Lawrence Wills's Ancient Jewish Novels

An issue of Forward out this week has a chatty review of Lawrence M. Wills (ed. and translator), Ancient Jewish Novels: An Anthology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003):

Something Old: A Collection of Ancient Novels Plumbs Antiquity and Proselytizes for Piety

Reviewer is Mark Jay Mirsky. He's clearly enjoyed reading Joseph and Aseneth in particular and comments

Joseph's eccentric romance with his Egyptian bride, who merits only a single line in the text of the Bible, echoes the Book of Ruth in its themes of conversion to Judaism and steadfast loyalty. "Joseph and Aseneth," however, is almost parody. The elements of exaggeration in Aseneth's conversion and Joseph's exalted status remove these characters from any realistic world and set them in a ritualized one of operatic melodrama — far from the austere riddles of the Book of Ruth, which continues to fascinate contemporary novelists, such as Cynthia Ozick. Does this in part explain why "Joseph and Aseneth" and several sister narratives were excluded by the redactors who established the rabbinic canon?

Answer: no, not even in part.

Update: previously blogged in Paleojudaica.