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.
460 Victor L. Parker
10,14-23 campaigns against the Idumaeans
10,24-38 campaigns against Timothy, to all appearances in the
coastal plain, and Timothy is slain — after Antiochus IV’s
death
12,3-9 Jews of Joppa are massacred; Judas (in lieu of Joppa)
attacks Jamnia
12,2.10-31 Judas campaigns against Timothy in Gilead
12,32-37 Judas campaigns against the Idumaeans and in the
Shephelah, but does not descend to the coastal plain
Again, we can clearly see problems with this account. Chap. 12
apparently speaks of the same Timothy as does chap. 10 — in which
the account of Timothy’s death stands. Prima facie chronological order
has not been maintained or the passages speak, despite appearances, of
two different men named Timothy — or something else is badly
amiss (11). Moreover, the first mention of Timothy, in 8,30-32, comes
in an isolated passage embedded in the context of a campaign against
the Seleucid general Nicanor, a context which does not explain who
Timothy is or why Judas is campaigning against him. Many have
suspected that the passage has erroneously come to stand where it now
does.
Notwithstanding these problems, we can at least constate that 1
and 2 Maccabees, to some extent, are speaking of the same events and
of the same Timothy. First, both books do place Timothy in the
Transjordan: 1 Macc 5,6-8 makes him the leader of “Ammonites†—
i.e. uses an old ethnic name to denote the denizens of the area to the
East of the Transjordanian highlands. The other campaign against
Timothy takes place in Gilead: 1 Macc 5,24-54. In 2 Macc 12,10-31
the mention of the towns Carnaim (vv. 21 and 26) and Ephron firmly
locates the story in the Transjordan (v. 27) (12).
(11) R. LAQUEUR, Kritische Untersuchungen zum 2. Makkabäerbuch
(Straßburg 1904) 72-87, develops a complicated view of two separate sources
within 2 Maccabees (cf. W. GRIMM, II Buch der Makkabäer. Kurzgefaßtes
exegetisches Handbuch zu den Apokryphen des Alten Testamentes [Leipzig
1853] 174); and the accounts of Timothy in chaps. 10 and 12 play a key rôle in his
arguments. He views these two accounts as doublets (77) which the author of 2
Maccabees failed to recognise as such — esp. given the low importance of the
man Timothy (79). In our opinion there is no doublet, however (see below, section
2); and the other observations of Laqueur’s, which he interprets as remnants of
the sewing together of two sources, point, we feel, towards the reworking of the
material so as to move Antiochus IV’s death to an earlier date (see below, n. 61).
Rejecting LAQUEUR’S view see also K.-D. SCHUNK, Die Quellen des I. und II
Makkabäerbuches (Halle 1954) 91-93.
(12) ABEL, “Topographieâ€, 520-521.