Re-imagining identity through national narratives: The representational ethics of Israelites and Other(s) in Jubilees and Josephus’s Judean Antiquities
This article brings the literary treasures of ancient Judea into conversation with the interdisciplinary fields of Narrative Ethics and Socio-Narratology while considering Jubilees and Josephus’s Judean Antiquities as participating in the etic genre of national history. This article interrogates the...
Main Author: | |
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Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Published: |
Sage
2023
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In: |
Journal for the study of the pseudepigrapha
Year: 2023, Volume: 32, Issue: 3, Pages: 213-228 |
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Narration studies
/ Book of Jubilees
/ Josephus, Flavius 37-100, Antiquitates Judaicae 1-3
/ Identity
/ Judaism
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RelBib Classification: | BH Judaism HA Bible |
Further subjects: | B
historical ethics
B Josephus B Genesis 34 B Judean Antiquities B representational ethics B liber iubilaeorum 30 B Jubilees |
Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
Summary: | This article brings the literary treasures of ancient Judea into conversation with the interdisciplinary fields of Narrative Ethics and Socio-Narratology while considering Jubilees and Josephus’s Judean Antiquities as participating in the etic genre of national history. This article interrogates the work that each of these narratives do to shape the collective identity of Hellenistic and Roman era Judeans and to shape Judean perceptions of their cultural Others. By analyzing Jubilees 30 and Antiquities 1.337–341 dialogically, this paper claims that Josephus’s re-narrativization of Judean history serves as a corrective to the Israelite representation in Jubilees. It is argued that representations in Jubilees promoted an impermeable boundary between Judeans and Others, with violence as a legitimized and valorized ethic of cross-cultural engagement, whereas Antiquities re-imagined a new future of more permeable boundaries and diplomatic negotiation for first-century C.E. Judeans by re-imagining their past through narrative. Dangerous representations of cultural Others, however, remained a part of the story. |
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ISSN: | 1745-5286 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal for the study of the pseudepigrapha
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1177/09518207221124490 |