Book excerpt: Introduction -- Passion, Persecution and Epiphany: the David and Bathsheba Affair According to the LXX, Josephus and the Rabbis / Nicholas Peter Legh Allen -- Victorious Victims and Prayers for the deceased: Possible Links Between Conceptual Tension and Progressive Doctrine in 12 Maccabees / Eugene Coetzer -- Did the Devastating Persecution and Reforms of Antiochus IV Epiphanes have an Impact on the LXX Version of Proverbs? / Johann Cook -- Passion, Persecution, and the Strategic Discourse of the Body in 2 Maccabees 7 / Chris L. de Wet -- Martyrs, Religion and Politics / Jan Willem van Henten -- Human and Divine Persecution in the MT and LXX Lamentations 3:52-66 / Gideon R. Kotzé -- Establishing and Maintaining Communal Identity through Food in Times of Persecution: An Interpretation of Daniel 1:8-16" / Manitza Kotzé -- The Death of Antiochus IV Epiphanes In 2 Maccabees 9: Persecution and Epiphany as Dramatic Irony / Pierre Johan Jordaan -- Pathos and the Passions in Josephus's Judaean War / Steve N. Mason -- Let Us Test Him with Cruelty and with Torture (Wisdom 2:19) / Friederich Vincenz Reiterer -- Persecution and Epiphany in 2 Maccabees /Johan Steenkamp -- A Battle of Honour! Persecution in 2 Maccabees 7:1-42 as Part of a Post-War Ritual in a Challenge for Honour to Establish Power and Dominion / Lodewyk Sutton -- Hellenistic Persecutions of the Samaritans According to Josephus Flavius / József Zsengeller.