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.
466 Victor L. Parker
mishearing (actually hearing rz[y but imagining that he had heard rzG).
Neither mistake seems to us inherently probable; and when making
such emendations one must always guard against the wish’s becoming
father to the thought: the reason for making the emendation arises not
of any actual perception of disorder in the text, but of a desire to make
the text say what we think it should. But if we accept that the
Epitomator did write Gazara (mistakenly or not), then perhaps we
might suggest that he did so on purpose.
Now our suggestion imputes to the Epitomator nothing more than
the same desire of modern scholars to expunge inconsistency from the
text where he found it. We can see this same desire operating within
him elsewhere in my view (39), so we need not blench at it in the case
at hand. What I suggest is that the Epitomator, seeing in Timothy’s
death at 2 Macc 10,24-38 the same contradiction which all of us have
also seen, solved the problem to his own satisfaction: He assumed that
it was a different Timothy (40); and that the mention of Iazer in the work
which he was epitomising was false precisely because this — and only
this — detail mandated the identification of the one Timothy with the
other. In a word, the Epitomator posited (falsely) in Jason of Cyrene
the reverse of the error which modern scholars (equally falsely) have
imputed to him.
The Epitomator thus removed the contradiction in question. In 2
Maccabees we have then a mistake upon the initial mistake (Timothy’s
death mentioned prematurely). The initial mistake we must then
attribute to Jason of Cyrene who, in his eagerness to see Timothy off
with a just punishment, got ahead of his story (41). The error may not
have struck Jason as it now strikes us: Although we have little idea of
the true size of Jason’s work in five books, we must assume that he told
Judas’ story at some length – else an epitome would not have become
necessary. In Jason’s history considerable tracts of verbiage may have
lain between Timothy’s death and his reäppearance. Jason may have
made an honest mistake in failing to recognise that the Timothy of the
one campaign was the same as that in the other. The fiction of
Timothy’s death, however, need not have been honest; and may well
belong on the same order of wishful thinking as the appearance of the
magnificent five horsemen: in brief, in his desire to see Timothy
condignly punished, Jason embroidered a bit.
(39) PARKER, Campaigns (in press).
(40) Cf. also BAR-KOCHVA, Judas, 513.
(41) Cf. BAR-KOCHVA, Judas, 513.