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.
Richard Bolchover
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781874774808
- eISBN:
- 9781800340022
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781874774808.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter presents an overview of the social and political philosophies of the Anglo-Jewish community. A community of some 385,000 people with such a polygenetic communal background as that of ...
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This chapter presents an overview of the social and political philosophies of the Anglo-Jewish community. A community of some 385,000 people with such a polygenetic communal background as that of Anglo-Jewry cannot be said to have thought with one mind on any issue, even on those which directly and explicitly concerned Jewry. Most particularly, this period saw a certain liquefaction of the Anglo-Jewish political system caused by political and social circumstances. Despite this, a communal consensus on many issues did emerge, mainly because the ramifications of the nineteenth-century struggle for emancipation continued to dominate Anglo-Jewish political thought. Indeed, commonly held ideologies regarding emancipation and the non-Jewish world confined the scope of ideological divergencies within the community to a very narrow range. The community saw the civic equality which resulted from emancipation as a gift, and the hospitality bestowed upon Jews by the British as one side of a contract demanding in return loyalty and gratitude. Beneath it all they still feared that they were aliens. As a result, public controversy with the government was assiduously avoided by all Jewish leaders — political invisibility was the goal. British Jews took civic loyalty to mean conformity. Consequent to this, virtually all self-identified Jews pursued a policy of what is today called 'acculturation' — of social integration and acceptance.Less
This chapter presents an overview of the social and political philosophies of the Anglo-Jewish community. A community of some 385,000 people with such a polygenetic communal background as that of Anglo-Jewry cannot be said to have thought with one mind on any issue, even on those which directly and explicitly concerned Jewry. Most particularly, this period saw a certain liquefaction of the Anglo-Jewish political system caused by political and social circumstances. Despite this, a communal consensus on many issues did emerge, mainly because the ramifications of the nineteenth-century struggle for emancipation continued to dominate Anglo-Jewish political thought. Indeed, commonly held ideologies regarding emancipation and the non-Jewish world confined the scope of ideological divergencies within the community to a very narrow range. The community saw the civic equality which resulted from emancipation as a gift, and the hospitality bestowed upon Jews by the British as one side of a contract demanding in return loyalty and gratitude. Beneath it all they still feared that they were aliens. As a result, public controversy with the government was assiduously avoided by all Jewish leaders — political invisibility was the goal. British Jews took civic loyalty to mean conformity. Consequent to this, virtually all self-identified Jews pursued a policy of what is today called 'acculturation' — of social integration and acceptance.
