4 Maccabees 1 - Devout Reason and the Passions

4 Maccabees begins with a claim about freedom: the person who reveres God need not obey every appetite, fear, or angry impulse. The author states his thesis, introduces the martyrs who will prove it, and then defines the reasoning he praises. It is a mind taught by the Law and joined to an upright life. Before the reader reaches the tyrant’s tribunal, the book asks what already governs the heart.

Historical and Scriptural Context

4 Maccabees reflects on the martyrdom tradition narrated in 2 Maccabees 6-7. Eleazar, seven brothers, and their mother will become its chief witnesses. Here, however, the author begins with the vocabulary of moral philosophy: reason, passion, prudence, justice, courage, and temperance. He makes those terms answer to Israel’s worship and commandments. Wisdom is learned through the Law; the argument ends by giving glory to God, not to an independent human intellect.

The chapter has two connected tasks. Verses 1-12 announce that devout reasoning can withstand the passions. Verses 13-35 explain how a person learns that freedom. Keeping thesis and definitions together prevents two opposite mistakes: admiring heroic endurance without learning its daily formation, and treating formation as a technique of self-salvation. The Law cultivates an obedient life; the martyr stories will test it under coercion.

The account continues with the Law’s training of desire and mercy.

Geographical Significance

The chapter does not locate its speaker in a particular teaching hall or city. Its announced examples belong to the persecution of Judea under Antiochus IV, but the opening question reaches into ordinary embodied life before the historical narrative begins. The body at the table, the tongue in an argument, and the heart anticipating pain are already places where obedience is tested.

The Characters 👥

• The speaker: An unnamed teacher who proposes an argument and promises to demonstrate it through the martyrs’ endurance.
• Eleazar: The aged witness whose confession will begin in chapter 5. His experience of the Law will be tested publicly.
• The seven brothers and their mother: A family whose shared fidelity will show the strength of love ordered toward God.
• The tyrant: As yet unnamed in the argument, but already described as defeated by endurance rather than superior force.

Reasoning and the passions are the subjects of the argument, not additional persons. The speaker describes the powers and pressures of one human life.

Light from the Word

Embedded Scripture is from Brenton’s English Septuagint (LXX).

4 Maccabees 1:1-4 - The thesis is stated

¹ As I am going to demonstrate a most philosophical proposition, namely, that religious reasoning is absolute master of the passions, I would willingly advise you to give the utmost heed to philosophy. ² For reason is necessary to every one as a step to science: and more especially does it embrace the praise of prudence, the highest virtue.

³ If, then, reasoning appears to hold the mastery over the passions which stand in the way of temperance, such as gluttony and lust, ⁴ it surely also and manifestly has the rule over the affections which are contrary to justice, such as malice; and of those which are hindrances to manliness, as wrath, and pain, and fear.

The book opens with a proposition: religious reasoning is absolute master of the passions. Brenton’s phrase “religious reasoning” is crucial. The author is not praising reason detached from God, detached from worship, or detached from the commandments. He is speaking of reason made devout, reason shaped by reverence.

The first examples are gluttony, lust, malice, wrath, pain, and fear. That list is pastorally useful because it refuses to let the reader reduce the passions to only one category. Some passions pull us toward pleasure. Some push us away from pain. Some disguise themselves as justice. Some come through bodily appetite. Some come through memory, resentment, fear, or self-protection.

The author begins with philosophy but quickly moves toward virtue. Prudence, temperance, justice, and manliness are not academic labels. They name the healed direction of the soul. The Church’s ascetic life gives a concrete parallel: fasting trains appetite, prayer trains attention, confession trains truthfulness, and obedience trains the will.

The opening phrase deserves precision. In the Greek text, “religious reasoning” is ho eusebēs logismos, devout reasoning. Logismos names the person’s reasoning or deliberation. It is not the title Logos, the Word confessed in John 1:1-14. The chapter also uses ordinary forms of logos for discourse and rational explanation; their presence does not turn its thesis into a direct statement about the divine Son. The Christian connection belongs to fulfillment: the incarnate Word heals and directs human reasoning. It is not an identity between two Greek terms.¹

4 Maccabees 1:5-6 - Reason resists without destroying

⁵ How, then, is it, perhaps some may say, that reasoning, if it rule the affections, is not also master of forgetfulness and ignorance? They attempt a ridiculous argument. ⁶ For reasoning does not rule over its own affections, but over such as are contrary to justice, and manliness, and temperance, and prudence; and yet over these, so as to withstand, without destroying them.

These verses protect the whole study from a major error. Reason does not rule over forgetfulness and ignorance in the same way, and it does not destroy the passions. It withstands them. This is close to the lived Orthodox understanding of ascetic struggle. A Christian may not be able to make anger, fear, desire, or grief disappear on command. But by grace, prayer, and training, he can refuse to become their slave.

The line “without destroying them” is especially important. The goal is not to become less human. The goal is to become healed. Natural desire is not evil in itself. Fear can warn. Anger can register an injustice. Grief can reveal love. But when these movements are ungoverned, they turn from servants into masters.

Pride remains a danger here. If reason withstands the passions, the person must still pray for mercy. Orthodox asceticism is not self-admiration. The one who fasts, watches, and refuses sin must not say, “I mastered myself.” He should say, “God has shown me what enslaves me, and He is teaching me to stand.”

The objection from forgetfulness also limits the claim. The speaker is discussing moral governance, not promising total control of every mental function. Memory loss, involuntary thoughts, bodily pain, and the symptoms of illness cannot honestly be classified as failures of obedience. A frightened person may pray faithfully while fear continues to be felt. Care for the mind and body, including appropriate medical care, is compatible with this struggle.

4 Maccabees 1:7-12 - The martyrs become the proof

⁷ I might prove to you, from many other considerations, that religious reasoning is sole master of the passions; ⁸ but I shall prove it with the greatest force from the fortitude of Eleazar, and seven brethren, and their mother, who suffered death in defence of virtue. ⁹ For all these, contemning pains even unto death, by this contempt, demonstrated that reasoning has command over the passions.

¹⁰ For their virtues, then, it is right that I should commend those men who died with their mother at this time in behalf of rectitude; and for their honours, I may count them happy. ¹¹ For they, winning admiration not only from men in general, but even from their persecutors, for their manliness and endurance, became the means of the destruction of the tyranny against their nation, having conquered the tyrant by their endurance, so that by them their country was purified.

¹² But we may now at once enter upon the question, having commenced, as is our wont, with laying down the doctrine, and so proceed to the account of these persons, giving glory to the all wise God.

The proof will not be abstract. The author will prove his thesis from Eleazar, the seven brothers, and their mother. 4 Maccabees therefore stands as a companion to 2 Maccabees rather than replacing its narrative. 2 Maccabees narrates the holy refusal and resurrection hope. 4 Maccabees reflects on what those witnesses reveal about the ordered soul.

Verse 8 names death “in defence of virtue.” Verse 9 says they demonstrate that reasoning has command over the passions. Verse 11 says they conquered the tyrant by endurance. The conquest is not military victory in the ordinary sense. It is the defeat of tyranny by refusing to give tyranny the obedience it demands.

This matters for Christian martyr theology. The martyrs do not win because pain is good. They win because faithfulness remains possible under pain. They do not purify their country by violence against others, but by witness, endurance, and holy refusal. Read through Christ, this prepares the Church to understand victory through suffering, not as weakness, but as the shape of the Cross. That Christological reading should remain reverent and not simplistic. Eleazar and the family are not Christ. Their witness is fulfilled and judged by Christ.

The sequence ends with “giving glory to the all wise God.” That ending directs the praise of virtue toward its proper object. The martyrs’ endurance has public consequences, but the author does not commend the infliction of suffering. The persecutor remains responsible for his violence. Nor does the declaration that the country was purified establish that these deaths accomplish the unique saving work Christians confess in Christ.

4 Maccabees 1:13-17 - Reason, wisdom, and the education of the Law

¹³ The question, therefore, is, whether reasoning be absolute master of the passions. ¹⁴ Let us determine, then, What is reasoning? and what passion? and how many forms of the passions? and whether reasoning bears sway over all of these?

¹⁵ Reasoning is, then, intellect accompanied by a life of rectitude, putting foremost the consideration of wisdom. ¹⁶ And wisdom is a knowledge of divine and human things, and of their causes. ¹⁷ And this is contained in the education of the law; by means of which we learn divine things reverently, and human things profitably.

The questions distinguish reasoning, passion, and the scope of moral governance. Familiar words require careful definition.

Reasoning is defined as intellect joined to a life of rectitude. That is not mere cleverness. A brilliant person can be enslaved by passions. In 4 Maccabees, reason is moral and spiritual. It puts wisdom first, and wisdom is knowledge of divine and human things. The final line is decisive: this wisdom is contained in the education of the Law.

The Law is therefore not treated as a cage. It is education. It teaches divine things reverently and human things profitably. The commandments train a person to see God, neighbor, body, food, family, money, anger, and desire truthfully. The Church trains the whole person in this way: fasting teaches appetite; almsgiving teaches money; confession teaches truth; the Agpeya teaches attention; the liturgy teaches the body to stand before God.

Knowledge and conduct belong together in verse 15. A clever defense of resentment remains resentment; a correct definition of temperance does not itself restrain appetite. “A life of rectitude” makes wisdom accountable to what the person actually chooses. This gives study a test within the week: the passage has been received when it begins to change the next use of money, the next impatient reply, or the next decision made in secret.

4 Maccabees 1:18-29 - The virtues and the garden of the soul

¹⁸ And the forms of wisdom are prudence, and justice, and manliness, and temperance. ¹⁹ The leading one of these is prudence; by whose means, indeed, it is that reasoning bears rule over the passions. ²⁰ Of the passions, pleasure and pain are the two most comprehensive; and they also by nature refer to the soul. ²¹ And there are many attendant affections surrounding pleasure and pain. ²² Before pleasure is lust; and after pleasure, joy. ²³ And before pain is fear; and after pain, sorrow.

²⁴ Wrath is an affection, common to pleasure and to pain, if any one will pay attention when it comes upon him. ²⁵ And there exists in pleasure a malicious disposition, which is the most multiform of all the affections. ²⁶ In the soul it is arrogance, and love of money, and vaingloriousness, and contention, and faithlessness, and the evil eye. ²⁷ In the body it is greediness and gormandizing, and solitary gluttony.

²⁸ As pleasure and pain are, therefore, two growths of the body and the soul, so there are many offshoots of these passions. ²⁹ And reasoning, the universal husbandman, purging, and pruning these severally, and binding round, and watering, and transplanting, in every way improves the materials of the morals and affections.

The author names prudence, justice, manliness, and temperance. Prudence leads because practical wisdom helps the person discern what must be done. Then the text classifies pleasure and pain as broad roots with many offshoots: lust, joy, fear, sorrow, wrath, arrogance, love of money, vainglory, contention, faithlessness, greed, and gluttony.

Verse 29 makes cultivation the governing image. Reasoning is called a universal husbandman. It purges, prunes, binds, waters, and transplants. This is not the image of a machine crushing emotion. It is the image of cultivation. The soul is a field or garden. The passions need correction, pruning, direction, and nourishment.

This fits Orthodox ascetic practice. The Church does not merely say, “Stop wanting.” She gives seasons, prayers, fasts, almsgiving, confession, vigils, hymns, and counsel. These do not destroy humanity. They cultivate it. The desire that once became greed can be trained toward generosity. Anger can be restrained and purified into zeal without hatred. Desire can be redirected toward God.

The gardener does more than cut. He waters, binds, and transplants as well as prunes. That variety matters for spiritual care. One habit needs a firm refusal; another needs patient nourishment through prayer, honest friendship, rest, or a work of mercy. Severity applied indiscriminately can damage what should be strengthened. Discernment asks what will help this particular desire become obedient to love.

St Athanasius on Antony’s early struggles

In Life of Antony 3-5, St Athanasius gives an Egyptian Christian witness to such cultivation. Antony listens to Scripture, works, shares with the needy, prays, and learns distinct virtues from different people. When temptations later argue for wealth, pleasure, and surrender, his earlier formation becomes a living resource. Athanasius does not describe a man saved by mental force. He explains the struggle through the Incarnation: “For the Lord was working with Antony”.² The Lord who took flesh gives help to a person fighting in the flesh. This is a thematic Christian witness, not a claim that Athanasius is commenting on 4 Maccabees.

Antony’s attention to another person’s freedom from anger and another’s loving-kindness also tests the meaning of ascetic success. The garden is judged by its fruit. A stricter fast that leaves a person contemptuous has not reached the charity toward which bodily discipline should lead.

4 Maccabees 1:30-35 - Appetite and temperance

³⁰ For reasoning is the leader of the virtues, but it is the sole ruler of the passions. Observe then first, through the very things which stand in the way of temperance, that reasoning is absolute ruler of the passions.

³¹ Now temperance consists of a command over the lusts. ³² But of the lusts, some belong to the soul, others to the body: and over each of these classes the reasoning appears to bear sway. ³³ For whence is it, otherwise, that when urged on to forbidden meats, we reject the gratification which would ensue from them? Is it not because reasoning is able to command the appetites? I believe so. ³⁴ Hence it is, then, that when lusting after water-animals and birds, and fourfooted beasts, and all kinds of food which are forbidden us by the law, we withhold ourselves through the mastery of reasoning. ³⁵ For the affections of our appetites are resisted by the temperate understanding, and bent back again, and all the impulses of the body are reined in by reasoning.

The first concrete test is appetite. The author asks why the faithful reject forbidden meats if not because reasoning can command appetites. For the original audience, this is tied to the Jewish dietary law and to the crisis of forced apostasy. Under Antiochus, eating forbidden meat was not a private menu choice. It was a coerced sign of surrender.

For Orthodox Christians, the direct application is not to make Mosaic food law the center of Christian practice. The pastoral bridge is fasting and bodily obedience. The body participates in faith. Appetite can be trained. Food can become either thanksgiving or slavery. Small acts of bodily obedience can prepare a person for costlier fidelity under pressure.

Fasting is not legalism when practiced with repentance and love. But fasting can become pride if the person treats self-restraint as superiority. 4 Maccabees is preparing us for martyrdom, not self-congratulation.

The original command is Israel’s dietary obedience. Verse 34 grounds abstinence in what the Law forbids; the reader must not rewrite that obedience as valid only when a particular meal involves idols. Chapter 5 will add public coercion and idol offerings to the scene. Christian fasting is a later ecclesial practice with a different covenantal setting, though it shares the truth that appetite can serve obedience rather than dictate it.

Christological Reading

The book speaks of logismos, human reasoning; the Church confesses the Logos, the eternal Word who became flesh. Christ is not one more example of unusually strong self-control. He is the Son through whom life is given and in whom our wounded human life is healed. The Christian reads this chapter’s account of cultivation through His grace, rather than trying to reach Him by private mastery.

Matthew 4:1-11 gives a precise connection. Christ truly hungers, yet refuses bread obtained by obedience to the tempter; He refuses both a display of invulnerability and kingdoms purchased through false worship. Hunger is real, worship is decisive, and the Father’s will governs the response. In Gethsemane, Matthew 26:36-46 records sorrow and prayer together. The Lord’s obedience does not require us to pretend that distress is unreal. It calls us to bring distress to the Father.

St Athanasius on the Resurrection and courage

In On the Incarnation 27-28, St Athanasius grounds Christian courage in the Lord’s risen Body, not in an elite temperament. He writes: “But now that the Saviour has raised His body, death is no longer terrible”.³ His subject is death’s broken dominion through Christ. His strong language about approaching death praises fidelity under persecution; it does not authorize seeking danger or death. A grieving or fearful Christian may receive that victory while still needing comfort, companionship, and care.

St Paul’s account of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:16-24 supplies the Christian measure of self-control. Temperance belongs beside love, peace, kindness, and gentleness. The mind is healed for communion, not for admiration of its own strength.

The Church’s Voice in Worship

This passage has no established place in the Coptic Orthodox lectionary.

On Mesra 8, the Coptic Synaxarium commemorates “The Martyrdom of Sts. Eleazar, Salome, His Wife, and Their Children.” This falls on August 14 in 2026, 2027 and 2028. St-Takla’s English narrative calls them Lazarus the Elder and Salomi and names their seven children. Lazarus is a Greek shortened form of Eleazar, but the family descriptions are not identical: 2 Maccabees presents Eleazar as an aged scribe, and 4 Maccabees calls him a priest, without identifying him as the brothers’ father; the mother is unnamed in those books. The Coptic narrative makes him Salomi’s husband and the children’s father. Its description of Antiochus as “King of Rome” is an anachronism, not a detail to import into the biblical history. The narrative nevertheless remembers their refusal of apostasy and says that “they received the crown of martyrdom.” This commemoration is not a lectionary reading of 4 Maccabees and does not give it the canonical standing of 1 and 2 Maccabees.⁴

The readings for Mesra 8 are Psalm 4:3, 6-7 and Matthew 11:25-30 at Vespers; Psalm 112:1-2 (LXX 111:1-2) and Mark 10:13-16 at Matins; and Hebrews 11:32-12:2, 1 Peter 4:12-19, Acts 19:23-41, Psalm 66:12-14 (LXX 65:12-14), and Matthew 18:10-20 at the Liturgy. Hebrews’ remembrance of those tortured in hope of a better resurrection and the Psalm’s passage through fire and water offer a fitting way to hear the martyrs’ witness. That connection is a reading of these texts together, not a claim that the lectionary supplies an official explanation of 4 Maccabees.

In the Byzantine Orthodox calendar, the seven Maccabean martyrs, their mother Solomonia, and their teacher Eleazar are commemorated on August 1. This is a broader Orthodox witness, distinct from the Coptic Synaxarium’s names and family relationships.

The Coptic Church’s remembrance of the Maccabean martyrs and its practices of prayer and fasting give this chapter a living setting: bodily discipline is ordered toward faithful worship and merciful life, not toward disdain for the body.

Spiritual Fruit

1. Name the master before naming the achievement. When an argument, purchase, or craving becomes urgent, pause long enough to identify what is demanding obedience: fear of disapproval, pleasure, resentment, or the wish to appear right. Bring that specific demand into prayer rather than hiding it beneath a general confession of weakness.
2. Choose one small, truthful refusal. Refuse gossip without humiliating the speaker, close the screen that feeds lust, or keep the agreed prayer time when distraction offers a plausible excuse. The point is a clean act of obedience, not a private tally of victories.
3. Cultivate what the refusal protects. Give the time saved from distraction to prayer or a person who needs attention. Pair restraint in food with almsgiving. The gardener does not leave the ground bare; he tends it for fruit.
4. Distinguish temptation from consent. An unwanted thought or persistent feeling does not make a person faithless. Resist what leads toward sin, seek help when overwhelmed, and return after a fall without making despair the next ruler of the heart.
5. Give glory where the chapter gives glory. When a habit begins to change, thank Christ and remember the people through whom He has helped. Gratitude protects discipline from becoming pride.

Lord Jesus Christ, eternal Word of the Father, bring my reasoning into the light of Your truth. Prune what wounds love, water what has grown weak, and teach my body to serve You without hatred of its frailty. Let the freedom I seek become patience and mercy toward another person.

Teaching Notes

Suggested flow: Begin with 1:1-6 and distinguish resistance from emotional numbness. Follow the announced proof in 1:7-12, then let the definitions and gardener image explain how obedience is learned. Finish with appetite as the first concrete test.

Where to linger: “Without destroying them,” “education of the law,” and “the universal husbandman.” Read the gardening verbs slowly. Use Antony as a Christian thematic witness, keeping Christ’s action central.

Accuracy: Distinguish logismos from Christ the Logos. Explain Brenton’s “manliness” as courage; women will be among the book’s strongest witnesses. Do not turn “science” into a reference to modern experimental science or identify the unnamed setting as a known school.

Pastoral care: Do not shame fear, grief, anxiety, involuntary thoughts, or illness. Ascetic formation is not self-salvation, contempt for Gentiles, body-hatred, or a call to seek martyrdom. Do not reproduce Antony’s exceptional bodily rule as a prescription for everyone; fasting requires pastoral guidance attentive to health.

Discussion Questions

1. What does “a life of rectitude” add to the definition of reasoning?
2. Which gardening action in 1:29 best describes the help you need: pruning, watering, binding, or transplanting?
3. How does the distinction between resisting a passion and erasing a feeling change the way we care for someone who is afraid?
4. What does Christ’s real hunger in Matthew 4 teach about bodily need and obedience?
5. What fruit would show that a small act of restraint had become an act of love rather than pride?

Glossary

• Devout reasoning, logismos: Human deliberation formed by reverence, wisdom, and obedience to God.
• Logos: “Word,” used in John 1 for the divine Son; not an interchangeable name for the human reasoning of this chapter.
• Passions: The desires, pleasures, pains, and affections discussed here, especially as they press toward disordered action. The word is broader in this book than a list of culpable sins.
• Prudence: Practical wisdom discerning what ought to be done.
• Temperance: The governance of desire and appetite.
• Manliness: Brenton’s rendering of courage or moral firmness, not a claim that holiness belongs to men alone.
• Universal husbandman: The gardener image for reason’s cultivation of moral life.
• Salome: The mother’s name in the Coptic Synaxarium tradition; 4 Maccabees itself leaves her unnamed.

Translation Notes

The Vespers Psalm is Psalm 4:3, 6-7 (LXX 4:4, 7-8 in Brenton); the two traditions use the same chapter number but count the verses differently.⁵

Embedded Scripture is from Brenton’s English Septuagint (LXX), public domain. The full chapter, 1:1-35, is quoted in its order. “Science” here concerns knowledge, and “manliness” concerns courage. The Christian use of “Logos” is a theological connection, not a translation of logismos in 1:1.

Sources

1. 4 Maccabees 1:1-35, Brenton’s English Septuagint (1851), public domain; 2 Maccabees 6-7 for the martyrdom background.

2. John 1:1-14; Matthew 4:1-11; Matthew 26:36-46; Galatians 5:16-24, NKJV, for the explained Christian connections.

3. St Athanasius, Life of Antony 3-5, H. Ellershaw’s translation, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 4 (1892), text. Thematic witness to formation, grace, and embodied struggle.

4. St Athanasius, On the Incarnation 27-28, Archibald Robertson’s translation, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, vol. 4 (1892), text.

5. Coptic Orthodox lectionary and Synaxarium. This passage has no established place in the Coptic Orthodox lectionary.

6. Coptic Reader, Synaxarium title for Mesra 8, distributed in @andraws/lectionary-data 1.3.3.

7. Coptic Orthodox readings for Mesra 8, August 14, 2026, with the same nine appointments in the 2027 and 2028 date-resolved records preserved in @andraws/lectionary-data 1.3.3. The links between these readings and 4 Maccabees are interpretive comparisons.

8. St-Takla English Synaxarium, Mesra 8, for Lazarus, Salomi, their family, and the narrative differences. The Synaxarium is a commemoration, not a canon list.

9. Orthodox Church in America, “7 Holy Maccabee Martyrs”, for the broader Byzantine August 1 remembrance and the name Solomonia.

Footnotes

1. Fourth Maccabees 1:1-3, Greek Analytical text, for the printed distinction between logismos and the ordinary uses of logos. The theological title is read from John 1:1-14. ↩

2. St Athanasius, Life of Antony 5, trans. H. Ellershaw, NPNF, second series, vol. 4, text. The quoted clause is followed by his explanation of the Lord’s Incarnation and help in bodily struggle. ↩

3. St Athanasius, On the Incarnation 27.2, trans. Archibald Robertson, NPNF, second series, vol. 4, text. ↩

4. Coptic Reader Synaxarium title for Mesra 8, preserved in @andraws/lectionary-data 1.3.3; St-Takla English Synaxarium, Mesra 8 narrative. The title and narrative are distinct witnesses. ↩

5. Psalm 4:3, 6-7, NKJV; Psalm 4:4, 7-8, Brenton’s English Septuagint (1851). ↩