Paper short abstract:

The paper is about forms of devotion in Second Temple Judaism, comparing the First and Second Book of Maccabees, and how narrativity and emotionality functioned as technologies for training and mobilising the audience towards total devotion.

Paper long abstract:

As a contribution to the study of radical religion in the ancient world, this paper will analyse religious narratives from Second Temple Judaism that focus on perfecting religious practice and training and intensifying devotion. Using narrativity and emotionality theories, I will examine and compare the different ideals of devotion embedded in the first and second Book of Maccabees. The two books narrate differing perspectives on the Jewish struggle for freedom from Hellenistic rulers towards the middle of the 2nd century BCE and contain various stories about idealized devout actors. Both books utilize narrative and emotional technologies to mobilise their audiences, striving to implant their ideals of devotion and intensify the religiosity of their target audiences, but in different ways. In these two Books of Maccabees, forms of devotion are pictured as competing and/or conflicting with each other, some are compared, in emic discourse, to others deemed more perfect or admirable, whereas some types of religious practice and devotion are excluded or looked down upon. I discuss how ideals regarding the intensity, perfection, and total scope of religion are narrated, how distinctions are made between types of devotion, and how narrativity and emotionality are used as technologies for the mobilisation of the audience and an intensification of devotion. A comparison of differing ideals of devotion and how narrativity and emotionality function in the 1st and 2nd Book of Maccabees can bring out historical aspects of the entanglement of religion and technologies.