The Holy Maccabean Martyrs

Antiochus the Fourth, called Epiphanes, ruled the Seleucid empire from Antioch and set out to abolish the practice of the Jewish religion. From about 167 BC the Temple was rededicated to Olympian Zeus, sacrifice and circumcision and the Sabbath were forbidden on pain of death, and the copies of the Law were burned. It was not a punishment of crimes but an attempt to make a people stop being what it was.

The second book of Maccabees records what happened when the policy met people who would not comply. Eleazar, a scribe of the first rank and ninety years old, was ordered to eat swine's flesh and refused, and refused as well the offer of friends to substitute lawful meat and let him pretend, because the young would learn from the pretense that a man may apostatize at ninety. He was beaten to death.

Then seven brothers were taken with their mother and tortured one after another in the king's presence, each given the same choice and each refusing it. What sets the account apart from every other martyrdom in the Old Testament is that they argue: they say why they are choosing to die, and the reason they give is the resurrection of the body.

Their mother spoke to each of them in their own language and told them she did not know how they came into her womb, that it was not she who gave them breath and life, and that the Creator who formed the beginning of man would give it back to them. She died last. St. Gregory the Theologian, preaching on their feast, says that they suffered for Christ before Christ suffered, and that no one should count them lesser for coming before the Cross.

Scripture does not name them. The Menaion does: Abim, Antonius, Gurias, Eleazar, Eusebonus, Alimus and Marcellus, with their mother Solomonia and their teacher Eleazar. Their relics were venerated at Antioch by the fourth century, which is where Chrysostom preached on them. The Church keeps their memory on the first of August, the day the Dormition fast begins, and the placement is deliberate.