Hellenistic and Rabbinic Models of Martyrdom

Telling the stories of martyrs—who gave their lives for their beliefs and ideals—is an enduring and powerful way to convey religious and cultural values. Stories of the early Jewish martyrs portray exemplary cultural heroes facing devasting political persecution. The protagonists of these narratives may well have been historical figures whose deaths are preserved in these literary sources. The stories themselves were likely shaped by their creators to convey their own values and wisdom through this narrative medium.

This collection portrays martyrs from the Maccabean revolt in the second century BCE to rabbis suffering Roman persecution in the early second century CE. (See The Hasmonean Revolt and The Bar Kokhba Revolt and Its Aftermath, 132–135 CE.) The stories themselves were composed as literary works beginning about half a century after the Maccabean revolt, toward the end of the second century BCE. They continued to be transmitted and to develop through the centuries, with the composition and redaction of Avot de-Rabbi Nathan taking place in the sixth through eighth centuries CE and preserved in the minor tractates of the Babylonian Talmud. See also “Collective Suicide at Masada.”