Ezekiel’s Exagoge and the Politics of Hellenistic Theatre

Abstract

The debate over the Jewish, Greek, or mixed social settings of Ezekiel’s Exagoge often focuses on whether the play was intended for performance in a Greek theatre. Consequently, much scholarship has attempted to define the play’s import to a reconstructed audience. This effort, while fruitful, has distracted scholars from the ways that this tragedy resonated with the broader parameters and ramifications of theatre culture in its particular social context. Our paper redirects the discussion by parsing the ways that the Exagoge engages with the theatre culture of Ptolemaic Alexandria. Literary and epigraphic evidence reveals that Hellenistic performance culture, no less than its Classical forebears, was markedly political. Festivals, including the penteteric Ptolemaieia in Alexandria, were an important means for communicating the ideology of the Hellenistic royal dynasties. Drawing on Catherine Bell’s understanding of “redemptive hegemony” as the way that human practices simultaneously convey an understanding of power relations in society and a vision for strategic empowerment, we interrogate the ways that the Exagoge both affirms and critiques Ptolemaic politics by invoking the same performative setting usually exploited as a means of royal acclamation.