Hornung Esther against Joseph’s Backdrop

The Theology and History of an Intertextual Relationship
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-3-11-121683-6
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, Band 553, 160 Seiten

Reihe: Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft

An examination of MT Esther’s relationship to the Joseph story, this study employs recent advances in author-oriented biblical intertextuality to address the debate concerning the religious purpose of the Scroll. While previous scholarship has seen Esther’s divine silence indicating God’s hidden hand, the characters’ or readers’ quiet faiths, or the secular concerns of an ancient Jewish nationalism, key aspects of Esther’s allusive character illustrate how the book purposefully constructs a theology of divine absence. As good-looking Israelites continue to rise in foreign courts to deliver themselves and their people from imminent dangers, the patterns God initiated in the Egyptian past are shown to extend into the Persian present even when the divine remains out of sight. Since this diachronically-oriented analysis suggests this theological interest was developed by Esther’s authors, it engages with Esther’s ancient Greek witnesses to demonstrate that the MT redactors altered an earlier version of the Scroll to position the Hebrew Megillah alongside Joseph’s instructive backdrop. By attending to these historical and interpretive issues, this work thus speaks to both Scroll scholarship and the study of inner-biblical allusions.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hornung, Gabriel Fischer

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Jüdische Studien Geschichte des Judentums
• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Bibelwissenschaften Altes Testament: Exegese, Geschichte

Über Autor(innen)

Gabriel F. Hornung, Trinity College, Hartford, CT, USA.

Gabriel F. Hornung, Trinity College, Hartford, CT, USA.