Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition

Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition

Judaism -- History -- Post-exilic period, 586 B.C.-210 A.D
Greek literature -- Jewish authors -- History and criticism
Judaism -- Apologetic works -- History and criticism
Jews -- Greece -- Intellectual life
Judaism and literature -- Greece
Hellenism

"In the wake of Alexander the Great's triumphant successes, Greeks and Macedonians came as conquerors and settled as ruling classes in the lands of the eastern Mediterranean. Jews endured a subordinate status politically and militarily, a minor nation amid the powers of the Hellenistic world. Erich Gruen's work, however, highlights Jewish creativity, ingenuity, and inventiveness, as the Jews engaged actively with the traditions of Hellas, adapting genres and transforming legends to articulate their own legacy in modes congenial to a Hellenistic setting. Drawing on a wide and diverse array of texts composed in Greek by Jews over an extended period of time, Gruen explores works by Jewish historians, epic poets, tragic dramatists, writers of romances and novels, exegetes, philosophers, apocalyptic visionaries, and composers of fanciful fables - not to mention pseudonymous forgers and fabricators. In these fictive creations, Jewish writers reinvented their own past, offering us vital insights into Jewish self-perception."--BOOK JACKET.

Erich S. Gruen

Berkeley, Calif. : University of California Press

Series: Hellenistic culture and society ; 30.

Hellenism and the Hasmonaeans -- The use and abuse of the Exodus story -- The Hellenistic images of Joseph -- Scriptural stories in new guise -- Embellishments and inventions -- Kings and Jews -- Pride and precedence.

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