The Place of the Court Tales in Early Jewish Literature and the Hebrew Bible.

Literary tales about the lives and vicissitudes of officials serving in the courts of powerful kings are attested throughout the writings of the ancient Near East. Such ‘court tales’ were a popular literary form during the Jewish Second Temple period (515 BCE-70 CE). With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a collection of previously unknown ancient Jewish court tales was discovered, along with others preserved in their original languages. The discovery of these texts has expanded our corpus of extant Jewish court tales. Research on these texts has yet to be systematically integrated into broader analyses of the Jewish court tales. This monograph addresses this desideratum and integrates the court tale evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls into research on the already extant Jewish court tales, with a focus on the themes of punishment, exile, and restoration.

Forthcoming (Bloomsbury, 2026)…