Lawrence M. Wills (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195151428
- eISBN:
- 9780199870516
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195151429.003.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
The introduction addresses such issues as the nature of the novel and of popular literature, and the relation of fiction to history and nonfiction. It also compares the Jewish novels with Greek ...
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The introduction addresses such issues as the nature of the novel and of popular literature, and the relation of fiction to history and nonfiction. It also compares the Jewish novels with Greek novels, Roman novels, Christian novels, and Apocryphal Acts. Jewish novels are treated in three categories: novels, historical novels, and testaments. Other aspects of Jewish novels are addressed, such as love, penitence, prayer, character, virtue, psychology, asceticism, the competition of ethnic groups, and the role of women and gender construction.Less
The introduction addresses such issues as the nature of the novel and of popular literature, and the relation of fiction to history and nonfiction. It also compares the Jewish novels with Greek novels, Roman novels, Christian novels, and Apocryphal Acts. Jewish novels are treated in three categories: novels, historical novels, and testaments. Other aspects of Jewish novels are addressed, such as love, penitence, prayer, character, virtue, psychology, asceticism, the competition of ethnic groups, and the role of women and gender construction.
Sara Raup Johnson
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520233072
- eISBN:
- 9780520928435
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520233072.001.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
This study investigates the creation of historical fictions in a wide range of Hellenistic Jewish texts. Surveying so-called Jewish novels, including the Letter of Aristeas, Second Maccabees, Esther, ...
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This study investigates the creation of historical fictions in a wide range of Hellenistic Jewish texts. Surveying so-called Jewish novels, including the Letter of Aristeas, Second Maccabees, Esther, Daniel, Judith, Tobit, and Josephus's account of Alexander's visit to Jerusalem and of the Tobiads, Artapanus, and Joseph and Aseneth, the book demonstrates that the use of historical fiction in these texts does not constitute a uniform genre. Instead it cuts across all boundaries of language, provenance, genre, and even purpose. It argues that each author uses historical fiction to construct a particular model of Hellenistic Jewish identity through the reinvention of the past. The models of identity differ, but all seek to explore relations between Jews and the wider non-Jewish world. The book goes on to present a focal in-depth analysis of one text, Third Maccabees. Maintaining that this is a late Hellenistic, not a Roman, work it traces important themes in Third Maccabees within a broader literary context. It evaluates the evidence for the authorship, audience, and purpose of the work and analyzes the historicity of the persecution described in the narrative. Illustrating how the author reinvents history in order to construct his own model for life in the diaspora, this book weighs the attitudes and stances, from defiance to assimilation, of this crucial period.Less
This study investigates the creation of historical fictions in a wide range of Hellenistic Jewish texts. Surveying so-called Jewish novels, including the Letter of Aristeas, Second Maccabees, Esther, Daniel, Judith, Tobit, and Josephus's account of Alexander's visit to Jerusalem and of the Tobiads, Artapanus, and Joseph and Aseneth, the book demonstrates that the use of historical fiction in these texts does not constitute a uniform genre. Instead it cuts across all boundaries of language, provenance, genre, and even purpose. It argues that each author uses historical fiction to construct a particular model of Hellenistic Jewish identity through the reinvention of the past. The models of identity differ, but all seek to explore relations between Jews and the wider non-Jewish world. The book goes on to present a focal in-depth analysis of one text, Third Maccabees. Maintaining that this is a late Hellenistic, not a Roman, work it traces important themes in Third Maccabees within a broader literary context. It evaluates the evidence for the authorship, audience, and purpose of the work and analyzes the historicity of the persecution described in the narrative. Illustrating how the author reinvents history in order to construct his own model for life in the diaspora, this book weighs the attitudes and stances, from defiance to assimilation, of this crucial period.
Tim Whitmarsh
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- August 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780199742653
- eISBN:
- 9780190880798
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780199742653.003.0012
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Poetry and Poets: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Is there such a thing as a Hellenistic ‘Jewish novel’, as certain recent critics have claimed? And if so, what is its status vis-à-vis the Greek novel? This chapter explores the relationship between ...
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Is there such a thing as a Hellenistic ‘Jewish novel’, as certain recent critics have claimed? And if so, what is its status vis-à-vis the Greek novel? This chapter explores the relationship between Jewish and Greek culture in the long era before the Roman sack of Jerusalem, finding a mixture of Jewish resistance, anti-Semitism and assimilation. Some Jewish literature speaks of Greek and Jewish as immiscible, like the Maccabean texts, composed in the period of Hasmonean ‘nationalism’. In Judith, resistance to assimilation is troped as resistance to sexual union with a foreigner. Esther, however, presents a more complementary mode: the Jewish woman successfully marries the Persian king. Formally and linguistically too, much of this literature blends Greek and Jewish in a fluid way.Less
Is there such a thing as a Hellenistic ‘Jewish novel’, as certain recent critics have claimed? And if so, what is its status vis-à-vis the Greek novel? This chapter explores the relationship between Jewish and Greek culture in the long era before the Roman sack of Jerusalem, finding a mixture of Jewish resistance, anti-Semitism and assimilation. Some Jewish literature speaks of Greek and Jewish as immiscible, like the Maccabean texts, composed in the period of Hasmonean ‘nationalism’. In Judith, resistance to assimilation is troped as resistance to sexual union with a foreigner. Esther, however, presents a more complementary mode: the Jewish woman successfully marries the Persian king. Formally and linguistically too, much of this literature blends Greek and Jewish in a fluid way.
