Jewish National Decline and Biblical Figures as Classical Exempla: Moses, Aaron, Joshua, David, and Elisha in De Excidio 5.2.1

Author:

Bay Carson1ORCID

Affiliation:

1. Institut für Judaistik , Universität Bern , 3014 Bern , Switzerland

Abstract

Abstract The fourth century of the Common Era was a period significant for witnessing the effective birth of Christian historiography and the (putatively) definitive separation of ‘Jew’ and ‘Christian’ as distinctive identities. A text emerged, known as Pseudo-Hegesippus or De Excidio Hierosolymitano (On the Destruction of Jerusalem). This text illustrates how Christian historiography and Christian anti-Jewish ideology at that time could engage with the traditions of classical antiquity. In particular, this article argues that Pseudo-Hegesippus deploys figures from the Hebrew Bible in the mode of classical exempla and that it does so within the largely classical conceptual framework of national decline. For Pseudo-Hegesippus, biblical figures presented as classical exempla serve to illustrate the historical decline of the Jews until their effective end in 70 CE (when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple). One passage, De Excidio 5.2.1, and its enlistment of five Hebrew heroes illustrates this point particularly well. The use of exemplarity and the theme of national decline employed there help us appreciate De Excidio as a distinctive contribution to early Christian historiography and anti-Jewish literature in late antiquity; this expands our ability to imagine the ways in which fourth-century Christian authors could conceive of and articulate Jewish history in classical terms.

Funder

Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung

Publisher

Walter de Gruyter GmbH

Reference66 articles.

1. Adler, W. 2008. “Early Christian Historians and Historiography.” In The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, edited by S. A. Harvey, and D. G. Hunter, 584–602. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2. Azoulay, V. 2014. Pericles of Athens, trans. Janet Lloyd. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

3. Balmaceda, C. 2017. Virtus Romana: Politics and Morality in the Roman Historians. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press.

4. Baugh, S. M. 2006. “The Cloud of Witnesses in Hebrews 11.” Westminster Theological Journal 68 (1): 113–32.

5. Bay, C. 2018. “The Bible, the Classics, and the Jews in Pseudo-Hegesippus: A Literary Analysis of the Fourth-Century De Excidio Hierosolymitano 5.2.” PhD diss., Tallahassee, Florida: Florida State University.

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