They contain discordant matters.
They contain discordant matters.
§ 233. [IV] They contain discordant and irreconcilable matters. (1) In 1 Maccabees 6:8 and 16, Antiochus is said to have died “from grief of spirit,” which he suffered because of the calamitous news, and that it happened “when he was in bed” in Babylon when he gave his son to Philip, whom he placed in charge of the kingdom. But 2 Maccabees 1:16 says, “He was cut down and dismembered in the temple of Nanea.” 2 Maccabees 9:28: “He came to a wretched death in the mountains of a foreign land.” 2 Maccabees 9:9: “He died from sickness of his vital organs, so that worms swarmed from his body. While he was still alive in his pain and torment, his flesh was dropping off, and the unbearable stench enveloped almost his entire army.” This last account agrees with what Dan. 8:25 foretold about Antiochus: “… he would be destroyed without a hand,” that is, that he would waste away with a foul disease. Therefore what 2 Maccabees 1:16 says about his being butchered is false. Melchior Canus responds (Loc., bk. 2, c. 11, 4): “This is not the same Antiochus.” But history itself refutes this clearly. Consequently, Bellarmine gives no weight to this response. He says, “Almost all agree that this is the same Antiochus, namely, Epiphanes.” Therefore Bellarmine responds in another way, namely, that this kind of reconciliation can be established: “Antiochus lost his army in the temple of Nanea. On the way he fell from his chariot and, after being carried to Babylon, died there. Therefore he is said to have died because he lost his army and himself fell, or perhaps was even wounded, in his disgraceful flight.” Yet 2 Maccabees 1:16 says that he was not only killed but was butchered and dismembered, which cannot be explained as Antiochus’s wounding or the flight of his army. The Greek reads 
, “they cut Antiochus to pieces.”
(2) In 1 Maccabees 9:3 Judas is said to have been killed in the 152nd year of the Seleucid kingdom. But in 2 Maccabees 1:10, Judas “writes a letter to Aristobulus, the teacher of Ptolemy, in the 188th year of that kingdom,” in fact, thirty-six years after he had died.
Now that the responses of the others have been refuted, Bellarmine claims that the question is to be resolved in such a way as to say, “The words ‘in the 188th year’ are not the beginning of the following letter that Judas wrote but the end of the preceding one that was written by the entire Jewish populace under the leadership of John Hyrcanus.” He argues his conjecture “from the Greek codices and because the number of years is usually noted at the end rather than at the beginning of an epistle.” However, it was not the Greek text but the Latin Vulgate version that the Council of Trent declared authentic under the thunderbolt of an anathema, so that it is thought not to be safe to depart from it under any pretext. Also, why does Bellarmine here ask for help from the Greek text that he has repudiated several times in this discussion of the apocryphal books? Furthermore, in the Greek version of Benedictus Arias Montanus, there is no pause here after the words 
[“in the 188th year”]. Instead, to them are added without any pause or punctuation the names of those who wrote that letter. Then come the beginning formulae generally used in letters: 
[“greeting and good health”]. All of this strongly opposes Bellarmine’s conjecture.
(3) First Maccabees 4:36 says that Judas cleansed the temple before the death of Antiochus after the flight to Lysia. However, 2 Maccabees 10:1[-3] says that the temple was cleansed after Antiochus’s death.
Sixtus Senensis responds that “the cleansing of the temple occurred twice” (Biblioth., bk. 8). Because both passages describe the cleansing of the temple in almost the same words, Bellarmine rejects the response of Sixtus and says (bk. 11, c. 10): “To be sure, the cleansing of the temple is told after Antiochus’s death, but by no means is the claim made that it occurred after Antiochus’s death.” Yet the entire context reveals that the cleansing of the temple is told as if it occurred after the death of Antiochus, for at the end of the preceding chapter, Antiochus’s death is described. And in this chapter, these words are added to the account of the cleansing of the temple: “Such was the end of the life of Antiochus, who was called Noble” (v. 9).
(4) Second Maccabees 10:11 says that Antiochus Eupator, the son of Epiphanes, took over the rule and put Lysias in charge of the business of the kingdom. According to 1 Maccabees 6:17, however, Lysias was in charge of things a long time before that. It was he who set up Antiochus as king and called him “Eupator.”
(5) Although the second book again goes over the same accounts that were described in the first, it adds many things, such as the astonishing apparitions in the battles, for example, which neither 1 Maccabees nor Josephus had mentioned. Although the first book speaks modestly about the numbers of those slain, the second exaggerates everything immensely. Furthermore, regarding the number of years, as well as other matters, we detect the obvious contradiction of the second book against the first.