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.
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Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), 116, states, “[T]here can be little doubt that the reference by Ezra’s princes to the intermarriage law in Deut. 7:1-3, 6, with the notable addition of just those peoples mentioned in Deut. 23:4-9, is an intentional exegetical attempt to extend older pentateuchal provisions to the new times” (emphasis original).
So, too, Terence L. Donaldson, Judaism and the Gentiles: Jewish Patterns of Universalism (to 135 CE) (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2007), 142.
Lipsett, Desiring Conversion: Hermas, Thecla, Aseneth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 103.
Barclay, Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora: From Alexander to Trajan (323 BCE-117 CE) (Hellenistic Culture and Society 33; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 211.
Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition (Hellenistic Culture and Society 30; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 90.
Pervo, “Aseneth and Her Sisters: Women in Jewish Narrative and in the Greek Novels,” in “Women Like This”: New Perspectives on Jewish Women in the Greco-Roman World (ed. Amy-Jill Levine; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), 145-60 at 151. It should be noted that Aseneth’s statements conflict with the narrative, which portrays her family’s continuing support of her.
Matthew Thiessen, “The Text of Genesis 17:14,” JBL 128 (2009): 625-42.
Burchard, Untersuchungen zu Joseph und Aseneth, 144; Delling, “Einwirkungen der Sprache der Septuaginta.”
See Milgrom, Leviticus: A Book of Ritual and Ethics (CC; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), 122-26. 1QHodayota supports this connection between birth and death: “I was in distress like a woman giving birth to her firstborn, when her pangs and painful labor have come upon her womb opening, causing spasms in the crucible of the pregnant woman. For children come to the womb opening of death, and she who is pregnant with a manchild is convulsed by her labor pains. For in the breakers of death she delivers a male, and in the cords of Sheol there bursts forth from the crucible of the pregnant woman a wonderful counselor with his power, and the manchild is delivered from the breakers by the one who is pregnant with him” (11:8-11). Translation follows Eileen M. Schuller and Carol A. Newsom, The Hodayot (Thanksgiving Psalms): A Study Edition of 1QHa (SBLEJL 36; Atlanta: SBL, 2012), 37.
See Shaye J. D. Cohen, Why Aren’t Jewish Women Circumcised? Gender and Covenant in Judaism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 19.
Donaldson, Judaism and the Gentiles, 149. On Torah more broadly in Joseph and Aseneth, see Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr, “Ethik und Tora: Zum Toraverständnis in Joseph und Aseneth,” in Joseph und Aseneth (Sapere 15; ed. Eckart Reinmuth; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 186-202.
Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, 571. See also the discussion of David A. Bernat, Sign of the Covenant: Circumcision in the Priestly Tradition (SBLAIL 3; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 2009), 60-63.
Milgrom, Leviticus, 88. See Bernat, Sign of the Covenant, 62.
Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Hellenistic Culture and Society 31; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 109-39.
Andrea Lieber, “I Set a Table before You: The Jewish Eschatological Character of Aseneth’s Conversion Meal,” JSP 14 (2004): 63-77 at 77. As Donaldson ( Judaism and the Gentiles, 148) notes, “The fundamental assumption underlying Joseph’s prayer for her (8:9), her own troubled soliloquies (11:3-14, 16-18), and her own prayer itself (12-13) is that God has the decisive role to play.”
Novak, The Election of Israel: The Idea of the Chosen People (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 188.
Chesnutt, “Perceptions of Oil,” 117. More fully, see Chesnutt, “The Social Setting and Purpose of Joseph and Aseneth,” JSP 2 (1988): 21-48.
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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.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 346 | 70 | 9 |
Full Text Views | 202 | 1 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 93 | 5 | 0 |