2 Maccabees 15:37–39

In these closing verses, the anonymous epitomist of 2 Maccabees brings his abridgment to a deliberate and self-aware conclusion, noting that Jerusalem has been restored to Hebrew control and humbly submitting his literary work to the reader's judgment. With striking candor, he acknowledges both his aspiration for excellence and his human limitation, then offers a charming analogy—the mixing of wine and water—to defend the value of pleasurable, well-crafted historical writing. These verses constitute one of the most distinctive epilogues in all of Sacred Scripture, uniquely blending historiographical humility, literary aesthetics, and the freedom of a sacred author writing in his own voice.

Verse 37 — "This then having been the account … I also will here make an end of my book."

The epitomist closes his narrative with a formal historiographical summary, a literary convention familiar in Hellenistic historiography (cf. Thucydides, Polybius). The phrase "the account of the attempt of Nicanor" refers back to the entire preceding chapter: Nicanor's blasphemous threat against the Temple and his catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Adasa (161 BC), after which his severed head and hand were displayed before Jerusalem as a sign of divine vindication (15:28–35). The epitomist anchors his closure in a political-theological fact: "the city having from those times been held by the Hebrews." This is not a triumphalist boast but a theological statement — Jerusalem's freedom is the fruit of fidelity to Torah and the mercy of God. The author's "I also will here make an end" is deliberately personal; the first-person voice, largely suppressed in the narrative body, resurfaces at the epilogue just as it did in the prologue (2:23–32), creating a literary frame around the whole work. This structural inclusio signals that the book is a unified, consciously crafted composition.

Verse 38 — "If I have written well and to the point … this is the best I could do."

This verse is one of the most remarkable acts of authorial humility in the deuterocanonical corpus. The epitomist does not claim prophetic inspiration or apostolic authority for his prose; he holds his work up to honest scrutiny. The phrase "well and to the point" (Greek: εὐστόχως καὶ εὐρύθμως) reflects a Hellenistic ideal of historiography that prizes both accuracy and elegance. Yet the author immediately qualifies this with disarming honesty: "if it is poorly done and mediocre, this is the best I could do." This is not false modesty. Catholic biblical tradition recognizes that the charism of scriptural inspiration does not eliminate the human writer's limitations in style, vocabulary, or literary skill; rather, God works through those limitations. The First Vatican Council's Dei Filius and Leo XIII's Providentissimus Deus both affirm that the sacred authors wrote as true human authors, employing their own faculties. The epitomist's self-appraisal is thus a living illustration of this dogma — the Holy Spirit inspires without obliterating the human author's personality, effort, or fallibility of craft.

Verse 39 — "For as it is distasteful to drink wine alone … so also the fashioning of the language delights the ears."

The wine-and-water analogy is the jewel of this epilogue. In antiquity, drinking unmixed wine was considered barbaric or intemperate; drinking water alone was considered insipid and joyless. The proper Greek symposium mixed wine with water (typically two or three parts water to one of wine) to achieve both pleasure and sobriety. The epitomist maps this onto his literary method: pure historical fact, like water alone, can be dry and unengaging; pure literary ornamentation, like undiluted wine, can be overwhelming and distorting. The mingling — the — produces delight. This is an implicit defense of the epitomist's own abridgment of Jason of Cyrene's five-volume work (cf. 2:23): he has condensed and stylized not to distort truth, but to make truth more palatable and therefore more formative for his Diaspora Jewish audience. Theologically, this anticipates a Catholic insight about the relationship between beauty and truth — the — articulated powerfully in Benedict XVI's address to the Synod of Bishops (2008): beauty is not an ornament to truth but one of its modes of transmission. The pleasure of well-crafted narrative is not a concession to human weakness; it is an instrument of moral and spiritual formation.

Catholic tradition offers uniquely rich resources for understanding this epilogue. The doctrine of biblical inspiration, as taught in the Second Vatican Council's Dei Verbum (§11), affirms that God used human authors as "true authors," meaning they employed their own talents, literary conventions, and even personal inadequacies. The epitomist's candid self-assessment in verse 38 is a textbook illustration of this mystery: inspiration does not guarantee stylistic perfection, but it does guarantee that what is communicated is what God willed to be written for our salvation.

St. Augustine, in De Doctrina Christiana, recognized that eloquence and rhetoric are not alien to sacred truth but can serve it — provided beauty remains the servant of charity. The wine-and-water image in verse 39 resonates powerfully with the Eucharistic tradition of the Church. From the earliest centuries, the mingling of wine and water in the chalice at Mass was invested with deep theological meaning: St. Cyprian of Carthage (Epistle 63) interpreted the water as representing the faithful united to Christ the wine — the people joined to their High Priest. While the epitomist's analogy is literary rather than liturgical, the Church's sacramental use of the same image invites the reader to see even this literary convention as a type of the union of the human and divine that is the heart of the Incarnation. Pope Francis, in Evangelii Gaudium (§167), echoes this sensibility when he urges that preaching must be both truthful and beautiful — "an image, an example, a metaphor" — because the human heart is moved to truth through beauty, not despite it.

Contemporary Catholics are immersed in a culture of both information overload and aesthetic superficiality — content that is either relentlessly factual without beauty, or visually dazzling without substance. The epitomist's wine-and-water image offers a corrective vision for Catholic communicators, writers, teachers, catechists, and preachers. The Church does not ask its members to choose between truth and beauty; it commissions both together. A Catholic parent teaching the faith at home, a theology teacher crafting a lesson, a blogger writing about Scripture — all face the same challenge the epitomist names: to blend accuracy with accessibility, substance with style. Equally important is his humility in verse 38. He does not wait for perfection before publishing his work. He offers what he has, acknowledges its limits, and trusts the reader and God with the rest. This is a model for any Catholic undertaking apostolic work: do your best, name your limits honestly, and release the outcome with detachment. The perfect is the enemy of the good — and of the proclaimed.