2 Maccabees 12 – While
there is this new pact of peace made with the Jews, some governors – Timothy,
Apollonius, Hieronymus, Demophon and Nicanor, still will not let them live in
peace.
It isn’t long before there is another assault on the people -
an unexpected drowning of people in Joppa. Judas takes revenge and then goes on
to head off a similar assault on the Jews of Jamnia. Clearly, as he sees it the
whole campaign embodies a recommitment of the Jews to their God. They believe in the resurrection of the
body. Offerings for the dead are made so that they might be released from
their sins. This is almost like the idea of a purgatory.
Judas and his men pursue all of the governors who refuse to
join in the terms of peace. He is successful in all his battles and takes a
terrible toll on his enemies towns. At Casphin, a city “inhabited by a crowd
from many different nations” (12:13), he “made a slaughter without number, so
much so that an adjoining pool, two stadia in width, was seen to flow with the
blood of the slain” (12:16). These words are always
hard to take in the scripture narrative; there must have been some innocent
among the slaughtered.
Judas’ enemies are stricken with fear. He wreaks havoc on a
number of populated cities. At Scythia, they learn that the inhabitants of the
city have been kind to the Jews, so they do not assault them. At the end, the
Jews return to Jerusalem for the “solemn days of the seven weeks were underway”
(12:31). After Pentecost, the march against Gorgias, the leader of Idumea [or
Jamnia]. After the battle, they find “some of the treasures of the idols that
were near” (13:40) hidden amongst the remains. They see this as the reason for
their success. It is confusing here. Clearly Gorgias
is a Seleucid governor who was attacked for mistreating Jews under his
authority, but the treasure found must have been associated with the Jews of
the town – otherwise it is hard to understand why he would react as he does.
“So then, turning themselves to prayers, they petitioned him
that the offense which had been done [by their
compatriots??] would be delivered into oblivion. And truly, the very
strong Judas exhorts the people to keep themselves without sin, since they had
seen with their own eyes what and happened because of the sins of those who
were struck down” (13:42). He send 12,000 drachmas of silver to Jerusalem to
make a “sacrifice for the sins of the dead thinking well and religiously about
the resurrection, for if he had not hoped that those who had fallen would be
resurrected, it would have seemed superfluous and vain to pray for the dead”
(13:43-44).
It is interesting to see the
beginnings of a belief in the resurrection of the dead here so late in the
narrative. I am not sure what I think when it comes to this. I tend to be
somewhat analytical about things; I see the increasing faith in the “afterlife”
and in the “resurrection of the dead” as ways of solving the problem of justice in this existential
reality we must deal with. It is so clearly not something we can see solely
within the parameters of the short lives we have.
“Friends’
Testimonies”
Part 10
Slavery
The question of racial equality did not really confront
Friends until they began to travel to those parts of the world where slavery
was practices. While Fox made it clear
that Friends who were slave owners should exercise kindness and teach their
slaves the gospel, he clung to the biblical letter here and did not see slavery
as a fundamental offense against the gospel of Christ.
John Woolman, in eighteenth-century America, would be the
one to lead Friends to the insight that any participation in the institution of
slavery was inconsistent with Christian practice.
Modern Friends found early Friends’ testimonies about sex
and race very meaningful, but not for the same reasons. Modern Friends’ testimony is based much more on the values and
principles of the Enlightenment than on any principle early Friends
articulated. The problem with that did not become entirely clear to me
until some years later when I thought through some of the dilemmas modern
feminism was causing us in the Society.
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