Jason of Cyrene five-book history behind 2 Maccabees

This article describes an entity that is not directly attested as an extant recoverable work; it is inferred from source-citation traces and should not be read as ordinary documentation of a surviving text.

Epistemic status

Draft article. The source relation is directly reported by 2 Maccabees, but Jason's five-book history is not extant here and is not reconstructed beyond the abridgement notice.

Summary

2 Maccabees presents itself as an abridgement of a five-book work by Jason of Cyrene. Inferpedia treats that named work as an absent source behind the surviving abridged account.

What is being inferred

The inferred entity is Jason of Cyrene's five-book historical account, available to or claimed by the 2 Maccabees prologue as the larger source behind the shorter work.

What is attested

The prologue names Jason of Cyrene, gives the scale as five books, and states that the present account will abridge it in one volume.

Why infer this entity

The notice gives author, extent, and textual relationship. That combination is stronger than a generic lost-source formula, though it still leaves the work's text and scope unrecovered.

Evidence ledger

• E1, 2 Maccabees 2:23: primary trace naming Jason of Cyrene and five books.
• E2, 2 Maccabees 2:23: primary trace describing the surviving work as an abridgement.

Counterarguments

The prologue may be a literary attribution strategy, and the exact form of Jason's work may not match the later description.

Confidence scores

Direct attestation: 62. Existence warrant: 84. Specificity: 76. Reconstruction dependence: 72. Counterevidence: 16.

What would change the score

Greek textual witnesses, specialist commentary on the 2 Maccabees prologue, or evidence that the Jason attribution is conventional rather than documentary would change the score.