (chapter 5).
2. Daniel’s visions (chapters 7-12). Daniel has a series of dreams—the four beasts (chapter 7), the ram and the he-goat (chapter 8), the seventy weeks of years (chapter 9), the angelic vision (chapters 10-11), and the resurrection (chapter 12)—many of which seem to foretell the succession of the kingdoms of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. (The same succession is foretold in the dreams and signs of chapters 2, 4, and 5.) However, since the Book of Daniel was written in 167-164, these events were already in the past. Daniel now interprets them as God’s design in the political upheaval. Some of the visions seem to be set at the end of time in God’s final triumph, similar to the style of the Book of Revelation.
Susanna and the Elders - Artemisia Gentileschi
Catholic and Orthodox Bibles use a longer deuterocanonical version of Daniel that includes:
3. The prayer of Azariah (3:24-90). An extended prayer by one of Daniel’s companions during their imprisonment in the furnace. It is used extensively in the prayers of the Church in times of both repentance and thanksgiving.
4. Susanna (chapter 13). Two men attempt to abduct Susanna. Daniel catches the men in their lie at court, thus freeing her from their accusations. This story is the longest first reading in the entire lectionary, proclaimed each year on the Monday of the 5th Week of Lent.5. Bel and the dragon (chapter 14). Daniel exposes the deception of Cyrus’ priests in their worship rituals surrounding two pagan idols. Cyrus, outraged at being tricked by his priests, has them put to death. Daniel is once again imprisoned in a den of lions, and he escapes unharmed.
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Synthesis
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What Do These Books Tell Us About The World of Jesus?
The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple - Raphael
The genres of Wisdom, 1 & 2 Maccabees, and Daniel are quite different from one another, yet together they weave a tapestry of the various threads dominating Jewish thought at the time of Jesus. This tapestry is made richer by including the other deuterocanonical books, especially Tobit and Sirach.
The Greek and Roman periods of Judaism were times of transition, turmoil, and questions about the future of the faith. Both Sirach and Wisdom were written by contemporary scholars of the Jewish Law combining Jewish teachings with principles of Greek and Egyptian learning.
Fiery Furnace - Toros RoslinJesus lived at a time when various factions—including the Essenes, the Zealots, the Herodians, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees—were competing for control of the future of Judaism. Despite his criticisms of the Pharisees, the teachings of Jesus (and modern Judaism as practiced today) most clearly align with the Pharisaical position. One of the hallmarks of Pharisaical thought was the belief that Jewish tradition could evolve. Many of the new elements that the Pharisees added to the tradition are found in the deuterocanonical books, including belief in the afterlife and the resurrection of the dead (2 Maccabees) and the role of angels (Tobit and Daniel).
Palm Sunday - Evans Yeagon
Jesus’ death was caused at least in part by the tension between Jews and Romans over the political leadership of Judaea. 1 Maccabees suggests that the Hasmonean rulers are the rightful successors of the Davidic line as military kings. When Jesus is greeted in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, many of the details sound similar to the triumphant entry of Judas Maccabeus into the city after defeating the Seleucids (1 Maccabees 13:51 and 2 Maccabees 10:7). Jesus' resurrection has enormous significance for us in countless ways, but it can also be understood as proof of ideas in Wisdom 3:10 - 18 and 2 Maccabees 7:9 - 23 regarding eternal life for the righteous.
Christ and angels
Perhaps most striking of all, when Jesus stands for trial before the Sanhedrin after his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:64, Mark 14:62, Luke 22:69), he speaks of being the Messiah in terms of Daniel’s vision of “one like a son of man coming on the clouds of heaven” (Daniel 7:13).
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The response to the first reading during Weeks 32 & 33 is from the Book of Psalms, except on Friday of Week 33, when the response is from 1 Chronicles. In Week 34, the response is always from the Prayer of Azariah in Daniel 3. In all three weeks, the gospel reading is from the Gospel of Luke, chapters 17-21.
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*At the death of Herod the Great around 4 BC, his kingdom was broken up among three of his sons into regions called tetrarchies. Several of his descendants are mentioned in the Bible:
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Herod II (or Herod Philip I), never a political ruler, son of Herod the Great, half-brother of Herod Antipas—mentioned in Mark 6 as the father of Salome
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Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea, son of Herod the Great, half-brother of Herod II—the “King Herod” who ordered the death of John the Baptist in Matthew 14 and mocked Jesus during his Passion in Luke 23
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Herod Agrippa, king of Judaea, grandson of Herod the Great, son of Aristobulus IV (another of Herod the Great’s children)—the “King Herod” mentioned in Acts 12 as a persecutor of several of the apostles
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Herod Agrippa II, king in parts of Judaea, great-grandson of Herod the Great and son of Herod Agrippa—the “King Agrippa” with whom Paul interacted in Acts 26
Herod Antipas - James Tissot
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