The despoliation of Egypt in pre-rabbinic, rabbinic and patristic traditions /
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This work examines the role played by the biblical motif of the despoliation of Egypt in the understanding Gentiles had of Jews, and how Jews defended themselves, their heroes and their God in the face of anti-Jewish slander. It also examines the manner in which Christians learned from their rabbinic counterparts how to defend Moses and his God against the gnostic challenge. Beginning with Philo and based on haggadic additions, the embarrassment of the episode was 'healed' through allegory and became a critically important biblical justification for the Christian appropriation of the 'Egyptian treasures' of their Greco-Roman cultural heritage. This work describes how Christians borrowed exegetical traditions from rabbis not only to defend their sacred texts against gnostic attacks but to justify their interest in and appropriation of non-Christian philosophy in their theological understandings.
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1 online resource (viii, 305 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 281-298) and indexes. :
9789047433569 :
0920-623X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Jewish ethnic identity and relations in Hellenistic Egypt : with walls of iron? /
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In Jewish Ethnic Identity and Relations in Hellenistic Egypt , Stewart Moore investigates the foundations of common assumptions about ethnicity. To maintain one's identity in a strange land, was it always necessary to band tightly together with one's coethnics? Sociologists and anthropologists who study ethnicity have given us a much wider view of the possible strategies of ethnic maintenance and interaction. The most important facet of Jewish ethnicity in Egypt which emerges from this study is the interaction over the Jewish-Egyptian boundary. Previous scholarship has assumed that this border was a Siegfried Line marked by mutual contempt. Yet Jews, Egyptians and also Greeks interacted in complicated ways in Ptolemaic Egypt, with positive relationships being at least as numerous as negative ones.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004303089 :
1384-2161 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.