The Construct of Identity in Hellenistic Judaism

Essays on Early Jewish Literature and History

Erich S. Gruen

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9783110375558
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Jewish Literary Criticism

This book collects twenty two previously published essays and one new one by Erich S. Gruen who has written extensively on the literature and history of early Judaism and the experience of the Jews in the Greco-Roman world. His many articles on this subject have, however, appeared mostly in conference volumes and Festschriften, and have therefore not had wide circulation. By putting them together in a single work, this will bring the essays to the attention of a much broader scholarly readership and make them more readily available to students in the fields of ancient history and early Judaism. The pieces are quite varied, but develop a number of connected and related themes: Jewish identity in the pagan world, the literary representations by Jews and pagans of one another, the interconnections of Hellenism and Judaism, and the Jewish experience under Hellenistic monarchies and the Roman empire.

Table of contents

• Overview
• Preface
• First Publications of Essays
• Introduction
• General Reflections
• 1. Cultural Fictions and Cultural Identity
• 2. Hellenistic Judaism
• Jewish Identity and Greco-Roman Culture
• 3. Fact and Fiction: Jewish Legends in a Hellenistic Context
• 4. Kinship Relations and Jewish Identity
• 5. Hellenism and Judaism: Fluid Boundaries
• 6. Jews and Greeks as Philosophers: A Challenge to Otherness
• 7. The Purported Jewish-Spartan Affiliation
• Reciprocal Perspectives
• 8. Jewish Perspectives on Greek Culture and Ethnicity
• 9. The Use and Abuse of the Exodus Story
• 10. Persia Through the Jewish Looking-Glass
• 11. Greeks and Jews: Mutual Misperceptions in Josephus’ Contra Apionem
• 12. Tacitus and the Defamation of the Jews
• Jewish Experience in a Pagan World
• 13. Diaspora and Homeland
• 14. Was There Judeophobia in Classical Antiquity?
• 15. Hellenism and Persecution: Antiochus IV and the Jews
• 16. The Origins and Objectives of Onias’ Temple
• 17. Herod, Rome, and the Diaspora
• 18. Caligula, The Imperial Cult, and Philo’s Legatio
• Jewish Literary Constructs
• 19. The Letter of Aristeas and the Cultural Context of the Septuagint
• 20. The Twisted Tales of Artapanus: Biblical Rewritings as Novelistic Narrative
• 21. Jews, Greeks, and Romans in the Third Sibylline Oracle
• 22. Subversive Elements in Pseudo-Philo
• 23. Jewish Literature and the Second Sophistic
• List of Abbreviations
• Bibliography
• Index of People, Places and Subjects
• Index of Primary Sources