Friday, June 7, 2024

“Passion of the Twenty Martyrs of Mar Saba (d. 797)" Identifying the Martyrs of Hebrews 11:35 with the Maccabean Martyrs in 2 Maccabees 7

  

39. But I say that in fact they won the crown of struggle and martyrdom three times. First, because they were killed for Christ, for if they were dwelling in this desert for Christ, all the things that they suffered in it they clearly endured for him. Second, because they handed themselves over for the sake of the lavra and its preservation and those who were being saved in it, as has been shown above—for they had the opportunity and occasion to flee, if they wanted, but they remembered and suffered as it was said, “The zeal for your house consumed me.” For if Naboth was stoned for not handing over the land that he inherited from his fathers, which is in no way brought the salvation to his soul, how much more did these men who contended for the house of God set themselves as praiseworthy and laudable? Third, because they chose to die for their brothers and fathers—and the one who dies for a fellow servant and slave, how would he not even more die ten thousand times for his own master? And if only those contending for the faith can be named martyrs, would John the Forerunner, who was beheaded because he would not keep silent concerning one transgression of a single man, Herod, not be counted and considered among the martyrs? For he was not killed for the faith. And what of the Maccabees? Did they not hand themselves over to so many cruel tortures and torments so that they would not transgress one of the least of the commandments of the law? Why was it such a great evil to taste swine flesh, since “it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person?” And the fathers honored by us today are in no way inferior to the holy fathers killed on the mountain Sinai and in Raitho, who were unjustly slaughtered by the barbarians for not handing over money that they did not have. . . . [41] And that not only those who were slain but also those who were prepared and ready to meet this fate have received the crown of martyrdom, and also that the one who has been slain for the sake of lesser things is also a perfected martyr—both things that I have said before—I will attempt to demonstrate from the words of Paul. For when the blessed Paul began to enumerate those who were illustrious among the ancestors—making a start with Abel and then continuing to Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, David, Samuel, Elijah, Elisha—he concluded saying, ‘Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses’. (“Passion of the Twenty Martyrs of Mar Saba (d. 797),” trans. Stephen J. Shoemaker, in Three Christian Martyrdoms from Early Islamic Palestine [Middle Eastern Texts Initiative; Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2016], 125, 127, 131)

 

In terms of this work's manuscript evidence, Shoemaker notes that it

 

[S]urvives in only a single manuscript—the tenth-century Greek manuscript Coislin 303 (fols. 99v-125r), now in the Bibolthèque nationale—which seems to have a Palestinian origin. (Ibid., xxx)

 

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