4 Maccabees
The Fourth Book of the Maccabees (or "From the rule of reason " ) is an apocryphal book of the Old Testament. In many Orthodox churches, it appears as an appendix to the Old Testament of the Bible in Western Bibles however, it is usually not included.
Since Eusebius of Caesarea († 339 or 340) is assigned to the book Flavius Josephus. From content and linguistic reasons, this assignment is rejected. Instead, the book is written by a rhetorical formed Hellenistic Diaspora Jews in Syrian Antioch toward the end of the first century after Christ.
Content
The book is conceived as a philosophical- ethical speech. An attempt to prove the thesis that the reason is sovereign over the instincts and used examples from the second book of Maccabees ( Ch. 6 and 7), which is why it has been ranked at the Maccabees historical content. In verse 9 of the introductory part it says, for example, with Eleazar and the seven brothers: " For while all failed to take this pain until death, they showed that the reason over the shoots has violence. " It exhorts the Jews to be faithful to the law.
The book refers indeed to events of Jewish history, but overall is very strong, influenced by the Greek popular philosophy, especially Stoicism.