Historical fictions and Hellenistic Jewish identity : Third Maccabees in its cultural context / Sara Raup Johnson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Johnson, Sara Raup, 1966-

Contributor:

Harry E. Humphreys Book Fund.

Series:

Hellenistic culture and society ; 43.

Joan Palevsky imprint in classical literature

Hellenistic culture and society ; 43

The Joan Palevsky imprint in classical literature

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Third Book of Maccabees--Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Third Book of Maccabees.

Jews--History--586 B.C.-70 A.D.

Jews.

Jews--Identity--History--To 1500.

Historical fiction--History and criticism.

Historical fiction.

Jews--Identity.

History.

Physical Description:

xix, 253 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, [2004]

Summary:

In this thoughtful and penetrating study, Sara Raup Johnson investigates the creation of historical fictions in a wide range of Hellenistic Jewish texts. Surveying so-called Jewish novels, including the Letter of Aristeas, 2 Maccabees, Esther, Daniel, Judith, Tobit, Josephus's accounts of Alexander's visit to Jerusalem and of the Tobiads, Artapanus, and Joseph and Aseneth, she 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. Johnson argues that each author uses historical fiction to construct a particular model of Hellenistic Jewish identity through the reinvention of the past. Although the models of identity differ, all seek to explore relations between Jews and the wider non-Jewish world.

Johnson goes on to present an in-depth analysis of one text, 3 Maccabees. Maintaining that this is a late Hellenistic rather than a Roman work, Johnson traces important themes in 3 Maccabees within a broader literary context. She 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, Johnson weighs the attitudes and stances, from defiance to assimilation, of this crucial period.

Contents:

Historical fictions and Hellenistic Jewish identity. Jews at court

Josephus

Patriarchal fictions

Third Maccabees, a case study. Date, literary context, authorship, and audience

Historicity and historical ambivalence.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 225-237) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Harry E. Humphreys Book Fund.

ISBN:

0520233077

OCLC:

55037896

Online:

Contributor biographical information

Publisher description