A Deliverance in Egypt

Third Maccabees is a short Jewish book, written in Greek, that despite its name has nothing to do with the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucids recounted in 1 and 2 Maccabees. It tells instead of an earlier threat, set in Egypt under the Ptolemaic king Ptolemy IV Philopator (late third century BCE). In the story the king, having been mysteriously prevented from entering the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem Temple, turns in fury against the Jews of Egypt, ordering them rounded up in the hippodrome of Alexandria to be trampled by intoxicated war elephants.

Twice the massacre is thwarted by divine intervention, the king is struck with forgetfulness, and then the elephants are turned back by avenging angels against his own forces, and finally the repentant king reverses himself, releases the Jews, and honours them. The book is generally dated to the first century BCE and read as a work of edifying historical fiction, composed to encourage the large Greek-speaking Jewish community of Egypt in their loyalty to the God of Israel under the pressures of life in a pagan kingdom.