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(4) Jewish Philosophy
(a) Fourth Book of Machabees
This is a short philosophical treatise on the supremacy of pious
reason, that is reason regulated by divine law, which for the author
is the Mosaic Law. In setting up reason as the master of human
passion, the author was distinctly influenced by Stoic philosophy.
>From it also he derived his four cardinal virtues: prudence,
righteousness (or justice), fortitude, temperance;
phronesis, dikaiosyne, andreia, sophrosyne,
and it was through Fourth Machabees that this
category was appropriated by early Christian ascetical writers. The
second part of the book exhibits the sufferings of Eleazar and the
seven Machabean brothers as examples of the dominion of pious
reason. The aim of the Hellenistic Jewish author was to inculcate
devotion to the Law. He is unknown. The work was erroneously
ascribed to Josephus by Eusebius and others. It appears to have
been produced before the fall of Jerusalem, but its date is a matter
of conjecture.