Sophrosune in the Greek Novel: Reading Reactions to Desire. By RachelBird. Pp. 235, London/NY, Bloomsbury, 2021, £83.67.

The polyvalent Qur’anic text lends itself to multiple interpretations, dependingupon one’s presuppositions and premises. In fact, Q. 3:7 distinguishesbetween muḥkam (explicit, categorical) and mutashābih (metaphorical, allegorical,symbolic) verses. As such, this device provides a way for reinterpretingverses that outwardly appear to be problematic – be it in the area ofgender equality, minority rights, religious freedom, or war. However, manyof the verses dealing with legal provisions in such areas as devotional matters,marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance and bequest, and specific punishmentsappear to be unequivocal, categorical, and explicit. As such, scholarshave devised certain hermeneutical strategies to situate and contextualizethese verses in a particular socio-historical context, as well as to emphasizethat they were in conversation with the society to which the Qur’an was revealedand thereby underlining the “performative” (p.15) nature of the relationshipbetween the Qur’an and the society.No verse is more problematic, in the sense that it offends contemporarysensibilities and is quite difficult to reconcile with an egalitarian worldviewwhen dealing with gender issues, than Q. 4:34, which allows the husband todiscipline his wife if he deems her guilty of nushūz (e.g., disobedience, intransigence,sexual lewdness, aloofness, dislike or hatred of himself). AyeshaChaudhry undertakes a study of this challenging verse by engaging the corpusof literature in Arabic from the classical period to the seventeenth century; shealso includes Urdu and English sources for the post-colonial period.She starts off by relating her personal journey from a state of discomfortand puzzlement when she first came across this verse in middle school to adefensive posture in trying to convince herself by invoking the Prophet’scompassion toward his wives and in cherishing the idea that the Qur’an gavemore rights to women than either the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament.She began a more rigorous and nuanced study of this verse after equippingherself with the necessary academic tools and analytic skills during her universitystudies. Frustrated with the shallow responses and the scholars’ circumspectionas regards any creative and novel reading of the verse for fearof losing their status in the community, she decided to do so herself with thehope of discovering views that would promote an egalitarian reading ...

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Sourcing Callirhoe

10.1093/oso/9780199742653.003.0005 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Tim Whitmarsh

Keyword(s):

Firm Boundaries ◽

The Novel ◽

Jewish Culture ◽

Greek Novel

Chariton’s Callirhoe is the earliest extant example of the Greek novel. What preceding texts are there that resemble it? Martin Braun demonstrated in the 1930s that many of the motifs that we think of as characteristically novelistic are found in Josephus’s retelling of the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. Does that tell us that Josephus was influenced by now-lost novels? Or that Jewish storytelling influenced the course of the novel? Or that these motifs were shared between Greek and Jewish culture, without firm boundaries of genre?

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Complexes of Emotions in Joseph and Aseneth

Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha ◽

10.1177/0951820720948245 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 30 (3) ◽

pp. 133-155

Author(s):

Tyler Smith

Keyword(s):

Ancient Greek ◽

Emotional Aspect ◽

Complex Emotions ◽

Jewish Text ◽

History Of ◽

History Of Literature ◽

Joseph And Aseneth ◽

Greek Novel

The ancient Greek novel introduced to the history of literature a new topos: the “complex of emotions.” This became a staple of storytelling and remains widely in use across a variety of genres to the present day. The Hellenistic Jewish text Joseph and Aseneth employs this topos in at least three passages, where it draws attention to the cognitive-emotional aspect of the heroine’s conversion. This is interesting for what it contributes to our understanding of the genre of Aseneth, but it also has social-historical implications. In particular, it supports the idea that Aseneth reflects concerns about Gentile partners in Jewish-Gentile marriages, that Gentile partners might convert out of expedience or that they might be less than fully committed to abandoning “idolatrous” attachments. The representations of deep, grievous, and complex emotions in Aseneth’s transformational turn from idolatry to monolatry, then, might play a psychagogic role for the Gentile reader interested in marrying a Jewish person.

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