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.
474 Victor L. Parker
This table shews a certain amount of repetition, repetition which
has always struck scholars as problematic. Wellhausen, for example,
declared the campaigns against the Idumaeans and Timothy in 164 a
doublet of those in 163; Kolbe felt the same about the two campaigns
of Lysias(63). Nonetheless, the genuine letters of Lysias and Antiochus
V attest two distinct campaigns of Lysias (64), so we should not hasten
to call the other repeated campaigns doublets. After all, it lay in the
nature of such a rebellion as Judas’ that several raids into Idumaea or
Gilead should take place or that an enemy commander should invade
twice (65). Finally, the repetition is present both in 1 and 2 Maccabees
— i.e. it belongs, conventionally, to these books’ shared source
material and thus to the earliest identifiable layer of transmission. The
difference in the two books’ presentation resides in 1 Maccabees’
grouping all the campaigns against the neighbouring peoples together,
immediately after the account of the Purification; whereas 2
Maccabees (both originally and in the Epitomator’s rearrangement)
splits them up with some before and some after the Purification.
Which arrangement has the greater claim to historicity? Niese,
who first broke a lance for 2 Maccabees in this question advanced one
negative argument against 1 Maccabees (the arrangement there betrays
literary patterning) (66) and one positive one in favour of 2 Maccabees:
(63) WELLHAUSEN, Wert, 149; KOLBE, Beiträge, 79-81.
(64) The (genuine) letter of Lysias at 2 Macc 11,16b-21 attests negotiations
between Lysias and Jewish rebels in the 148th year of the official Seleucid era (i.e.
Oct. 165 to Sept. 164 B.C.) and thus, a priori, fighting betwixt Lysias and the
rebels during the main campaigning season of 164. The letter of Antiochus V
Eupator at 2 Macc 11,22b-26 fits exactly into the context of Lysias’ second
campaign as described in 1 Macc 6 (see esp. 6, v. 59,62 and compare 2 Macc
11,25) and corroborates that book’s account of the negotiations as well as, by
extension, the historicity of that second campaign. See PARKER, Campaigns (in
press).
(65) In fact, in respect of the two campaigns against the Idumaeans, two
different groups of people may be involved: 1 Maccabees distinguishes between
the Idumaeans “in Acrabattene†(1 Macc 5,3) and those in “the land of the Southâ€
in and around Hebron (1 Macc 5,65). If we accept 1 Maccabees’ distinction, and
the Acrabattene — as HÖLSCHER, “Bemerkungenâ€, 133-134, suggests — lay in
the North, then Judas’ two Idumaean campaigns had nothing to do with each other
save that each took place near Judaea.
(66) NIESE, Kritik, 471-472. 1 Macc 5,1-2 deliberately recalls Neh 4,1.7 and
Ezra 4,1 both in wording and (esp. Ezra) in theme: Judas’ actions to restore the
practice of the Jews’ religion evokes the immediate hostility of their neighbours.
This thematic interpretation of Judas’ wars against the nations round about
distinguishes 1 Maccabees sharply from 2 Maccabees which does not venture any