Exclusive Inclusivity: Identity Conflicts Between the Exiles and the People Who Remained (6th-5th Centuries Bce) (The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies)

Rom-Shiloni, Dalit

ISBN 10: 0567661504 / ISBN 13: 9780567661500

Published by T&T Clark, 2015

About this Item

338.

Seller Inventory # 26372246811

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Exclusive Inclusivity: Identity Conflicts Between the Exiles and the People Who Remained (6th-5th Centuries Bce) (The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies)
• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Publication Date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0567661504
• ISBN 13: 9780567661500
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

The sixth and fifth centuries BCE were a time of constant re-identifications within Judean communities, both in exile and in the land; it was a time when Babylonian exilic ideologies captured a central position in Judean (Jewish) history and literature at the expense of silencing the voices of any other Judean communities.

Proceeding from the later biblical evidence to the earlier, from the Persian period sources (Ezra–Nehemiah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Deutero-Isaiah) to the Neo-Babylonian prophecy of Ezekiel and Jeremiah, Exclusive Inclusivity explores the ideological transformations within these writings using the sociological rubric of exclusivity. Social psychology categories of ethnicity and group identity provide the analytical framework to clarify that Ezekiel, the prophet of the Jehoiachin Exiles, was the earliest constructor of these exclusive ideologies. Thus, already from the Neo-Babylonian period, definitions of otherness were being set to shape the self-understanding of each of the post-586 communities, in Judah (Yehud) and in the Babylonian Diaspora, as the exclusive People of God. As each community reidentified itself as the in-group, arguments of otherness were adduced to diregard and delegitimize the sister community. The polemics against “foreigners” in the Persian period literature are the ideological successors to the earlier ideological conflict.

About the Authors

Dalit Rom-Shiloni is Professor of Biblical Studies at Tel-Aviv University, Israel.

Laura Quick is Assistant Professor of Religion and Judaic Studies at Princeton University, USA.

Jacqueline Vayntrub is Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible at Yale University, USA