Collective guilt and self-sacrifice in Sophocles' Antigone and in II & IV Maccabees - preliminary cultural-critical remarks

Abstract

Jewish-Hellenistic authors use language and ideas of ancient Greek tragedies in order to express their own religious and theological standpoints and make them accessible to the Greek-speaking world. This article highlights the significance of Sophocles’ Antigone for a cultural-critical understanding of the concepts of collective guilt and self-sacrifice in II Macc 6-7 and IV Macc.