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This monograph offers the first sustained study of female protagonists as central agents in the construction of Jewish identity in early Jewish narrative literature. Focusing on the Greek texts of Esther, Judith, Susanna, and Aseneth, Fitzgerald demonstrates that these narratives do more than entertain—they participate in complex discourses about what it meant to be Jewish in the Greco-Roman world.

Drawing on literary-critical and gender-informed approaches, this monograph examines four key dimensions of identity—foodways, sexuality, kinship, and community—to illustrate how Jewish authors used female characters to negotiate cultural boundaries and articulate forms of belonging. Rather than treating women as marginal or merely symbolic figures, Fitzgerald argues that these protagonists function as primary sites through which Jewish authors imagined, contested, and maintained Jewishness in literary texts.

By situating these texts within their broader Greco-Roman and Second Temple contexts, the book challenges longstanding assumptions about the androcentric nature of Jewish identity formation. It demonstrates that narratives centered on women are not peripheral to discussions of Jewishness but are essential to understanding its diversity and fluidity in antiquity.

Engaging critically with major scholarship on Jewish identity, diaspora, and ancient gender systems, Women in Greco-Roman Jewish Novels bridges the gap between studies of Jewishness and gender in antiquity. It offers a new framework for reading early Jewish literature—one that takes seriously the literary construction of women and the interpretive possibilities these figures open for reconstructing ancient Jewish thought.

This book will be of interest to scholars and students of early Judaism, biblical studies, gender studies, and ancient Mediterranean literature.

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