3 Makkabaer

The third book of Makkaba reports on the attempt of King Ptolemy IV in 216 BC. To destroy all Jews in Alexandria and Egypt and then to razor Jerusalem to the ground. In contrast to the first two books of the Maccabees, the Jews did not defend themselves, but instead pleaded with God for salvation. Several times God intervenes in what is happening and in the end the Hellenistic king is lucid and the Jews are saved. Ptolemy is not the new Pharaoh of the Exodus, but a Macedonian foreign ruler over Egypt, whom the Jews can faithfully serve in the diaspora. The book thus provides an important insight into the history and the internal discussions of diaspora Judaism in Greco-Roman Egypt . The present volume examines and explains in a verse-by-verse commentary the political, cultural, historical and theological context of the text.