Time, communion, and ancestry in African biblical interpretation: a contextual note on 1 Maccabees 2:49-70

Abstract

Because behaviors and values described in the Bible most often have no analogues among contemporary Euro-Americans, social scientific biblical interpretation uses appropriate, explicit models of behavior verifiable among contemporary peoples through which to process behavior described in biblical documents. While the process sounds anachronistic, models are judged as structurally appropriate when they accord with all relevant biblical data and thus generate new understanding. Among biblical data in search of a verifiable, explicit model is that of ancestrism and ancestor veneration. In this essay, data from First Maccabees describing Israelite time and ancestrism are viewed in comparative perspective, at a high level of abstraction, with ancestrism perspectives provided by sub-Saharan African biblical scholars and theologians. During the last thirty years the amount of work produced by African scholars has increased to the point that it can be considered a large corpus of original research. In their selection of biblical texts to work on, African scholars have stressed those passages that relate to their own cultural experience. These quite often embrace the social structures and cultural values described in the Old Testament. This essay will explore the categories of time and ancestry by comparing ancient Israelite and African perspectives, while noting the wide ranging contributions of African scholarship.

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Just as the Old Testament has proved to be an African book, to do Old Testament scholarship has likewise proved to be an African enterprise (Holter 2000b: 66)

In a previous study in this journal, and in the context of the First Book of Maccabees, I have suggested that

   Collective memories are vehicles of organic solidarity, as they are the
   product of individual voices that point to charismatic figures, i.e.
   individuals who create themselves and are created in return so as to
   symbolise collectivities and social histories [Aguilar 2000].

The story of the Maccabean uprising points up a founding figure, Mattathias, who can be described as a symbolic community figure or a legendary ancestor. According to the narrative, Mattathias together with his five sons (John known as Gaddi, Simon called Thassi, Judas called Maccabaeus, Eleazar called Avaran, and Jonathan called Apphus) engaged in the traditional Middle Eastern ritual to protest the presence of social evil: he tore his garments, put on sackcloth, and observed deep mourning. The social evil in question included the abominations performed by the Hellenists, the pillage of the Temple and the installation of Gentile cults (1Macc 2:14). Later on within the text he is portrayed as leading a violent uprising against the imposition of certain Hellenistic practices in Judea.

In my previous work I suggested that the collective memory of a hero like Mattathias is created both by a linguistically composed (as opposed to an extemporary) document (i.e. a textually fixed yet oral narrative of the Maccabees) and by the actual intervention and action of such a person within the larger history of Syrian occupation and colonial power. The narrative itself was important enough for a Palestinian Israelite (probably its author) to write it down. And it was important enough to capture the attention of the historian Flavius Josephus, who under the auspices of Roman patronage narrated his own history of identity, ancestry and changing political allegiances.

In the second chapter of the First Book of Maccabees, the author tells how Mattathias died after leading public disturbances and violent resistance against the Hellenists on the Sabbath. Before dying Mattathias reminded his sons about their ancestors and the great deeds performed in each generation. Such an oral testament, not unknown within the Old Testament (cf., e.g., the Eulogy of the Ancestors in Sirach 44-50), provided continuity in the conflict with non-Israelites and urged Mattathias' sons to renewed commitment to the Law and to the Covenant. After speaking to them, Mattathias "blessed them and was joined to his ancestors" (1Macc 2:69).

This essay continues a social enquiry into the First Book of Maccabees. It departs from the "ethnographic present" provided by the author of the book, however, while asking questions of methodology related to the reading of this ancient text. What happens when one reads First Maccabees within other parameters of time and space? What happens when one replaces the cultural lenses shared by the author of First Maccabees, with a world view derived from contemporary sub-Saharan, African enculturation and experience?

The value of such an exercise derives from the fact that it is often quite difficult to recover the cultural lenses of ancient Mediterranean authors in specific areas such as ancestor veneration. Social scientific biblical interpretation is premised on the attempt to find out what an original audience understood by what an original author said and meant to say by discovering some actual modern human population that shares a social system and cultural values similar to those described in the ancient documents. While these contemporary social systems and cultural values are not identical to those of ancient Mediterranean populations, yet they are closer to anything available in modern Euro-American societies, and hence can serve as a springboard into the world view of ancient populations for the purpose of constructing testable comparative models of understanding. The sub-Saharan African experience is quite apropos to the task of understanding ancestrism and ancestor veneration in some comparative way that might be useful in understanding this feature of ancient Israelite society as it is presented in the biblical documents.