Ancient
Jewish letter writing is a neglected topic of research. Lutz Doering’s
new monograph seeks to redress this situation. The author pursues two
major tasks: first, to provide a comprehensive discussion of Jewish
letter writing in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman periods and,
second, to assess the importance of ancient Jewish letter writing for
the emergence and early development of Christian epistolography.
Although individual groups of Jewish letters have been studied before,
the present monograph is the first one to look at Jewish letters
comprehensively across the languages in which they were written and/or
handed down (chiefly Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek). It operates with a
broad concept of "letter” and deals with documentary as well as literary
and embedded letters. The author highlights cross-linguistic
developments, such as the influence of the Greek epistolary form on
Aramaic and Hebrew letters or the non-idiomatic retention of Semitic
"peace” greetings in some letters translated into Greek, which allowed
for these greetings to be charged with new meaning. Doering argues that
such processes were also important for early Christian epistolography.
Thus, Paul engaged creatively with Jewish epistolary formulae. Frequent
address of communities rather than individuals and the quasi-official
setting of many Jewish letters would have provided relevant models when
Paul developed his own epistolary praxis. In addition, the author shows
that the concept of communication with the "Diaspora”, in both
halakhic-administrative and prophetic-apocalyptic Jewish letters, is
adapted by a number of early Christian letters, such as 1 Peter, James,
Acts 15:23-29, and
1 Clement . Ancient Jewish and early
Christian letters also share a concern with group identity and cohesion
that is often supported by salvation-historical motifs. In sum, Lutz
Doering addresses the previously under-researched text-pragmatic
similarities between Jewish and Christian letters.
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