A NEW COMMENTARY ON 2 MACCABEES is reviewed in BMCR:

Daniel R. Schwartz, 2 Maccabees. Commentaries on Early Jewish Literature. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008. Pp. x, 617. ISBN 9783110191189. $158.00.

Reviewed by Frank Shaw, Cincinnati, Ohio (feshaw72@email.com)
Word count: 3053 words

The publication of a full-length commentary in English on 2 Maccabees is a rare occurrence (the only other one was a quarter century ago), so the appearance of Schwartz's tome is both needed and welcome. His mentor Menahem Stern had just begun work on a 2 Macc. commentary when he was murdered during the first intifada in 1989, and the task of continuing the project fell to Schwartz. Originally published in Hebrew in 2004, the book has undergone significant changes in the English version. General comments between his translation and the verse-by-verse commentary have been added; the bibliography has been improved and updated; statements only related to modern Hebrew have been dropped; various revisions and corrections have been made, some stemming from reviewers of the Hebrew edition. Important too is Schwartz's claim of an "English translation [that] is not only new but also qualitatively different from the Hebrew one." Here he means it is "freer and, consequently, more idiomatically English" (vii). Naturally the English version will be far more widely read than the Hebrew one.

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Via the Agade list.