The First Book of Maccabees is widely regarded as an instance of conservative, biblically oriented historiography in which Hellenistic influence on narrative composition is minimal or absent. This article challenges that consensus through a close analysis of two key passages. (a) The farewell speech of Mattathias (1 Macc 2:49–68) is shown to reflect the Hellenistic conventions of the dynastic Abschiedsrede, the paradeigma list, and the exitus illustrium virorum more closely than any biblical model: the structural architecture of the speech, the rhetorical function of the ancestral exempla as stimuli to mimesis, and the valorization of honorable death as civic immortality all belong to the Greek tradition, even as their content is drawn from the sacred history of Israel, a form of “Jewish exemplarity.” (b) The battle narrative of 1 Macc 9 is analyzed as an instance of what recent scholarship has termed “immersive historiography.” The article argues that these features are integral to the original compositional program of the work, not the product of the Greek translator’s intervention. Through them, the Jerusalem elite deployed the culturally dominant historiographical syntax as a political instrument. Calculated pathos acts as advocacy, guiding the reader’s judgment against the Seleucids and justifying Hasmonean dynastic power. In this sense, 1 Maccabees appears not as a protest against Hellenistic influences but as a key example of the complex nature of Hellenistic Judaism.
In the practice of editing and translating 1 Enoch, there are usually two ways of dealing with the textual evidence. Some translations represent an eclectic hybrid text, which is based on all textual witnesses, but historically never existed. In other cases, the translation is based on one textual witness because this either comes close to the postulated final text or offers a complete and text-critically trustworthy text. Both ways, however, are inadequate from a historical perspective because each fails to acknowledge the entire textual evidence. Therefore, I argue for a synoptic approach, which I will illustrate and explain using the example of a new synoptic edition and translation of 1 Enoch 22. This is the second part of a two-part publication where I present the new edition and synoptic translation of 1 Enoch 22.
In ancient Jewish and Christian intercessory traditions, one emerging trend insists that death is final with no allotment for postmortem mercy of any kind. By late antiquity, speculations about the in-between status of souls proliferated, eventually emerging, for Christians, as a nascent doctrine of purgatory. Scholars have long acknowledged the practice of efficacious prayers for the deceased, attested by at least the third century. The following article considers often neglected evidence from the Testament of Abraham arguing that the Testament of Abraham offers a compelling example of one early conceptualization of the practice of postmortem intercession.
The Ascension of Isaiah accords well with Sommer's or Bunta's fluidity models of divine embodiment. It envisions an alternate metaphysics, a universe full of divine glory "embodied" or "moving" not only in the Great Glory but also in seven glories suited to lower powers of sight, in angels and righteous humans, and finally visible from lowest to highest in the Beloved's humanity. "Extrinsic" and "intrinsic" participation in divine glory explains the Ascension's proto-trinitarian and incarnational thinking. Since a respiration of glory, participation in divinity, defines and nourishes every righteous intelligence, both angelic and human, the Beloved's humanity embodies highest glory so naturally that it accords as perfectly with what it means to be human as with what it means to be God.
The Odes of Solomon, an early Christian collection of hymns preserved largely in Syriac, constitute an important yet underutilized witness to Christological reflection at the turn of the first and second centuries. This article re-examines the Christology of the Odes by situating them within Jewish Wisdom traditions and assessing their relationship to the Johannine Prologue and other early Christian texts. Against interpretations that read the Odes as expressing an orthodox Logos Christology, a quasi-Docetic view, or early Gnostic speculation, I argue that they articulate a distinctly Human Christology, centred on the exaltation of a righteous human Messiah. Apparent motifs of pre-existence and heavenly provenance are shown to arise from sapiential categories-especially Wisdom and Word-rather than from ontological claims about a pre-existent divine person. In the Odes, the "Word" denotes God's revelatory activity, closely associated with Wisdom, while the Son functions as its vessel and mediator; the Son pre-exists only in the foreknowledge and purpose of God. By clarifying the conceptual relationship between Word, Wisdom, and Son, this study illuminates an early form of Christology that precedes later hypostatic developments and offers fresh perspective on the interpretation of the Johannine Prologue and the Christology of Ignatius.
The Letter of Mordecai to Alexander the Great is a philosophical and theological treatise in the form of a pseudepigraphic letter preserved in manuscripts of the Latin J3 recension of the Alexander Romance beginning in the fourteenth century CE and in German, Italian, and French vernacular translations beginning in the fifteenth century CE. Following a brief introduction to the letter, this article presents for the first time both the Latin text (following the edition of Karl Steffens) and a new English translation. Merging scriptural and philosophical idiom, the letter positions Mordecai the Jew, a biblical figure known from the book of Esther for wise and challenging counsel and diplomatic acumen in the context of foreign imperial rule, as teacher to the Macedonian king Alexander the Great. The letter's intricate and metaphor-rich arguments pertain to epistemology, monotheism, cosmology, anthropology, and eschatology. The letter's relationship to biblical traditions and its inclusion within the Alexander Romance exhibit creative interplay of genres and discursive frames. The letter's provenance remains a matter of debate, with proposals ranging from ancient Jewish-Hellenistic origins to later Christian authorship, reflecting rich intertextual, intellectual, and cultural intersections across multiple traditions.
This article examines an early Armenian parabiblical text concerning Noah preserved in manuscript M2679 (981 CE), the oldest surviving paper manuscript in Armenian. The text provides a distinctive interpretation of the biblical name-midrash on Noah found in Genesis 5:29, demonstrating how Armenian exegetical traditions both preserved and transformed biblical source material. In addition to presenting a comparative analysis of the Armenian text and its reading of its biblical source, this study reveals significant hermeneutical aspects of early medieval Armenian biblical interpretation.
The Enoch and Petrine compositions - the Gospel of Peter and the Apocalypse of Peter - are partly thematically linked in Codex Panopolitanus (also known as the Akhmim Fragment), from Upper Egypt. The so-called 'duplicate' extract from the Greek Book of the Watchers in the papyrus codex is the subject of debate among scholars regarding its significance, background and textual history. This study considers whether the involvement of two scribes and the presence of a duplicate extract in the Enoch composition reflect Second Temple Jewish scribal practices. By comparing some scribal traditions found in the Nash Papyrus and Qumran corpus, it is proposed that the beginnings and endings in the Enoch sections are harmonised with similar themes in the Petrine corpus. It is also suggested that the unusual binding of the Apocalypse of Peter, which is placed upside down and back-to-front in the codex, is intentional. This research is important for understanding how Jewish and Christian groups developed and adapted apocalyptic literature and for an insight into scribal and book-binding practices for noncanonical use in late antiquity.
One of the major sources in 1 Enoch 6-11, a narrative strand focusing on the rebellious angel Asael, emphasizes the culpability of human women in the transmission of illicit knowledge. While scholars have long noted that this narrative strand develops concepts found in Genesis 4, the polemic against women as transmitters of dangerous ideas draws from a long-unnoticed aspect of the Genesis material that has been obscured through the latter's redaction into the Pentateuch. The Pentateuchal redactor introduced a secondary gloss at the end of Gen 4:1, rendering Eve's comment on Cain's birth as a comment on YHWH's involvement. In the absence of this secondary addition, an earlier form of Genesis 4 emerges where Eve alone takes credit for "creating" Cain, whose descendants continue to "create" human culture as an affront to YHWH's divine intentions. This earlier version of Genesis 4 likely emerged during the reign of King Hezekiah, and survived in oral tradition beyond the redaction of the Pentateuch down to the days of the authors of the Asael strand. This carries implications for dating the Asael strand's compositional origins and the use of oral traditions in the literary compositions of Second Temple scribes.
The biblical story of Queen Esther rescuing ancient Persia's Jewish population from annihilation has proven to be a pliable resource in competitions over power and place in contexts beyond the book's murky origins in Jewish antiquity. In fact, Esther has figured frequently in public discourse in the modern United States. In this article, I use the optic of "scripturalization," drawing on Vincent Wimbush's theorization, to argue that Esther has become a flexible American scripture, bound up in modern U.S. discourses of law and moral order, freedom and rights, and patriotism and civic responsibility. While many American Esthers have been activated over the life of the nation, this article focuses on two in particular-that of abolitionist Angelina Grimk & eacute; in the 1830s and that of a 2024 white paper entitled "Project Esther" from the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation-to show how Esther has been constructed variously to regulate gendered speech, produce racialized paradigms of national belonging, and intervene in policy debates about immigration, education, and U.S. support for Israel. Insisting that Esther's story as scripture is continually constituted, the article models an approach that moves beyond moralizing paradigms of "use" and "misuse" when it comes to tracing histories of scriptural production.
Solomon's legacy has been shaped by two major loves in his life: his love for wisdom (1 Kgs 3:1-15) and his love for women (1 Kgs 11:1-9; cf. Song of Songs). The dual passions have generated polarizing interpretations of his character in the history of reception: the former one draws him closer to God, while the latter drives him away from God. The Wisdom of Solomon, however, reinterprets the two seemingly contradictory impulses, bringing reconciliation of the competing loves of Solomon through erotic metaphors and love language within the wisdom tradition. In this paper, I argue that the Wisdom of Solomon reframes Solomon from an unfaithful lover to a devoted one by presenting Lady Wisdom as both a divine gift and a woman figure of desire. Through an analysis of biblical and Second Temple texts, including those depicting Solomon's relationship with real women and personified Lady Wisdom, I demonstrate how Wisdom of Solomon transforms Solomon's earthly passions into a singular and sacred devotion. This reconciliation, in turn, provides a significant lens through which to view the characterization of Solomon as a lover.
This article reexamines Matthew 27:19b, the dream of Pilate's wife, in light of both ancient dream traditions and Matthean Christology. While often overlooked in scholarly discussions, Pilate's wife's brief appearance in Matthew's Passion narrative offers rich interpretive potential. The study argues that her dream aligns closely with Greco-Roman and Jewish conceptions of divine dreams, marked by divine revelation and emotional distress. Drawing on literary and epigraphic evidence from the ancient Mediterranean world, this article situates Pilate's wife within a broader dreamscape that cuts across gender, class, and religious boundaries. It further contends that Pilate's wife's dream functions theologically within Matthew's Gospel as an extension of the "God-with-us" Christology inaugurated in the infancy narratives. Unlike those earlier dreams delivered by angelic intermediaries, here Jesus himself appears to be the source of the revelation, suggesting his divine presence persists even in suffering and rejection. In this way, the dream not only deepens Matthew's Christological portrait but also invites fresh reflection on divine communication at the narrative's climax.
This article explores the intersection of gender and trauma in the narratives of Judith and Susanna. While these novels focus on threatening situations ranging from cultural assimilation to genocide, scholarship has yet to examine them through the lens of cultural trauma theory. Written during a period of unprecedented globalization and the mingling of various cultures in the pluralistic melting-pot of the Greco-Roman Mediterranean world, Judith and Susanna provide a window into the complex anxieties and concerns Jews faced during this period. This article reads these narratives through the lens of cultural trauma theory and examines how the authors depict women as resilient figures, who overcome threatening situations. Specifically, this article (1) considers the historical context of Judith and Susanna, (2) examines the portrayal of trauma in these female-centered narratives, and (3) explores the role of women as figures of resiliency. This article demonstrates that the authors of Judith and Susanna interweave traumatic experiences into female-centered narratives that depict women as resilient, through their perseverance and faith in the face of danger.
The four earliest extant resurrection narratives record that women find the empty tomb first. This consensus suggests that although the resurrection narratives diminish the roles of women in these scenes, women undisputedly witness the resurrection. The details of women's authority and leadership that remain in the narratives preserve their primacy. Isolating these details reveals a pattern of gendered redaction in the three endings of Mark and the four canonical resurrection narratives that diminishes, obscures, and excises women from these texts. This study rediscovers these women. Buttressed by early Christian art, the details of women's authority and leadership evince new evidence for Historical Jesus reconstructions of these events, the priority of the longer ending of Mark, vestiges of women's leadership in early Christian worship, and a strong affirmation for the reliability of women's witness. Analyzing redaction that erases women reveals that the heroines are in the details. By recovering women's narratives, this article contributes to the study of ancient Jewish and Christian Pseudepigrapha by giving a model of how to recover women's narratives in other literature as well.
In the Wisdom of Solomon, a Jewish writing from the first-century BCE, the "spirit of wisdom" and the personified Wisdom, two concepts well known from the Hebrew Bible, are brought together and developed, partly by the integration of Greek philosophy. Through a reception-historical approach, this study traces intertextual links between the Wisdom of Solomon and earlier Jewish scriptures, and argues that the author of this text also conflates this "personified spirit of Wisdom" with the Angel-of-the-Lord-tradition from the Book of Exodus, with a precedent in Isa 63:9-14, where the Angel of the Presence is identified with the spirit of God. The result is the "Angelomorphic Spirit of Wisdom," a unique development in late Second Temple Jewish pneumatology and an important background to early Christian pneumatology. In this way, this article contributes to research previously done by John R. Levison and Bogdan G. Bucur on the "Angelic Spirit" in Early Judaism and "Angelomorphic Pneumatology" in early Christianity.
The beheading of Holofernes is the most iconic scene in Judith. Since the author of Judith plays loose-and-free with history which renders an ahistorical situation and saturates the novella with inner-biblical echo and allusion, this investigation seeks to determine whether the author of Judith was inspired by Jehu in 2 Kings 10 as a plot-structuring template. There, Jehu beheads King Ahab's seventy sons and places their heads in a basket. The extent to which the beheading motif as well as the context of a tyrannical king and a cultic purge was appropriated for the crafting of Judith is explored. Further, a feminist-postcolonial interpretation of the proposed literary pattern in Judith is proffered. With the female protagonist a cipher for colonized Jewry and the novella as revenge fantasy, Judith is a heroine who is at times similar and dissimilar to Jehu, with both common and diverse objectives. A fusion of biblical-historical and contemporaneous-political intentions are discerned in the book of Judith, through this interpretive lens, and extrapolated.1
Commentators have searched in vain for a Jewish precedent for the 1,000-year length of the Millennium in Revelation 20. There are well-known Jewish parallels for the concept of such an interim eschatological period. Although unrecognized in earlier scholarship, the earliest of these parallels, the Apocalypse of Weeks (1 En. 93:1-10; 91:11-17), also provides the precursor for the 1,000-year length of the Millennium. This conclusion follows from various findings concerning the Apocalypse of Weeks: that the ten shabu'& icirc;n (conventionally, "weeks") have a literal meaning as a heptadic period (one divisible by seven); that each of these ten periods have equal lengths of 490 years; and that the resulting 20-jubilee (980-year) interim eschatological period symbolizes legal recompense and restoration for earlier periods of Israelite history. The additional 20 years in Revelation's Millennium may have resulted simply from the author's approximation or, alternatively, from his use of 50-year rather than 49-year jubilee periods.
One feature of antiquity which can be hard for modern readers to make sense of is ancient three-tier cosmology. This article explores this difficulty and responses to it, focusing particularly on Rudolf Bultmann's articulation of myth and demythologization in relation to the location of heaven in the New Testament. While some scholars suggest that Jewish and Christian writers in the late Second Temple period had already demythologized their cosmology, there is evidence in this literature of cosmological realism with respect to heaven's vertical location "up there." Moreover, scholars sometimes "remythologize" heaven using language of alternative realities, dimensions, or universes. Such language vindicates the importance of myth-making and suggests that demythologization is neither necessary nor sufficient. Further, it suggests that we instinctively reach for language at the edge of our observable cosmos to articulate the transcendence-with-immanence of the location of God's abode.
