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Classicism in Post-exilic Jewish Literature

Sun, December 16, 12:30 to 2:00pm, Seaport Hotel & World Trade Center, Beacon Hill 1 Complex

Abstract

The Babylonian Exile created a distinct cultural matrix for biblical writers by imposing an historical and literary break or rupture between the pre-exilic and post-exilic periods. Thanks to this break, the Davidic kingdom and its successor states, Israel and Judah, came to be seen by post-exilic Jews as constituting their glorious defining past, the literature of which therefore came to be venerated as “classical” – i.e., as culturally authoritative. In the immediate aftermath of this break, exilic biblical writers – Second Isaiah, e.g. – were preoccupied with reacting to and accounting for the Exile. A generation later, however, as the living trauma of exile gradually faded into the mists of time, new literary choices came to present themselves to ancient Jewish writers. Chief among these was the question of their relationship to classical culture; this in two forms. First, of course, was the question of language: Hebrew or Aramaic. Second, and more important for my purposes here, was the question of literary culture: of conventions, TOPOI, etc. Post-exilic writers, that is, needed to position themselves with respect to classical literary culture. More precisely, they needed to choose between resuscitating the classical past – literary “classicism” – and clearing a new, non-classicist path. In order to illustrate this choice, I will analyze two biblical books in relation to classical Israelite literary culture, namely, the Books of Ruth and Esther. Whereas the author of Ruth paid homage to his classical sources, the author of Esther so fully committed to the post-Israelite literary culture developing in the Jewish diaspora that his is the only biblical book that fails to mention “God.” Whereas the Book of Ruth founded its hopes for the future on the classical Davidic past (Ruth 4:17-22) and on the figure of the return from exile (Ruth 1:6), the Book of Esther boldly established a radically non-classical alternative, a future planted firmly in the Persian Empire where the rejected lineage of Saul could once again take root (Esther 2:5).

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