Scriptures & Texts
3 Maccabees
Deuterocanonical Books
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Despite its name it has nothing to do with the Maccabees: it tells how the Jews of Egypt were delivered under Ptolemy IV Philopator, who, repulsed from the Jerusalem Temple, ordered them trampled by drunken elephants, only for the beasts to turn on his own troops. Written in ornate Greek, probably in the first century BCE, it is a festival legend of rescue in the manner of Esther. It was never part of the Catholic or Protestant canons and is absent from the Vulgate, but it stands as received scripture in the Eastern Orthodox and Armenian churches and is printed in the Greek and Slavonic Bibles. Judaism does not receive it. It is one of the clearest cases of a book canonical in the East and effectively unknown in the West.
Facts
Origins
Era of Composition Attributed Author / CompilerAnonymous; a Hellenistic Jewish narrative of deliverance, c. 1st c. BCE (critical) 1 Status
Canonical StatusSourced to the subject's own accountDeuterocanonical 2Tradition: Eastern Orthodoxy Canonical StatusNon-canonical 1Tradition: Judaism Canonical StatusNon-canonical 1Tradition: Roman Catholicism Text
Literary FormDidactic narrative / novella 1 Structure
StructureThe deliverance of Egyptian Jews under Ptolemy IV (unrelated to the Maccabean revolt) 1 Learn More
A Deliverance in Egypt
Third Maccabees is a short Jewish book, written in Greek, that despite its name has nothing to do with the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucids recounted in 1 and 2 Maccabees. It tells instead of an earlier threat, set in Egypt under the Ptolemaic king Ptolemy IV Philopator (late third century BCE). In the story the king, having been mysteriously prevented from entering the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem Temple, turns in fury against the Jews of Egypt, ordering them rounded up in the hippodrome of Alexandria to be trampled by intoxicated war elephants.
Twice the massacre is thwarted by divine intervention, the king is struck with forgetfulness, and then the elephants are turned back by avenging angels against his own forces, and finally the repentant king reverses himself, releases the Jews, and honours them. The book is generally dated to the first century BCE and read as a work of edifying historical fiction, composed to encourage the large Greek-speaking Jewish community of Egypt in their loyalty to the God of Israel under the pressures of life in a pagan kingdom.
Themes and Canon
The purpose of Third Maccabees is plainly consolation and exhortation: it assures a diaspora community that God protects his faithful people even in a foreign land, that apostasy is a betrayal to be resisted, and that deliverance comes to those who hold fast and pray. It shares this theme, and its taste for dramatic reversal and divine rescue, with books such as Esther and Daniel, and it includes a long penitential prayer that became part of its appeal.
In canon it stands among the Eastern Orthodox deuterocanonical books, printed in the Greek and Slavonic Bibles, but it was not received by the Latin West: it is absent from the Vulgate and from the Roman Catholic canon, and Protestant Bibles omit it or relegate it to the further reaches of the Apocrypha. It is thus one of the books that marks the difference between the broader Orthodox canon and the narrower Western ones. Scholars value Third Maccabees as a window onto the situation and self-understanding of Egyptian Judaism in the Hellenistic period, and onto the literary forms (dramatic, providential, martyrological), through which that community expressed its hope and its identity.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.
Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.
Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.
Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.
Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.
Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.
Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.
Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.
Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.
Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.
Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.
Excluded from Canon
Anabaptism, Denominations This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize 3 Maccabees, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.
Baptist, Denominations This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize 3 Maccabees, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.
The Church of Sweden does not include 3 Maccabees in its Bible. Its Old Testament follows the Lutheran Reformation's return to the thirty-nine books of the Hebrew Bible, and 3 Maccabees, read as scripture within Eastern Orthodoxy, falls outside that narrower canon along with the rest of the deuterocanonical and apocryphal writings.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America does not include 3 Maccabees in its Bible. Its Old Testament follows the Lutheran Reformation's return to the thirty-nine books of the Hebrew Bible, and 3 Maccabees, read as scripture within Eastern Orthodoxy, falls outside that narrower canon along with the rest of the deuterocanonical and apocryphal writings.
This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize 3 Maccabees, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.
Lutheranism, Denominations Lutheranism does not canonize 3 Maccabees. Luther placed the deuterocanonical books in a separate section of his 1534 Bible as good and useful to read, but not equal to scripture.
This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize 3 Maccabees, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.
This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize 3 Maccabees, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.
Protestantism, Denominations The Protestant confessional consensus holds a thirty-nine-book Old Testament and does not canonize 3 Maccabees, against the wider canon affirmed at Trent in 1546 and at Jerusalem in 1672. Lutheran and Anglican practice retains several of these books as edifying reading while denying them authority to establish doctrine.
This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize 3 Maccabees, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.
This tradition holds the standard thirty-nine-book Protestant Old Testament and does not canonize 3 Maccabees, following the confessional consensus among Protestant bodies against the wider Trent and Synod of Jerusalem deuterocanon.
Sources
1. An Introduction to the Apocrypha
Bruce M. Metzger, Oxford University Press, 1957The chapter on 3 Maccabees and its legend of deliveranceView the Source 2. The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)
Synod of Jerusalem, Eastern Orthodox Church, 1672On the Greek Bible receiving books absent from the Western canonthe holders' own accountView the Source The Westminster Confession of Faith
The Belgic Confession
The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority
Lee Martin McDonald, Hendrickson, 2007On 3 Maccabees as canonical in the East and absent from the Western canonsView the Source Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
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