Ambrose’s Use of 4 Maccabees in De Jacob et Vita Beata: Some Correctives

It is widely recognized that Ambrose relied heavily on 4 Maccabees in his composition of the De Jacob et Vita Beata. His regard for, and use of, this text is fully in keeping with the practice of the church of the third through fifth centuries c.e., particularly among the Eastern fathers.¹ The extent of his debt to 4 Maccabees has not been sufficiently acknowledged, which may signal the need for Ambrose scholars to conduct a more thorough exploration of the connections between these texts.²

Ambrose opens his De Jacob with what is essentially a free paraphrase of 4 Maccabees 1.1–3.18 (Iac. 1.1.1–1.3.8). He commends “sound instruction” as that which equips the mind that “excels in virtue and restrains its passions” (Iac. 1.1.1; cf. 4 Macc 1.1, 15–17).³ He agrees with the author of 4 Maccabees, against the more hardline view of Stoics like Cicero, that sound reasoning does not eliminate emotions or desires, but equips the will to withstand these impulses and to choose the course of action in keeping with virtue instead (compare Iac. 1.1.1 with 4 Macc 3.2–3).⁴ He also incorporates the example of David’s irrational thirst, following some of the details from the version in 2 Kings 23.16–17, but clearly depending on 4 Maccabees’s interpretation of the story and using it to the same end (Iac. 1.1.3–4; 4 Macc 3.6–18).⁵ In light of these similarities in the opening sections of both works, it is surprising to find scholars not exploring more closely and carefully the influence of this work of Hellenistic Judaism upon Ambrose.

Thus, for example, while Marcia Colish correctly attributes to Ambrose the position “that passions are a feature of the human condition which, while they can be governed and redirected, cannot be excised from our nature,” she does not explore the origins of Ambrose’s position beyond positing a general view shared with “Plato and Aristotle, and Panaetian Middle Stoicism.”⁶ It seems clear, however, that this more general view has been specifically mediated here by the author of 4 Maccabees, and appears in the De Jacob by virtue of Ambrose’s reading of the Jewish oration.

Indeed, when God created human beings and implanted in them moral laws and feelings, at that time He established the royal rule of the mind over the human being’s emotions, so that all their feelings and emotions would be governed by its strength and power.

(Iac. 1.1.4 [trans. McHugh, 121–22])

When God shaped humankind, God planted emotions and inclinations within them. At that time, he also set the mind on the throne in the midst of the senses, to serve as a holy ruler over them all.

(4 Macc 2.21–22)

What is distinctive to both authors, but not held in common with Plato, Aristotle, and Middle Stoics, is the grounding of this position in a particular theology of creation by God, according to which emotions (“feelings”) are part of the human being’s God-ordained design. Because of this, it is neither prudent nor, in all likelihood, possible to extirpate the passions or emotions. Ambrose goes on immediately to define and enumerate the major passions using the taxonomy found in 4 Maccabees (Iac. 1.2.5; 4 Macc 1.20–27). Ambrose’s debt to 4 Maccabees at this point is not typically acknowledged. Colish, once again for example, writes that

Ambrose proceeds to analyze the passions under three headings. Some passions arise in the body. The examples he gives are gluttony and wantonness. Some passions arise in the soul. Under this rubric, his examples are pride, envy, avarice, ambition, and strife. There are also passions that, according to Ambrose, arise in both the body and the soul. In this third category he places the Stoic quartet of pleasure, pain, fear, and desire. But he alters this Stoic doctrine significantly. In the first place, the Stoics...