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1 Maccabees 2:52

The New Testament’s use of 1 Maccabees

2 places · 2 kinds of echo

The source

Was not Abraham found faithful in temptation, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness?

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Where this passage surfaces again, sorted by the strength of the link. Each kind of reuse — formal quotation, deliberate allusion, faint echo, figural pattern — carries its own mark. Follow any reference to read it in place.

Allusion1

A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.

Jas 2:14-26

Mattathias's deathbed exhortation: 'Was not Abraham found faithful when tested, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness?' This deuterocanonical text already fuses Genesis 15:6 with the Aqedah-as-test (Genesis 22), exactly the synthesis James makes in vv.21-23. Strong evidence James draws on this interpretive tradition.

Medium confidence

Echo1

A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.

Rom 4:1-8 ?

1 Maccabees 2:52 ('Was not Abraham found faithful when tested, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness?') itself cites Genesis 15:6 but fuses it with the Aqedah (Genesis 22) to make faith = proven works/faithfulness under testing. This is the foil for Paul's whole argument that the reckoning preceded and excluded works. Strong verbal overlap with the catchphrase 'reckoned... as righteousness'; marked contested as reception-background rather than source.

Medium confidence
Elsewhere in 1 Maccabees 2
1 Maccabees 2:26 21 Maccabees 2:28 2