Diss--Heidelberg, 2007.

<p>This dissertation examines the ideological developments and strategies of boundary formation which accompanied the sociological novelty of gentiles&rsquo; becoming Jews in the Second Temple period. I argue that the phenomenon of gentile conversion influenced ancient Jews to re&ndash;conceive their God as they devised new ways to articulate the now&ndash;permeable boundary between Jew and &lsquo;other,&rsquo; between insiders and outsiders. Shaye Cohen has shown that this boundary became porous as the word &lsquo;Jew&rsquo; took on religious and political meanings in addition to its ethnic connotations. A gentile could therefore become a Jew. I focus on an ancient Jewish author who thought that gentiles not only could become Jews, but that they should: that of <italic>Joseph and Aseneth</italic>. Significant modifications of biblical traditions about God, Israel, and &lsquo;the other&rsquo; were necessary in order to justify, on ideological grounds, the possibility of gentile access to Jewish identity and the Jewish community. </p><p>One such rewritten tradition is the relationship of both Jew and gentile to the &lsquo;living God,&rsquo; a common epithet in Israel&rsquo;s scriptures. Numerous Jewish authors from the Second Temple period, among whom I include the apostle Paul, deployed this biblical epithet in various ways in order to construct or contest boundaries between gentiles and the God of Israel. Whereas previous scholars have approached this divine title exclusively as a theological category, I read it also as a literary device with discursive power which helps these authors regulate gentile access to Israel&rsquo;s God and, in most cases, to Jewish identity. <italic>Joseph and Aseneth</italic> develops an innovative theology of Israel&rsquo;s &lsquo;living God&rsquo; which renders this narrative exceptionally optimistic about the possibilities of gentile conversion and incorporation into Israel. Aseneth&rsquo;s tale uses this epithet in conjunction with other instances of &lsquo;life&rsquo; language not only to express confidence in gentiles&rsquo; capability to convert, but also to construct a theological articulation of God in relationship to repentant gentiles which allows for and anticipates such conversion. A comparison of the narrative&rsquo;s &lsquo;living God" terminology to that of the book of <italic>Jubilees</italic> and the apostle Paul sets into relief the radical definition of Jewishness which <italic>Joseph and Aseneth</italic> constructs &mdash; a definition in which religious practice eclipses ancestry and under which boundaries between Jew and &lsquo;other&rsquo; are permeable.</p> / Dissertation

The story of Joseph and Aseneth expands a few verses from the book of Genesis into a novella-length work. In recent years, the story has attracted considerable scholarly attention. Interest has focused on questions of provenance: whether the 'longer' or 'shorter' version of the text has priority, and what this means for its interpretation. Like other works of the so-called 'Jewish Pseudepigrapha', it is increasingly used as a source for Judaism and Christianity at the turn of the Common Era. But few have engaged with the story's manuscript witness and transmission. This thesis returns to the sources. It considers how the redaction and translation of Joseph and Aseneth affected its interpretation, and looks at the interests of the redactors and copyists. It warns against placing too much weight on details that lack such an importance in the manuscript tradition. The introduction surveys modern secondary literature on the story. Section 1 investigates the translation and transmission context of the two earliest preserved versions, the Syriac and Armenian translations. Despite their text-critical importance, they have received little attention. Section 2 focuses on the Greek manuscripts of the three longest families (f, Mc, a). It argues that these redactions, and the variety within their witnesses, need to be understood within a Byzantine context, in particular, within hagiographic trends for works produced in monastic environment. Section 3 looks at how the story could be abridged and edited. It identifies the key elements of the story shared by redactors. Four versions are compared: family d, E, Latin 1 and so-called "early modern Greek". The appendices contain a synoptic presentation of Greek versions of the story, an edition and translation of the story from manuscript E, and a translation of the Greek text from manuscript 661.

My dissertation analyzes the portrayal of women in Jewish novels of the Greco-Roman period (300 BCE-100CE): Greek Esther, Judith, Susanna, and Aseneth. During the Greco-Roman period, the female heroine frequently became the focus in Jewish novels. This innovation coincides with a concern over maintaining Jewishness. Several areas surrounding the maintenance of social identity appear in the Jewish novels, including dietary restrictions and the preservation of the family. Although a great deal of literature exists regarding the above texts, there are currently no systematic examinations of the portrayal of women’s Jewishness in regards to the Jewish novels. My dissertation examines the portrayal of women in the Jewish novels through a literary critical approach and questions how their representation can inform scholarship on how authors depicted Jewishness during this period. This dissertation treats the Jewish novels collectively and contributes to the scholarly discussion with a systematic examination of depictions of Jewish women in these texts. Following a brief introduction in Chapter 1, where I provide an overview and assessment of earlier treatments on the Jewish novels and the topics of women and Jewishness, Chapters 2 through 5 examine the portrayal of women in the Jewish novels. These chapters are organized around four distinct aspects of Jewishness which center on the representation of the female protagonists and their relationships in the narratives: 1) the representation of women’s sexuality, 2) the preservation of foodways, 3) kinship ties, and 4) the role of the protagonist in their Jewish community. In Chapter 6, I use a comparative approach to examine the depiction of women’s Jewishness in the novels, which demonstrates women’s active roles in maintaining and defining Jewishness. Chapter 7 concludes the dissertation with a summary and recommendations for future work. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This dissertation analyzes the portrayal of women in Jewish novels of the Greco-Roman period (300 BCE-100CE): Greek Esther, Judith, Susanna, and Aseneth. I question how women’s representation in the Jewish novels can inform scholarship on how authors depicted Jewishness during this period. The analysis of women is organized around four categories of Jewishness centered on the representation of the female protagonists and their relationships in the narratives: 1) the representation of women’s sexuality, 2) the preservation of foodways, 3) kinship ties, and 4) the role of the protagonist in their broader Jewish community. This dissertation contributes to the scholarly discussion by providing a systematic examination of depictions of Jewish women found in these texts and demonstrates that the authors of the Jewish novels depict women playing active roles in maintaining and defining Jewishness.

From the end of the 19th century, the Old Czech apocryphal story of Joseph (son of Jacob), called Life of Joseph, has not been in the center of the scholars' and editors' attention, and therefore many pivotal philological questions concerning this Old Czech composition have not been satisfactory solved yet. This thesis offers a comprehensive analysis of the Old Czech Life of Joseph in terms of textual criticism and literary history and attempts to bring answers to the main problems of its contextualization. The six extant medieval manuscripts of the Life of Joseph, representing the inherent part of the thesis, are provided with critical edition. The Old Czech Life of Joseph is a late medieval work of an anonymous author and should be dated to the second half or to the end of the 14th century. It is based on a Latin model, namely Historia Ioseph, which was composed in the year 1336 by the Spanish Dominican Alfonso Buenhombre (Alphonsus Bonihominis). The Czech Life of Joseph is the unique vernacular translation of Alfonso's Latin text. This Latin text has not been broadly disseminated. I am aware of the existence of 14 manuscripts, six of which originated in Bohemia and represent the specific Bohemian manuscript branch. The Czech translation is admittedly based on the Latin text related closely to...

This is a study of the fifteenth-century, “Storie of Asneth,” a late-medieval English translation of a Jewish Hellenistic romance about the Patriarch, Joseph, and his Egyptian wife, Asneth (also spelled Aseneth, Asenath). Belonging to the collection of stories known as The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha and derived from Jewish Midrash, the story was widely read among medieval religious in England in Latin before being translated into the vernacular for devotional purposes. Part of this study considers and identifies the aristocratic female patron (Elizabeth Berkeley) and author (John Walton) of the fifteenth-century Middle English text, based on literary, historical, and manuscript evidence from the sole surviving copy of the text in Huntington Library EL.26.A.13, a manuscript once owned by John Shirley. Also explored is the ritualistic pattern of events in the text (original to its Hellenistic origins) that coincides with ancient female initiation rites as we understand them from recent studies of Greek mythology. Centred in the narrative, culminating Asneth’s liminal seclusion, is her sacred marriage with a heavenly being. The argument suggests that in the Middle Ages this sacred consummation would have been interpreted as the union of God with the soul, similar to the love union in the Song of Songs. In the Christian tradition it is referred to as mystical marriage. Early Christian exegesis supports that Joseph was considered a prefigurement of Christ in the Middle Ages. In her role as divine consort and Joseph’s wife, Asneth would also have been identified as a type of Ecclesia in the Middle Ages—the symbolic bride of Christ. Patterns of female initiation in the story are also reflected in the hagiographical accounts of female saints, female mystics, and the ritual consecration of nuns to their orders, especially where they focus on marriage to Christ. The similarity of Asneth with Ecclesia, and therefore Asneth’s identity as a type of the church in the Middle Ages, is then explored in the context of the theology of the twelfth-century Cistercian prophet, Joachim of Fiore. The thirteenth-century Canterbury manuscript, Cambridge Corpus Christi College MS 288 (CCCC MS 288), which holds a Latin copy of Asneth also contains one of the earliest Joachite prophecies in England, known as Fata Monent. The study suggests Asneth may have held theological currency for early followers of Joachim of Fiore in England. / Graduate

Cette thèse s’inscrit dans le débat actuel relatif au monothéisme biblique et au pluralisme religieux. Ces dernières décennies, ce débat a été influencé par des auteurs comme Jan Assmann pour lequel le monothéisme vétérotestamentaire constitue une racine importante de l’intolérance dont les trois religions monothéistes se seraient rendues coupables. Le but de notre thèse n’est pas d’entrer dans ce débat mais d’approfondir un sujet négligé par la recherche : qu’en est-il des tendances inclusives du monothéisme vétérotestamentaire ? Cette thèse ne se veut pas une contribution historique mais son but est d’étudier les principes théologiques permettant de concevoir des rapports positifs entre le Dieu d’Israël et des individus ou des peuples étrangers. En particulier, nous cherchons à analyser trois textes, le Livre de Jonas, le Psaume 33 (TM et LXX) et le roman Joseph et Aséneth. Bien qu’il s’agisse de trois textes différents en ce qui concerne le genre littéraire, l’origine et la datation, ils ont en commun d’aborder le problème du rapport entre le Dieu d’Israël et les non-Israélites. Plus concrètement, chacun de ces trois textes présente le Dieu d’Israël comme un créateur universel qui, en tant créateur, a pitié de toutes ses créatures. / The starting point of this study is the current debate on monotheism and religious pluralism. In recent decades, this debate has been strongly influenced by some authors such as Jan Assmann for whom the monotheism originating in the Old Testament is the root of the intolerance and violence of the three monotheistic religions. Rather than participating at this debate, the intention of this study is to answer the following questions: what about inclusive tendencies in Old Testament monotheism? Thus, this thesis is aimed at looking into the theological principles motivating and supporting the possibility of an approach by individuals and peoples to the God of Israel. With this aim, our objective is to analyse three texts where the relationship between YHWH, Israel and the non-Israelites is examined: the book of Jonah, Psalm 33 (MT and LXX), and the novel, Joseph and Aseneth. Although these three texts are different concerning their genre, period and provenance, they have the following ideas in common: the relationship between the God of Israel and non-Israelites as well as the concept of God as an universal creator who has pity of all his creatures.