A series of historical events forced Israelites to leave Palestine and scatter in the four corners of the ancient world. Soon enough they found themselves living in foreign lands, where people spoke alien languages and performed strange customs. Separated from their home country they had to face a basic question: "how could they maintain their tradition in an environment dominated by outsiders?" This question posed a fundamental problem in the construction of their identity. This problem became particularly sharp in the cultural environment of Hellenistic Egypt. Jews found themselves attracted to the Hellenistic lifestyle and were eager to win the respect of the Greeks by adapting to their ways. Their struggles around this identity renegotiation is evident in a series of texts that scholars call "the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha." In the J-term to Greece, we will read and analyze these texts with an eye to the challenges the modern Greek cultural environment will present to your identity construction.
Course Objective:
- Identify Hellenistic literature and its main themes.
- Acquire a basic working knowledge of the social context of Jews in Diaspora.
- Analyze Hellenistic literature in a way that addresses the social interactions between different groups.
Course Credit:
RELI 330 (course number under department review spring 2010): Between Athens and Jerusalem. R1 (GUR) or RG (GenEd), department credit.