Images of Joshua: Luận án Tiến sĩ về Xây dựng Ký ức trong Bản sắc Văn hóa

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Signature: _________________________ ______________ Zev Israel Farber Date ii Images of Joshua: The Construction of Memory in Cultural Identities By Zev I. Farber Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Division of Religion Jewish Religious Cultures _______________________ Jacob L. Wright Advisor ________________ ________________ ________________ Carol Bakhos William K. Johnson Committee Member Committee Member Committee Member ________________ ________________ Ed Noort Michael Segal Committee Member Committee Member Accepted: _______________________ Lisa A.

Dean of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies ______________ Date iii Images of Joshua: The Construction of Memory in Cultural Identities By Zev I. Farber Yadin Yadin, YCT Rabbinical School, 2010 Yoreh Yoreh, YCT Rabbinical School, 2006 M., Touro College, 1997 Advisor: Jacob L. An abstract of A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the James T.

Laney School of Graduate Studies of Emory University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Religion, Jewish Religious Cultures 2013 iv Abstract Images of Joshua: The Construction of Memory in Cultural Identities By Zev I. Farber Joshua son of Nun is a heroic and religious figure described at length in the Hebrew Bible and venerated in numerous religious traditions. My dissertation is both a text study and a cultural memory study. As such it tackles reception as well as redaction history, focusing on the use and development of Joshua’s character and how his various images are deployed in the narratives and sacred texts of several religious traditions.

The first two chapters look at Joshua’s portrayal in biblical literature, using both synchronic as well as diachronic methodologies. The first chapter focuses on how Joshua is presented (literary analysis) in the Bible, the second on how his image was crafted from various textual layers and traditions (Überlieferungsgeschichte and redaction/source criticism). The other four chapters focus on the reception history of Joshua as a mytho-historic figure. Chapter three deals with Second Temple and Hellenistic/Early Roman period literature (Ben Sira, Maccabees 1&2, 4 Ezra, Philo, Assumptio Mosis, Biblical Antiquities, the Apocryphon of Joshua, and Josephus), chapter four with the medieval (Arabic) Samaritan Book of Joshua, chapter five with the New Testament and Church Fathers, and chapter six with Rabbinic literature.

One central question drives this dissertation: What is the relationship between a hero and the culture in which he or she is venerated? This question is most poignant when a hero spans multiple cultures and religious traditions. On the one hand, a hero cannot remain a static character if he or she is to appeal to diverse and dynamic communities. On the other hand, a traditional icon must retain some basic features throughout in order to remain recognizable. Using Joshua as a case study, my investigation into this tension demonstrates that the study of a hero figure shared by multiple cultures can assist us in understanding not only the elements that bind certain cultures together but also those that keep them apart.

At the same time, by taking a cross-cultural and multi-disciplinary approach, the dissertation hopes to show how these traditions, while remaining distinct, were in conversation with each other, and subtly shaped each other’s interpretive agenda. v Images of Joshua: The Construction of Memory in Cultural Identities By Zev I. Farber Yadin Yadin, YCT Rabbinical School, 2010 Yoreh Yoreh, YCT Rabbinical School, 2006 M., Touro College, 1997 Advisor: Jacob L. A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the James T.

Laney School of Graduate Studies of Emory University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Religion, Jewish Religious Cultures 2013 vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am thirty six years old and it has been a long journey. First and foremost, I thank my parents for bringing me up with a love of Tanakh, Rabbinic literature, and all things Jewish. My father is a rabbi and my mother a Jewish studies teacher and administrator in Jewish day schools. In a very real sense, I’ve been “doing this” for as long as I can remember; hopefully, after years of training, I do it better now than I did as a child.

My advisor, Jacob Wright, deserves special thanks for convincing me to apply to Emory and for overseeing my progress from the first semester to the final draft of the dissertation. Jacob is the sort of advisor who constantly advises, reads and comments on countless versions of drafts, and is an ever-flowing fountain of new ideas and perspectives. Most importantly, Jacob always responds to emails and queries, and has believed in the project (and the candidate) from beginning to end. I also thank the members of my committee, William (Bill) Gilders and Luke Johnson.

Bill was one of the reasons I was interested in Emory and he does not disappoint. He has a way of getting to the heart of many issues and has more than once extricated me from a tough midrash. Luke was one of the first professors I studied with at Emory. His insights into how religious traditions during the Graeco-Roman period intermesh with one another are a model for young scholars like me who favor interdisciplinary approaches to religious studies.

Due to the wide-ranging nature of my project, my committee “accrued” three outside readers and I am very grateful that they agreed to sit on the committee. Each represents the pinnacle of good scholarship in his or her field, and each represents the style of a different continent and school of thought. I was first introduced to Carol Bakhos’ scholarship by Bill Gilders. Her work on midrash and her comparative studies with Islamic vii literature were influential in my thinking as I planned out the method and scope of this project.

Michael Segal’s work on Jubilees was an eye opener for me and strongly informs how I do (or try to do) historical-critical work on Second Temple literature. I can only hope that, over time, my eye will grow to be as sharp as his. I heard Ed Noort lecture on Joshua in reception history at my first SBL conference (2009) only a few weeks after I turned in my original two-page proto-proposal to do a study like this for my dissertation. I quickly contacted him and he pointed me to a number of articles on the subject (including his own) and kindly invited me to submit a paper proposal for the conference on Joshua at Leuven.

In this sense, Ed Noort can be seen as a kind of “grandfather” for this dissertation, and I am particularly gratified that he agreed to sit on the committee and witness the outcome of this project. I took a long break between my M. and my Ph., but Joshua has remained an interest of mine throughout. For this I would like to thank my M.

advisor from Hebrew University, Mordechai Cogan. His class on Joshua was my first experience with University level Bible study, and since then I have been hooked both on the discipline as well as the book itself. Since my interests were rather unique, and I was one of the first from my course of study to do a dissertation, my preliminary exams were a particular challenge. The exam lists and the exams themselves needed to be tailor made.

I am grateful that Emory faculty was ready and willing to work with me on this, and I thank Jacob Wright for working with me on Bible and method, Bill Gilders for working with me on Rabbinic hermeneutics, Brent Strawn for working with me on religion and theory (a follow up to two classes I took with him which explored some of these issues), and Michael Broyde for working with me on Jewish viii law. Special thanks go to Michael Broyde for bringing me to Atlanta in the first place, for assisting me throughout my stay here, for sharing his wisdom and advice, for mentoring me, and for hiring me indefinitely as a research assistant. This extra job has gone a long way towards allowing me to support myself and my family during my Ph. Emory faculty are top notch and I gained tremendously from their wisdom and teaching.

In addition to the above mentioned faculty, I wish to thank Carol Newsom for teaching me about genre theory, David Peterson for emphasizing the importance of methodological clarity, Joel LeMon for teaching me Ugaritic, Egyptian, and all things grammatical and iconographic, Carl Holladay for his tour of the wonders of the NA27 and his attention to detail, Michael Brown for his guided reading of Romans, and Lewis Ayers and Gail O’Day for introducing me to the world of early Christian biblical interpretation. Additionally, I thank Gay Robins for working with me on Egyptology (always an interest of mine), and Niall Slater for allowing me to sit in on his Homeric reading class. The many colleagues and fellow graduate students I met and befriended over these five years at Emory—in the GDR and outside it—are a tribute to the collegial atmosphere of Emory University and that quality of its education. I look forward to working with these new friends and colleagues, albeit at a distance, over our many future years in academia.

The Tam Institute of Jewish Studies has been instrumental in supporting Jewish Studies in Emory, both morally and financially, and I thank the Institute, its associated faculty and financial backers for this, as well as its user-friendly staff, Mary Jo Duncanson, Toby Ames and Malory Mibab. I also thank the various heads of JRC’s graduate studies during my time here, Michael Berger, Jacob Wright and Don Seeman. Emory requires its Ph. students to do two teaching assistantships and one teaching associateship.

I thank Miriam Udel and Oded Borowski for allowing me to be their teaching ix assistant and David Blumenthal for allowing me to be his teaching associate. The latter had to work with me on my complicated schedule that semester, and I greatly appreciate his flexibility. I learned much about University teaching from all three, and hope to put it to good practice in my career. Emory staff is always ready to assist graduate students in our attempt to navigate the complexities of the program.

I thank Leah Carswell for her work on the many applications for grants that I turned in over the years, some of which actually succeeded. I especially thank Nancy Caro and Pescha Penso for their constantly answering my emails, my questions, and my concerns. Without their help these five years would have been much tenser. The Young Israel of Toco Hills has been a second home to me and my family in our stay in Atlanta and I thank Rabbi Adam Starr and the members of this community for this.

Specifically, I thank a number of friends and supporters who rallied to my aid when I needed a little extra work to make ends meet, and, just maybe, because they genuinely wanted to hear more classes: Marshall and Sheila Cohen, Roy and Arianna Fass, Perry Brickman, Debra Fernhoff, George Gottlieb and Jeremy Sarnat—(I’m sure there are others that I missed). Without your support and interest in my work I would have spent much of my valuable writing time selling coffee. (A shout out to Suzi Brozman as well, who both helps me with editing and drums up support for my classes where she can.