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Exemplarity, Exegesis, & Ethnography: Abraham in Pseudo-Hegesippus as a Test Case for Biblical Reception in Christian Late Antiquity

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Published/Copyright: June 25, 2021

Abstract

Exemplarity, ethnography, and exegesis are three forms of cultural practice well known to the ancient Mediterranean world. The use of role models, the ‘writing’ of peoples, and the interpretation of authoritative writings (i.e. “Scriptures”) were ways in which many authors of Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian antiquity situated themselves and others within history. Here I argue that the biblical patriarch Abraham, as received within the late antique Christian text called Pseudo-Hegesippus (On the Destruction of Jerusalem), provides a quintessential example of these scribal-rhetorical habits in action. The upshot of this study is that key figures like Abraham were integral tools for doing the things that certain interested ancient writers were trying to do, and as such these figures constitute appropriate, even necessary, objects of research for those seeking to understanding ancient Mediterranean texts, authors, and readers.


Corresponding author: Carson Bay, Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute of Jewish Studies, University of Bern, 3014Bern, Switzerland, E-mail:
Article note: SBL-De Gruyter Prize for Biblical Studies and Reception History. This article has been awarded the SBL-De Gruyter Prize for 2020 in the category of Textual Culture and Reception of the Bible. The prize recognizes excellence in the field of reception history, which aims to shed light on the broader horizon of the use and influence of the Bible in a wide variety of academic fields, historical periods, and cultural settings. The Prize Committee and the Editors of JBR offer their congratulations on this achievement.

Funding source: Swiss National Science Foundation

  1. Research funding: Funding for this article was provided in part by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF, Sinergeia Project 180217) as part of the project “Lege Iosephum: Ways of Reading Josephus in the Latin Middle Ages”.

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Published Online: 2021-06-25
Published in Print: 2021-04-27

© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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