In all this the Hellenic element prevails, readily recognizable, even stereotypical, for any reader conversant with Greek philosophy and rhetoric in the age of the Second Sophistic. Indeed, the treatise refrains from theology, and it alludes only vaguely to any precepts or practices that could be identified as Jewish. The term “Judaism” appears just once in the text, and “Hebrews” also just once, apart from references to Hebrew as a language spoken by characters in the story. The author does state that Antiochus sought to have the people renounce their “Judaism” and take up a “Greek form of life,” and he refers to an epitaph that praises the martyrs for resisting the tyrant who had resolved to destroy the polity of “the Hebrews” (4 Macc. 4.26, 8.7–8, 17.9–10). But the treatise shows little interest in pitting Hellenism against Judaism. 4 Maccabees does not depict an ideological war. The focus is on philosophical principles that are thoroughly Greek, rather than on matters of religion.
Yet the author engaged in no pretense or disguise. His heritage stands out unequivocally. The story dwelled on the Maccabean martyrs, not on abstract theory. We may not be able to identify precise Greek texts on which the author drew for his philosophic ideas. But we do know that he employed the tale of the origins of the Maccabean rebellion as found in 2 Maccabees, although he rewrote it for his own purposes, giving little space to the historical background recounted by 2 Maccabees, while dwelling at length upon and significantly expanding the narrative of the martyrdoms. And, although he avoided depicting a clash of cultures or religions, he injected a feature that left no doubt about the special piety of his people. The “reason” (λογισμὸς) to which the text repeatedly refers is frequently accompanied by the adjective εὐσεβὴς (e.g., 4 Macc. 1.1, 6.31, 7.16, 8.1, 13.1, 16.1, 18.2). Thus, “devout reason,” a coinage of the author, is the driving force of the treatise. And reference to piety, εὐσεβεία, occurs throughout as prime motif and motivation for the actions of the characters (e.g., 5.38, 6.22, 7.3–4, 12.11, 13.7–8, 15.1–3). Although the particulars of the author’s religion are not spelled out, the fundamental principle, that adherence to the Law, that is, Mosaic law, inspires the steadfastness of its believers, dominates the work (e.g., 1.17, 2.5–6, 3.20, 5.16–36, 6.18–21, 7.7, 9.1–4, 11.27, 15.8–10). Further, the author appeals regularly to the exemplars of his nation’s past, the figures of the Bible, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, Daniel, and others (2.2–3, 2.17–19, 3.6–16, 7.19, 13.9, 13.17, 15.28, 16.3, 16.20–22, 18.10–19). Most notably, the text describes Eleazer as “philosopher of the divine life” and as advocate of “divine philosophy” (7.7, 7.9). The wise and courageous man who masters his own passions is the philosopher who lives in accord with the rule of philosophy—and has trust in God. Control of the passions comes through reverence for God (7.21–23). The author, in effect, equates true philosophy with the faith of his fathers.
4 Maccabees holds enduring interest as a document of Jewish intellectual engagement with the cultural world of the Greeks. How best to characterize that engagement poses a challenging task. The aim has been described as “wrapping its (Jewish) message in attractive philosophic garb” (Barclay 1996, 379). That formulation may not have it quite right. The philosophic garb is the author’s own. His familiarity with currents of philosophy and rhetoric swirling in the world of the Second Sophistic suggests a writer thoroughly at home in that world, not one who needed to borrow its accouterments for an artificial construct. He conceived his work as a “most philosophical one” (4 Macc. 1.1). Its lessons would be conveyed in the form and style in which he had been trained through the Hellenic paideia of his diaspora community. 4 Maccabees was no mere façade, nor was it a piece of apologetic literature designed to justify the ways of Jews to Gentiles. The mode of expression was deeply ingrained. But so also was the religious conviction that underlay it. The blend of the two may not always have been easy. Stoic logismos was transformed into a “devout logismos.” The exercise of reason became equivalent to obedience to the Law. The four cardinal virtues were appropriated, but Jewish piety held center stage. Laudatory rhetoric celebrated heroic deeds, but the praise went to murdered martyrs rather than military heroes. Ultimate authority—and triumph—rested not with tyrants and despots but with the God-given Law.
PSEUDO-PHOCYLIDES
A very different text in a very different genre speaks to a very similar issue: the expression of Jewish precepts in the language, culture, and modalities of Hellenism. The Greek gnomic poet Phocylides dates to the sixth century BCE, in the archaic age of Hellenic literature. His reputation in subsequent generations was high and impressive. Yet only a few fragments of his writings survive, an unfortunate, probably quite a significant, loss. What we do have, however, is a poem of 230 lines in dactylic hexameters attributed to Phocylides but composed probably half a millennium or more later. And this set of verses was written by a Jew.
No firm date can be fixed. The text contains a number of words unattested prior to the first century BCE. And parallels with Stoic writings of the early imperial era, like those of Musonius Rufus and Seneca, offer a clue that might put it in the first century CE (Derron 1986, lxi–lxvi; van der Horst 1978, 81–83). Further precision eludes us. But the poem likely falls somewhere in the era inhabited by Philo and the author of 4 Maccabees. And it serves further to illustrate Jewish adaptation to the wider world of the Second Sophistic.
The work raises a number of fascinating questions. If one digs below the surface, certain tell-tale signs identify it unmistakably as a Jewish composition. Yet there are few signs of Judaism that could be detected by the most determined researcher, and even fewer by any contemporary. The author appears to have covered his tracks. To what purpose? Why produce a work in a palpably Greek mode, ascribe it to a well-known Greek poet, but use it to convey Jewish thinking? Was this an elaborate disguise or a charade? Whom was the author seeking to fool, and why? Did the poem represent an effort to bring Jewish ideas to the attention of a wider Greco-Roman world? Or did the reverse hold, a demonstration that the ways of that world impinged productively upon Jewish consciousness?
The work conventionally carries the designation of The Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides. That label alludes to the form, a series of sententiae or statements, set in verse, delivering moral maxims or aphorisms, a genre known in Greek as gnomai. Gnomic poetry, brief and pithy sayings for the edification or education of the readership, had its origin in archaic Greece, with Hesiod, Theognis—and Phocylides. The reputation of the last in antiquity made him a logical figure to whom to attach the work that we possess (van der Horst 1978, 60–63). There is little doubt, however, that the author is a Jew. Parallels in Septuagint pronouncements can readily be found. Although many are generic and not exclusively tied to Jewish precepts, others have a specificity that is hard to dismiss. So, for example, the opening lines of the text, admonishing readers to refrain from adultery, murder, theft, falsehoods, or covetousness of others’ property, while honoring God and parents, plainly paraphrase parts of the Decalogue (Ps.-Phoc. 3–8; Exod. 20:12–14). In similar fashion, the author’s stress on concern for the poor and the laborer, on charity to the needy, and on philanthropy by the fortunate echoes biblical pronouncements (Ps.-Phoc. 10, 19, 22–29; Deut. 24:14–15; Isa. 58:7; Prov. 3:27–28). So also does the noble injunction to hold strangers as equal to citizens (Ps.-Phoc. 39–41; Exod. 23:9; Lev. 19:34, 24:22). More tellingly still, the author’s reference to the physical resurrection of the dead, a concept quite foreign to Greco-Roman thought, has a direct predecessor in the Book of Daniel (Ps.-Phoc. 103–104; Dan. 12:22–23). Scholars have rightly pointed to many other parallels (Thomas 1992, 161–179; van der Horst 1978, 65; Wilson 2005, 17–19).
The connection can be reinforced. Overlappings exist between Pseudo-Phocylides’s remarks on sexual behavior, condemnation of homosexuality, marriage practices, and attitudes toward the elderly and the poor, on the one hand, and those expressed by Philo and Josephus in their summaries of Jewish law on the other (Joseph
. Ap. 2.190–219; Philo Hyp. 7.1–9; Wilson 2005, 19–22). The correspondence can occur even in the smallest detail, as in the case of the prohibition against taking the mother bird from her nest (Ps.-Phoc. 84–85; Philo Hyp. 7.9; Jos. Ap. 2.213). Whether or not all three drew on the same source, the Jewish inspiration for the pronouncements is undeniable. The form itself of the work, the staccato-like delivery of maxims and lessons for behavior, readily recalls the Book of Proverbs, as well as the second-century BCE Jewish writer of ethical and practical counsel Ben Sira. The whole tradition of Jewish Wisdom literature lies in the background. In addition to Proverbs and Ben Sira, Kohelet deserves mention, and the Wisdom of Solomon also contains comparable adages and aphorisms in a text that may be approximately contemporary with Pseudo-Phocylides. God himself gains repeated mention. He is the one god, wise and powerful, judge of the wicked, scourge of the perjurer, provider of prosperity, the bestower of reason, whose spirit and image are granted to mortals, and who is to be honored first above all (Ps.-Phoc. 8, 11, 17, 29, 54, 106, 128).
All that said, however, the poem hardly wears its Judaism on its sleeve. The name of Israel appears nowhere in the text, and the distinguishing characteristics of Jews that were most familiar to pagans, such as circumcision, dietary laws, observance of the Sabbath, and prohibition of idolatry, go altogether without mention. It causes little surprise that the ascription to Phocylides himself went unquestioned not only in antiquity but until the late sixteenth century. The piece plainly had close affinities with the Greek gnomological tradition. Precedents exist in Hesiod’s Works and Days, in Theognis, Isocrates, Menander, and elsewhere in Greek literature. The authors provided ethical and practical advice, with didactic objectives, in some instances perhaps deliberately designed for pedagogical purposes. Gnomic poetry enjoyed a vogue in the Hellenistic period, employed most notably by the Cynics, embraced also by other philosophers, and used by a range of other authors. Gnomic sayings generated wide enough interest even to prompt collections and anthologies, a veritable industry of gnomologia (Derron 1986, vii–xxxi; Thomas 1992, 287–313; Wilson 1994, 18–33). Philosophic, especially Stoic, teachings can be found among the Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides. The praise of moderation, self-restraint, resistance to pride, anger, or excess of any sort take prominence in the treatise (Ps.-Phoc. 36, 53, 57, 59–64, 76, 118, 122).
The Sentences fall within a well-established Greek tradition of supplying wise counsel for the instruction of its constituencies. Resonance occurs in a text conveniently reflective of the Second Sophistic. Dio Chrysostom’s third oration on monarchy, directed probably to the emperor Trajan, expounds on the qualities and principles desirable in a ruler and offers generous advice on how that ruler should comport himself. The counsel provided by Dio includes embrace of the familiar virtues of courage, self-restraint, and justice, only taken to a higher level since the king must serve as a model for his subjects. A shepherd to his flock, the monarch takes full responsibility for their welfare and security, exercising sound judgment, scorning flattery and false glorification, preferring duty to self-indulgence, adhering to law, and following the guidance of the divine (Dio Chrys. Or. 3, passim). In that company, pagan readers would have found the Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides a recognizable parallel. The Jewish roots of the text would have been difficult to detect.
How then should one understand the aims of the Sentences? Did Pseudo-Phocylides address himself to a gentile readership, suppressing his Jewishness, presenting his principles as entirely consistent with pagan philosophical and ethical teachings, and thus seeking to secure a welcome place for Jews within the larger Greco-Roman society? Or was his audience a Jewish one, the intellectual elite who enjoyed a Greek paideia but needed assurance that they could participate in the broader culture because the precepts of the Torah were consonant with Hellenic tenets? Or did he have an intermediate segment in mind, the “god-fearers,” that category of gentiles who were sympathetic to and shared many practices and beliefs of the Jews, without seeking full conversion? Or did the text express a form of universalizing Judaism, symbolized by the donning of a gentile mask? (Cf. Barclay 1996, 343–346; Collins 2000, 173–174; Derron 1986, xxxviii–li; Thomas 1992, 231–235, 352–361; van der Horst 1978, 70–76; 1988, 3–30). None of the suggestions has compelling force. If the author endeavored to win Jewish acceptance by gentile society because of the correspondence of their doctrines or concepts, why present them in strictly Greek guise and attribute them to a celebrated Greek writer? There would be little point in covering up his Jewishness if he wished to exhibit its consonance with Hellenism. An appeal to fellow-Jews makes more sense if he hoped to reassure them that they could fully embrace Greco-Roman culture without deviating from their own traditions. Yet the message would seem to be over-subtle and too indistinct for readers to catch the meaning when Torah teachings take on pagan trappings, Jewish practices are nowhere in sight, and the author of the tract has the persona of an ancient Greek gnomic poet. As for the “god-fearers,” we have only the haziest sense of their mind-set, we know little or nothing of their aspirations, and we have no reason to believe that they took any interest in this form of literature. A resort to their membership as either authors or audience is a mere stab in the dark.
A different approach might be salutary. Pseudo-Phocylides need not have been on a mission at all. The composition of a gnomic poem places him as part of a literary tradition. By the age of the Second Sophistic, Jewish intellectuals had long since been participants in a shared culture, without needing to calculate a balance of Hellenism and Judaism or consciously brewing a cultural blend. The Jewish author worked within the known genre of the didactic poem, possessing a deep familiarity with both Jewish Wisdom literature and Hellenic gnomic poetry. The mix may well have been ingrained for generations in the circles of the Jewish intelligentsia. It did not require a deliberate scheme to win over gentiles or comfort Jews. The Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides embodies the unselfconsciousness of Jewish participation in Greco-Roman intellectual culture.
Why then the application of a pseudonym, and recourse to a renowned writer dating to many centuries earlier? Was it camouflage or deception? One might consider instead a simpler answer: the name was chosen because it exemplified a master of the genre. The real author perhaps indulged in a bit of whimsy.
JOSEPH AND ASENETH
Yet another genre serves as illuminating instance of Jewish interaction with Greek literature in the age of the Roman Empire. The “novel” had its heyday in that era, a literary type difficult to define, somewhat easier to illustrate. Labels and categories are inevitably artificial, requiring repeated exceptions, modification, and reformulation. The ancients themselves had no word for “novel,” a disconcerting fact that needs to be borne in mind. But we do like to think that we know one when we see one. The novel, in general, takes form as a piece of prose fiction that narrates an entertaining and/or edifying tale that can also communicate values, ideas, and guidance. In antiquity, the standard examples normally cited fall somewhere in the period of the first through the fourth centuries CE, though none can be dated with any precision. The extant Greek novels of that period are ascribed to Chariton, Xenophon of Ephesus, Achilles Tatius, Longus, and Heliodorus (see chapters 25–27 in this volume). Two celebrated Latin novels, by Petronius and Apuleius, much influenced by Greek models, serve also as prime exemplars of the category (for Apuleius, see chapter 22). It held favor over an extensive stretch of time and not only possessed appeal in the realm of “popular culture,” often transmitted orally, but also possessed subtleties and complexities, while assuming knowledge of earlier literature and intellectual traditions that could appeal to more sophisticated audiences.
Ancients may not have had a name for the genre. But certain common features among these works (even if those features are occasionally parodied) do suggest a pattern that readers came to expect and found welcome: the separation of lovers, their adventures or misadventures, whether kidnapping, shipwrecks, or the amorous designs
of third parties, and eventual reuniting with a happy ending. The repeated motifs, themes, and narrative techniques give a unity to the genre, without inhibiting the great variety and diversity in which they were expressed (Anderson 1984; Goldhill 2008, 185–200; Hägg 1983; Reardon 1991; Whitmarsh 2008, 1–14).
One Jewish “romance” falls recognizably within the umbrella of these prose narratives. It evidently partook of their popularity in the age of the Roman Empire. Joseph and Aseneth shares a number of features with the other novels. Among them, alas, is deep uncertainty as to its provenance and date. The story takes place in ancient Egypt, unsurprisingly so, since Joseph is a principal figure, but that need not be a clue to its place of composition. And the work has been situated anywhere from the Ptolemaic period to Late Antiquity, although most scholars put it in the first or second century CE (Chesnutt 1995, 80–85; Collins 2000, 104–110; Humphrey 2000, 28–37; Kraemer 1998, 225–244). In any case, it belongs in the company of the extant Greek and Latin novels, whether as imitation or model. They thrived in a common intellectual atmosphere.
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