The book known as 4 Maccabees is a strange book. At first glance, it seems to be only a story about the persecution under Antiochus IV Epiphanes, about Jews forced to eat pork, about Eleazar, about the seven brothers and their mother. It seems to be a book about courage, faithfulness, and people who prefer death to compromise.
But when read carefully, the book says much more. It does not show only a conflict between Jews and Greeks. It does not show only a conflict between Law and tyranny. It shows the moment when the Law itself is transformed into Philosophy.
This is the key.
The author does not begin by saying, “I will defend the Law of Moses.” He does not begin like Moses, he does not begin like the prophets, and he does not begin with the simple call to obey God. He begins by saying that he is about to treat a “philosophical” subject: whether pious reason is master over the passions. Then he speaks about prudence, virtue, self-control, courage, justice, piety, reason, passions, desires, pleasure, and pain.
In other words, we immediately enter a world that is no longer the sober world of Creation, and not even the concrete world of the Law given to a people. We enter the world of concepts. We enter the language of Philosophy.
And here the first problem appears.
The Law, in its historical form, was given to a people, in a context, as an order of life. It was not given to all humanity as the absolute definition of man. Not every human being on earth was Jewish. Not every human being on earth lived in the same covenant, in the same package of commandments, or in the same history.
But the moment the Law is transformed into Philosophy, it no longer remains only a concrete order for a concrete people. It becomes a system. It becomes a criterion of superiority. It becomes the way through which some people see themselves as higher than others.
This is what Philosophy does with everything it touches. It takes something concrete and turns it into a universal principle. It takes a historical order and turns it into metaphysics. It takes a practice and turns it into a definition of man.
In 4 Maccabees, this is seen without any veil. Eleazar does not merely say that he keeps the Law. He speaks about “our philosophy.”
That is the explosive formulation.
Judaism is declared to be philosophy. The Law is presented as a system of reason, virtue, and moral mastery. It teaches people self-control, courage, justice, and piety. We no longer have only the commandment of God. We have the Law translated into Greek language and presented as a philosophical form of life.
That is already a mutation.
Anyone who reads superficially will say that 4 Maccabees is an anti-Greek book. It is not that simple. The book opposes Greek tyranny, but it does so by using Greek language. It opposes the philosophy of Antiochus, but it builds a philosophy of the Law. It does not escape Philosophy. It turns Philosophy in favor of the Law.
Antiochus, in turn, appears not merely as a tyrant. He is not only the man who wants to force the Jews to eat pork. That is the surface, the caricature of the conflict, the part that is easy to see.
In reality, Antiochus comes with another definition of man. He tells Eleazar that he does not seem to be a philosopher precisely because he keeps the religion of the Jews. He asks him why he refuses what nature has given. He tells him that it is senseless not to enjoy pleasant things. He calls him to abandon his “foolish philosophy” and follow the philosophy of advantage.
Here is the connection between Antiochus and Philosophy.
Antiochus does not come only with the sword. He comes with an anthropology. He comes with the idea that man must follow nature, usefulness, survival, legitimate pleasure, and political adaptation. For him, to die for a food commandment is absurd. To live is more useful. To adapt is wiser. To accept the Greek world is more rational.
So the conflict is not about pork. Pork is the visible symbol. The real conflict is about who defines man.
But 4 Maccabees answers in an equally philosophical way. It says that true reason is not the reason of advantage, but pious reason. It says that man must not be ruled by pleasure, fear, pain, or survival, but by reason formed by the Law.
Thus the opposition to Philosophy is formulated through Philosophy. Exactly here the contamination becomes visible. Even the struggle against the Greek world is fought with the weapons of the Greek world.
That is why 4 Maccabees is such an important piece. It shows an intermediate state: the Law has not disappeared, but it is no longer simple Law. It has become philosophy. The Jew is no longer merely the man of the covenant. He becomes the man of pious reason. And the Law is no longer merely commandment. It becomes a system of virtue, reason, and moral superiority.
Here the Pauline system enters.
Before making the comparison, however, the chronology must be stated accurately. The date of 4 Maccabees is uncertain. Proposals range broadly from approximately AD 20 to the beginning of the second century. The book may predate some Pauline writings, overlap with them, or have reached its final form after them.
Therefore, it cannot be demonstrated that Paul read 4 Maccabees or copied this particular book. The importance of 4 Maccabees is structural. It preserves a form of Jewish-Hellenistic martyr theology that belonged to the same intellectual world in which Pauline theology developed. The relationship is one of theological environment and shared mechanism, not a demonstrable line of literary dependence.
When the Pauline corpus warns against “philosophy,” we must not rush to believe that it is simply attacking Greek thought from outside. The explicit warning appears in Colossians 2:8, a letter whose direct authorship by Paul remains disputed. The precise wording should therefore be attributed first to the Pauline corpus rather than used as an unquestioned personal declaration of the historical Paul.
The Pauline corpus itself uses Greek concepts. It speaks about body, spirit, powers, authorities, the elements of the world, the old man, the new man, image, fullness, and the cosmic Christ. Pauline theology is not foreign to the Greek conceptual world. It uses it. It breathes it. It transforms it into theology.
Then the question is: what philosophy is being attacked?
Here 4 Maccabees gives us the key to the conceptual environment. There already existed a philosophy of the Law. There already existed a Judaism that no longer presented itself only as obedience to God, but as a rational system for forming man. There already existed the idea that the Law is the true philosophy and that the man formed by the Law is the man who masters the passions and deserves eternal life.
The Pauline system attacks exactly that world. It attacks the philosophy of the Law. It attacks the Law transformed into a system of identity, superiority, formation, and justification. It attacks the idea that man becomes complete through the Law. It attacks the idea that the Law is the final criterion of man before God.
But here the paradox appears.
The Pauline system rejects the philosophy of the Law, yet it adopts its strongest theological mechanism: the blood of the righteous one that redeems.
In 4 Maccabees, Eleazar is not merely a moral example. If he were only an example, the discussion would be simpler. But he is not only an example. He dies for the Law, and his death is presented as exchange, purification, and atonement. He asks that his blood become purification for the people and that his life be received in exchange for their lives.
At the end, the martyrs are presented as a ransom for the sin of the nation, and their blood is said to preserve Israel:
“Make my blood their purification, and take my life in exchange for theirs.”
—4 Maccabees 6:29
And again:
“They became, as it were, a ransom for the sin of our nation.”
—4 Maccabees 17:21
The next verse speaks explicitly about their blood and their death as an atoning sacrifice through which divine Providence preserved Israel.
That is enormous.
In this Jewish-Hellenistic martyr theology, we find the same structure that later appears at the center of Pauline soteriology. We have the righteous one who suffers. We have blood that purifies. We have death that redeems. We have one life accepted in exchange for other lives. We have the people saved through the suffering of the faithful one.
This is what I call Paul’s proto-gospel in its pro-Law form.
The expression is structural, not chronological. It does not mean that 4 Maccabees has been proven to precede Paul or that Paul copied this book. It means that 4 Maccabees displays, in a pro-Law direction, the same martyr-atonement mechanism that the Pauline system applies universally to Christ.
The difference is the direction.
In 4 Maccabees, Eleazar dies so that the Law may remain standing. His death defends the Law. It confirms the Law. It strengthens the philosophy of the Law.
In the Pauline system, Jesus is made to die according to the same martyr-atonement mechanism, but the conclusion is the opposite. Christ dies, His blood redeems, and His death has value for others, but the result is no longer the strengthening of the Law.
In Galatians, the Law is presented as a guardian until Christ and as a jurisdiction from whose curse Christ redeems. In Romans 10:4, Christ becomes the telos of the Law—its end, goal, or culmination. Whatever nuance is assigned to the term, the result is that the Law no longer occupies the governing center of religious life.
Colossians 2:14 should not be misquoted in this respect. It does not say that the Law itself was nailed to the cross. It says that the record of debt or accusations standing against humanity was nailed there. Nevertheless, within the wider Pauline system, the Law is displaced from the position it held in the philosophy of the Law.
In other words, the Pauline system takes the martyr-atonement structure preserved in the Eleazar tradition and turns it against the world Eleazar represents.
Eleazar dies for the Law.
The Pauline Christ dies within a system that removes the Law from the center.
That is not a small difference. It is an inversion. But the mechanism remains structurally the same. Blood receives theological efficacy. The death of the righteous one becomes effective for others. Redemption is constructed through suffering and sacrifice.
The Pauline system does not escape the hybrid logic created when the Law becomes Philosophy and martyrdom becomes atonement. It uses that logic in order to declare that the Law no longer governs the relationship between man and God.
Here the major contradiction becomes visible.
The Pauline system appeals to the curse and sacrificial vocabulary associated with the Law in order to explain why death is effective. But the Mosaic Law itself does not demand the blood of a righteous human being as payment for others. That step is supplied by Jewish-Hellenistic martyr theology, where the death of a faithful human being becomes purification, ransom, and atoning exchange.
Pauline theology then uses this hybrid mechanism to remove man from under the Law.
The Law condemns. The righteous victim pays. The jurisdiction of the Law is declared completed.
But if the Law is the problem, why is the sacrificial logic produced by the philosophy of the Law still accepted? Why would God need human blood? Why would the death of a righteous man be the mechanism through which God forgives?
This is not Creation.
This is system.
In Creation, man is not made incomplete. Man is not made so that later he would need a mechanism of blood in order to become man before God. Man is created in the Image of God.
That comes before Law.
Before Philosophy.
Before Israel.
Before Greece.
Before Paul.
Here is my break with both systems.
I am not pro-Law against Paul. And I am not pro-Philosophy against the Law. Both can become harmful because both can add over man a criterion through which some become superior to others.
The Law, when absolutized, says: we have the commandment, we have the covenant, we have the sign, we have purity, we have the chosen people, we are different from the others.
Philosophy, when absolutized, says: we have reason, we have form, we have the school, we have the logos, we understand nature, we define man, we form the others.
Both create hierarchy. Both create “special people.” Both begin, in the end, from the same denial: man, as he was created, is not enough. He needs an addition. He needs Law. He needs Philosophy. He needs initiation. He needs system. He needs someone to tell him what he is.
But Creation says something else.
Creation says that man is man through the act of the Creator. Not through Law. Not through Philosophy. Not through belonging. Not through blood. Not through school. Not through initiation. Not through human sacrifice.
Man receives the Image of God before he receives any system. And if God created man in His Image, then the dignity of man cannot be administered by any people, any caste, any school, or any theology.
That is why Jesus cannot be reduced to the mechanism of Pauline sacrifice.
Jesus does not die because God demands human blood. That is already an idea foreign to Creation. His death must not be read through the logic preserved in 4 Maccabees, as purifying blood and ritual exchange for others.
His death must be read as the killing of the Anointed One of God.
They killed the One chosen.
They killed the One sent.
They killed the Man who showed that the Truth of God needs neither the Law transformed into superiority nor Philosophy transformed into dominion.
The cross is not the altar on which God demands blood.
The cross is the place where men kill the Anointed One of God.
This changes everything.
If Jesus is the sacrifice demanded by God, then the cross becomes a religious mechanism. If Jesus is the Anointed One killed by men, then the cross becomes an accusation.
It is not God who demands the blood; it is men who shed the blood.
It is not God who needs death; it is systems that need to kill the man who exposes them.
Here the Pauline system makes the decisive mutation. It takes the crime and turns it into a cosmic mechanism. It takes the blood shed by men and turns it into blood required by the system of redemption. It takes Jesus, the killed Anointed One, and turns Him into the Christ sacrificed within a theology that removes the Law from the center.
For this move to become universal, the Pauline system needs more than an ordinary human martyr. It needs a Christ whose identity can be extended beyond Israel and beyond the limits of one historical nation.
Eleazar can die for Israel.
But the heavenly or preexistent Christ of Pauline theology can be made to die for the world.
Eleazar defends the Law.
The Pauline Christ brings the Law’s jurisdiction to its telos.
Eleazar is the martyr of the philosophy of the Law.
The Pauline Christ becomes the center of a new religious philosophy.
Here terminology must again be precise. Paul does not formulate the later Nicene or Chalcedonian doctrine of the Incarnation, nor does he use “incarnation” as a technical term. The Pauline writings contain passages interpreted as presenting a heavenly or preexistent Christ who enters the human condition—especially Philippians 2:6–8, 2 Corinthians 8:9, Galatians 4:4, and Romans 8:3—but the exact meaning of several of these passages remains disputed.
The argument of this article therefore does not depend upon attributing the complete later doctrine of the Incarnation to Paul. It depends upon the Pauline expansion of Jesus beyond the historical Anointed One into a heavenly and universal Christ whose death acquires cosmic efficacy.
Here Paul’s claim to a special revelation becomes essential to the authority of his construction.
Galatians 1 says that Paul received his gospel through revelation rather than from those who walked with Jesus. It does not say explicitly that the specific content revealed to him was “the Incarnation.” That connection must not be presented as a direct quotation from Paul. It is an inference drawn from the overall structure of his gospel.
But the crucial question remains: if the disciples had already received from Jesus the doctrine of a heavenly, preexistent Christ sent to die as a universal sacrifice, then Paul’s special revelation becomes unnecessary.
They could have preached it themselves.
They could have told Paul:
“This is not your revelation; we already received it from the Master.”
But this is not what we see. Paul presents his gospel as something received by revelation, not as something learned from those who walked with Jesus.
This means that the heavenly and universal Christ of the Pauline system cannot simply be assumed to be a continuation of Jesus’ own preaching. It is the theological key through which the martyr-atonement mechanism becomes universal.
Without that expansion, Eleazar remains a martyr for Israel.
With it, the Pauline system can turn Jesus into the cosmic victim whose death brings the Law’s jurisdiction to an end for everyone.
This is the decisive move.
The martyr of the philosophy of the Law becomes, in the Pauline system, the universal sacrifice that displaces the Law.
But Jesus does not need this construction in order to be true.
Jesus does not need to be transformed into a mechanism of blood in order to remain the Anointed One of God. He does not need to be placed within the logic of Eleazar and universalized through a heavenly Christology in order to have authority.
His authority comes from anointing, from Truth, from the calling of God, and from the fact that He shows man alive before the Creator—not man trapped in a system.
That is why 4 Maccabees is such an important book.
Not because it must be accepted.
Not because it must be rejected as a whole.
But because it shows the mechanism.
It shows how the Law becomes Philosophy.
It shows how Philosophy fights the Law and how the Law, in order to resist, begins to speak philosophically.
It shows how martyrdom becomes redemption through blood.
It shows how the eternal life already present in Daniel 12 is absorbed into a philosophical martyr system and presented as the reward for suffering governed by pious reason.
It shows how the righteous man is transformed into a component of a mechanism of salvation for others.
Then the Pauline system universalizes this mechanism in Christ.
That is why it can be said plainly: 4 Maccabees is Paul’s proto-gospel in a structural, not necessarily chronological, sense.
The Pauline system takes the mechanism, changes the center, and draws the opposite conclusion.
In 4 Maccabees, the blood of the martyr defends the Law.
In the Pauline system, the blood of Christ displaces the Law.
In both cases, blood becomes a theological instrument.
And here the question must be asked—the question systems avoid:
What does this have to do with Creation?
If man is created in the Image of God, then man does not need to be produced by the Law.
If man is created in the Image of God, then man does not need to be produced by Philosophy.
If man is created in the Image of God, then his dignity cannot depend on belonging to Israel, on Greek culture, on philosophical reason, on circumcision, on food, on sacrifice, on blood, or on initiation into a mystery revealed only to a late apostle.
The Truth about man does not begin with the Law.
It does not begin with Philosophy.
It does not begin with Paul either.
It begins with Creation.
There man receives the Image of God. There he receives dignity. There he receives moral capacity. There he receives responsibility. There he is equal to every other human being—before religion divides him, before Philosophy ranks him, and before systems tell him that he is not enough.
4 Maccabees is the testimony of a great confusion: the Law tries to defend itself against Philosophy by becoming Philosophy. The Pauline system tries to free man from the philosophy of the Law by using the martyr-atonement mechanism produced within that same philosophical world.
And man remains trapped between systems that tell him, each in its own way, that he must become something else in order to be whole.
But man does not need to become man.
Man must simply stop being removed from what God already created him to be.