Beauty is an unexplored theme in studies of Second Temple Jewish texts. Yet disclosing the aesthetic beauty in literary works has affinities with current methodologies such as reader response criticism and explorations of emotion and affectivity in prose and poetry. Since beauty is in the eye of the beholder, aesthetic analyses enhance the reader’s subjective experience of the text and thereby are capable of reaching an audience beyond that of biblical specialists.

This volume explores Hebrew Scriptures, deuterocanonical texts, and extra-canonical Jewish literature. To disclose the aesthetics in the texts, the 20 essays apply a variety of interpretive methodologies, including literary-critical, cultural-historical, linguistic, and art-historical. Essays will examine beauty in postexilic Hebrew Bible texts, apocryphal/ deuterocanonical writings, and other Second Temple texts such as Qumran. Besides literary aesthetics, the essays will explore the beauty of female figures and the natural world, as well as spiritual beauty. While this volume is intended primarily for scholars in the fields of Second Temple Judaism, early Christianity, and ancient society, it will also be of interest to students in their classrooms.