Ancient Fiction: The Matrix of Early Christian And Jewish Narrative (original) (raw)
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The ancient novel and early Christian and Jewish narrative: fictional intersections
Ancient narrative, 2012
The Ancient Novel and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative: Fictional Intersections offers select papers presented at the fourth meeting of the International Conference on the Ancient Novel (ICAN IV) in 2008. The conference subject was “Crossroads in the Ancient Novel: Spaces, Frontiers, Intersections” and was meant to examine Jewish and Christian texts and their interactions with other novelistic texts of antiquity. The book itself—being the sixteenth in the series of Supplementa to Ancient Narrative—is a sampling of Greek, Jewish, and Christian novels each with a specific evaluative interest. Judith Perkins’s prologue and Richard Pervo’s introduction succinctly detail the purpose and approach of the book. Both are helpful to the reader because they bring a sense of continuity to the diverse materials.
The Ancient Novel and Early Christian and Jewish Narratives: Fictional Intersections, ed. by Marília P. Futre Pinheiro, Judith Perkins, Richard Pervo, 2012
This innovative collection explores the vital role played by fictional narratives in Christian and Jewish self-fashioning in the early Roman imperial period. Employing a diversity of approaches, including cultural studies, feminist, philological, and narratological, expert scholars from six countries offer twelve essays on Christian fictions or fictionalized texts and one essay on Aseneth. All the papers were originally presented at the Fourth International Conference on the Ancient Novel in Lisbon Portugal in 2008. The papers emphasize historical contextualization and comparative methodologies and will appeal to all those interested in early Christianity, the Ancient novel, Roman imperial history, feminist studies, and canonization processes.
Religious Studies Review, 2007
Pp. 332, appendices. $135.00, ISBN 0-567-02592-6. Gmirkin proposes a new theory concerning the date of the composition of the Pentateuch that focuses upon the parallels between the Babylonian mythological materials preserved by the priest Berossus (ca. 278 BCE) and the Genesis stories, and the Egyptian historical and mythological materials preserved by the priest Manetho (ca. 285-80 BCE) and the accounts in Exodus. Because these materials closely accord with the earliest level of the biblical accounts, he proposes that the translation of the Pentateuch into Greek, the Septuagint, in 273-72 BCE in Alexandria was actually the first time that the text was written down as a whole. In presenting this hypothesis, Gmirkin summarizes archeological, epigraphic and literary evidence that would weaken the basis for the documentary hypothesis (or JEPD theory). He proposes that the biblical narratives should be seen in the light of the events of the third century BCE, primarily those of Alexander and his immediate successors.
Ancient Narrative
The Jewish literary production of Hellenistic and early imperial times includes a substantial number of short narratives displaying novelistic features. Most of these texts are in Greek, with novelistic trends also appearing in Hebrew and Aramaic works (Esther, Daniel). While this stylistic shift is undeniable, the present article questions the social and cultural implications that a number of scholars seek to read into it. Because of their shared stylistic innovations, these works are often treated as a homogeneous group, regardless of whether or not they were eventually included in the biblical canon (the Septuagint), and contrasted with the traditional narrative genres represented in the Hebrew biblical corpus. The transition to the novelistic is further taken to indicate a shift in the social context in which these works were produced, and correlatively, in their social function. Thus, in contrast with the earlier narrative literature written by temple scribes, these early novel...
THE ANCIENT NOVEL AND THE FRONTIERS OF GENRE, ANCIENT NARRATIVE Supplementum 18, 2014 ,
The Ancient Novel and the Frontiers of Genre, ed. Marília P. Futre Pinheiro, Gareth Schmeling, Edmund P. Cueva, 2014
Despite the fact that postmodern aesthetics deny the existence or validity of genres, the tendency nowadays is to assume that there was in Antiquity a homogeneous group of works of narrative prose fiction that, despite their differences, displayed a serious of recurrent, iterative, thematic, and formal characteristics, which allows us to label them novels. The papers assembled in this volume include extended prose narratives of all kind and thereby widen and enrich the scope of the canon. The essays explore a wide variety of texts, crossed genres, and hybrid forms, which transgress the boundaries of the so-called ancient novel, providing an excellent insight into different kinds of narrative prose in antiquity.
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 76:3 (2013) 497-99.
Millar: Handbook of Jewish Literature from Late Antiquity, 135-700 ce . xxv, 162 pp. Oxford: Oxford University Press, for the British Academy, 2013. £25. ISBN 978 0 19 726522 2.
"Biblical Characters in Hellenistic Judaism," Religion Compass 5/1 (2011): 12-27.
The portrayal of biblical characters in Hellenistic Judaism exhibits a consistent, individual-centered approach to the interpretation of the Bible. Jewish Greek literary traditions (such the Septuagint, apocryphal and pseudepigraphic works composed in Greek, Philo of Alexandria, Josephus, and Greek fragmentary works by Jewish authors) promoted first the historical influence and relevance of biblical characters and subsequently their moral exemplarity or depravity. The latter trend was influenced by Hellenistic biographies, aretalogies, and the ideal of the Stoic sage. An interest in biblical figures and patriarchs as role models and anti-role models may also be seen in the Hellenized Jewish use of intertextuality, typology, ‘riffing’, or mirror narratives, as well as in pseudepigraphic attribution and composition, as a means to lend scriptural authority to new narratives and moral authority to the heroes and texts of the past. A similar focus on the virtues and vices of biblical characters in texts composed by Jews can be found in the use of the Hellenistic literary form known as the Beispeilreihe, in which exemplars are listed in a carefully crafted genre that argues a consistent theme in a poetic and condensed form.