Ezekiel’s Exagoge and the drama of intertextuality

Abstract

Ezekiel’s Exagoge is unusual as a Greek tragedy not only because it draws on Biblical rather than mythological subject matter but also because it makes such extensive use of an external source for much of its text: the Septuagint. Although the general concept of a Greek tragedy on a Jewish subject has drawn the attention of many scholars, the literary function of the Exagoge’s close relationship with the LXX text remains comparatively unexplored. In this article, I examine in detail several passages which connect the texts. These reveal that Ezekiel’s use of text from the Septuagint is not a symptom of a lack of poetic ingenuity but rather a deliberate literary choice. The intertextual links engage the audience intellectually by encouraging them to consider the ways in which Ezekiel receives, interprets, and occasionally departs from the Biblical text and its associated exegetical traditions. A comparison of Ezekiel’s poetry with that of the Greek poet Callimachus shows that Ezekiel’s engagement with scholarly, interpretational, and literary questions through the medium of poetry reflects the techniques and interests of the so-called Hellenistic poets, the sophisticated non-Jewish writers of his own age.