Alexandrian Judaism Research Articles

Renderings of paronymous infinitive constructions in OG Exodus and implications for defining the character of the translation

This article gives insight into the world of 3rd century BCE Alexandrian Judaism by analysing one aspect of the Greek translation of Exodus and provides a detailed evaluation of the way the translator managed to express the essence of the Hebrew text of Exodus while reflecting to some degree the form of the Hebrew text. No previous study only analyses this translator’s treatment of Hebrew paronymous infinitive absolute constructions in Greek Exodus. This research contributes to the preparation of a commentary on Greek Exodus in the Society of Biblical Literature Septuagint Commentary Series. Using the Göttingen text of Greek Exodus prepared by John William Wevers, it evaluates how this translator rendered each occurrence of a paronymous infinitive absolute construction in Hebrew Exodus, defining the primary modes employed and also seeking to explain variations from these norms. The primary method incorporates a close exegetical reading of both the Hebrew and Greek texts and comparing their texts, in order to discern how the translator treated this Hebrew idiom and illustrating his translation approach.Contribution: The results contribute to our understanding of how the translator of Greek Exodus approached his task. He was more concerned to express the sense of the Hebrew text, than producing a literal translation. He generally follows the Hebrew text’s word order, but is creative in his choice of Greek equivalents, often showing sensitivity to context and Greek idiom. This translation approach differentiates this translator’s approach somewhat from those responsible for other portions of the Pentateuch.

De Atenas a Jerusalén. La creación del mundo en Filón de Alejandría

El objetivo del presente artículo es trazar un recorrido por las principales líneas de la cosmología de Filón de Alejandría tal y como ésta se manifiesta en su obra De Opificio Mundi. Dicha obra es exponente de la síntesis que lleva a cabo el autor entre judaísmo alejandrino y algunas corrientes filosóficas del helenismo tardío. Por eso, estudiar la concepción que de la creación del mundo tiene Filón es estudiar sus influencias filosóficas y religiosas, pero es asimismo estudiar las innovaciones que el alejandrino propone en sus escritos y que suponen un importante paso hacia delante en el camino hacia la formulación de la doctrina de la creatio ex nihilo.

WHAT HAS ALEXANDRIA TO DO WITH JERUSALEM? WRITING THE HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

ABSTRACTHistories of the Jews are a fundamental and polemical aspect of Christian and especially Protestant historiography in the nineteenth century. This article considers, in their context, the five most popular and influential multi-volume histories published in Britain, namely those of Henry Hart Milman, Heinrich Ewald, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Ernest Renan (the one significant – lapsed – Catholic historian in the tradition), and Emil Schürer. It shows how each of these major historians constructs an opposition between Alexandrian Judaism and Palestinian Judaism, a hierarchical opposition which denigrated Alexandrian Judaism as a betrayal or corruption of true religion because it depended on an assimilation of Jewishness and Greekness. The opposition of Greek and Jew was fundamental to nineteenth-century thought for a high intellectual tradition (most famously embodied in Matthew Arnold's categories of Hebraism and Hellenism). The Alexandrian Jews become for these historians an icon of a dangerous hybridity – despite the fact that the Septuagint, the Alexandrian Greek Bible, was the Bible of early Christianity. The article considers the different strategies adopted by these historians in response to this constructed opposition of Jerusalem and Alexandria, and its continuing implications for the historiography of the Hellenistic world.

A Jewish Critique of Christianity from Second-Century Alexandria: Revisiting the Jew Mentioned in Contra Celsum

This article proposes to read all the fragments that Origen identified as belonging to the section of “Celsus’s Jew” in The True Doctrine as deriving from a written document composed by an Alexandrian Jew in the mid-second century. The author of these fragments emerges as an educated and highly scholarly writer with an Alexandrian background, who was alarmed by the situation of the Jewish community following a significant spread of Christianity, which was accompanied by separatist theology. The anonymous Jewish author thus produced the first literary critique of the Gospels, which is of significant value for our understanding of the “parting of the ways.” Moreover, I suggest that these fragments should be interpreted in light of both earlier forms of Alexandrian Judaism as well as the Letter of Barnabas.

New Light on the Nebiim from Alexandria: A Chronography to Replace the Deuteronomistic History

If the periodization of Israel’s past was worked out by the composer of the Deuteronomistic History already in the sixth century BCE, is it not strange that we have to wait until Ben Sira to find the earliest mention of the Joshua—Kings succession? The four-century gap between the work of DtrH and Ben Sira begs for an explanation. In the wake of the present trend of challenging the validity of the Deuteronomistic History hypothesis, this article reviews the evidence offered by Ben Sira. Identifying the scope of the gloss at the end of Sira 49 leads to understand the Praise of the fathers (Sira 44—49) as a theological commentary of the books of the Nebiim, a collection recently put together when Sira wrote his Wisdom. The Nebiim constituted a rival collection to the first ever Jewish Chronography crafted barely a century earlier for the Alexandria library to provide Hellenistic historians with sources pertaining to Jewish past. On the basis of Nina Collins’ ground-breaking study of the Letter of Aristeas, the opposition between the Chronography and the Nebiim is understood as a reflection of the tensions between the Library and the Jews at the time of the translation of the Torah. The point is that the initiative for translation and canonization Hebrew literature always originated from Hellenistic scholars, and that the Jews were reacting to it. The Alexandrian Canon hypothesis thus needs to be revived, albeit in a modified form, despite the conclusions reached 40 years ago by Albert Sundberg. Even Josephus, who had a low opinion of the LXX, based his list of thirteen prophetic books on the Alexandrian Chronography, transmitted by the LXX’s Historica (Joshua—Esther). In reaction to the Chronography, Alexandrian Judaism created the Nebiim, retaining the first part of the Alexandrian Chronography (minus Ruth) while adding the Prophetic books proper. Whereas Demetrius the Chronographer or the school to which he belonged is likely to have produced the Chronography, Ben Sira, who migrated to Egypt with the Ptolemaic elite of Jerusalem after the battle of Panion could have been involved in the formation of the Nebiim. His grandson translated his grandfather’s Wisdom once the Nebiim were officially canonized by the Hasmonaeans. A three-century shift is therefore required for the organization of the Joshua—Kings succession, which means that the periodization of Israel’s past belongs to the last stage of the formation of the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings, and not to the onset of their growth. Alexandria is restored in its position as the leading centre for canonizing ANE literature.

“Wisdom Among the Perfect:” Creation Traditions in Alexandrian Judaism and Corinthian Christianity

L'A. s'interesse a la genese des traditions en prenant l'exemple de celle qui s'est elaboree dans le judaisme alexandrin et de celle du le christianisme corinthien. Il tient a montrer l'influence de la premiere dans l'elaboration de la seconde, notamment dans le cadre du corpus paulinien