Joseph and Aseneth

In this book, Ari Mermelstein examines the mutually-reinforcing relationship between power and emotion in ancient Judaism. Ancient Jewish writers in both Palestine and the diaspora contended that Jewish identity entails not simply allegiance to God and performance of the commandments but also the acquisition of specific emotional norms. These rules regarding feeling were both shaped by and responses to networks of power - God, the foreign empire, and other groups of Jews - which threatened Jews' sense of agency. According to these writers, emotional communities that felt Jewish would succeed in neutralizing the power wielded over them by others and, depending on the circumstances, restore their power to acculturate, maintain their Jewish identity, and achieve redemption. An important contribution to the history of emotions, this book argues that power relations are the basis for historical changes in emotion discourse.

Among the different understandings of the Spirit in the New Testament, Paul's Spirit language stands out for being at once dynamic and sometimes impersonal—inviting comparison with the Stoic notion of spirit (pneuma) as a substance. Volker Rabens re-examines Paul’s statements about the Spirit in the widest possible contexts and argues that the alleged parallels with Stoic conceptions are at best ambiguous. Paul understands the work of the Spirit relationally, Rabens argues, and it is through intimate relationships that the Spirit transforms and empowers people's lives.

Following a scholarly conference given in honor of Adela Yarbro Collins, this collection of essays offers focused studies on the wide range of ways that women and gender contribute to the religious landscape of the ancient world. Experts in Greek and Roman religions, Early Christianity, Ancient Judaism, and Ancient Christianity engage in literary, social, historical, and cultural analysis of various ancient texts, inscriptions, social phenomena, and cultic activity. These studies continue the welcomed trend in scholarship that expands the social location of women in ancient Mediterranean religion to include the public sphere and consciousness. The result is an important and lively book that deepens the understanding of ancient religion as a whole. With contributions by:Patricia D. Ahearne-Kroll, Loveday Alexander, Mary Rose D'Angelo, Stephen J. Davis, Robert Doran, Radcliffe G. Edmonds III, Carin M. C. Green, Fritz Graf, Jan Willem van Henten, Paul A. Holloway, Annette B. Huizenga, Jeremy F. Hultin, Sarah Iles Johnston, James A. Kelhoffer, Judith L. Kovacs, Outi Lehtipuu, Matt Jackson-McCabe, Candida R. Moss, Christopher N. Mount, Susan E. Myers, Clare K. Rothschild, Turid Karlsen Seim

In this article I discuss the political themes attached to the eusocial creatures, specifically ants and bees, in Old Norse sources. I consider the situation of Old Norse as a transnational literature, encompassing one country that lacked ants and bees (Iceland) and one that did not (Norway). Although the behavioural ecology of eusociality, or indeed the classification of ants and bees as taxonomically related, is a relatively recent development in human knowledge, I argue that the fundamental qualities of swarming and mutual aid were clearly recognisable long before modern science. The differing environments and differing political systems between Iceland and Norway are examined as factors shaping the depiction of eusocial insects. However, the Old Norse sources are also integrated into their European context in order to explore the abstract - even universal - ideological questions that are prompted when humans compare their own societies to those of ants and bees.

In this book, Ari Mermelstein examines the mutually-reinforcing relationship between power and emotion in ancient Judaism. Ancient Jewish writers in both Palestine and the diaspora contended that Jewish identity entails not simply allegiance to God and performance of the commandments but also the acquisition of specific emotional norms. These rules regarding feeling were both shaped by and responses to networks of power - God, the foreign empire, and other groups of Jews - which threatened Jews' sense of agency. According to these writers, emotional communities that felt Jewish would succeed in neutralizing the power wielded over them by others and, depending on the circumstances, restore their power to acculturate, maintain their Jewish identity, and achieve redemption. An important contribution to the history of emotions, this book argues that power relations are the basis for historical changes in emotion discourse.

Much energy has been spent on discussions regarding the direction traveled by mystical practitioners (or readers!) in their quest to reach the heavenly palaces (hekhalot) and achieve a glimpse of the Divine Chariot (merkavah). The question is informed not in the least by the confusing language used in the Hekhalot texts themselves, describing a heavenly journey as a descent to the merkavah, and the reverse journey, as ascent. Likewise, the location of heaven is not altogether clear in the earlier Jewish and Christian apocalypses. Even in a number of biblical texts dealing with the heavenly realm in relation to earthly observers there seem to be cases of loss of the pivot. This paper proposes that the entire confusion is illusionary, the question a non-question, resulting from a traditional mis-placing of heaven “up there”.

The author of Joseph and Aseneth writes a lengthy narrative about Aseneth’s conversion, thereby providing a justification for Joseph’s marriage to an Egyptian woman. The author explicitly connects her seven-day period of withdrawal to creation, thus portraying her conversion as a divinely wrought new creation. In addition, her eight-day conversion process imitates two similar processes from Jewish scripture. First, Aseneth’s transformation parallels the circumcision of the newborn male eight days after his birth. Second, on the eighth day Aseneth partakes of an angelic existence, conversing with an angel, eating the food of angels, and being dressed in angelic garb. This elevation in her status parallels the consecration of the priestly class in Lev 8, which goes through a period of seven days before it can serve as priests on the eighth day. This process thus stresses the distance between non-Jew and Jew, while at the same time providing a scriptural rationale for how Aseneth overcame it.

The media hype over Jacobovici and Wilson's "The Lost Gospel" is that they have found a forgotten ancient text that is really a coded telling of Jesus and Mary Magdalene as married. This thesis is far from serious research, more likely aimed at making money. Still, the question of Jesus's marital status deserves careful consideration.

The Hellenistic Jewish narrative Joseph and Aseneth never cites or quotes an antecedent text. There are only two references to writing in the narrative. But this is not to suggest that Joseph and Aseneth does not exhibit familiarity with other textual traditions. On the contrary, the pseudepigraphon is peppered with echoic references to the Septuagint, frequently evokes tropes from the Greek romance novels, and is itself within the generic range of rewritten Bible. In this paper, I investigate Joseph and Aseneth’s taciturn and echoic mode of intertextual recall and compare it with the intertextuality of Mark’s Gospel. While the latter is more self-conscious about its engagement with antecedent texts than the former, there are numerous instances where Mark’s intertextuality is echoic in a manner akin to Joseph and Aseneth’s. Both narratives frequently recall textual traditions with key themes, lexemes, and phrases rather than by embedding discrete texts into their narratives verbatim. To expose their similarities, I investigate Mark’s “mis-citations” and “misquotations” in Mark 1:2–3, where Mark attributes a composite citation to Isaiah, and Mark 2:23–28, where Mark ostensibly confuses the High Priest Abiathar with his father, Ahimilech. I compare these two texts with Jos. Asen. 1:3, which intertextually evokes Gen 41:46–49, and Jos. Asen. 6:1–8, which thematically resembles two Greek romances, Xenophon’s Anthia and Habrocomes and Chariton’s Callirhoe. I then compare how Joseph and Aseneth 27–29 recalls and subverts the story of David and Goliath from 1 Samuel 17 with the way that Mark 4:35–41 evokes the story of Jonah from Jonah 1 and Mark 5:1–20 recalls the watchers tradition from 1 Enoch 6–16. I suggest that Mark and Joseph and Aseneth’s similar mode of intertextual recall in these passages can be illuminated methodologically by John Miles Foley’s concepts, “communicative economy” and “metonymy.” According to Foley, tradents can recall an entire wellspring of tradition by evoking a familiar theme, phrase, or scene. Once a “communicative node” metonymically activates the wellspring of tradition, it continues to reverberate in the audience’s mind, affecting the reception and meaning of the text that recalls it. Significantly, this metonymic mode of intertextual recall is characteristic of orally performed texts and oral traditions. I conclude the paper by suggesting that Mark and Joseph and Aseneth’s similar mode of intertextual recall is not the result of direct influence in one direction or the other. Rather, the two are similar with respect to their mode of composition and medium of reception, and this is reflected in their echoic intertextuality.

In the ancient Jewish romance oi Joseph and Aseneth, the Egyptian maiden Aseneth eats from a life-giving honeycomb. In partaking of the honeycomb, she is transformed into Joseph's eternal bride and a City of Refuge. This essay explores the significance of the honeycomb through close analysis of the text of Joseph and Aseneth in comparison with the use of honey and honeycomb imagery in the Septuagint. Aseneth equates the sweetness of God with God's capacity for mercy. The honeycomb thus proves a fitting medium for imparting this mercy to Aseneth and to others through her. After she has partaken of its substance, and the bees have constructed a second honeycomb upon her lips, she is at last made pure and transformed into an agent of divine mercy for others, modeling an ethic of mercy that elevates the practice of forgiveness above the exercise of vengeance.

In Aseneth of Egypt: The Composition of a Jewish Narrative, Patricia D. AhearneKroll challenges reliance on reconstructed texts in previous scholarship on the book of Joseph and Aseneth. After outlining the problems with previous prototypes of the Hellenistic narrative, she proposes a way to talk about the story in its initial setting without ignoring the manuscript evidence. Her thorough analysis of the evidence reveals how Joseph and Aseneth reflects the literary impulse of Greek-speaking Jewish writers to redescribe their identity in Egypt and Judean connections to the land of Egypt, while incorporating Ptolemaic strategies of legitimation of power. In the end, Ahearne-Kroll concludes that the base storyline preserved in all the copies of this story demonstrates that it was written for Jewish communities living in Hellenistic Egypt.

Features:
• A focus on Hellenistic stories of heroic ancestors
• A discussion of the possible lives of Jews in Hellenistic Egypt drawn from the
narrative of Aseneth
• An examination of the complexities involved in dating the composition of
literary texts

Contained here is the Abstract, Preface, Table of Contents, and Introduction to my recently defended dissertation at Marquette University.

Abstract:
This study compares two seemingly dissimilar ancient texts, the Gospel of Mark and Joseph and Aseneth. The former is a product of the nascent Jesus movement and influenced by the Greco-Roman βίοι (“Lives”). It details the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of a wandering Galilean. The latter is a Hellenistic Jewish narrative influenced by Jewish novellas and Greek romances. It expands the laconic account of Joseph’s marriage to Aseneth in Genesis 41 into a full-blown love story that promotes the romantic, theological, and ethical incentives of spurning idols and converting to Judaism. Generically, theologically, and concerning content the two texts are quite different.

Nonetheless, Mark and Joseph and Aseneth exhibit a number of remarkable affinities. As to language and style, both are paratactically structured and contain few long, complex periods. They are repetitive with respect to words, clauses, sentences, and pericopes. Each employs a similar proportion of active to passive voice verbs, as well as present and imperfect to aorist tenses. They are similar in length, and the direction of each narrative dramatically shifts at its midway point. Both are intertextually echoic, evoking Jewish Scriptures metonymically rather than by direct citation. And each has a multiform textual tradition that went unprotected from dramatic revisions by later authors and editors.

I argue that Mark and Joseph and Aseneth are similar in these respects because of their medium and mode of composition. Each was composed via dictation. They are what I will call “textualized oral narratives.” As such they represent one instantiation of the complex relationship between orality and textuality in early Judaism and Christianity. This thesis is argued on the basis of modern sociolinguistic studies that compare oral and written narratives, considerations of ancient media culture, and the linguistic and metalinguistic characteristics of the texts themselves.

In the romance Joseph and Aseneth, Aseneth identifies herself as an orphan abandoned by her parents (e.g., 11.3–5; 12.5; 13.1–2). The problem, however, is that she consistently maintains cordial relations with her family. This article addresses this discrepancy by analyzing the rhetorical function of the orphanhood language in light of the parenthood imagery running throughout the work. The romance presents people as belonging to the families of either God or the devil (12.9–11). Aseneth's self-identification as an orphan both signals her total separation from the family of the devil and prepares Aseneth for full incorporation into the family of God by placing her into the category of marginalized people over whom God exercises paternal care (e.g., 11.13; 12.13). The orphanhood and parenthood language thus justifies the acceptance of non-Jews into the chosen community in a way that could have appealed to some communities of Jews or Christians.

Anger, courage, and philanthropia—three important elements of Greco-Roman civic life—figure prominently in the book of Joseph and Aseneth and help us uncover the book's message. One view within Greco-Roman culture valorized manly anger—at least where appropriate—and manly courage, but, according to Joseph and Aseneth, Jews instead privileged the emotion of pity and the related virtue of philanthropia. The author strategically developed his plot around the experiences of a female convert, whose views on anger, courage, and philanthropia highlight both the distinctiveness and subversiveness of the Jewish position. His message served an important polemical goal, one which highlighted the premium that Jews place on philanthropia and challenged contemporary accusations of Jewish misanthropy.

In recent decades, the debate on monotheism and religious pluralism has been strongly influenced by the idea that monotheism originating in the Old Testament is the root of intolerance and violence. In this study, Daniela Scialabba investigates inclusive tendencies in Old Testament monotheism, in particular theological principles motivating and supporting the possibility of a positive relationship between non-Israelites and the God of Israel. Thus, she examines three texts thoroughly: the Book of Jonah, Psalm 33 (MT and LXX), and the novel »Joseph and Aseneth«. Despite their difference concerning genre, date of origin and provenance, these texts have important ideas in common: the relationship between the God of Israel and non-Israelites as well as the concept of God as a universal creator who has pity with all his creatures.


Veröentlicht auf Englisch. In den letzten Jahrzehnten wurde die Debatte um Monotheismus und religiösen Pluralismus stark von der Idee beeinusst, der alttestamentliche Monotheismus sei die Wurzel von Intoleranz und Gewalt. Daniela Scialabba untersucht in dieser Studie inkludierende Tendenzen im alttestamentlichen Monotheismus, insbesondere theologische Grundsätze, die die Möglichkeit einer positiven Beziehung zwischen Nicht-Israeliten und dem Gott Israels begründen und unterstützen. Daher analysiert sie drei Texte sorgfältig: Das Buch Jona, Psalm 33 (MT und LXX) und den Roman »Joseph und Aseneth«. Obwohl sie sich in Gattung, Entstehungszeitraum und Ursprung unterscheiden, haben diese Texte wichtige Gemeinsamkeiten: die Beziehung zwischen dem Gott Israels und den Nicht-Israeliten sowie die Idee, dass Gott als der universelle Schöpfer mit allen seinen Geschöpfen Mitleid hat.

A historic production of the lost books of the Old Testament apocrypha, together for the first time. 

Featuring--
The Testament of Adam and Eve
The Testament of Enoch
The Testament of Abraham
The Testament of Isaac
The Testament of Jacob
The Testament of Joseph and Asenath
The Testaments of the 12 Patriarchs
The Testament of Job



Featured in volume 4 of The New Melchizedek Bible. 

Preceded by the book of Malachi, and followed by Psalms 151-175,
the psalms of David, 151-155, and the psalms of Solomon, 156-175.

SUMMARY

The Play With The Myth
Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brethen as Literary Reading of The Bible


Thomas Mann's tetralogy 'Joseph and His Brethen' represents an expanding of the biblical story of Joseph, Jacob's son, using also other sources that deal with the story of Joseph (like the persian poet Firdausi's epic poem, Koran or jewish rabinic literature). A comparative structuralistic analysis of psychemic, sociemic and ontemic sequence led to the conclusion that what we have here is a productive reception, a literary reading or a concretisation of the biblical narrative. The prevailing characteristic of the work is a humoristic irony / parody, where the irony refers to the content and the parody to the style of the novels. The author had put the biblical story into reality with help of the contemporary means of philology, psychology, mythology, philosophy, archeology, historigraphy, religiology, theology and biblical egzegesis. But all this scientific treatment of the wholly unscientific and legendary matters is nothing but pure irony and the play with the myth. This work is necesserily partial, because it doesn'n consider other sources about Joseph, it only deals with the relation between the biblical narrative and the Mann's novels.

SAŽETAK

Igra s mitom
Josip i njegova braća Thomasa Manna kao književnoumjetničko čitanje Biblije

Tetralogija Thomasa Manna Josip i njegova braća predstavlja proširenje biblijske pripovijesti o Josipu, Jakovljevom sinu, koristeći i druge izvore koji govore o Josipu (kao što su poema perzijskog pjesnika Firdusija, Kuran ili židovska rabinska literatura). Komparativna strukturalna analiza psihemskog, sociemskog  i ontemskog niza pokazala je da se radi o produktivnoj recepciji, književnoumjetničkom čitanju ili konkretizaciji biblijske pripovijesti. Prevladavajuća odlika djela jest humoristička ironija / parodija, pri čemu se ironija odnosi na sadržqj, parodija na stil djela. Autor je biblijsku priču postavio u realnost, koristeći suvremena sredstva filologije, psihologije, mitologije, filozofije, arheologije, historiografije, religiologije, teologije i biblijske egzegeze. Ali sva ta znanstvena obrada potpuno neznanstvene i legendarne građe nije ništa drugo nego čista ironija i igra s mitom. Ovaj je rad nužno djelomičan jer ne uzima u obzir druge izvore o Josipu, bavi se samo odnosom biblijske pripovijesti i Mannovih romana.

ZUSAMMENFASSUNG

Thomas Manns Tetralogie „Joseph und seine Brüder“ stellt eine Erweiterung der biblischen Erzählung über Joseph, Jakobs Sohn, dar, benutzt aber auch andere Quellen, die Joseph-Erzählung bearbeiten (wie Poem des persischen Dichters Firdausi, den Kora'n oder jüdisch rabbinische Literatur). Die vergleichende strukturalistische Analyse der psychemischen, soziemischen und ontemischen Reihe zeigte, dass es sich um eine produktive Rezeption, ein kunstliterarisches Lesen oder eine Konkretisation der biblischen Erzählung handelt. Die überwiegende Werkauszeichnung ist eine humoristische Ironie/Parodie, wobei sich die Ironie auf den Stoff und die Parodie auf den Stil bezieht. Der Autor hat mit Hilfe der Gegenwartsmittel der Philologie, Psychologie, Mythologie, Philosophie, Archäologie, Geschichtsforschung, Religionswissenschaft, Theologie und Bibelexegeze die biblische Geschichte in die Realität gesetzt, aber all diese wissenschaftliche Bearbeitung eines völlig unwissenschaftlichen und legendären Stoffes ist nicht anderes als eine Ironie und ein Spiel mit dem Mythos. Diese Arbeit ist notwendigerweise partial, denn es nimmt die anderen Quellen nicht in Betracht, sie beschäftigt sich nur mit dem Verhältnis zwischen biblischer Geschichte und Manns Werk.

Данная статья указывает на то, что отдельные сюжетные элементы древнеисландской "Саги об Ингваре Путешественнике" могли быть заимствованы из греческого ветхозаветного апокрифа "Иосиф и Асенет". Кроме того, в статье демонстрируется то, как сюжет "Иосиф и Асенет" проник на территорию Исладнии.

Generically, theologically, and with respect to content Joseph and Aseneth and the Gospel of Mark are miles apart. But the two narratives also exhibit remarkable stylistic affinities. Each is paratactically structured, frequently employs verbs that are active in voice and imperfective in aspect, evokes Jewish Scriptures echoically rather than by citation, and is the product of a fluid, pluriform tradition. I argue that these parallels result from a shared media form. Mark and Aseneth represent one instantiation of the complex relationship between orality and textuality in early Judaism and Christianity. Both are textualized oral narratives.

The Tale of Yusof and Zoleykhā appears as part of a religious epic poem, the Bereshitnāma (Book of Genesis), by the fourteenth-century Judaeo-Persian poet Shāhin. Composed in 1358/9, in classical Persian with an admixture of Hebraisms and written in Hebrew characters, this tale was enormously popular within Persian-speaking Jewish communities and was frequently copied on its own. The paper focuses on two episodes from this story: Yusof's marriages to Zoleykhā and to Osnat (Asenath). Shāhin was active in the late Il-khanid and early post-Mongol periods, when new forms of patronage of literary and artistic production emerged seeking to blend different cultural worlds. The poet indeed fashioned unique amalgams of Jewish and Perso-Islamic traditions, both in form and content. The two episodes constitute small case studies for exploring Shāhin's diverse array of sources and for determining the thematic and structural ramifications of this fusion. The paper pinpoints how Shāhin accommodated and adapted Jewish and Islamic materials and demonstrates that, though Jewish, the poet firmly ensconces himself in a Persianate cultural sphere.

Despite the myriad approaches to the identity of the “I” in Rom 7:7–25, there is one aspect of the passage that has not been considered: its similarity to the tragic Greek laments. I offer a new perspective on the identity of the “wretched man”— rather, the “wretched woman”—in Rom 7:7–25, contending, based on generic and intertraditional arguments, that Eve, not Adam, is the individual identified in Paul’s speech-in-character in this chapter. Paul has recast Eve in the role of the female lamenter who bemoans her tragic condition. In this way, he has uniquely fused Second Temple Jewish traditions about Eve with tragic traditions that were prevalent in his Greco-Roman context. I argue that Paul evokes Gen 3 in Rom 7 but that the intertextual themes and lexemes concern Eve, not Adam. A com- parison of Rom 7 with portrayals of Eve from Paul’s Second Temple Jewish con- text shows that Paul is evoking an established tradition about Eve. Finally, I argue that Paul has recast Eve in the role of the tragic, lamenting woman to serve a pedagogical function in the unfolding argument of Rom 5–8. The constituent aspects of her character fit the Aristotelian model of the ideal tragic figure who provokes fear and pity in the audience’s mind and ultimately effects a cathartic release of these emotions.

This article, and its companion "Ethics and the Spirit in Paul : Religious-Ethical Empowerment through the Relational Work of the Spirit", deal with the question of how, according to Paul, the Holy Spirit enables religious ethical life. This article challenges the "infusion-transformation" approach to Pauline pneumatology which builds on a Stoic concept of the Spirit as a material substance that transforms the substance of its recipients in order to enable ethical behaviour. The second article argues that in Paul (as well as in a significant number of texts from early Judaism) the Spirit transforms and empowers people for ethical living primarily through initiating and sustaining an intimate relationship with the divine and with the community of faith.

In this paper (in Dutch) it is maintained that "Joseph and Aseneth" was primarily aimed at a Jewish audience.
The story deals with tensions within the Jewish community between certain groups (exemplified here by the sons of Bilha and Zilpa) and proselytes. After her conversion Aseneth attains a high status, not only socially (as the wife of Joseph) but also religiously, via her contacts with Levi.
In the second part of "Joseph and Aseneth", the son of Pharaoh, who wants Aseneth for himself, kindles the jealousy of the sons of Bilha and Zilpa (Dan, Naftali, Gad and Aser) by saying that Joseph looks down on them due to the status of their mothers. When an ambush by the brothers goes wrong and the remaining sons of Jacob want to kill them, Aseneth stops them and restores unity.
In the end Aseneth and Levi are the only two people to uphold the moral principle not to repay evil for evil, showing that proselytes can be outstanding both morally and religiously and should not be looked down upon.

published 2016 on https://kun.academia.edu/AdThijs

Resumen: El interés por la literatura apócrifa judía y judeocristiana del período comprendido entre el s. II a. C. y el s. II d. C se manifiesta en la cantidad de publicaciones sobre el tema que han aparecido en el último cuarto del siglo XX. Este artículo intenta analizar una de las obras más interesantes del período, la novela de " José y Asenet " , en la que el autor, partiendo de los datos del texto bíblico, reinterpreta el mismo para justificar la manera de vivir el judaísmo en un contexto de minoría, el de la Alejandría de los siglos I antes y después de Cristo. Abstract: The interest in the vitality of the Jewish religion between the 2nd Century b. C. up to the 1srt Century a. C. is expressed in the increase that studies on Jewish and Judaeo-Christian apocryphal /pseudoepigraphic literature have experienced in the last quarter of the 20th Century. This article tries to analyze one of the most peculiar works of this period, the novel " José and Asenet " in which parting from the reinterpretation of the biblical text, we try to show a way of living the Jewish religion in a minority context. Palabras clave: apócrifo-pseudoepígrafo, reinterpretación/reescritura.

Српскословенска варијанта апокрифног Житија Асенетиног, иако сачувана у свега два пре-писа из 15. века, има нарочити значај у светским оквирима јер се сматра да је реч о буквалном пре-воду грчког оригинала, па је све до краја 19. века служила и као замена за древни текст на грчком језику. Припада тзв. краћој варијанти, која у себи нема Асенетин плач. У раду смо анализирали једини сачувани оригинални препис у српскословенској рукописној традицији Slave 306, поредећи га са Новаковићевим издањем другог преписа. Текстолошком анализом дошли смо до закључка да се ова два српскословенска преписа мало разликују, и то на морфолошком и лексичком нивоу, као и да су заступљена минимална одступања у погледу редукције и проширивања текста. Такође, утвр-дили смо да препис Slave 306 има уводну формулу " Благослови, оче! " , која упућује на читање овог апокрифа у црквеним круговима. Кад су стилске одлике преписа Slave 306 у питању, већим својим делом стилско обликовање Житија заснива се на употреби епитета, поређења и полисиндета, док су остале стилске фигуре (метафора, антономазија, метонимија и синегдоха) готово у незнатној мери заступљене. Међутим, различите синтаксичке реализације стилских фигура омогућавају појачану стилогеност израза, и доприносе реторичности текста. Предочене текстолошке и стилс-ке карактеристике српскословенског преписа Slave 306 омогућују његово јасније позиционирање унутар богате светске традиције и изучавања овог апокрифа.
Кључне речи: апокриф, Житије и исповест Асенете, српскословенски препис Slave 306.

The paper investigates the apocryph Žitije i ispovest Asenete (engl. The Life and Confession of Aseneth),
known in Serbian-Slavonic literacy exclusively based on two manusripts from the 15th century – one of them
preserved in the edition by Stojan Novaković from the year 1877 (the authentic text was destroyed), and the
other one preserved in the copy kept in the Romanian Academy, marked as Slave 306. Serbian-Slavonic version
of apocryphal The Life of Aseneth bears a specific worldwide significance since it is assumed that this is a literal
translation of the Greek original, which served as a substitute for the ancient text in Greek, as well, until the
end of the 19th century. We determined that it belonged to the so-called shorter variant lacking Aseneta’s weeping.
Having in mind that the research so far has been grounded on Novaković’s edition, we analyze the only
remaining original copy in Serbian-Slavonic manuscript tradition Slave 306 in the current paper, comparing it
to Novaković’s edition. By means of textological analysis we arrived at the conclusion that the two SerbianSlavonic
copies slightly differ, morphology-wise and lexis-wise, as well as that there were minimal deviations
in terms of text reduction and expanding. Furthermore, it was determined that Slave 306 copy began with the
formula „Bless me, Father!”, pointing to the reading of the apocryph in ecclesiastical circles. When it comes
to the stylistic features of Slave 306 copy, we determined that the stylistic form of The Life of Aseneth was
predominantly based on the usage of epithets, comparisons and polysyndeton, whereas other stylistic devices
(metaphor, antonomasia, metonymy and synecdoche) are almost negligible. Nevertheless, various syntactic
realizations of stylistic devices enable an expressed stylogeny of expression, contributing to the rhetoric value
of the text itself.
Keywords: apocryph, The Life and Confession of Aseneth, Serbian-Slavonic manusript Slave 306.

The current text is an English translation of my article published in Tirosh #17, in Russian. The article indicates borrwoing of certain plot elements from Joseph and Aseneth into Yngvars saga and proves that it was possible as the story of Joseph and Aseneth was known to medieval Icelandic readers as a part of book Stjorn.

Zu den populärsten symbolischen Erzählzügen der neutestamentlichen Literatur gehört sicher die dreifache Gabe der Magier aus dem Osten, die in der matthäischen Geburtserzählung eine wichtige Rolle spielt. Der Artikel versucht zu klären, was diese Geschenke im narrativen Rahmen des Matthäusevangeliums bedeuten.

Der Septuaginta-Psalter hat einen starken Einfluss auf spätere jüdische Gebetstexte ausgeübt, die in griechi-scher Sprache verfasst worden sind, ja er hat in einem bestimmten Ausmaß deren theologisches Vokabular geprägt. Dies betrifft vor allem drei Bereche:
 die Gottesepitheta,
 die Termini, mit denen die Betenden ihre eigene Lage und ihre Hinwendung zu Gott beschreiben,
 die Substantive und Verben, mit denen das erwartete, erwünschte oder schon eingetretene göttliche Handeln bezeichnet wird.
Das Vokabular dieser drei Bereiche unterscheidet sich beträchtlich von den überlieferten Gebeten nichtjüdischer Herkunft in griechischer Sprache. Daher ist die B¬hauptung berechtigt, dass der Septuaginta-Psalter ein Vokabular in die jüdisch-hellenistische Gebetssprache eingeführt hat, das von jüngeren Texten jüdi-scher Herkunft übernommen wurde, in Einzelfällen sogar bis in die frühe christliche Literatur in griechischer Sprache Verwendung fand.
In diesem Artikel werden zunächst einige charakteristische Termini des Septuaginta-Psalters vorgestellt, sodann einige Beispiele dieser Terminologie in Gebeten der jüdisch-hellenistischen Literatur (Judith, Joseph und Aseneth, Psalmen Salomos). Zuletzt wird kurz die Frage aufgegriffen, inwiefern die dem Septuaginta-Psalter eigene Sprache zur Ausbildung religiöser Identität beitragen konnte..

The existence of the Icelandic Book of Joseph and Aseneth was first brought to scholarly attention in M.R. James's introduction to Batiffol's Latin edition of 1889. Since then commentators have continued to include the Icelandic tradition in lists of translated versions (often by the shelfmark provided by M.R. James, BL Add MS 11068). However, until now the Aseneth contained in BL Add MS 11068 has remained unedited. This article provides an annotated edition and translation which presents the Icelandic Aseneth in comparison with the exemplar from which it was translated, namely Hans Mogensen's Danish version of 1580. Most importantly, the Icelandic translator, Árni Halldórsson (1630–1687), made an original contribution to the tradition, authoring a unique account of the death of Aseneth from grief.

This paper investigates and elucidates the oral aspects of the Jewish narrative Joseph and Aseneth. This is to suggest that Joseph and Aseneth had an oral tradition that preceded, and likely also proceeded, the written version(s) that is (are) now extant. The text is best understood using oral hermeneutics. By making this argument I do not postulate any one oral or written genre for the text, nor any argument for how it might have been composed. Instead, I seek to demonstrate that Joseph and Aseneth retains strong residual orality. That is to say: many of the oral features of the text are salient in its written form, including: the consistent use of paratactic καὶ; the use of the ‘intonation unit;’ the one new idea constraint, which is often accomplished by the form ἦν; the visible and descriptive nature of the narrative; and the redundancy of certain words and phrases. The second half of the paper offers some repercussions that an oral existence of the narrative might have on the scholarly landscape. The most pertinent effects are on the assumption that Joseph and Aseneth is a Jewish Hellenistic romance novel and on the scholarly divide concerning the ‘originality’ of the longer b textual recension as opposed to the shorter d textual recension.

Faunus-who-is-also-Hermes is one of the composite god-kings dealt with in the polemical Christian 'Picus-Zeus narrative' of the fourth century. The narrative of his life is based on the Biblical account of Joseph, along with the elaborations on Joseph's life in Hellenistic Jewish fiction. Whereas Joseph is a virtuous hero, however, Faunus-Hermes is a villain who practices sorcery and usurpation and ultimately induces men to worship him as a god. The Hellenistic novels and especially the philosophical considerations of Philo of Alexandria accentuate the ambiguities in Joseph which might allow a bad character to be developed out of his good character. The Clementine Recognitions, moreover, offer an understanding of history and human character according to which good and evil come in contrasting and inimical pairs. Altogether, the use of Joseph as a model for Faunus-Hermes allows the author to subtly introduce a moral message in what seems to be a blunt and unadorned history.

This essay (in Danish) is written with a friend who has studied Danish literature and philosophy. We explore the symbolic traits of honey; more precisely how honey in Biblical literature is employed as a strong and ambiguous symbol. In an exegetical exposition of the ‘honeycomb apocalypse’ in the story of Joseph and Aseneth, we argue that repetition of sentences, gestures and honey transmit and mediate the apocalyptic encounter. The mortal recipient is not merely paralyzed by the appearance of the revelatory figure; she is rather protected by a honey sweetened agency which guards her wiz (sunesis) and free speech (parrêsia).

El interes por la literatura apocrifa judia y judeocristiana del periodo comprendido entre el s. II a. C. y el s. II d. C se manifiesta en la cantidad de publicaciones sobre el tema que han aparecido en el ultimo cuarto del siglo XX. Este articulo intenta analizar una de las obras mas interesantes del periodo, la novela de �Jose y Asenet�, en la que el autor, partiendo de los datos del texto biblico, reinterpreta el mismo para justificar la manera de vivir el judaismo en un contexto de minoria, el de la Alejandria de los siglos I antes y despues de Cristo.