4. Pleasures and Dangers of Conversion: Joseph and Aseneth

The divine title “(the) living God” in Joseph and Aseneth is used in conjunction with the narrative’s other language and imagery of “life” and “living” to construct a totalizing paradigm of life-versus-death that initially excludes Aseneth but ultimately, because of her shift in cultic loyalty and subsequent transformation by God, embraces her. Chapter 2 presents manuscript evidence in order to show that each of the earliest families of witnesses to Joseph and Aseneth employs creation language and imagery from Genesis 1–2 LXX to represent Aseneth’s transformation as a re-creation by the life-giving, creator God. Aseneth’s story draws on the inaugural Genesis creation narratives as it constructs an ideology of Israel’s “living God” which allows for, and even hopes for, gentile inclusion in the people of this God.

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Introduction

10.1093/oso/9780190878993.003.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Jill Hicks-Keeton

Keyword(s):

Jewish History ◽

Jewish People ◽

Second Temple ◽

Second Temple Period ◽

A Minor ◽

Joseph And Aseneth ◽

Literary Phenomenon ◽

Minor Character

The Introduction claims that the ancient romance Joseph and Aseneth moves a minor character in Genesis from obscurity to renown, weaving a new story whose main purpose was to intervene in ancient Jewish debates surrounding gentile access to Israel’s God. Aseneth’s story is a tale of the heroine’s transformation from exclusion to inclusion. It is simultaneously a transformative tale. For Second Temple-period thinkers, the epic of the Jewish people recounted in scriptural texts was a story that invited interpretation, interruption, and even intervention. Joseph and Aseneth participates in a broader literary phenomenon in Jewish antiquity wherein authors took up figures from Israel’s mythic past and crafted new stories as a means of explaining their own present and of envisioning collective futures. By incorporating a gentile woman and magnifying Aseneth’s role in Jewish history, Joseph and Aseneth changes the story. Aseneth’s ultimate inclusion makes possible the inclusion of others originally excluded.

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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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Jewish Novellas in a Greek and Roman Age: Fiction and Identity

Journal for the Study of Judaism ◽

10.1163/157006311x544409 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 42 (2) ◽

pp. 141-165 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Lawrence M. Wills

Keyword(s):

Cultural Context ◽

Jewish Literature ◽

Broad Category ◽

Biblical History ◽

The Rich ◽

Roman Age ◽

Joseph And Aseneth

AbstractAlthough Jewish novellas (Esther, Daniel, Tobit, Judith, and Joseph and Aseneth) have received more attention recently as a distinct genre within ancient Jewish literature, their relation to Greek and Roman novels is still debated. This article argues that, although some of the Jewish novellas arise earlier, they should be considered part of the same broad category of novelistic literature. The rich research on the cultural context of Greek and Roman novels applies to the Jewish as well. But a further question is also explored: if the Jewish texts were originally considered fictional, how did they come to be considered biblical and historical? Two suggestions are proposed: the protagonists of the narratives first came to be revered as heroes of the faith aside from the texts, and the rise of “biblical history” required the use of Esther and Daniel to fill in the gaps in the chronology.

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