Fourth Maccabees is a Jewish work in Greek that is less a history than a philosophical discourse, cast in the form of a diatribe or sermon. Its announced thesis is that devout reason is sovereign over the passions, that piety, informed by God's law, can master fear, pain and desire. To prove it, the author retells at length the story, drawn from 2 Maccabees, of the martyrs of the Seleucid persecution under Antiochus IV: the aged scribe Eleazar, and the seven brothers and their mother, who chose torture and death rather than violate the Jewish law by eating pork. Their steadfastness under appalling suffering is offered as the supreme demonstration that reason, strengthened by faith, can conquer the strongest passions.
The book is deeply marked by Stoic philosophical vocabulary and by the conventions of Greek rhetoric, which it weds to an intense devotion to the Torah, making it a striking example of the fusion of Hellenistic thought and Jewish piety. It was probably written in the first century CE, perhaps at Antioch or Alexandria.