Victor L. Parker, «Judas Maccabaeus' Campaigns against Timothy», Vol. 87 (2006) 457-476
Both 1 and 2 Maccabees mention various campaigns of Judas Maccabaeus against
an opponent called Timothy. The author argues that although 1 Maccabees in
several instances does provide more accurate detail, 2 Maccabees’ presentation
of these campaigns as chronologically discrete has the greater historical
plausibility. Additionally, 2 Maccabees alone preserves a record of a third,
historically plausible campaign against Timothy. Overall, 2 Maccabees deserves
more esteem as an historical source than it commonly receives.
Judas Maccabaeus’ Campaigns against Timothy 459
tically related campaigns (possibly in overall chronological order)
rather than, say, a year’s worth of integrally related campaigning (9). 2
Maccabees, as we shall shortly see, does divide these campaigns up
into several discrete periods of time. Next, chap. 5 mentions what
appear to be two distinct campaigns against Timothy in the
Transjordan. Do both campaigns really belong to one integral series of
campaigns or are they instead separate campaigns spread out over
several years? Again, 2 Maccabees treats these campaigns as discrete
in time.
In these two last points, however, we have posited, without yet so
proving, that 1 and 2 Maccabees do indeed refer to the same events.
We now hasten to make good that omission.
On three occasions in 2 Maccabees we read of such campaigns:
8,30-32 a brief mention of a battle against Timothy and Bacchides
(in which an ‘officer’ with Timothy’s forces is slain —
this passage stands before both Purification and Antiochus
IV’s death (10), but as we shall see, it is not immediately
patent that this passage stands in its original position in 2
Maccabees)
(9) Thus, at least, the older communis opinio: See (e.g.) B. NIESE, “Kritik der
beiden Makkabäerbücher nebst Beiträgen zur Geschichte der Makkabäischen
Erhebungâ€, Hermes 35 (1900) 471; ABEL, “Topographieâ€, 512. GALLING,
“Judäaâ€, 44, is perfectly clear on the point: “Es ist allgemein anerkannt, daß die
in dem Kapitel behandelten Kämpfe hier mit bewußter Absicht zusammengestellt
sind…†E. MEYER, Ursprung und Anfänge des Christentums (Stuttgart 1921) II,
228, notes 1 and 4, views 1 Macc 5 as indeed a summary and spreads the
campaigns out (with few details) over the years 164 and 163 (223-231). On the
other hand, J. GOLDSTEIN, 1 Maccabees (New York 1976) 166, (with little
argument) places these campaigns in a group in “164, to some time in April, 163â€
“from soon after the [Purification] (perhaps before the death of Antiochus IV)â€.
The very last campaigns in 1 Macc 5 (i.e. those in verses 65-68) he dates to “late
April or May†of 163 B.C. The communis opinio may have shifted.
(10) In 2 Maccabees the account of Antiochus IV’s death now stands in chap.
9 but it originally stood after 10,8 — see J. GOLDSTEIN, 2 Maccabees (New York
1983) 345-347. This “relocation†of the account does not affect how it stands in
relation to any campaign against Timothy. At any rate, the transposition of chap.
9 and 10,1-8 seems to have been undertaken to remove one of the many
contradictions between the main narrative and the fictive letter now at 2 Macc
1,10–2,18. This letter was secondarily attached to the main narrative in
particularly clumsy scissors-and-paste work; and the person who attached it may
well have also moved chapter 9 to where it now stands. Most have viewed this
person as a later revisor distinct from the epitomator; and I have argued elsewhere
at length for this view: “The Letters in 2 Maccabees: Reflexions on the book’s
compositionâ€, ZAW (in press).