Comparing Maccabees 7: 1-42 In Hannah And Her Seven Sons
“Martyrdom: extreme suffering; torment“ (Dictionary.com). The epitome of martyrdom is exemplified in 2 Maccabees 7:1-42 in the story of “Hannah and her Seven Sons.“ The persistent horror and barbarity struck people with fear and doubtfulness about the promises made by God. The subject where the story takes place is during the Maccabean revolt, lasting from 167 to 160 BC, between a Judean rebel group known as the Maccabees and the Seleucid Empire. There are very few scholars who would actually date the composition of the passage to the time of the evil decree of Antiochus. 2 Maccabees was written in Greek and years later them events narrated had passed. “The purpose of this writing is to celebrate the “martyr“ as a brace sacrifice for the truth
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The sons seem to have the same-shaped ideals as their mother. The sons have ideals that they are suffering for their sins by being tortured by the king Antiochus. However, they believe that now that they are paying for their sins that they will go to heaven and be in a better place. The mother sees an afterlife after they all die. By this, she hopes that she will be reconnected with all her sons once again if their Lord is willing. When comparing these ideals to the Hebrew bible, they both differ majorly. In the Hebrew Bible, they believe in the concept she-ol. She-ol is a place of darkness which all the dead go- the righteous and unrighteous regardless of the choices they made in life. She-ol is a place of darkness and stillness cut off from the Hebrew God. This differs from the Hebrew Bibles view on she-ol because in 2 Maccabees 7:1-42, we witness Hannah and her Seven Sons being hopeful of an afterlife together. “The effect of this extreme attention to the body in the restoration of this world shows that the tradition of resurrection was not at all obligated to Platonic or any other Greek philosophical thought, although 2 Maccabees was written first in Greek using Greek cultural norms in a variety of ways. The resurrection of the body became a Jewish ideal because is differentiates the oppressed from the
The sons seem to have the same-shaped ideals as their mother. The sons have ideals that they are suffering for their sins by being tortured by the king Antiochus. However, they believe that now that they are paying for their sins that they will go to heaven and be in a better place. The mother sees an afterlife after they all die. By this, she hopes that she will be reconnected with all her sons once again if their Lord is willing. When comparing these ideals to the Hebrew bible, they both differ majorly. In the Hebrew Bible, they believe in the concept she-ol. She-ol is a place of darkness which all the dead go- the righteous and unrighteous regardless of the choices they made in life. She-ol is a place of darkness and stillness cut off from the Hebrew God. This differs from the Hebrew Bibles view on she-ol because in 2 Maccabees 7:1-42, we witness Hannah and her Seven Sons being hopeful of an afterlife together. “The effect of this extreme attention to the body in the restoration of this world shows that the tradition of resurrection was not at all obligated to Platonic or any other Greek philosophical thought, although 2 Maccabees was written first in Greek using Greek cultural norms in a variety of ways. The resurrection of the body became a Jewish ideal because is differentiates the oppressed from the