Esther against Joseph’s Backdrop: the theology and history of an intertextual relationship

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 han...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Hornung, Gabriel F. (Author)
Corporate Author: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG
Format: Print Book
Language:English
Subito Delivery Service: Order now.
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
WorldCat: WorldCat
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: Berlin Boston De Gruyter [2024]
In: Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (volume 553)
Year: 2024
Series/Journal:Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft volume 553
Online Access: Unbekannt (Verlag)
Parallel Edition:Erscheint auch als: 9783111216836
Erscheint auch als: 9783111216119
Description
Summary: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.
Physical Description:viii, 152 Seiten, 23 cm x 16 cm
ISBN:3111214133