complete Syriac translation, as well as a Latin adaptation under the title Passio Sanctorum Machabaeorum (Suffering of the Holy Maccabees). One of the Syriac versions was titled The Fourth Book of the Maccabees and Their Mother. The Latin text was made around the same time as Ambrose's De Jacob et vita beata (388), which includes an independent partial translation of 4 Maccabees. The Passio was probably completed before the appearance of the Vulgate Bible in 405–406 and was probably produced in Gaul. Fragments of an abridged Sahidic Coptic translation were discovered by Enzo Lucchesi in the 1980s. They have been edited and translated into English. Maximus the Greek produced an abridged Slavonic translation. The Fourth Book of Maccabees is not in the Vulgate and so is absent from the Apocrypha of the Roman Bible as well as from Protestant Bibles. Erasmus published at Cologne in 1524 a very free Latin paraphrase of 4 Maccabees, possibly based on the Passio. After the invention of the printing press, 4 Maccabees was first mass printed in a 1526 edition of the Septuagint made in Strasbourg, albeit one based on a less reliable manuscript with a number of printer's errors. Notes References Bibliography External links English text from The Apocrypha, New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) English text from The Apocrypha, Revised Standard Version (RSV) New Testament Allusions to Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (including 4 Macc.) New English Translation of the Septuagint (4 Maccabees) 1st-century books 2nd-century books 4 Jewish texts Old Testament pseudepigrapha Texts in Koine Greek Texts in the Septuagint Jewish apocrypha