Before the Church · c. 100–50 BC
Third Maccabees
Anonymous
What it is
Nothing to do with the Maccabees. Ptolemy IV is repelled from the temple by an invisible force, and in revenge herds the Jews of Egypt into the hippodrome to be trampled by five hundred drugged elephants. The plan fails three days running, and the elephants finally turn on his own troops.
Why it lasted
Canonical in the Eastern Orthodox and Armenian Bibles, unknown in the West. Its picture of a diaspora community saved from a state pogrom by direct intervention is the oldest of its kind.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
Read next