Constructions of Masculinity

Thanks to Holger Szesnat, I am able to present a link to a recent dissertation that also contains a chapter on Philo's work De Josepho: Jessica Lyn Tinklenberg De Vega,
"A Man who Fears God," Constructions of Masculinity in Hellenistic Jewish Interpretations of the Story of Joseph.
(A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Religion in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy; Florida University, 2006).
The dissertation is available in .pdf format here.

The author's own summary of her work runs like this:Hellenistic Jewish interpreters of the Bible often restructured and modified biblical texts in an effort to further their own ideological perspectives. Among the many adaptations they made, these exegetes often sought to transform the familiar stories to better fit or express their own constructs of gender identity. This study attempts to uncover the ideologies of masculinity in three first-century Hellenistic Jewish texts: The Jewish Antiquities of Josephus, Philo’s De Somniis, and the anonymous Joseph and Aseneth. The texts were studied by means of a close reading for the rhetorical structures of each author, particularly noting the ways terminology and literary structures describing maleness are held in opposition to femaleness, and assuming that gender was a culturally constructed (rather than innate or essential) category. In the course of the study, a variety of constructions are confirmed: masculinity as dominance over the self (Josephus), as sexual propriety and non-violence (Joseph and Aseneth), and as avoidance of eunuchism, feminine company, and violating establish hierarchies (Philo). As these three exegetes represent only a small number of those writing at the time, this variety suggests that there may be many more constructions of maleness present in Hellenistic Jewish literature of the era.