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«Иосиф и Асенет» И Книга Есфири
A historical, ideological and literary contextualisation of the biblical Apocrypha Joseph and Aseneth (hereafter J&A) can be solved, in particular, by comparison with other books of the Septuagint. Although J&A is a small work, it contains references to 28 of the 39 Hebrew Bible books, so the density of “quotations” and the variety of Septuagint books used in J&A are exceptional. However, if this Apocrypha is similar to other pseudepigrapha regarding the set of biblical books most frequently used in J&A, the interest in the Greek Book of Esther (hereafter Esth.) in J&A is special. Of the 24 references to Esth. in the entire corpus of pseudepigrapha, 16 are in the small J&A. The article attempts to examine the parallels between Esth. and J&A (and of these, the majority fall on the lengthy addition in 4:17, the prayers of Mordechai and Esther) as evidence that Esth. influenced J&A in literary and ideological terms. Based on a comparative analysis of the parallels in J&A and Esth., as well as a consideration of the literary strategy of the author of J&A as a whole, we conclude that he did not just use the language of the Bible but the Bible itself as a literary source, referring to those books and contexts of the Bible that are important for him in literary and ideological terms. The author of J&A plays with and even quotes the Greek version of Esth. However, his work is entirely opposed to Esth., not polemically, like to the Book of Judith, but as another possibility: both books are oriented literarily and theologically on the Josephus story from Genesis and fulfil the same task— to teach “the way of life in the Diaspora”. However, there is a fundamental difference between them: the difference in worldview. The author of J&A proposes that a Jew in a foreign land should not adapt to the life of the local people and rise among them in order to save his people but that he should reveal to the locals the beauty and truth of the biblical faith and thereby convert and save all people, Jews and non-Jews.