4 Maccabees 2

1 And is it any wonder that the soul’s own desires for a share in beauty are cancelled? 2 That, at any rate, is why the self-controlled Joseph is praised: because by his understanding he overpowered the pleasure of the senses. [a] 3 For though he was young and at the peak of his readiness for intercourse, by reason he cancelled the goad of the passions. 4 And reason plainly gets the upper hand not only over the goading of the pleasure of the senses, but over every desire.

5 The law says, “You are not to set your desire on your neighbor’s wife, or on anything at all that belongs to your neighbor.” [b] 6 And since it is the law that has told us not to set our desire on anything, I can persuade you all the more easily that reason is able to rule the desires — just as it does the passions that stand in the way of righteousness.

7 For how else is a man whose character is to eat alone, or a glutton, or a drunkard, ever taught otherwise, unless it is plain that reason is in command of the passions? 8 Take a man who lives by the law. Even if he loves money, he forces his own character: he lends to those in need without interest, and he lets the loan go when the seventh year comes in. [c] 9 And if a man is tight-fisted, he is ruled by the law through reason: he does not go back over his harvest for the last of the grain, and he does not go back over his vineyards for the last of the grapes. In other matters too you can recognize this, that reason is what rules the passions.

10 For the law rules even goodwill toward parents, and does not betray virtue for their sake; 11 and it gets the upper hand over affection for a wife, convicting her when she breaks the law; [d] 12 and it has command over affection for children, punishing them for vice; 13 and it is master of the closeness of friends, exposing them for wickedness. [e] 14 And do not think it strange that reason can get the upper hand even over enmity, through the law: it does not cut down the cultivated trees of enemies in war, it keeps safe for the men who lost them the things that belong to enemies, and it helps up again what has fallen. [f]

15 Reason plainly rules the more violent passions as well: love of power, vanity, boastfulness, bragging, and envy. [g] 16 For the self-controlled mind pushes away all these malicious passions, and anger too, since it is master even of that. 17 Moses, at any rate, was angry at Dathan and Abiram, and yet he did nothing against them in anger; he settled his anger by reason. [h] 18 For the self-controlled mind, as I said, is able to win the fight against the passions — to shift some of them and cancel others.

19 Why else does our all-wise father Jacob find fault with Simeon and Levi, for cutting down the Shechemites as a whole people and not by reason, when he says, “Cursed be their rage”? [i] 20 For if reason had no power to rule anger, he would not have spoken like that.

21 For when God formed the human being, he planted the passions and the traits of character in him, 22 and at that same time he enthroned the mind over them all, by way of the senses, as their sacred leader, 23 and he gave the mind a law; and living by that law, the mind will reign a reign that is self-controlled and righteous and good and courageous.

24 Someone may say: “How then, if reason is master of the passions, does it not rule forgetfulness and ignorance?”