Novellas

Chapter one introduces the Jewish novellas of the Apocrypha: Esther in its Greek form, Tobit, Judith, and the additions to Daniel: Susanna, Prayer of Azariah and Song of the Three, and Bel and the Dragon. Third Maccabees, although written like a history, is also included here since it is more of a novella than a history. The superficial similarity between histories and novellas, in fact, reveals part of the method of the novella: what seems at first like a prose narrative of real events was actually likely fiction and intended as entertainment. Similarities to the court narrative genre and to the somewhat later Greek novels are also noted. Other Jewish and non-Jewish texts, not part of the Apocrypha, are also compared, such as the later Joseph and Aseneth, Tales of the Persian Court and Prayer of Nabonidus from Qumran, satires such as Testament of Abraham, novelistic histories such as Artapanus’s On Moses, Tobiad Romance and Royal Family of Adiabene from Josephus’s Antiquities, and from outside Judaism, Story of Ahikar, Alexander Romance, Ninus Romance, and Life of Aesop.