Passion, Persecution, and Epiphany in Early Jewish Literature

This volume examines Jewish literature produced from c. 700 B.C.E. to c. 200 C.E. from a socio-theological perspective. In this context, it offers a scholarly attempt to understand how the ancient Jewish psyche dealt with times of extreme turmoil and how Jewish theology altered to meet the challenges experienced.

Introduction 1. Passion, Persecution and Epiphany: the David and Bathsheba Affair According to the LXX, Josephus and the Rabbis 2. Victorious Victims and Prayers for the Deceased: Possible Links Between Conceptual Tension and Progressive Doctrine in 2 Maccabees 12 3. Did the Devastating Persecution and Reforms of Antiochus IV Epiphanes have an Impact on the LXX Version of Proverbs? 4. Passion, Persecution, and the Strategic Discourse of the Body in 2 Maccabees 7 5. Martyrs, Religion and Politics 6. Human and Divine Persecution in the MT and LXX Lamentations 3:52-66 7. Establishing and Maintaining Communal Identity through Food in Times of Persecution: An Interpretation of Daniel 1:8-16" 8.The Death of Antiochus IV Epiphanes In 2 Maccabees 9: Persecution and Epiphany as Dramatic Irony 9. Pathos and the Passions in Josephus's Judaean War 10. Let Us Test Him with Cruelty and with Torture (Wisdom 2:19) 11. Persecution and Epiphany in 2 Maccabees 12. A Battle of Honour! Persecution in 2 Maccabees 7:1-42 as Part of a Post-War Ritual in a Challenge for Honour to Establish Power and Dominion 13. Hellenistic Persecutions of the Samaritans According to Josephus Flavius