4 Maccabees 1 - New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition 2021(NRSVUE)

4 Maccabees 1The Author’s Definition of His Task

1 and it is not for the purpose of destroying them but so that one may not give way to them.

7 is absolute ruler over the passions,

8

29Sir 27.6each of which the master cultivator, reason, weeds and prunes and ties up and waters and thoroughly irrigates and so tames the jungle of habits and passions.

30Wis 8.7; Sir 23.2For reason is the guide of the virtues, but over the passions it is sovereign.

Observe now, first of all, that rational judgment is sovereign over the passions by virtue of the restraining power of self-control.

31Self-control, then, is dominance over the desires.

32Some desires belong to the soul, others to the body, and reason obviously rules over both.

33Otherwise, how is it that when we are attracted to forbidden foods we abstain from the pleasure to be had from them? Is it not because reason is able to rule over appetites? I for one think so.

34Therefore when we crave seafood and fowl and animals and all sorts of foods that are forbidden to us by the law, we abstain because of domination by reason.

35Sir 37.29For the passions of the appetites are restrained, checked by the temperate mind, and all the impulses of the body are bridled by reason.