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The Socio-cultural setting of Joseph and Aseneth*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Howard Clark Kee
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Extract

One conclusion concerning Joseph and Aseneth on which recent scholarly studies are in agreement is that the literary model for this fascinating work is the hellenistic romance. In both European and American analyses that assumption is evident. But since the intention of a romance has not been agreed upon - either by literary historians in general or by biblical scholars assessing the aims of the writer of Joseph and Aseneth – the import of this judgment about the literary paradigm for our work varies widely. Burchard assumes ‘that Joseph and Aseneth was composed for Jews, both born and naturalized, including perhaps those “god-fearing” sympathizers who thought and lived Jewish, but never crossed the line formally and were seldom pressed to do so. The document reminds not only the Jews of the privileges they always enjoyed, but the converts of what they, or their forefathers, gained by crossing over to Judaism.’ This position is adopted in opposition to the notion that the work was a missionary tract, aimed at enticing non-Jews to convert.

Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , July 1983 , pp. 394 - 413
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

NOTES

[1] Burchard, Christoph, ‘Joseph and Asenath’ for Anchor Bible Pseudepigrapha, ed. Charlesworth, J. H., preliminary draft. M. Philonenko, Joseph et Aseneth, Introduction, Texte Critique, Traduotion et Notes (Leiden: Brill, 1968).Google Scholar

[2] Pervo, Richard I., ‘Joseph and Asenath and the Greek Novel’, in SBL Seminar Papers 1976. Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, pp. 171–82. Also in same volume, H. C. Kee, ‘The Socio-Religious Setting and Aims of Joseph and Asenath’, pp. 183–92.Google Scholar

[3] Burchard, p. 45. P. 115: ‘not a Missionschrift’.

[4] Ibid., p. 38.

[5] Philonenko, , J & A, pp. 51–98.Google Scholar

[6] Ibid., p. 83.

[7] Ibid., p. 81.

[8] Ibid., p. 80; cf. J & A 6. 5.

[9] Burchard, p. 36.

[10] Philonenko quotes approvingly Massebieu: ‘quelque secte mystique’.

[11] Pervo, op. cit.

[12] Ibid., p. 176.

[13] Ibid., p. 177.

[14] So Merkelbach, R., Roman und Mysterium in der Antike (Munich and Berlin: C. H. Beck, 1962), p. 336Google Scholar; Johannes, Helms, Character Portrayal in the Romance of Chariton (The Hague: Mouton, 1966), p. 17Google Scholar, who assigns the origin of the hellenistic romance to the same date. Others would place Chariton as the oldest of the genre.

[15] Hadas, , Moses, , Three Greek Romances, trans, and intro. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1953), p. ix.Google Scholar

[16] On Judith's beauty, Jth. 8. 7–8; 10. 19; 12. 16. On the problem of the relationship of Jews to non-Jews, 12. 2, 20.

[17] Here I refer the reader to my Christian Origins in Sociological Perspective (Philadelphia and London, 1980)Google Scholar. German trans., Das frühe Christentum in soziologischer Sicht (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (Taschenbuch), 1982).Google Scholar

[18] Burchard, pp. 43–4.

[19] Perry, Ben Edwin, The Ancient Romances: A Literary-Historical Account of their Origins (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), p. 10.Google Scholar

[20] Perry, , Romances, pp. 18–20.Google Scholar

[21] Ibid., p. 21.

[22] Ibid., p. 25.

[23] As in Northrup Frye's The Anatomy of Criticism.

[24] Perry, p. 30.

[25] See, for example, Philonenko, under Note 10.

[26] Burchard, pp. 35–6.

[27] Philonenko, pp. 62–82.

[28] Pervo, p. 177.

[29] Ibid., p. 176.

[30] Ibid., p. 175.

[31] Ibid., p. 175.

[32] Philonenko, p. 106.

[33] J & A 7.1; 8. 5; donning the black tunic, 10. 8; abstinence from food, 21. 7, though the issue of kosher food is never raised; break with the family leads to new familial relationships, 11. 3–13.

[34] The six cities of refuge are designated and their function described in Num. 35. 9–15.

[35] Philonenko, who draws attention to the portrait of Tamar (De virtutibus) and to the identification of Abraham with the city of refuge in Quaest. Gen 4. 120. Similarly, he notes that ‘flight’ is linked with repentance by the neo-Pythagorean philosopher, Pseudo-Cebes, writing at the opening of our era. He further observes that in LXX, the term katapheuxontai is used at Zech. 2. 15 (in MT, 2. 11) to depict the turning of the nations to Yahweh ‘in that day’, 55–57.

[36] The portrayal of Apuleius' misery in Metamorphoses XI.2.12; the account of the second epiphany in XI.23.

[37] Philonenko, p. 178, note on 14. 7.

[38] Goodenough, Erwin R., Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period. Vol. 1, The Archaeological Evidence from Palestine (Bollingen Series XXXVII) (New York: Pantheon Books, 1953); also Vol. III, Illustrations, especially the mosaics at Beth Alpha, 248–53 and Naaran, 253–7.Google Scholar

[39] See the discussion of the inscriptions in Goodenough, Symbols, 1, p. 243.Google Scholar

[40] E.g., Goodenough, Symbols, 3, pp. 631, 632, 640.Google Scholar

[41] J & A 6. 1–6.

[42] As Burchard suggests, p. 37; note to 6. 6.

[43] Merkelbach, , Roman, pp. 94–5Google Scholar; also Witt, R. E., Isis in the Graeco-Roman World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971), pp. 240–51.Google Scholar

[44] Noted by J. Horst in TDNT IV: In Fug. 138 (from Ex. 16. 31) and in Det. Pot. Ins., based on Dt. 32. 13, honey is seen as representing divine wisdom.

[45] As implied by Burchard, p. 36.

[46] Dunand, Françpise, Le Culte d'Isis dans le Bassin Orientate de la Mediterranée. 3 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1973); in Vol. III, pp. 250–1. In the first century B.C. hymns of Isidorus, for example, the divine benefactions are enumerated, but no mention is made of the mysteries. For the beneficiaries of Isis, salvation occurs visibly in the material order, since she comes to the aid of combatants, sailors, prisoners, the sick and the blind, in all the circumstances of a difficult life. But she never appears in any fashion – in this period – as the guarantor of blessed immortality.Google Scholar

[47] Solmsen, Friedrich, Isis among the Greeks and Romans (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), pp. 62–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

[48] Dunand, , Culte, 3, p. 244.Google Scholar

[49] Burchard, note to 18. 9.

[50] Philonenko, p. 103.

[51] Hanson, Paul D., The Dawn of Apocalyptic, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982)Google Scholar; also Otto Ploeger, Theocracy and Eschatology (Oxford, 1968).Google Scholar

[52] Gruenwald, Ithamsa, Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism (Leiden: Brill, 1980)Google Scholar; also Michael, Stone, Scriptures, Sects and Visions: A Profile of Judaism from Ezra to the Jewish Revolts (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980).Google Scholar

[53] Stone, Sects, p. 35.

[54] So Jonas Greenfield in his introduction to the re-issue of 3 Enoch, p. xxvi.

[55] Gruenwald, p. 12.

[56] Hengel, Martin, Judaism and Hellenism, 1, p. 217.Google Scholar

[57] Kee, H. C., Christian Origins, p. 153. See now the German edition.Google Scholar

[58] Scholem, Gershom, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken (1941), 1973), p. 9.Google Scholar

[59] Summarized from my Christian Origins, p. 154.

[60] Testament of Job 33. 9. Discussed by A. Dupont-Sommer, Essene Writings from Qumran, p. 334, note 4.

[61] Kee, H. C., ‘Satan, Magic and Salvation in the Testament of Job’, SBL Seminar Papers, Vol. 1 (Scholars Press, 1974).Google Scholar

[62] Discussed by Gruenwald, I..Apocalyptic, pp. 54–7Google Scholar. Scholem, G. remarked that the Apocalypse of Abraham more closely resembles Merkavah texts than any other text in Jewish apocalyptic literature (in Jewish Gnosticism, Merkavah Mysticism and Talmudic Tradition, 2nd ed.New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1965).Google Scholar

[63] Chariots and/or their wheels are associated with the presence of Yahweh in 1 Enoch 14. 18–23; 61.10; 71. 7–8; 2 Enoch 9; and in the Apocalypse of Moses 33.

[64] A chief case in point is the new Schürer, which mostly adds information without calling into question the fundamentally flawed structure and presuppositions of Schiirer's original work.

[65] Philonenko quite properly sees a kinship here with Philo, De Somniis 1. 76. He and Burchard also cite Heb. 11. 3; Burchard underlines the later part of the passage, where it is the Word which effects creation.

[66] See my forthcoming study, Miracle in the Early Christian World, esp. the chapter on Isis and miracles.

[67] Also discussed in my Miracle, chapter on Asklepios;and in Jewish and Christian Self-Definition, 3, ed. Sanders, E. P. (Philadelphia, 1983), pp. 118–36.Google Scholar

[68] Jacob Neusner has made a persuasive case for the theory that the origins of rabbinic Judaism are to be found in Phariseeism, which, following the disillusionment with the Hasmonean rulers, turned from politics to piety, making the paramount issue for Jewish identity to be the laws of purity. In the process, their interpreters of Torah applied to themselves the standards and practices laid down in the Law for the temple, its cult, and its priesthood. See his Meaning and Method in Ancient Judaism, Series III, pp. 15–101 (Scholars Press, 1981).Google Scholar

[69] Also discussed in my Miracle, in the chapter on Acts, with special attention to the influence on Luke of the Hellenistic romances.

[70] Scholem, G., Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism and Talmudic Tradition (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1965), p. 17.Google Scholar

[71] Discussed in my studies in Mark, Community of the New Age (Philadelphia, 1977), pp. 132–4.Google Scholar