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.
472 Victor L. Parker
According to 1 Maccabees, however, Lysias’ first campaign
belongs to the period immediately preceding Antiochus IV’s death. As
I hope to have shewn elsewhere, that dating is correct: the different
order of events in 2 Maccabees is predicated, however, not on a
shifting of Lysias’ campaign forwards, but rather on a shifting of
Antiochus IV’s death backwards in time (60). Briefly, in 2 Maccabees
an undated letter of Antiochus V Eupator (11,22b-26) is misunderstood
as following upon a letter of the general Lysias, whose letter (11,16b-
21) in turn bears the date “Year 148†— i.e. of the official Seleucid Era
which began in October of 312 B.C. The 148th year corresponds to the
period Oct. 165-Sept. 164. Now, Antiochus V Eupator did not ascend
the throne until December of 164 B.C.; but the Epitomator (who, in my
opinion, is responsible for adding (and interpreting) the letters in
question to Jason’s work — and hence: for carrying out any editorial
rearrangment consequent upon their addition) did not know this and
therefore assumed that Antiochus IV had died a year earlier than he
actually did so that Antiochus V’s letter could fall into the 148th year.
Accordingly, the Epitomator transferred both Antiochus IV’s death and
the nearly contemporaneous Purification back one year and thus
brought Lysias’ first Judaean campaign into the reign of Antiochus V.
Hence 2 Maccabees places two years between the suppression of
worship in the Temple and the Purification (10,3) – in contrast to the
three years in 1 Maccabees which preserves an unaltered placement of
Antiochus IV’s death as coming after Lysias’ first campaign (1,54 and
4,52).
We have gone through this exactly to the following end: The
Epitomator moved not Lysias’ first campaign so that it came to rest
between the campaign against Timothy in chap. 10 and that in chap.
12 (61) — i.e. splitting up what had originally stood together — but
rather Antiochus IV’s death so that it came to rest before Lysias’ first
campaign and, it follows, before the campaign against Timothy in
chap. 10. The Epitomator had to decide how far back in his narrative
to transfer the death and chose a position before the last mentioned
campaign. If this be correct, then Lysias’ first campaign clearly
separated the two pertinent campaigns against Timothy already in
Jason of Cyrene’s work.
(60) For the opposite view see the next note.
(61) SCHUNK, Quellen, 110-111, argued that the Epitomator left 8,30-33
behind when he transferred Lysias’ first campaign to the reign of Antiochus V.
Cf. LAQUEUR, Untersuchungen, 43.