Daily Old Testament: 2 Maccabees 12 and My Own Article on "Friends' Testimonies" (Part 10)

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.

Daily Old Testament: 2 Maccabees 11 and My Own Article on "Friends' Testimonies" (Part 9)

2 Maccabees 11 – Lysias, the brother of Antiochus [a new fact about him here introduced] and head of the government, wants Jerusalem to be a city amenable to those who love Greek culture. He also wants the good old days back when they taxed the Temple, sold the high priesthood of the Jews for lots of money and basically ignored the will of God for the city.

“Lysias was so pleased with his tens of thousands of infantry, his thousands of cavalry, and his eighty elephants that he failed to take into account the power of God” (11:4). He invades Judea and attacks a fort about 19 miles south of Jerusalem.

Judas Maccabaeus urges men to join him in going to defend their fellow Jews, but not far from Jerusalem, “they noticed that they were being led by a horseman dressed in white and carrying gold weapons” (11:8). They see him as an angel or celestial man God has sent to help rout their enemy. They “charge into the enemy like lions, killing 11,000 infantry and 1,600 cavalry, and forcing the rest to run for their lives” (11:11).

This is in 164 BC. After this, Lysias sends an offer of reconciliation and Judas agrees to the proposals he makes. A letter from the king promises the Jews independence in cultural and religious matters. The Romans also send a letter agreeing with the terms of the agreement made between the Seleucid king and the Jews.

“Friends’ Testimonies”

Part 9

Equality of Persons

Early Friends’ testimony on the equality and worth of all men and women is another fruit of Friends’ faith from the beginning. But again the basis of this testimony has shifted over the years. Early Friends saw the equality of the sexes as something that flowed from the “restoration” Christ had brought to pass on earth. God had never intended men and women to be unequal (Gen. 1:26-27 and Gen. 2:18). The subordination of women to men had arisen in the fall (Gen. 3:16); but with the fall overcome in Christ, the subordination of women was meant to cease.

. . . man and woman were meet-helps [companions and helpers to one another] (before they fell) and the image of God and righteousness and holiness; and so they are to be again in the restoration by Christ Jesus” (Fox, Journal, 667).

The restoration came with Christ, with the institution of the New Covenant and the outpouring of his Spirit that had come at Pentecost. Again, Fox pointed to Peter’s first address to the people of Jerusalem, a speech I have already quoted in my discussion of early Friends’ theology. Christ’s coming was the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy that God’s Spirit would be poured out on all flesh. “Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy . . ..Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy” (Acts 2:17-18).

As women converts came into the life and power of Christ as Friends, they too began to preach and prophesy. Fox defended them in an England that saw this as an affront to proper church order. As to the admonitions against women preaching in Paul’s letter to Timothy (1 Tim. 2:12), Fox developed complex arguments to reconcile his views. He never doubted that women had a right and a duty to respond to Christ’s call in them to preach, teach, or prophesy. Women played a vital role in the building of the early Quaker movement. Many preached and some even traveled to the far ends of the earth to proclaim the gospel Friends were preaching. One woman, May Dyer, died as a martyr for responding to that call—hanged by the Puritans of Massachusetts in 1660 along with three Quaker men called to the same ministry.

It was this same sense of what life “in the restoration by Christ Jesus” was to be that shaped the Friends’ wedding ceremony. Just as God had joined Adam and Eve together without the mediation of any other human being, so Friends too believed it should be among them. Friends who desired to marry were not joined by any minister or officiating elder or clerk of the Meeting. They simply met in a Meeting for Worship and stood in the group to exchange their promises to love and care for the other, “with divine assistance.”