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The Perfection of ‘Love for Offspring’: Greek Representations of Maternal Affection and the Achievement of the Heroine of 4 Maccabees

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2006

DAVID A. DESILVA
DAVID A. DESILVA
Affiliation:
Ashland Theological Seminary, 910 Center Street, Ashland, Ohio 44805, USA
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Abstract

A close comparison with Plutarch's De amore prolis and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics shows the author of 4 Maccabees to have used common topics from Greek ethical reflection on love for offspring as a means of commending Torah-observance as the means by which one is enabled to secure one's children's eternal well-being, fulfilling the natural goal of love for offspring more completely. The author shows how trust in God's future enables the mother to view even the death of her children as the fulfillment rather than the negation of her maternal investment, as in the laments of Euripides's heroines in Trojan Women and Hecuba, from which the author explicitly distances her, enabling her exemplary courage.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , April 2006 , pp. 251 - 268
Copyright
2006 Cambridge University Press

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