The Power of Personality
Exemplarity, Racial Alterity, & Abraham/Moses Stereotypes in Greco-Roman & Judeo-Christian Antiquity
Abstract
Abraham and Moses were perhaps the only two figures that non-Jewish authors of the ancient Mediterranean world would have known about and would have associated with the Jews (or Judeans). The Roman world in particular cared a great deal about famous ancestral paradigms – what they called exempla – and the ancient world writ large had a habit of correlating the defining characteristics of particular exempla and particular peoples. Thus Carthaginians, like Hannibal, were seen as perfidious and Romans, like Scipio, were understood to be brave and impassive. This essay explores a similar dynamic wherein exemplarity and racial (and/or ethnic/national) stereotypes coalesced in Greco-Roman presentations of Abraham and/or Moses as embodiments of Jewish traits. It argues that Greek and Roman authors tended to impute to Abraham and Moses a particular theurgic, magical essence, and that this came to be a stereotype used to categorize the Jewish people. By putting this discourse in the frame of symbolic or cultural power, this article seeks to contribute to our understanding of how exemplarity, the rhetoric of race, and discursive constructions of identity and alterity could function in Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian antiquity.
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Braund, Susanna Morton, trans. and ed. Juvenal and Persius. Loeb Classical Library 91. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.
Buell, Denise Kimber. Why this New Race? Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
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Cook, John Granger. The Interpretation of the Old Testament in Greco-Roman Paganism. Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 23. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004.
Derks, Belle, Daan Scheepers, and Naomi Ellemers, eds. Neuroscience of Prejudice and Intergroup Relations. New York: Psychology Press, 2013.
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Rackham, H., trans and ed. Pliny: Natural History, Volume I – Books 1-2. Loeb Classical Library 330. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938.
Riess, Ernst. “Pliny and Magic.” The American Journal of Philology 17.1 (1896): 77–83.
Roller, Matthew B. Models from the Past in Roman Culture: A World of Exempla. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. New York: Penguin, 1995 [1978].
Schäfer, Peter. Judeophobia: Attitudes Toward the Jews in the Ancient World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Schapera, Jason. “A Pirkei Avot for Tu Bishvat.” Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion Library Blog. February 3, 2020. Accessed October 4, 2021. http://huc.edu/research/libraries/blog/2020/02/03/pirkei-avot-tu-bishvat
Schott, Jeremy. Eusebius of Caesarea: The History of the Church – A New Translation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019.
Schwartz, Eduard, Theodor Mommsen, and Friedhelm Winkelmann, eds. Eusebius Werke: Zweiter Band, Erster Teil – Die Kirchengeschichte. Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte, Neue Folge, 6.1. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1999.
Scrofani, Giorgio. “‘Like the Green Herb’: Julian’s Understanding of Purity and His Attitude Towards Judaism in Contra Galilaeos.” Journal for Late Antique Religion and Culture 2 (2008): 1–16.
Stangor, Charles. Principles of Social Psychology: 1st International Edition. British Columbia: Open Textbook Project, 2014. (https://opentextbc.ca/socialpsychology/)
Stern, Menahem. Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism. 3 Volumes. FARJS. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences & Humanities, 1974.
Swartz, Michael D. The Mechanics of Providence: The Workings of Ancient Jewish Magic and Mysticism. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 172. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018.
Trachtenberg, Joshua. Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion. Philadelphia: The University Pennsylvania Press, 2004 [1939].
White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in 19th-Century Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014 [1973].
Williams, Margaret. “Abraham in Contemporary Greek and Latin Authors.” In Abraham in Jewish and Early Christian Literature, ed. Sean A. Adams and Zanne Domoney-Lyttle, 168–182. Library of Second Temple Studies 93. London: T&T Clark, 2019.
Wimmer, Andreas. Ethnic Boundary Making: Institutions, Power, Networks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Wright, Wilmer C., trans. and ed. Julian: Letters – Epigrams – Against the Galileans – Fragments. Loeb Classical Library 157. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1923.
Bay, Carson. “Religion, Ethnicity, and the Fashioning of Egyptian Identity in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica.” Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities 44 (2018): 71–95.
Bell, Sinclair, and Inge Lyse Hansen, eds. Role Models in the Roman World: Identity and Assimilation. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2008.
Bloch, René. “Moses and the Charlatans: On the Charge of γόης καὶ ἀπατεών in Contra Apionem 2.145, 161.” In Ancient Jewish Diaspora: Essays on Hellenism, 39–54. Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 206. Leiden: Brill, 2022.
Bloch, René. “Mose und die Scharlatane: Zum Vorwurf γόης καὶ ἀπατεῶν in Josephus, Contra Apionem 2.145–161.” In Internationales Josephus-Kolloquium Bruxelles 1998, ed. Folker Siegert and Jürgen U. Kalms, 142–157. Münsteraner Judaistische Studien 4. Münster: LIT Verlag, 1999.
Bohak, Gideon. Ancient Jewish Magic: A History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Pascalian Meditations. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
Braund, Susanna Morton, trans. and ed. Juvenal and Persius. Loeb Classical Library 91. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004.
Buell, Denise Kimber. Why this New Race? Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
Carstens, Pernille, and Niels Peter Lemche. The Reception and Remembrance of Abraham. Perspectives on Hebrew Scriptures and Its Contexts 13. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2011.
Cook, John Granger. The Interpretation of the Old Testament in Greco-Roman Paganism. Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 23. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004.
Derks, Belle, Daan Scheepers, and Naomi Ellemers, eds. Neuroscience of Prejudice and Intergroup Relations. New York: Psychology Press, 2013.
Edmonds, Radcliffe G. “And You Will Be Amazed: The Rhetoric of Authority in the Greek Magical Papyri.” Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 21–22.1 (2020): 29–49.
Esler, Philip Francis. Conflict and Identity in Romans: The Social Setting of Paul’s Letter. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003.
Finkelstein, Ari. Specter of the Jews: Emperor Julian and the Rhetoric of Ethnicity in Syrian Antioch. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018.
Frankfurter, David. Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic. Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 189. Leiden: Brill, 2019.
Gager, John G. Moses in Greco-Roman Paganism. Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series 16. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1972.
Gero, Stephen. “The Enigma of the Magician Lotapes (Pliny, Naturalis Historia XXX, 11),” Journal for the Study of Judaism 27.3 (1996): 304¬–23.
Harari, Yuval. Jewish Magic before the Rise of Kabbalah. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2017.
Hartog, François. The Mirror of Herodotus: The Representation of the Other in the Writing of History. Translated by Janey Lloyd. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.
Harvey, Graham. The True Israel: Uses of the Names Jew, Hebrew, and Israel in Ancient Jewish & Early Christian Literature. Leiden: Brill, 2001.
Haslam, S. Alexander. Psychology in Organizations: The Social Identity Approach. London: Sage, 2001.
Horwitz, Murray, and Jacob M. Rabbie. “Stereotypes of Groups, Group Members, and Individuals in Categories: A Differential Analysis.” In Stereotyping and Prejudice: Changing Conceptions, ed. Daniel Bar-Tal, Carl F. Graumann, Arie W. Kruglanski, and Wolfgang Stroebe, 105–129. New Yori: Springer, 1989.
Isaac, Benjamin. The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Johnson, Aaron. Ethnicity and Argument in Eusebius’s Praeparatio Evangelica. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Jones, Christopher P, trans. and ed. Apuleius: Apologia – Florida – De Deo Socratis. Loeb Classical Library 534. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017.
Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.
Langlands, Rebecca. Exemplary Ethics in Ancient Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Levinson, Joshua. “The Travels and Travails of Abraham.” In Jews and Journeys: Travel and the Performance of Jewish Identity, ed. Joshua Levinson and Orit Bashkin, 29–45. Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021.
Mann, Michael. The Sources of Social Power, Volume 1: A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760. New Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Najman, Hindy. Seconding Sinai: The Development of Mosaic Discourse in Second Temple Judaism. Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 77. Leiden: Brill, 2003.
Rackham, H., trans and ed. Pliny: Natural History, Volume I – Books 1-2. Loeb Classical Library 330. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1938.
Riess, Ernst. “Pliny and Magic.” The American Journal of Philology 17.1 (1896): 77–83.
Roller, Matthew B. Models from the Past in Roman Culture: A World of Exempla. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. New York: Penguin, 1995 [1978].
Schäfer, Peter. Judeophobia: Attitudes Toward the Jews in the Ancient World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Schapera, Jason. “A Pirkei Avot for Tu Bishvat.” Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion Library Blog. February 3, 2020. Accessed October 4, 2021. http://huc.edu/research/libraries/blog/2020/02/03/pirkei-avot-tu-bishvat
Schott, Jeremy. Eusebius of Caesarea: The History of the Church – A New Translation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019.
Schwartz, Eduard, Theodor Mommsen, and Friedhelm Winkelmann, eds. Eusebius Werke: Zweiter Band, Erster Teil – Die Kirchengeschichte. Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte, Neue Folge, 6.1. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1999.
Scrofani, Giorgio. “‘Like the Green Herb’: Julian’s Understanding of Purity and His Attitude Towards Judaism in Contra Galilaeos.” Journal for Late Antique Religion and Culture 2 (2008): 1–16.
Stangor, Charles. Principles of Social Psychology: 1st International Edition. British Columbia: Open Textbook Project, 2014. (https://opentextbc.ca/socialpsychology/)
Stern, Menahem. Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism. 3 Volumes. FARJS. Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences & Humanities, 1974.
Swartz, Michael D. The Mechanics of Providence: The Workings of Ancient Jewish Magic and Mysticism. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 172. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018.
Trachtenberg, Joshua. Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion. Philadelphia: The University Pennsylvania Press, 2004 [1939].
White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in 19th-Century Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014 [1973].
Williams, Margaret. “Abraham in Contemporary Greek and Latin Authors.” In Abraham in Jewish and Early Christian Literature, ed. Sean A. Adams and Zanne Domoney-Lyttle, 168–182. Library of Second Temple Studies 93. London: T&T Clark, 2019.
Wimmer, Andreas. Ethnic Boundary Making: Institutions, Power, Networks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Wright, Wilmer C., trans. and ed. Julian: Letters – Epigrams – Against the Galileans – Fragments. Loeb Classical Library 157. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1923.
Veröffentlicht
2024-09-12
Zitationsvorschlag
Bay, C. (2024). The Power of Personality: Exemplarity, Racial Alterity, & Abraham/Moses Stereotypes in Greco-Roman & Judeo-Christian Antiquity. Judaica. Neue Digitale Folge, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.36950/jndf.2024.1.15
Ausgabe
Rubrik
Literary Powerplays – Jewish Authors and Power in the Graeco-Roman Period
Lizenz
Copyright (c) 2023 Carson Bay
Dieses Werk steht unter der Lizenz Creative Commons Namensnennung 4.0 International.
