Peshitta - 5ᵗʰ Maccabees: The History of the Destruction of Jerusalem

By Scriptural Research Institute

The Peshitta includes Syriac translations of the four books of the Maccabees found in the Septuagint, along with a 5ᵗʰ book of Maccabees, which is also labeled as The History Of The Destruction Of Jerusalem. This book is a Syriac translation of the 6ᵗʰ book of Josephus' The Judean War. General Josephus had started on the Judean side of the rebel

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digital Ink Productions
• Release date: May 30, 2024
• ISBN: 9781998288748

Book preview

Peshitta: 5ᵗʰ Maccabees

The History of the Destruction of Jerusalem

SCRIPTURAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE

Published by Digital Ink Productions, 2024

COPYRIGHT

While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

Peshitta: 5ᵗʰ Maccabees

Digital edition. May 16, 2024

Copyright © 2024 Scriptural Research Institute.

ISBN: 978-1-998288-74-8

The Peshitta’s 5ᵗʰ Maccabees is a Syriac version of book 6 of the Judean General Josephus’ The Judean War, written in the late 1ˢᵗ century AD. This English translation was created by the Scriptural Research Institute in 2024.

The image used for the cover is an artistic reinterpretation of ‘Destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem’ by Francesco Hayez, painted in 1867. The original painting is in the Accademia di Belle Arti, in Venice.

Note: The notes for this book include multiple ancient scripts. For your convenience, fonts correctly depicting these scripts are embedded in the ebook. If your reader does not support embedded fonts, you will need to install Unicode fonts that cover the ranges for Arabic, Cuneiform, Greek, Hebrew, Phoenician, Syriac, and Ugaritic on your reader manually, or you may see blank areas, question marks, or squares where the scripts are used. The Noto fonts from Google cover most of the scripts used, however, will not depict Egyptian hieratics correctly due to current limitations in Unicode.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

Forward

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Also Available

FORWARD

The Peshitta is the standard Syriac version of the Christian Bible. The consensus within Western biblical scholarship is that the Old Testament of the Peshitta was translated into Syriac from the Hebrew Tanakh, probably in the 2ⁿᵈ century AD, and that the New Testament of the Peshitta was translated from Koine Greek, probably in the early 5ᵗʰ century, with the disputed books being added 616 AD. However, this interpretation of its origin is based on the Byzantine Orthodox Church’s viewpoint and is not the traditional viewpoint of the Syrian churches. The traditional Syrian viewpoint is that the Peshitta’s Old Testament is a transcription from the older Aramaic versions of the books, which the Hebrew translation is also based on.

While the older books in the Tanakh were likely composed in Canaanite, either by Samaritans or Judahites, the later books, such as Daniel and Esther, would have been composed in Aramaic before being translated into Classical Hebrew alongside the older Canaanite books. The translation of Daniel was never completed, leaving the mixed Hebrew and Aramaic language book found in the Masoretic texts. The earliest sanctioned Aramaic translation of the Torah appears to have happened during the rule of King Manasseh of Judah, who first removed the name of God from the texts according to the Talmud’s Sanhedrin 103b. This is almost certainly where some of the differences between the later Greek and Hebrew translations originated. The Greek translations made at the Library of Alexandria were based on the common Aramaic versions of the books, while the Hebrew translations appear to be translated from Canaanite texts.

Based on the interpretation found in the Talmud’s Megillah 3a, the Aramaic translation of the Torah was used in the temple at the time of Nehemiah, who arrived in Jerusalem in approximately 385 BC. As Aramaic was the common language of the era, this does correlate this the archeological evidence. The papyrus manuscripts found at Oxyrhynchus, in central Egypt, record correspondence between the temple in Jerusalem and the temple in Elephantine from circa 419 BC, and were written in Aramaic. Most of the latter books of the Masoretic text and Septuagint were likely composed in Aramaic, including Ezra-Nehemiah, Esther, Maccabees, and parts of Daniel.

The Peshitta includes Syriac translations of the four books of the Maccabees found in the Septuagint, along with a 5ᵗʰ book of Maccabees, which is also labelled as the The History Of The Destruction Of Jerusalem. This book is a Syriac translation of the 6ᵗʰ book of Josephus’ The Judean War. General Josephus had started on the Judean side of the rebellion, however, was captured by the Romans, and survived the war. During the fall of Jerusalem, he was part of Caesar Titus’ entourage who tried to negotiate with the Judean rebels in Jerusalem. After the destruction of Jerusalem, Josephus was given some of the surviving archives and wrote Antiquities of the Judeans, as well as The Judean War. These books survive in Greek; however, it is generally agreed that Josephus wrote these books in Judeo-Aramaic, and then translated them into Greek, as the audience he was writing to was the Judean diaspora in the Middle East. The Syrian churches have traditionally claimed that the Peshitta’s 5ᵗʰ Maccabees is a Syriac transliteration of Josephus’ original Aramaic text.

The Peshitta’s 5ᵗʰ Maccabees is often confused with the Arabic book of Maccabees in English literature due to a misidentification by the Anglican historian Henry Cotton in 1832. Josphus’ writing is also part of the Ge‘ez language extended canon of the Ethiopian bible, however, the Ge‘ez translations are longer, and it is debated if they were made from the old Aramaic versions or an Arabic translation.

5ᵗʰ Maccabees seems to have been added to the Peshitta in order to create a conclusion to the history of the kingdom of Judea, as it is just the section of The Judean War which covers the conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple. Josephus’ intent was to accurately record the fall of Judea and is generally considered a reliable source. Not all of the 1ˢᵗ century historians agreed with Josephus’ view of what happened.

Justus of Tiberias was a 1ˢᵗ century Jewish historian who had been the secretary of King Herod Agrippa II, the last ruler from the Herodian dynasty who reigned over territories outside of Judea as a Roman client. Agrippa II fled Jerusalem in 66 AD, during the Judean uprising, and supported the Roman side in the First Judean-Roman War. His work has not survived to the present, however, Josephus mentioned in his autobiography that he was rebutting some of the claims of Justus in his History of the Judean War, meaning Justus’ view of Josephus was not favorable. As Josephus had been a Judean general early in the war, Justus’ view of him as one of the causes of the war would have been justified. According to Josephus’ biography, he surrendered to the Romans after being trapped in a cave with his Judean soldiers, who didn’t want to surrender to the Romans. He ordered a mass suicide, and then left the cave and surrendered to the Romans when his soldiers were dead. As this was Josephus’ account, which he defended, Justus’ account must have been far more scathing.

Although Justus had not been mentioned in Josephus’ earlier The Judean War, Josephus wrote over 30 pages