THE FORGOTTEN BOOKS OF EDEN

Translated in the late 1800’s

by

Dr. S. C. Malan and Dr. E. Trumpp.

Translated into King James English from both the Arabic version and the
Ethiopic version which was then published in The Forgotten Books of Eden in
1927 by The World Publishing Company.


FOURTH BOOK OF MACCABEES

part of the “Forgotten” books of Eden

THIS book is like a fearful peal of thunder echoing out of the dim horrors of
ancient tyranny. It is a chapter based on persecution by Antiochus, the tyrant of
Syria, whom some called Epiphanes, The Madman. Roman history of the first centuries
records two such tyrants–the other, Caligula, the Second Brilliant Madman.

The form of this writing is that of an oration. So carefully timed are the risings
and fallings of the speech; so devastating are its arguments; so unfaltering is
its logic; so deep its thrusts; so cool its reasoning–that it takes its place as
a sample of the sheerest eloquence.

The keynote is Courage. The writer begins with an impassioned statement of the
Philosophy of Inspired Reason. We like to think of this twentieth Century as the
Age of Reason and contrast it with the Age of Myths–yet a writing such as this
is a challenge to such an assumption. We find a writer who probably belonged to
the first century before the Christian Era stating a clear-cut philosophy of Reason
that is just as potent today as it was two thousand years ago.

The setting of the observations in the torture chambers is unrelenting. On our
modern ears attuned to gentler things it strikes appallingly. The detail’s of the
successive tortures (suggesting the instruments of the Spanish Inquisition centuries
later) are elaborated in a way shocking to our taste. Even the emergence of the
stoical characters of the Old man, the Seven Brothers, and the Mother, does nothing
to soften the ferocity with which this orator conjures Courage.

The ancient Fathers of the Christian Church carefully preserved this book (we
have it from a Syrian translation) as a work of high moral value and teaching, and
it was undoubtedly familiar to many of the early Christian martyrs, who were aroused
to the pitch of martyrdom by reading it.

There are two versions of the book :

Dr. S. C. Malan and Dr. E. Trumpp. short version

The old RSV version, long version

both are published here