Bibliography
| Title: The Invisible Presence: Josephus's Retelling of Ruth Secondary Title: JSPE.S 32 Pages: 104-171 Type: Generic Year: 1998 Abstract: "Paget, James Carleton in: BJGS 25 (1999/00) 20: Gregory Sterling's contribution, the most lengthy in the volume, looks at Josephus' presentation of the story of Ruth, showing in what ways Josephus has sought to interpret the story and the extent to which he interacts with other versions. Septuagintal, targumic, Qumranic. // Feldman Louis Harry in: OTA 22,1 (1999) 139: Josephus found several aspects of the biblical story of Ruth unnecessary on stylistic grounds: duplications, nonessential observations, inexplicable details, and the extensive use of direct speech. Other aspects of the biblical version were removed because they conflicted with the historian's perspective. The most obvious difference between his understanding of narrative and that of the Bible is his sense of unity; he subsumed the story into the larger frame of the Antiquities. Josephus develops his characters more than does the original story by introducing psychological motivations, which, in turn, create more drama. His concern for the reader is developed in a more profound way through his moralizing and theologizing of the text, namely through commendation of virtue, assignment of gender roles, and emphasis on the thesis that G-d rewards the righteous in spectacular ways. The fact that he retells a relatively unimportant Ruth episode as carefully as he does leads to the presumption that he is careful in his retelling of Scripture until proven otherwise. He underscores in a provocative way the central ""theology"" of Ruth, the invisible presence of G-d, though only in non-spectacular ways. An appendix presents five text-forms of the Ruth story (Masoretic, four fragmentary manuscripts from Qumran, the Septuagint, Josephus, and an Aramaic targum) in synoptic fashion." Keywords: Antiquities |