98:2.7

As I am going to demonstrate a most philosophical proposition, namely, that religious reasoning is absolute master of the emotions. I would willingly advise you to give the utmost heed to philosophy. For reason is necessary to everyone as a step to science. In addition, it embraces the praise of self-control, the highest virtue. If, then, reasoning appears to hold the mastery over the emotions which stand in the way of temperance, such as gluttony and lust, it surely also and manifestly rules over the affections which are contrary to justice, such as malice, and of those which are hindrances to courage, such as wrath, pain, and fear. Perhaps some may ask, “How is it, then, that reasoning, if it rules the emotions, isn’t also master of forgetfulness and ignorance?” They attempt a ridiculous argument. For reasoning does not rule over its own emotions, but over those that are contrary to justice, courage, temperance, and self-control; and yet over these, so as to withstand, without destroying them.

The reasoning of our father Eleazar, like a first-rate pilot, steering the vessel of piety in the sea of emotions, and flouted by the threats of the tyrant, and overwhelmed with the breakers of torture, in no way shifted the rudder of piety until it sailed into the harbor of victory over death. No besieged city has ever held out against many and various war machines as that holy man did when his pious soul was tried with the fiery trial of tortures and rackings and moved his besiegers through the religious reasoning that shielded him. For father Eleazar, projecting his disposition, broke the raging waves of the emotions as with a jutting cliff. O priest worthy of the priesthood! You didn’t pollute your sacred teeth, nor make your appetite, which had always embraced the clean and lawful, a partaker of profanity. O harmonizer with the law, and sage devoted to a divine life! Of such a character ought those to be who perform the duties of the law at the risk of their own blood, and defend it with generous sweat by sufferings even to death. You, father, have gloriously established our right government by your endurance; and making of much account our past service, prevented its destruction, and by your deeds, have made credible the words of philosophy. O aged man of more power than tortures, elder more vigorous than fire, greatest king over the emotions, Eleazar! For as father Aaron, armed with a censer, hastening through the consuming fire, vanquished the flame-bearing angel, so, Eleazar, the descendant of Aaron, wasted away by the fire, didn’t give up his reasoning. What is most wonderful is that though he was an old man, though the labors of his body were now spent, his muscles were relaxed, and his sinews worn out, he recovered youth. By the spirit of reasoning, and the reasoning of Isaac, he rendered powerless the many-headed rack. O blessed old age, and reverend hoar head, and life obedient to the law, which the faithful seal of death perfected. If, then, an old man, through religion, despised tortures even to death, then certainly religious reasoning is ruler of the emotions. But perhaps some might say, “It is not all who conquer emotions, as not all possess wise reasoning.” But those who have meditated upon religion with their whole heart, these alone can master the emotions of the flesh: they who believe that to God they don’t die; for, as our forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they live to God. This circumstance, then, is by no means an objection, that some who have weak reasoning are governed by their emotions, since what person, walking religiously by the whole rule of philosophy, and believing in God, and knowing that it is a blessed thing to endure all kinds of hardships for virtue, would not, for the sake of religion, master his emotion? For only the wise and brave man is lord over his emotions. This is why even boys, trained with the philosophy of religious reasoning, have conquered still more bitter tortures; for when the tyrant was manifestly vanquished in his first attempt, in being unable to force the old man to eat the unclean thing,

When Seleucus was deceased, and Antiochus, who was called Epiphanes, succeeded to the kingdom, Jason the brother of Onias supplanted his brother in the high priesthood, having promised to the king at an audience three hundred sixty talents of silver, and out of another fund eighty talents. In addition to this, he undertook to assign one hundred fifty more, if it might be allowed him through the king’s authority to set him up a gymnasium and a body of youths to be trained in it, and to register the inhabitants of Jerusalem as citizens of Antioch. When the king had assented, and Jason had taken possession of the office, he immediately shifted those of his own race to the Greek way of life. Setting aside the royal ordinances of special favor to the Jews, granted by the means of John the father of Eupolemus, who went on the mission to the Romans to establish friendship and alliance, and seeking to overthrow the lawful ways of living, he brought in new customs forbidden by the law. For he eagerly established a gymnasium under the citadel itself, and caused the noblest of the young men to wear the Greek hat. Thus there was an extreme of hellenization, and an advance of a foreign religion, by reason of the exceeding profaneness of Jason, who was an ungodly man and not a high priest; so that the priests had no more any zeal for the services of the altar; but despising the sanctuary and neglecting the sacrifices, they hastened to enjoy that which was unlawfully provided in the wrestling arena, after the summons to the discus-throwing. They despised the honors of their fathers, and valued the prestige of the Greeks best of all. For this reason, severe calamity overtook them. The men whose ways of living they earnestly followed, and to whom they desired to be made like in all things, these became their enemies and punished them. For it is not a light thing to show irreverence to God’s laws, but later events will make this clear.