¹ Quoted in Deleuze, Gilles, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1987) 124Google Scholar.

² Tertullian Praescr. haer. 7.

³ For a concise summary of the different positions, see Herr, Moshe, “Hellenismus and the Jews of Palestine,” Eshkolot, n.s., 2–3 (1978) 20–27 [Hebrew]Google Scholar.

⁴ Safrai, Zeev, “The Roman Army in the Galilee,” in Levine, Lee I., ed.. The Galilee in Late Antiquity (New York: JTSA, 1992) 105Google Scholar. Safrai remarks that from the second to the fourth centuries, Judea contained 25,000 soldiers or 8 percent of the Roman forces, thus making it the greatest concentration of Roman troops in any province of its size. Of course the army was a considerable consumer of services and supplies and an important medium of cultural exchange. See b. Šabbat 145b for the frequent visits of the army to Tiberias and Sepphoris.

⁵ “R. Levi bar Hita went to Caesarea. He heard them reading the shema in Greek” (v. Sola 21b).

⁶ y. Maéaśer Š. 55d. Archaeologists relate that the theater in Sepphoris had a seating capacity of 5,000. See Weiss, Zeev, “Roman Leisure Culture and Its Influence on the Jews of Palestine,” Qadmoniyot 28 (1995) 2–19 [Hebrew]Google Scholar; and Boatwright, Mary T., “Theaters in the Roman Empire,” BA 53 (1990) 185Google Scholar.

⁷ See Herr, , “Hellenismus,” and idem, “External Influences on the World of the Sages in Palestine—Acceptance and Rejection,” in Kaplan, Yosef and Stern, Menahem, eds., Acculturation and Assimilation (Jerusalem: Merkaz Shazar, 1989) 83–106 and the literature recorded thereGoogle Scholar.

⁸ See the encyclopedic works of Elimelech Halevi; Herr, “External Influences,” 85 n. 8. Cohen, Shaye (“The Beauty of Flora and the Beauty of Sarai,” Helios, n.s., 5 [1981] 41–53)Google Scholar examines literary influences of Greek love poetry which can already be noticed in the Genesis Apocryphon of the first century BCE.

⁹ See Fischel, Henry A., Rabbinic Literature and Greco-Roman Philosophy (Leiden: Brill. 1974); idem, “Story and History: Observations on Greco-Roman Rhetoric and Pharisaism,” in idem, ed., Essays in Greco-Roman and Related Talmudic Literature (New York: Ktav, 1977) 443–72Google Scholar; and Braun, Martin, History and Romance in Graeco-Oriental Literature (Oxford: Blackwell 1939)Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Lieberman, Saul, Studies in Palestinian Talmudic Literature (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1991) 433Google Scholar.

¹¹ Lieberman, Saul, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1962) 105Google Scholar.

¹² Wolfson, (Philo [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1947] 92)Google Scholar has remarked that “in the entire Greek vocabulary that is embodied in the Midrash, Mishnah, and Talmud there is not a single technical philosophic term.” See also Lieberman, Saul, “How Much Greek in Jewish Palestine?” Texts and Studies (New York: Ktav, 1974) 222Google Scholar.

¹³ m. Yad. 4.6; y. Sank. 28a; b. Hul. 60b; Midrash Tehilim 1.8 (Buber, p. 9); see Lieberman, Hellenism, 105.

¹⁴ Origen, Cels. 2.34 (trans. Chadwick, Henry; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980) 94Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Gafni, Isaiah M., “The World of the Talmud: From the Mishnah to the Arab Conquest,” in Shanks, Hershel, ed., Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism (Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1992) 233Google Scholar; see also Hengel, Martin, Judaism and Hellenism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974)Google Scholar; and Bickerman, Elias J., The Jews in the Greek Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Hirshman, Marc, “The Greek Fathers and the Aggada on Ecclesiastes: Formats of Exegesis in Late Antiquity,” HUCA 59 (1988) 138Google Scholar.

¹⁷ This distinction raises interesting questions regarding the redactional history of rabbinic literature which have yet to be suitably addressed.

¹⁸ Lieberman, “How Much Greek?” 224; Herr, “Hellenismus,” 25; and idem, “External Influences,” 85. See also Douglas Edwards's summary: “Any suggestion that the Galilee was isolated from its gentile neighbors either locally or internationally … is not borne out by the ceramic or numismatic evidence.… A wide range of people, not just the upper class and not just in the coastal areas, was influenced by Greek language and culture” (“The Socio-Economic and Cultural Ethos of the Lower Galilee in the First Century,” in Levine, The Galilee, 62,71).

¹⁹ I have followed the version of MS Parma De Rossi 1400. This midrash has been transmitted in two different recensions. I shall provide differences in the other branch using MS Cambridge 495. I want to thank Paul Mandel for generously providing me with the variants.

²⁰ MS Cambridge 495: Zadok.

²¹ MS Cambridge 495: a youth.

²² MS Cambridge 495: put them; the reading of MS Parma De Rossi 1400 is unclear here.

²³ MS Cambridge 495: She answered, “Should I not cry that the daughter of a high priest has gone and wed a slave?”

²⁴ MS Cambridge 495: Zadok the priest.

²⁵ MS Cambridge 495: He said, “And where did you used to live?” She answered, “In the upper quarter.” He said, “And what mark was on your house?” She answered, “Such and such.”

²⁶ MS Cambridge 495: “I would uncover him and kiss him.”

²⁷ MS Cambridge 495: him.

²⁸ MS Cambridge 495: He exposed himself.

²⁹ Lam. R. 1.46.

³⁰ The redactional context further strengthens this orientation.

³¹ I refer to the corpus exemplified by such works as Chariton Chaereas and Callirhoe (first century CE); Xenophon of Ephesus Ephesiaca (second century CE); Achilles Tatius Leucippe and Clitophon (late second century CE); Longus Daphnis and Chloe (end of second century CE); Heliodorus Aethiopica (third to fourth century CE); Apollonius King of Tyre (third century CE). All quotations are taken from Reardon, Bryan P., Collected Ancient Greek Novels (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

³² Morgan, John R., “Introduction,” in Morgan, John and Stoneman, Richard, eds., Greek Fiction: The Greek Novel in Context (London: Routledge, 1994) 2.Google Scholar See also Konstan's (Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related Genre [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994] 14) definition: “A young couple in love, of extraordinary beauty, are plunged by a hostile fate into various adventures and dangers, until, in the end, for the most part after a rather long separation, they are united in a stable, faithful love for a life that is henceforth unchangingly happy.”

³³ Even the fact that the protagonists are brother and sister has precedents in the extant romances. This motif appears in the late Clement Romance (fourth century CE) which recounts the separation and reunion of two brothers. So also The Story of Apollonius King of Tyre (third century CE) describes the travails of a father and his daughter.

³⁴ Julian Epistulae 89b (301B): “We must eschew the fictions reported in the shape of history by earlier writers, love themes and all that sort of stuff.”

³⁵ Sinfield, Alan, Literature, Politics, and Culture in Postwar Britain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989) 2Google Scholar.

³⁶ Bakhtin, Mikhail M. and Medvedev, Pavel M., The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985) 133Google Scholar.

³⁷ Culler, Jonathan, Structuralist Poetics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975) 135Google Scholar.

³⁸ Jauss, Hans R., “Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory,” in Cohen, Ralph, ed., New Directions in Literary History (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974) 23Google Scholar.

³⁹ Ruiz-Montero, C., “The Structural Pattern in the Ancient Greek Romances and the Morphology of the Folktale of V. Propp,” Fabula 22 (1981) 228–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁰ For example, see Petronius Satyricon. On the development of this genre and its tendency to borrow and incorporate themes and motifs from other genres, see Hagg, Tomas, The Novel in Antiquity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983) 161, 171Google Scholar; Reardon, Bryan P., The Form of Greek Romance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991) 127Google Scholar; Morgan, “Introduction,” 1–14; Holzberg, Niklas, The Ancient Novel (London: Routledge, 1995)Google Scholar.

⁴¹ This popularity in no way characterizes the actual audiences. As Egger, Brigitte remarks (“Women and Marriage in Greek Novels,” in Tatum, James, ed.. The Search for the Ancient Novel [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994] 362Google Scholar), it is “now generally accepted that the novelists were well-read, educated men of literary aspirations-theories of juvenile, trivial, uncultivated, or frivolous writers (and readers) have become obsolete.” See also Ewen Bowie, “The Readership of Greek Novels in the Ancient World,” in Tatum, Search, 435–59. For a different view of the popularity of the romances, see Susan A. Stephens, “Who Read Ancient Novels?” in Tatum, Search, 405–18.

⁴² The narrative of R. Akiva and his wife (b. Ned. 50a), as recognized and analyzed by Boyarin, Daniel, Carnal Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) 136Google Scholar, is but one example. See also Friedman's, Shamma interesting suggestion (“The Primacy of Tosefta in Mishnah-Tosefta Parallels,” Tarbiz 62 [1993] 328Google Scholar [Hebrew]) concerning the halakhah that forbids reading secular texts (חזםוידה ידםש) on shabbat (t. Šabbat 13.1). He speculates that these may be secular Hellenistic texts. West, Stephanie (“Joseph and Asenath: A Neglected Greek Romance,” Classical Quarterly 24 [1974] 70–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar) has posited the influence of the romance literature on Joseph and Asenath. For a summary of prerabbinic influence, see Lawrence Wills, “The Jewish Novellas,” in Morgan and Stoneman, Greek Fiction, 223. Stern, David noted (The Parables in Midrash [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991] 245Google Scholar) in passing the similarity of this tale with the romance form.

⁴³ For example, Boyarin has shown how the Akiva romance was appropriated in order to placate deep-seated ideological tensions. It can be added to his sensitive analysis that the incorporation of the New Comedy motif of parental and class conflict served the needs of legitimizing the house of study as the spiritual home and nexus of society. For a similar effect, see the story of R. Eliezer in BR 41.1, 398. On these themes, see Konstan, David, Roman Comedy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983)Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Hasan-Rokem, Galit, “The Ideological and Psychological Codes,” Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 3 (1983) 135 [Hebrew]Google Scholar. It is precisely in regard to the effects of the generic horizon of expectations that I differ from Hasan-Rokem. Though we vary in our perspectives, I am much indebted to Professor Hasan-Rokem's insightful and innovative article, as well as her generous comments.

⁴⁵ See, for example The Story of Apollonius King of Tyre (33.758) where the princessheroine is bought by a pimp but succeeds in keeping her virginity until reunited with her father.

⁴⁶ Lev 18:9; m. Yebamot 4.13; m. Qidd. 3.12.

⁴⁷ John J. Winkler, “The Invention of Romance,” in Tatum, Search, 28.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 36.

⁴⁹ Bakhtin, Mikhail, The Dialogic Imagination (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981) 105Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ As Aristotle has remarked, anagnorisis may be brought about by “memory when the sight of some object awakens a feeling, as in seeing a picture” (Poet. 16.5 [trans. S. H. Butcher; New York: Dover, 1951] 57). For an identical motif of a birthmark on an arm see Heliodorus Aethiopica 10.569. This theme appears in almost all of the extant Greek novels. See An Ephesian Tale 10.167; Daphnis and Chloe 21.341; Aethiopica 12–13.567; The Story of Appolonius King of Tyre AA.ldl, and the well-known scene from Homer Odyssey 19. See also the satirical treatment of this theme in Petronius Satyricon 105. As Hasan-Rokem (“The Ideological Codes,” 135) has pointed out, Aristotle considered this type of recognition as one of the “least artistic forms” (Aristotle Poet. 16.1–3).

⁵¹ Cave, Terence, Recognitions (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988) 1Google Scholar.

⁵² This narrative occlusion lends support to Wills's insight (The Jewish Novel in the Ancient World [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994] 13) that in the Jewish literature that adopted the generic conventions of the romance “the women do not so much move onto stage as take total possession of it. Even where there are other male characters, the dramatic tension is focused on the heroine, she is the medium through which certain obsessions of the author and audience are expressed.”

⁵³ Konstan, Sexual Symmetry; idem, “Xenophon of Ephesus,” in Morgan and Stoneman, Greek Fiction, 53.

⁵⁴ Konstan, Sexual Symmetry, 97.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 25; Konstan, “Xenophon of Ephesus,” 50.

⁵⁶ An Ephesian Tale 2.1; Reardon, Collected Novels, 139.

⁵⁷ Ibid.

⁵⁸ Konstan, Sexual Symmetry, 48.

⁵⁹ Hagg, The Novel in Antiquity, 104.

⁶⁰ Ibid., 89; Holzberg, The Ancient Novel, 30.

⁶¹ Morgan, “Introduction,” 3; Reardon, Form of Greek Romance, 172.

⁶² Perry, Ben E., The Ancient Romances (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967) 48Google Scholar. See also the description of Bakhtin: “All moments of this infinite adventure-time are controlled by one force—chance” (The Dialogic Imagination, 94).

⁶³ Reardon, Form of Greek Romance, 172.

⁶⁴ Judith Perkins, “Representation in Greek Saints' Lives,” in Morgan and Stoneman, Greek Fiction, 258–59; Frye, Northrop, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957) 167Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ Perkins, “Representation,” 262; Elliott, Alison G., Roads to Paradise: Reading the Lives of the Early Saints (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1987) 42–76Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ Brown, Peter, The Body and Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988) 155Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ Terry Comito, “Exile and Return in the Greek Romances,” Arion, n.s., 2 (1975) 66.

⁶⁸ Morgan, “Introduction,” 3.

⁶⁹ Konstan, Roman Comedy, 24; Zeitlin, Froma I., “The Poetics of Eros: Nature, Art, and Imitation in Longus' Daphnis and Chloe,” in Halperin, David, Winkler, John, and Zeitlin, Froma, eds.. Before Sexuality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) 419Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, 101.

⁷¹ Ibid., 106.

⁷² Ibid., 105.

⁷³ Lam 1:16.

⁷⁴ The exposition of the narrative up until the first verse (Joel 4:4) is in Hebrew, the remainder is in Aramaic. This seems to indicate that this section circulated as an independent unit.

⁷⁵ “Every genre depends on a conventional set of ways of framing a location, a semiotic space within which particular objects (texts) can be made to mean something.… A text is recognizable as of a particular type in so far as it lends itself to certain framing operations that locate it vis-à-vis other types of texts” (Reid, Ian, “Genre and Framing,” Poetics 17 [1988] 28, 34CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

⁷⁶ Maclean, Marie, Narrative as Performance (London: Routledge, 1988) 45Google Scholar.

⁷⁷ Ibid., 46.

⁷⁸ Winkler, John J., Auctor & Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apuleius's Golden Ass (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985) 123Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ Daniel L. Selden, “Genre of Genre,” in Tatum, Search, 49–50.

⁸⁰ Frye, Northrop, Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976) 107Google Scholar. So Chaereas and Callirhoe, An Ephesian Tale, Leucippe and Clitophon, Daphnis and Chloe, Ethiopica, and The Ass—all conclude with an offering of thanks to the gods who have preserved the good fortune of the protagonists.