The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

CHILTON Aramaic and Targumic Antecedents of 'Justification' 391
to be understood as positing a formal replacement of the cult by Jesus'
death. 39 The standard references to similar usages in 2 Maccabees
(3.33) and 4 Maccabees (6.28, 29; 17.20-22) ought to have warned
commentators long ago against any reading which involves such
notions, whether in the key of Hebrews (as in Cranfield's reading) or
in the key of a transcendent eschatology (as in Michel's reading).
2 Mace. 3.33, after all, simply speaks of a high priest 'making
appeasement' (TioioDio.evo'u 5e TOV dpxiepecoq TOV l^aajiov) by
cultic means. That usage is an extension of the Septuagintal equation
between I'Xeox; and such verbs as n'po, nrn and K03, Drn, and "is?, where
the emphasis falls on the divine affect involved in forgiveness. 40
Even 4 Maccabees, which is probably too late a composition to be
used to represent the milieu which was the matrix of Paul's thought,
maintains a distinction between God's pleasure in sacrifice, and the
means of that sacrifice. In 6.28, God is asked to be pleased with his
people (iXecoq yevoo) TW e9vei) by Eleazar, and on that basis to make
his blood their purification and his life their ransom (6.29). Then, in
chapter seventeen, it is said of the seven brothers that, in the manner
of Eleazar, they purified the homeland in that they became a ransom
for the sin of the nation (v. 21, mi IT\V mTp{5a Ka9apia6fivat
coarcep avti\|A)%ov Y£YOv6ia