I set a table before you: The Jewish eschatological character of Aseneth's conversion meal

Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha

Volumn 14, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 63-77

  Lieber, Andrea ^a  

^a DICKINSON COLLEGE   (United States)

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EID: 60950551513     PISSN: 09518207     EISSN: 17455286     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/095182070401400104     Document Type: Article

References (58)

1. The two major editions of the text are those edited by C. Burchard and M. Philonenko, respectively known as the 'long' and 'short' recensions. For a history of scholarship on Joseph and Aseneth, see Randall D. Chesnutt, From Death to Life: Conversion in Joseph andAseneth (JSPSup, 16; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), pp. 20-95
2. Christoph Burchard, 'Joseph and Aseneth: The Present State of Research', in idem, Gesammelte Studien zu Joseph und Aseneth (Studien in Veteris Testamenti pseudepigrapha, 13; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996)
3. Burchard's text is translated with an introduction in Charlesworth's OTP, and, for many recent scholars of the text has been employed as the authoritative version. In addition to Chesnutt, Death to Life, see Gideon Bohak, Joseph and Aseneth and the Jewish Temple in Heliopolis (Early Judaism and its Literature, 10; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996)
4. Richard I. Pervo, 'Aseneth and Her Sisters: Women in Jewish Narrative and in the Greek Novels', in A.J. Levine (ed.), 'Women Like This ': New Perspectives on Jewish Women in the Greco-Roman World (Early Judaism and its Literature, 1; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), pp. 145-60
5. However, for an alternative, see the most recent study of the material in Ross Kraemer, When Aseneth Met Joseph: A Late Antique Tale of the Biblical Patriarch and his Egyptian Wife, Reconsidered (New York; Oxford University Press, 1998)
6. and Angela Standhartinger, Das Frauenbild im Judentum der Hellenistischen Zeit: Ein Beitrag anhand von Joseph und Aseneth ' (Arbeiten zur Geschichte des anktiken Judentums und des Urchristentums, 26; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995). Standhartinger argues that the two recensions actually present two distinct portraits of women in antiquity, and thus were perhaps redacted with different intentions or for different audiences. Both the 'long' and 'short' texts share the centrality of the heavenly meal shared between Aseneth and her angelic visitor. The narrative embellishments of Burchard's text do not effect my reading of this meal and its significance within the novella. The following discussion is based upon the longer text of Burchard; the Greek text is published in Burchard, Gesammelte Studien, and his English translation is found in Charlesworth's OTP
7. Jos. Asen. 8.5-7: 'Joseph said, "It is not fitting for a man who worships God, who will bless with his mouth the living God and eat blessed bread of life and drink a blessed cup of immortality and anoint himself with blessed ointment of incorruptibility to kiss a strange woman who will bless with her mouth dead and dumb idols and eat from their table bread of strangulation and drink from their libation a cup of insidiousness and anoint herself with ointment of destruction. But a man who worships God will kiss his mother and the sister who is born of his mother and the sister who is born of his clan and family and the wife who shares his bed, all of whom bless with their mouths the living God. Likewise, for a woman who worships God it is not fitting to kiss a strange man, because this is an abomination before the Lord God.'"
8. Chesnutt, Death to Life, pp. 97-99. The food one eats determines appropriate boundaries of kinship. See Jos. Asen. 8.5-7
9. Nancy Jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever: Sacrifice, Religion and Paternity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). Jay's work provides an excellent summary of the classical anthropological approaches to sacrifice and kinship studies. Her own work relies heavily on that of Durkheim, and Hubert and Maus
10. Jay, Throughout Your Generations Forever, pp. 18-19
11. A similar point is the focus of Dennis Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist (Minneapolis: Fortress Press 1998), pp. 1-12
12. Karl Georg Kuhn, 'The Lord's Supper and the Communal Meal at Qumran', in K. Stendahl (ed.), The Scrolls and the New Testament (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957), pp. 65-93
13. Howard Clark Kee, 'The Socio-Cultural Setting of Joseph and Aseneth', NTS 29 (1983), pp. 394-413
14. idem, 'The Socio-Religious Setting and Aims of "Joseph and Aseneth"', SBLSP 15 (1976), pp. 183-92
15. Joachim Jeremias, The Eucharistie Words of Jesus (trans. N. Perrin; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966)
16. This view was put forth by Kee, 'Socio-Cultural Setting', pp. 406-408. His work has been criticized as a superficial comparison of the Hellenistic text with certain motifs of merkavah mysticism
17. See Chesnutt, Death to Life, p. 25
18. Gideon Bohak noted the centrality of cultic imagery in the text in his Joseph and Aseneth and the Jewish Temple at Heliopolis. He concluded that the temple-symbolism indicates the text's affiliation with the Oniad temple at Leontopolis, and argued that the mysterious bee/honeycomb scene in Joseph and Aseneth enacts the departure of the Oniad priests from Jerusalem and their building of a rival temple in the Egyptian diaspora. As creative a thesis as this is, it is based upon very thin evidence
19. Exod. 24.9-11 (all biblical translations follow the NJPS version)
20. It is important to note here that Philo is working with the Septuagint version of the biblical text, which translated Hebrew yehezu as ophtheisan tou theou. Hence Philo's reading, 'they appeared in the place of God', rather than the Hebrew, 'they saw God'. Nonetheless, as we will see here, Philo does preserve the tradition that Moses and company 'envisioned' God, and it is this vision which provides the 'food of the soul'. This Septuagint reading, and Philo's failure to note the difference between the literal version of the text and his interpretation, is paralleled in the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible, Exod. 23.17-'Three times in the year all males shall appear (literally, be seen) before (lipnei) the Lord God' - and the various rabbinic sources that read it as a visionary episode. There is much debate over the pointing of this text, and conflicting interpretations appear at various points in rabbinic texts. See Max Kadushin, The Rabbinic Mind (New York: Bloch, 3rd edn, 1972), pp. 239-40
21. Translations from Philo are taken from H. Colson's LCL edition. Manuscript variants are noted where pertinent. Quaestiones et Solutiones in Exodum is extant only in Armenian and Latin translations from the Greek, along with a few Greek fragments
22. This is a basic assumption shared by Philo and Josephus as well as a number of other ancient rabbinic, patristic and pseudepigraphic sources. The underlying idea is that there is no eating in heaven. Rather, angels are sustained by the divine presence in the form of ' spiritual ' food. The need for food is explicitly bodily, and heavenly bodies are sufficently refined so as not to require food. Cf. Gen. R. 18.4; 48
23. Exod. R. 47.4-5
24. Tobit 12.19
25. T. Abr. 15
26. Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 56
27. Did. 9-10
28. Ignatius, Rom. 4
29. Letter to the Smyrneans
30. Also see Goodman, 'Do Angels Eat?', pp. 160-78
31. Werner Jaeger, Paideia; The Ideals of Greek Culture, III (trans. Gilbert Highet; 3 vols.; New York: Oxford University Press, 1963)
32. Note the vivid image of the soul as a furnace for consuming knowledge: 'The soul of him who loves learning and hopes for its consummation [is like] a furnace or oven, because each serves as a vessel wherein is prepared nourishing food, in the one case the food of corruptible meats, in the other that of incorruptible virtues' (Quis Rentm Divinarum Heres 311). Ovens prepare food for the body, the soul prepares virtue as its own nourishment. Several studies have examined Philo's gendered language. See Sharon Lea Mattila, 'Wisdom, Sense Perception, Nature, and Philo's Gender Gradient', HTR 89.2 (1996), pp. 103-29
33. Richard Baer, Philo's Use of the Categories Male and Female (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1970)
34. Judith Romney Wegner, 'The Image of Women in Philo', SBLSP 21 (1982), pp. 551-63
35. Dorothy Sly, 'Philo's Practical Application of dikaiosyne", SBLSP 30 (1991), pp. 298-308
36. This association of Israel with the ish who sees God effects a masculinization of the nation. Several scholars have noted that Philo's use of gendered terms to describe the interplay of the sensible and intelligible worlds reflects a theme common among classical Greek thinkers. In Philo, we find the material world associated with the feminine and the rational faculty which 'tames' the material world of nature associated with a masculine potency. Indeed, Philo's consistent association of Israel, the nation of contemplative vision, with a highly evolved noetic ability, is also a portrayal of the nation as masculine. The ability to contemplate God derives from Israel's ability to order properly the masculine faculty of reason and the feminine faculty of sense. Perhaps this scheme sheds light on the cryptic passage that concludes the Gospel of Thomas: 'Jesus said, "Behold, I shall guide her to make her male, so that she to may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven"' (The Gospel of Thomas 114.2-following the translation in John S. Kloppengerg et al., Q Thomas Reader [Somona, CA: Polebridge Press, 1991], p. 114)
37. Mut. Nom. 259-60
38. The Greek is he theia syn taxis aute, which I believe is better defined in a way that evokes the femininity of the image
39. Geza Vermes, '"He is the Bread": Targum Neofiti Exodus 16.15', Post Biblical Jewish Studies (1975), pp. 139-46
40. All dates for midrashim follow H.L. Strack and G. Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (trans. M. Bockmuehl; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992)
41. Lev. R. 20.10. Translation excerpted from H. Freedman and M. Simon (eds.), Midrash Kabbah, Translated in English with Notes, Glossary and Indices (10 vols.; London: Soncino Press, 1961)
42. For a summary of textual issues and dating, see Strack and Stemberger, Talmud and Midrash, pp. 342-43
43. The Hebrew text can be found in Mordecai Margulies (ed.), Midrash Vayikra Rabhah: A Critical Edition based on Manuscripts and Geniza Fragments with Variants and Notes (2 vols.; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1993)
44. Cf. Pesikta d'Rav Kahana (Buber); Num. R. 2.25
45. Lucretius devoted almost an entire book of his De Rerum Natura to the study of the 'effluences' that form the basis of sensory phenomena, most particularly the sense of sight. In this work, beauty is a physical emanation that radiates and flows in the form of a thin 'membrane' from the body of the beloved into the eye of the beholder. Receiving this efflux of beauty stimulates in the eye of the beholder an appetitive desire that is only satisfied through physical 'possession' of the beloved (De Rerum Natura 4.30-95
46. cf. Plato, Phaedrus 255c). Also compare this excerpt from Achilles Tatius: 'The dinner she provided was sumptuous; she took a portion of the meats set before her, so as to appear to eat, but could swallow nothing of the food; she did nothing but gaze upon me. To lovers there is no delight save in the object of love, which occupies the whole of their soul, and leaves no place in it for the pleasures of the table. The pleasure which comes from vision enters by the eyes and makes its home in the breast; bearing with it ever the image of the beloved, it impresses it upon the mirror of the soul and leaves there its image... I said to her, "How is this? Do you take nothing of the dainties you have yourself provided? You consume no more than those who are painted as eating". [And she replies,] "What costly dish, what wine could be more satisfying to me than the sight of you?" ' (Achilles Tatius 5.13 - following the translation in S. Gaslee's LCL edition)
47. An analogous episode is witnessed in the gnostic novel and its description of the bride/heroine who is rescued from 'the world': 'Secretly her bridegroom fetched it (the word); he presented it to her mouth to make her eat it like food and he applied the word to her eyes as a medicine to make her see with her mind and perceive her kinsmen and learn about her roots, in order that she might cling to her branch from which she had first come forth, in order that she might receive what is hers and renounce matter' (Authoritative Teaching, 22.23-25 [trans. G. MacRae, in James M. Robinson [Gen. ed.], The Nag Hammadi Library in English; Third, Completely Revised Edition [San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988], pp. 304-10)
48. This passage is discussed at length in Madeline Scopello, 'Jewish and Greek Heroines in the Nag Hammadi Library', in Karen L. King [ed.], Images of the Feminine in Gnosticism [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988], pp. 71-90 [74]). Ingesting the 'word' here brings noetic enlightenment. It is interesting to note that the knowledge gained by this heroine is that of her familial connection; she becomes aware of her true kinship
49. Gen. R. 48; here following the text of Midrash Bereshit Rabbah: Critical Edition with Notes and Commentary (ed. Hanokh Albeck; 3 vols.; Jerusalem: Wehrman, 2nd edn, 1965). Translation from Freedman and Simon (eds.), Midrash Kabbah
50. b. Ber. 17a
51. On the issue of reading of lehanot as a feeding metaphor, see Arnold M. Goldberg, Untersuchungen über die Vorstellung von der Schekhinah in der frühen rabbinischen Literatur - Talmud und Midrach (Studia Judaica, 5; Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1969), p. 286, and Ira Chernus, Mysticism in Rabbinic Judaism: Studies in the History of Midrash (Studia Judaiea, 11; Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1982), p. 79 n. 34. The strongest argument for this reading is the midrash itself, which associates the verb with the eating and drinking of the Exodus episode
52. Elliot Wolfson, 'Yeridah la-Merkavah: Typology of Ecstasy and Enthronement in Ancient Jewish Mysticism', in R.A. Herrera (ed.), Mystics of the Book: Themes, Topics and Typologies (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), pp. 13-44
53. E.g. b. B. Bat. 74b-75a
54. See Kenneth William Whitney, Jr, 'Two Strange Beasts: A Study of Traditions Concerning Leviathan and Behemoth in Second Temple and Early Rabbinic Judaism' (dissertation PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1992)
55. Whitney's dissertation (see previous note) hints at theme throughout the work
56. Song R. 1.3.3. Translation excerpted from Freedman and Simon (eds.), Midrash Rabbah. For a summary of textual issues and dating, see Strack and Stemberger, Talmud and Midrash, pp. 342-43
57. Compare Alpha Beta de-Rabbi Akiba, in Adolph Jellinek, Bet ha-Midrash (6 vols.; Jerusalem: Wahrmann Books, 1967), III, pp. 33-34
58. For a summary of textual issues surrounding this late work, see Strack and Stemberger, Talmud and Midrash, pp. 381-82