Abstract:The following essay is the first attempt at a construal of the Fourth Book of Maccabees in a way that is consistently sensitive to its context, i.e. the first attempt to ask to which schools and ideas of his contemporary addressees the author refers. In the present paper, IV Maccabees 5,1–4.5–38 will be used as an example of this approach. This context-sensitive analysis results in the conclusion that certain groups in IV Maccabees' audience wanted to abandon their Jewish identity for the sake of a thoroughgoi… Show more
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