Polyglot Bible: 2 Macabees: 2 Macabees 1

This is the opening chapter of 2 Maccabees, a deuterocanonical (apocryphal) Jewish text, presented here in three parallel versions: the English King James Apocrypha, the Greek Septuagint, and the Latin Vulgate. It consists of two festal letters sent from Jewish leaders in Jerusalem and Judea to the Jewish diaspora in Egypt, urging them to observe the feast of purification (Hanukkah) on the 25th of Casleu, with the first letter briefly referencing the crisis caused by Jason's apostasy and the second celebrating God's deliverance from Antiochus IV. A notable theological claim frames Antiochus's death as divine justice: he was lured into the temple of the goddess Nanea under the pretext of marriage, then ambushed and dismembered by priests who sealed him inside and stoned him through a hidden roof door. The chapter's most distinctive narrative is the legend of Nehemiah and the sacred fire: when priests hid altar fire in a dry cistern before the Babylonian exile, it was miraculously preserved as a thick liquid (identified as naphtha), which burst into flame when the sun emerged and was sprinkled on sacrifices at the temple's rededication. This etiological story—explaining both the origin of Hanukkah and the substance called "Nephthar" (purification)—is unique to 2 Maccabees and absent from the Hebrew Bible. The text is of interest to scholars of Second Temple Judaism, Hellenistic Jewish literature, and the origins of Hanukkah.

Polyglot Bible: 2 Macabees: 2 Macabees 1

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