Rewriting Lineage

This article examines Second Temple portrayals of Jacob’s sons born to the slave mothers Bilhah and Zilpah, who in certain texts are cast as morally suspect and genealogically subordinate. It shows how some authors – particularly in Egyptian Jewish contexts – reconfigure these figures as illegitimate, deny them parity, and associate them with disloyalty, and it reads these judgments in light of both the Jewish concept of distinguished descent and the Greek ideal of nobility of birth ( εὐγένεια ). Other traditions, however, seek to recalibrate their maternal origins through genealogical expansion. Rather than reflecting a simple geographic divide, these divergent representations reveal differing ideological orientations within Second Temple Judaism. The article argues that this literary pattern emerges within a broader context shaped by Egyptian ethnographic traditions that portrayed the Jews as a people of servile origin. By restructuring internal genealogical hierarchies, these authors articulate a legitimate collective identity capable of resisting hostile external representations.