Conclusion Memories of the Maccabean Martyrs and Remembering History Ethically

Abstract

This book has examined late antique and medieval traditions of the Maccabean martyrs, covering in detail traditions ranging from the fourth to sixteenth centuries and moving from the writings of authors located in the eastern Mediterranean and Asia Minor to North Africa to northwestern Europe. The memories of the Maccabean martyrs preserved in these traditions were malleable products shaped by the needs and issues facing religious leaders and their communities within specific contexts. While a core narrative derived from 2 Maccabees 7 remained foundational for Christian traditions concerning these martyrs, their memory was perpetuated for different purposes over time. Christian authors contended with the fact that these martyrs were appropriated from Judaism and bore witness to an undying devotion to the Mosaic Law, which Christianity taught had been superseded with the coming of Christ. In the afterlife of the appropriation of this Jewish narrative, Christians sought to explain why the memory of these martyrs retained significance within their own cultural context. As I have defined it, these memories were both allosemitic and deeply hybridized. These memories were allosemitic in the sense that their purpose was not aimed primarily at either positively or negatively portraying Jews. Rather, these Jews were objects employed in the course of assertions of Christian concerns and historical remembrances. These memories were hybrid in that the Maccabean martyrs became simultaneously Jewish and Christian figures. They were a synecdoche for the hybrid origins of Christianity itself.