E T H N I C I T Y

A N D T H E BIBLE
ETHNICITY AND THE BIBLE

EDITED BY

MARK G. BRETT

BRILL ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS, INC.

BOSTON · LEIDEN
2002
E t h n i c i t y a n d t h e Bible / e d i t e d by M a r k G. Brett
p. c m .
O r i g i n a l l y p u b l i s h e d : L e i d e n ; N e w Y o r k : E.J. Brill, 1 9 9 6 , i n s e r i e s : Biblical
interpretation series.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-391-04126-6
1. E t h n o l o g y i n t h e B i b l e . 2 . E t h n i c i t y — B i b l i c a l t e a c h i n g . I. B r e t t , M a r k G.

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Acknowledgments vii
List of Contributors ix

INTRODUCTION

MARK G . BRETT
Interpreting Ethnicity: Method, Hermeneutics, Ethics 3

P A R T I: E T H N I C I T Y IN T H E BIBLE

Hebrew Bible

D I A N A EDELMAN
Ethnicity and Early Israel 25
FRANK CRÜSEMANN
H u m a n Solidarity and Ethnic Identity: Israel's Self-definition
in the Genealogical System of Genesis 57
ROLF RENDTORFF
T h e Gēr in the Priestly Laws of the Pentateuch 77
JONATHAN E . DYCK
T h e Ideology of Identity in Chronicles 89
DANIEL L . SMITH-CHRISTOPHER
Between Ezra and Isaiah: Exclusion, Transformation and
Inclusion of the "Foreigner" in Post-exilic Biblical
Theology 117
JON D . LEVENSON
T h e Universal Horizon of Biblical Particularism 143

New Testament

D A V I D SIM
Christianity and Ethnicity in the Gospel of Matthew 171
JOHN M . G . BARCLAY
'Neither J e w nor Greek': Multiculturalism and the
New Perspective on Paul 197
PHILIP F . ESLER
G r o u p Boundaries and Intergroup Conflict in Galatians:
A New Reading of Gal. 5:13-6:10 215
REINHARD FELDMEIER
T h e 'Nation 5 of Strangers: Social Contempt and its
Theological Interpretation in Ancient Judaism and Early
Christianity 241
WOLFGANG STEGEMANN
Anti-Semitic and Racist Prejudices in Titus 1:10 16 ‫־‬ 271

P A R T II: C U L T U R E A N D INTERPRETATION

Indigenous Peoples

PABLO RICHARD
Biblical Interpretation from the Perspective of Indigenous
Cultures of Latin America (Mayas, Kunas,
and Quechuas) 297
SUSAN HAWLEY
Does G o d Speak Miskitu? T h e Bible and Ethnic Identity
a m o n g the Miskitu of Nicaragua 315
THANZAUVA AND R . L . HNUNI
Ethnicity, Identity and Hermeneutics: An Indian Tribal
Perspective 343
LYNNE HUME
T h e Rainbow Serpent, the Cross, and the Fax Machine:
Australian Aboriginal Responses to the Bible 359

The Politics of Interpretation

D A V I D JOBLING AND CATHERINE ROSE

Reading as a Philistine: T h e Ancient and M o d e r n History
of a Cultural Slur 381
R.S. SuGIRTHARAJAH
Orientalism, Ethnonationalism and Transnationalism:
Shifting Identities and Biblical Interpretation 419
J O H N RICHES
Cultural Bias in European and North American Biblical
Scholarship 431
P1ETER F . CRAFFERT
O n New Testament Interpretation and Ethnocentrism 449
FERNANDO F . SEGOVIA
Racial and Ethnic Minorities in Biblical Studies 469
Index of Authors 493
Index of Biblical References 499
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Patricia M a r r f u r r a and Dominica Katyirr, both of the Merrepen Arts

Aboriginal Corporation, Daly River (Northern Territory, Australia),
kindly gave their consent for the reproduction in this volume of their
paintings "Easter" and "Christ is Born. , ‫י‬
Thanks are due also to the American Jewish Committee for per-
mission to print a revision of J o n D. Levenson's essay " T h e Univer-
sal Horizon of Biblical Particularism, ‫ י י‬first published as a pamphlet
in 1985.
I am very grateful to the members of the editorial board of the
journal Biblical Interpretation who supported this project by contribut-
ing their own work in response to a research proposal which I first
circulated at the end of 1993. O t h e r members of the board offerred
good advice along the way: Yairah Amit, Adela Yarbro Collins,
Norman Gottwald, Jorge Pixley, J o h n Rogerson, Christopher Rowland
and Gerd Theissen. Susan Hawley gave helpful guidance on some of
the relevant anthropological literature, and my introduction has
benefitted from her perceptive critique. Thanks also to the transla-
tors who offerred their services: Alan Moss, David O r t o n , Sharon
Ringe, and Rainer Shack. My own thinking on the subject of ethnicity
has been influenced by all the authors who have contributed to this
volume, but also by a n u m b e r of friends, none of whom can be held
responsible for the particular set of views represented here but all
of whom have in some sense convinced me that this theme should
be an important one in biblical studies: D a n n y Carroll (Guatemala),
Terry Falla (Melbourne), Edea Kidu (Port Moresby), Philip Mosely
(Melbourne), Thevathasan Premarajah (Colombo), Anna M a y Say Pa
(Rangoon), and Gerald West (Pietermaritzberg).
R o n H a m , K e n Manley and the Executive Committee of Whitley
College kindly granted me study leave in order to work on this and
a related project on nationalism. O v e r the past few months, I have
enjoyed the hospitality of the D e p a r t m e n t of Studies in Religion,
University of Queensland (thanks, especially, to Ed Conrad), the
Department of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield, and Lincoln
Theological College. T h e faculty and staff at all these places have
provided stimulating environments in which to work. A somewhat
"peripatetic" sabbatical has also left my family with a number of
personal debts: Susan, Anusha, Mattheus and I would like to thank
Lori Andrews and Matt Wiebe, Pippa and Alan Winton, Annette
and David Orton, Chris and Noel Bailey, Christopher Rowland,
Cheryl Exum, Gill and Rob Waszak, Melinda and Stephen Fowl.
In more general terms, I need to acknowledge my colleagues in
Melbourne who, along with my former colleagues Stephen Fowl and
Alan Winton, have helped me to reflect on the meaning of an aca-
demie vocation, especially, J i m Barr, Merryl Blair, Edwin Broadhead,
Rosemary Dillon, Keith Dyer, Terry Falla, J o h n Hirt, Trevor Hogan,
David H u n t e r , Kate H u n t e r , Geoff Jenkins, J e a n e t t e Mathews,
Gwenith Measham, Frank Rees and Howard Wallace. There is an
important sense in which my own teaching and research would not
be possible without such a network of friendship.

M.G. Brett
Brisbane, J u n e 1995
 LIST O F C O N T R I B U T O R S

J o h n M.G. Barclay Virginia 22807

Department of Biblical Studies USA
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G l 2 8 Q Q , Philip F. Esler
SCOTLAND Dept. of Divinity
St Mary's College
Mark G. Brett University of St Andrews
Whidey College St Andrews, Fife KJ16 9JU
271 Royal Parade, Parkville SCOTLAND
3052
AUSTRALIA Reinhard Feldmeier
Universität Bayreuth
Pieter F. Craffert D-95440
Department of New Testament Bayreuth
UNISA, P.O. Box 392 GERMANY
Pretoria 0001
S O U T H AFRICA Susan Hawley
Mansfield College
Frank Criisemann Oxford O X 1 3 T F
Kirchliche Hochschule Bethel ENGLAND
Remterweg 45
33617 Bielefeld Lynne Hume
GERMANY Dept. of Studies in Religion
University of Queensland
Jonathan E. Dyck St. Lucia, 4072
School of Hebrew, Biblical & AUSTRALIA
Theological Studies
Trinity College David Jobling and
Dublin Catherine Rose
IRELAND St Andrew's College
1121 College Drive
Diana Edelman Saskatoon
James Madison University Saskatchewan S7N O W 3
Dept. of Religion and CANADA
Philosophy
J o n D. Levenson David C. Sim
T h e Divinity School, Dept. of Religion and
Harvard University Philosophy
45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge, Australian Catholic University
Massachusetts 02138 McAuley Campus,
USA P.O. Box 247
Everton Park, Qld 4053
Rolf Rendtorff AUSTRALIA
(Professor Emeritus)
Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Daniel L. Smith-Christopher
6900 Heidelberg Dept. of Theology
GERMANY Loyola Marymount University
Loyola Blvd at W80th Street
Pablo Richard Los Angeles, CA 90045
Departamento Ecumenico de USA
Investigaciones
Apartado 389-2070 Sabanilla Wolfgang Stegemann
San José Augustana Hochschule
COSTA RICA Postfach 20
91561 Neuendettelsau
J o h n Riehes GERMANY
Department of Biblical Studies
University of Glasgow R.S. Sugirtharajah
Glasgow G12 8 Q Q Central House
SCOTLAND Selly Oak Colleges
Birmingham B29 6 L Q
Fernando F. Segovia ENGLAND
T h e Divinity School
Vanderbilt University Thanzauva and R.L. Hnuni
Nashville, Tennessee 37240 Eastern Theological College
USA P.O. Rajabari
Jorhat 785014, Assam
INDIA
INTRODUCTION
 INTERPRETING ETHNICITY:
METHOD, HERMENEUTICS, ETHICS

Mark G. Brett

Contrary to the expectations of many social theorists writing in the

1950s and early 1960s, ethnic identity is still a pressing feature of
contemporary politics the world over. It was often suggested that
although the new, post-colonial states would need to grapple for some
time with the politics of ethnicity, they would gradually absorb the
civic ideas of Western modernity which had, apparently, succeeded
in amalgamating diverse peoples within nation states.1 Communism,
in a different way, attempted to construct a politics of homogeneity,
often in an ironic alliance with nationalism. But whether communist
or "democratic," there are now many examples in Africa and Asia
where the fragile political unities constructed by post-colonial nation-
alisms have broken down with bloody consequences. The Soviet Union
and communist Europe have also been deconstructed, and in the
process, ethnic identities have been violently re-asserted. Ethnic na-
tionalisms have emerged as potent forces, whatever the governing
ideologies of previous regimes. Also in the homelands of civic de-
mocracy—France, Britain, North America—the politics of immigra-
tion and indigeneity have generated ethnic revivals of various kinds.
Even if ethnic nationalisms have not been asserted there with com-
parable violence, a major social question has arisen of whether civic
nationalism can encompass the diversity of multiculturalism. 2
In most Western democracies, public life has been dominated by
a discourse which tends to treat individuals primarily as equal citi-
zens and economic actors—religion, culture and ethnicity therefore
being regarded as private matters. In some contexts, such a discourse
has been used with liberating consequences, such as in the American
civil rights movement. T h e recent democratic reforms in South Africa

1
See E. Ben-Rafael and S. Sharot, Ethnicity, Religion and. Class in Israeli Society (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 3.
2
See D . T . Goldberg (ed.), Multiculturalism: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell,
1994); for a fuller discussion of nationalism, see Mark G. Brett, "Nationalism and
the Hebrew Bible,>‫ י‬in J. Rogerson, M. Davies, M. Daniel Carroll R. (eds.), The
Bible in Ethics (Sheffield: J S O T Press, 1995), pp. 136-63.
would be another case where the rhetoric of equal rights has been
transformative. But in other contexts, such equalizing discourse is ill-
prepared to deal with groups for w h o m ethnic or religious identity
may be over-riding concerns. 3 T h e homogenizing presumptions of
Western liberalism have been challenged by a "politics of difference"
which emphasizes the uniqueness of particular social identities, like
ethnicity and aboriginality, and adopts "affirmative action" pro-
grammes which, by definition, are not universalizable. 4 Several au-
thors have suggested that movements which project universal ethics
and a uniform humanity have, ironically, turned out to be anti-Jew-
ish, 5 but ideas of social homogeneity have also been directed against
m a n y other groups who have refused to sacrifice their particularity
for the sake of the national good.
An example is provided by Australian Aborigines whose legal claims
on traditional lands have only now been recognized in the High Court.
Native title legislation based on the so-called " M a b o decision" rejects
the presumption of terra nullius which has legitimated two centuries of
British settlement, and suggests that Aboriginal tribes who can dem-
onstrate a continual connection with crown land since pre-settlement
days may claim it as their own; the land can no longer be conceived
as a blank space to be filled by the civilizing power of Europe. T h e
conspiracy of legal and poetic imagination which constructed a land
with "no past, no story" 6 has been unmasked. T h e opponents of native
title regard it as a threat to economic security and development,
arguing that Aborigines should be regarded as Australian citizens like
any other, with no rights or privileges which could not be universal-
ized to include every citizen. 7 This kind of "difference-blind" liberal-

3
P. Worsley, The Three Worlds: Culture and World Development (London: Weidenfeld
and Nicholson, 1984), p. 243. Cf. J. Uyangoda, commenting on the situation in Sri
Lanka: "We have had the Westminster type of democracy, which allowed an ethnic
community with a numerical majority to control political power and resources . . .
That in turn has given rise to another form of nationalism which I call minoritarian
nationalism. , ‫" י‬Understanding Ethnicity and Nationalism' 1 Ecumenical Review 4 7 / 2
(1995), p. 191.
4
C. Taylor, "The Politics of Recognition," in A. Gutman (ed.), Multiculturalism
and "The Politics of Recognition" {Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 2 5 - 7 3 .
5
See, e.g., Frank Criisemann's citation of Kant's statement "Pure moral religion
is the euthanasia of Judaism." In W. Weischedel (ed.), Werke Bd. 6: Der Streit der
Fakultäten (Frankfurt: Insel, 1964), p. 321.
6
This phrase is from Marcus Clarke's introduction to the Poems of Adam Lindsay
Gordon. See Veronica Brady's essay "Mabo: A Question of Space," in her Caught in
the Draught: On Contemporary Australian Culture and Society (Sydney: Angus & Robertson,
1994), pp. 13-29.
7
Cf. the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, in the case of City of Richmond v. Croson
ism might be summarized with some vocabulary borrowed from the
aposde Paul: for those who are Australian, there is neither J e w nor
Greek, slave nor free, English nor Aboriginal. From the perspective
of the "politics of difFerence," however, such a view simply reflects
the interests of the dominant culture, neglecting the constitutive role
which land plays in Aboriginal identity.
Even if the land-centred worldviews of Australian Aborigines are
in some senses distinctive, the legal and cultural conflicts in Australia
are in many ways analogous with other contexts. T h e more general
point here is that there are many ethnic groups who refuse, for good
reasons, to be subsumed under homogenizing visions of national (or
international) culture.
Whatever their geographical or social location, I would argue bib-
lical critics have an ethical responsibility to address this complex web
of issues.8 There can be no denying that the Bible has had, and
continues to have, an influence on many cultures, and a specialist
knowledge of this ancient library is something which carries moral
and political implications—whether scholars possess particular faith
commitments or not. As the discipline of biblical studies begins to
absorb the significance of reader-oriented literary theory, and the
"cultural studies" movement, 9 it is becoming yet more clear that schol-
arly discourses themselves have histories and socio-economic loca-
tions (see especially, R.S. Sugirtharajah, J o h n Riches and Fernando
Segovia).10 Whether we like it or not, we are implicated in contem-
porary ethnic issues in a variety of ways.

(1989), that a city ordinance which set aside 30% of public works funds for minority-
owned construction companies was unconstitutional. For a detailed discussion of the
issues, see S.L. Myer, "Measuring and Detecting Discrimination in the Post-Civil
Rights Era," in J.H. Stanfield and R.M. Dennis (eds.), Race and Ethnicity in Research
Methods (Newbury Park: Sage, 1993), pp. 172-97.
8
Cf. Ν. Gottwald, "The Interplay of Religion and Ethnicity in Ancient Israel,"
in M. Bradbury (ed.), Religion, Ethnicity and Violence (College Park, MD.: University of
Maryland Press, forthcoming).
9
See Fernando Segovia's observation that the cultural studies movement has
unmasked the "enduring construct of a universal and informed reader" which actually
required all readers to divest themselves of constitutive identity factors and "to in-
terpret like Eurocentric critics." See Segovia, '"And They began to speak in Other
Tongues': Competing Modes of Discourse in Contemporary Biblical Criticism," in
F.F. Segovia and M.A. Tolbert (eds.), Reading from this Place Vol. 1 (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1995), pp. 2 9 - 3 0 . Cf. J.D. Levenson, The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament and
Historical Criticism (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993), pp. 95, 98, 122.
10
Bracketed references in the text refer to essays in this volume. I do not mean
to suggest that the discipline of biblical studies has only recendy discovered the idea
that all exegesis has presuppositions; this idea has been given lip service for some
 Quite apart from the ethical implications of interpreters' social
locations, there are issues of "ethnocentrism" which belong to the
business of exegesis, however narrowly this may be conceived. For
example, in spite of the frequently expressed (and logically vague)
exhortation for biblical scholars to analyze a text "in its own terms,"
the interpretation of ancient texts requires, at decisive points, that
cross-cultural comparisons and contrasts are made with the interpreter's
own culture." And insofar as the interpreter's own culture is an
ineluctable feature of cross-cultural understanding, one could say that
a certain kind of ethnocentrism is unavoidable: either one "goes
native," in which case no crow-cultural u n d e r s t a n d i n g has been
achieved, 12 or one attempts to describe the "other" in terms which
would be intelligible within the interpreter's own culture (see further,
Pieter Craffert).
This does not m e a n that cross-cultural understanding needs to find
simple corresponding concepts; as Charles Taylor has argued, inter-
pretation will often need to work with "perspicuous contrasts." In
the case of a magical worldview, for example, a contrast is rarely
made between the social dimensions and the cognitive claims of magic.
Anthropologists coming from a scientific culture have, however, tended
to introduce such a distinction since they are likely to regard the
cognitive claims as false and to explain magical practices primarily
in social terms. As soon as the charges of falsehood have (explicitly
or implicitly) been laid, however, the logic of interpretation has moved
from "the native point of view" (emics), towards a claim of critical
superiority (etics). T h e anthropologist has, I would suggest, a choice
between two kinds of ethnocentrism: (1) to observe that the native
makes no distinction between the cognitive and social functions of
magic, as we do, or (2) to explain what is really going on in magical

time, but sustained and detailed analyses of scholarly discourse (which go beyond
the disciplinary limits of "Forschungsgeschichte") are still comparatively rare.
11
See C. Taylor, "Understanding and Ethnocentricity," in his Philosophy and the
Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 116-33; C. Geertz,
Works and Lives (Cambridge: Polity, 1988), pp. 144—45; H. Eilberg-Schwartz, The
Savage in Judaism: An Anthropology of Israelite Religion and Ancient Judaism (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 8 7 - 1 0 2 ; D. Hoy, "Is Hermeneutics ethnocen-
trie?" in J.F. Bohman, D.R. Hiley, and R. Shusterman (eds.), The Interpretive Tum:
Philosophy, Science, Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 155-75.
12
See C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973),
p. 13: "We are not, or at least I am not, seeking either to become natives (a com-
promised word in any case) or to mimic them. Only romantics or spies would seem
to find point in that. W e are s e e k i n g . . . to converse with them."
practices, regardless of native accounts. No doubt the emic-etic con-
trast must be conceived as a continuum, rather than as a sharp di-
chotomy; either way, interpreters necessarily betray the categories of
their own culture. But in the second case the goal of emic descrip-
tion has given way to explanation which is much less actor-oriented.
T h e conclusion to E.P. Sander's influential Paul and Palestinian Judaism
represents a comparable example from New Testament studies. Sand-
ers recalls that Rudolf Bultmann attempted to read all of Paul's dis-
course regarding the Christian life as existential demands relating to
the believer's self-understanding. This was, at least in part, an ex-
egetical claim: since a person who is already incorporated "in Christ"
must still make decisions, Bultmann argued that Paul's language of
incorporation did not imply magical or metaphysical transformation
into the body of Christ. Sanders agrees up to a point, but then suggests
that Bultmann and his followers set u p the oppositions too rigidly:
being one body with Christ was conceived as dther cosmic specula-
tion or a revision of self-understanding; receiving the Spirit was dther
a magical transfer or "accepting the word of grace." T h e difficulty,
Sanders suggests, is that "we" lack a category "which lies between
naive cosmological speculation and belief in magical transference on
the one hand and a revised self-understanding on the other," but
Paul certainly had one. 13 This kind of claim is a descriptive (emic)
one which rightly betrays the limitations of the interpreter's culture;
modern Western culture is shaped by a different system of semiotic
contrasts. Sanders then makes an entirely different claim: what Paul
thought cannot be direcdy appropriated by Christians today, because
the falsehood of Paul's claims regarding the end of the present world
undermines the plausibility of the cosmic dimensions of his thought. 1 4
These two claims, the one acknowledging a conceptual contrast and
the second making a substantive critique, represent two different kinds
of ethnocentrism, and there are different ethical issues arising from
each. T h e co-operation of professional ethicists is much needed, I
would suggest, if we are to take this analytical discussion further.
T h e issue of cross-cultural interpretation has, however, been dis-
cussed in some recent publications not so much as an emic-etic prob-
lern as a matter of global politics. African scholars have pointed out,
for example, that there are enough analogies between the biblical

13
E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (London: SCM, 1977), p. 522.
14
Sanders, Paul, p. 523.
world and traditional, tribal societies to suggest that some biblical
concepts may be more readily intelligible in Africa than in modern
Europe (see J o h n Riches but also R.S. Sugirtharajah's reservations
concerning the homogenization of non-Western experience). A ma-
jor problem, however, is that educational resources, theological insti-
tutions, and the means of publishing are all disproportionately con-
centrated in Europe and North America. Indeed, "contextual" and
"cultural" hermeneutics have, in some cases, been developed in the
Third World as forms of resistance to hegemonic Western theology
and exegesis, and under the heading of "inculturation" such herme-
neutics have often been governed, rightly, by a kind of ethnocentric
logic.15 This development within the domains of theology and bibli-
cal studies illustrates one the complexities which is to be found in
the wider literature on ethnicity: ethnic categories have been used to
manipulate and to rule, but they have also been used as modes of
resistance.16 Accordingly, a volume which deals with the general theme
of "ethnicity and the Bible" will need to reflect the diversities of
culture both within the biblical texts and among the interpretative
communities for whom the Bible is a focus of thought and action. 17

15
See, e.g., R.S. Sugirtharajah (ed.), Voices from the Margin (New York: Orbis, 1991);
idem, (ed.), Commitment, Context and Text: Examples of Asian Hermeneutics, special issue of
Bib.Int. 2 / 3 (1994); G. West, Contextual Bible Study (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster, 1993);
idem., "Difference and Dialogue: R e a d i n g the J o s e p h Story with Poor and
Marginalized Communities in South Africa," Bib.Int. 2 / 2 (1994), pp. 152-70; idem.,
Biblical Hermeneutics of Liberation (New York: Orbis, rev. edn, 1995); see also the North
American discussion of "Afrocentricity" in Cheryl J. Saunders (ed.), Living the Inter-
section: Womanism and Afrocentrism in Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995).
16
Worsley, Three Worlds, pp. 239, 241. A particularly ironic case of this is to be
found among the indigenous people of N e w Caledonia whose self-description as
"kanaks" deliberately reverses the pejorative connotations of the French "canaque."
See P. Wete, Agis ou meurs-L'Eglise Evangélique: de Calédonie vers Kanak)! (Suva: Lotu
Pacifika, 1991) and the discussion of "double-voiced" revision in H.L. Gates, The
Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American literary Criticism (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1988), pp. 111-13. Another irony of Wirkungsgeschichte: Marshall Sahlins has
recently argued that the very idea of "culture," in the relevant anthropological sense,
was invented as a counter-Enlightenment strategy in the late eighteenth century by
J.G. Herder, yet this "Western product" has been adopted as a c o m m o n principle
of resistance by peoples as diverse as Ojibway Indians, Tibetans, Kashmiris, Zulus,
Maoris and Aborigines. Cf. Sahlins, How "Natives" Think.: About Captain Cook, for
example (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995).
17
There are, I should emphasize, severe practical limits on the extent to which
the diversity of interpretative communities can be represented (limitations which belong
also to the present volume). In addition to the inequitable distribution of resources
for research, there are a range of political reasons why some groups do not wish to
be represented; they resist the idea of an "ideal speech situation." See especially
James Scott's reservation concerning Jürgen Habermas's tendency to treat politics as
 O u r discussion has relied thus far on a rather loose association of
the terms "culture" and "ethnicity," and broadly speaking, an ethnic
group may indeed be defined as a social group which shares a culture.
But such concepts obviously require closer definition, and there are
a range of interpretative questions which need more detailed analy-
sis.18 For example, do modern ideas of ethnicity have direct parallels
in ancient cultures, and by what method should any cross-cultural
comparison proceed? How do particular groups go about constructing
"ethnic" identities, as opposed to other kinds of identity? Under what
conditions do people give priority to their ethnic identity, and what
kinds of choices do they have in doing so? What is the relationship
between ethnicity and class, or to put this more broadly, between
ethnicity and asymmetrical social relationships—economic and political?
(See especially Jonathan Dyck, Susan Hawley, David Jobling & Cathe-
rine Rose.) How much weight should be placed on self-descriptions
(emics) and how much on ethnic labels imposed by outsiders? 19 As
the essays in this volume make clear, there are several productive
ways of construing ethnic identity, it may be unhelpful to pre-empt
the conversation by defining our concepts too tightly; some approaches

if it ought to reflect "the perfect graduate student seminar." Scott, Domination and the
Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 115
n. 12. See, e.g., Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (Oxford: Polity,
1990). T o mention just one example which complicates Habermas's ideal of
undistorted communication, it is precisely the gender-differentiated secrecy of Austra-
lian Aboriginal sacred traditions regarding their land which limits the incorporation
of such traditions in the public realm. T o sacrifice this secrecy would entail a mas-
sive revision of aboriginal culture. Cf. Scott, Arts of Resistance, passim.
18
See, especially, J.M. Yinger, "Ethnicity" Annual Review of Sociology 11 (1985),
pp. 151-80.
19
T w o examples will suffice to suggest that, in my view, this last question should
be decided on a case by case basis. During the Holocaust, the Nazi definition of a
J e w was imposed without negotiation. O n the other hand, in the context of current
Israeli politics, it has been argued that the edot ha'Mizrach (communities of the East:
Moroccan, Yemenite, etc.) have asserted their ethnic identity over against their per-
ception of the secularized nationalism c o m m o n amongst the Ashkenazi establishment.
See further, E. Ben-Rafael and S. Sharot, Ethnicity, Religion, and Class in Israeli Society,
pp. 4 3 - 4 7 , 222. Cf. above n. 16 for the case in N e w Caledonia where the label
"kanak" was ironically negotiated between insiders and outsiders. This latter ex-
ample does not, however, undermine Pierre van den Berghe's well-argued case that
social scientists should preserve a methodological distinction between emic and etic
labels. See van den Berghe, "The Use of Ethnic Terms in the Peruvian social Science
Literature," International Journal of Comparative Sociology 15 (1974), pp. 132-42. This
article also illustrates the instability of emic labels, depending on who is using the
term and in what setting. Mestizo, for example, was primarily a racial term in colonial
times, whereas it has now lost practically all such connotations. Cf. the shifting
usage of the terms "Hebrew" and "Philistine" (David Jobling and Catherine Rose).
to the theme may thereby be excluded. Let me risk a few introduc-
tory observations, however, which foreshadow some of the key issues.
Discussions of ethnicity are part of the formidable network of debates
concerned with the description and explanation of social groups larger
than the family. As with all social groups, the formulation of bound-
aries is crucial feature of self-definition. W h o should be considered
one of "us" and who should be considered "other"? W h e t h e r explic-
itly or implicitly, such a binary opposition is a c o m m o n feature of
social discourse. But as has frequently been observed, the most prob-
lematic social transactions occur precisely at the boundary, between
"us" and those who are "like us." Binary divisions simplify the com-
plexities of "proximate otherness;" otherness is "a matter of relative
rather than absolute difference." 2 0
J o n a t h a n Z. Smith has emphasized that social taxonomies often
obscure the fact that the construction of otherness is relational and
transactional: "Something is 'other 5 only with respect to something
'else'." And if otherness is always a product of where one is stand-
ing, then it should be regarded not so m u c h as a state of being but
as "a political and linguistic project, a matter of rhetoric and judge-
ment." 2 1 (Thus, for example, K a s h m i r i Brahmins, w h o think of
themselves as white in contrast to dark-skinned South Indians, find
themselves, on coming to Britain, treated as "Black" or "Coloured." 2 2 )
Although ethnie can be exceptionally durable once formed, they are
also symbolic constructions which have to be maintained by reiter-
ated practices and transactions. 23 It seems that the majority of recent
studies on ethnicity have envisioned this process as a dialectic of
"structure" and "agency." 2 4

20
J.Z. Smith, "What a Difference a Difference Makes," in J. Neusner and E.S.
Frerichs (eds.), "To See Ourselves as Others see us": Christians, Jews, "Others" in Late An-
tiquity (Chico: Scholars, 1985), p. 15; cf. E.S. Bogardus, "A Social Distance Scale,''
Sociology and Social Research 17 (1933), pp. 2 6 5 - 7 1 . A paradigmatic biblical example
of proximate otherness is supplied by the laws of warfare in Deut. 2 0 : 1 0 - 1 8 which
(retrospectively) reserve the most violent treatment for the cities which are "near"
rather than those which are "far." For a plausible account of the composition of
this chapter, see M. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon,
1985), pp. 199-209; cf. also G. Braulik, Deuteronomium II 16, 18-34, 12 (Würzberg:
Echter Verlag, 1992), p. 150.
21
Smith, "Difference," p. 46.
22
Worsley, Three Worlds, p. 342.
23
This is argued even by A.D. Smith, Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell,
1986), p. 16. For a recent review of the relevant social-scientific literature, see
C. Calhoun, "Nationalism and Ethnicity," Annual Review of Sociology 19 (1993),
pp. 2 1 1 - 3 9 .
24
T h e choice of vocabulary here resonates in particular with the social theory of
 Studies of the Bible illustrate the complexity of such a dialectic.
While controversy and doubt will always surround the dating of
particular biblical traditions, there can be no doubt that the Bible
records a long and heated conversation about how the boundaries of
Israelite community are to be constructed and maintained. 2 5 T w o
extreme positions in this debate are well known: first, the "racialized"
marriage policies of Ezra/Nehemiah, 2 6 and second, Paul's vision in
Gal. 3:28-29 that within the social space defined by Jesus Christ
"there is neither J e w nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free;"
Christ has erased the categories of ethnic group, gender and class.27
However, the extremes represented by E z r a / N e h e m i a h and Paul
are not simply identifiable with a divergence between the Testaments,
nor with a divergence between Judaism and Christianity. As several
scholars have made clear, Ezra and Nehemiah represent a particu-
larist strand of post-exilic political theology which is opposed to a
great number of other traditions within the Hebrew Bible itself (see
J o n Levenson, Frank Crüsemann, Rolf Rendtorff, J o n a t h a n Dyck and
Daniel Smith-Christopher). Complexities also arise within the New
Testament material. If Paul appears to be prescribing a "new hu-
manity of no difference," the wider contours of his argument consti-
tute precisely an ascription of "ethnic" identity to the Galatians which
is opposed to the Jewish ethnos (so Philip Esler).28 And if we accept a

Anthony Giddens, but the general point has been advocated in different ways by
most of the major sociological schools who have risen in revolt against the structural
functionalism of Talcott Parsons—conflict theory, social exchange theory, symbolic
interactionism and ethnomethodology. For a brief review, see W.H. Handel, Contem-
poraiy Sociological Theoiy (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1993). With specific appli-
cation to ethnicity, see the detailed studies in Stanfield and Dennis (eds.), Race and
Ethnicity in Research Methods.
25
See, e.g., H.G.M. Williamson, "The Concept of Israel in Transition," in R.E.
Clements (ed.), The World of Ancient Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1989), pp. 141-61.
26
"Racialized" is here is scare quotes, alluding to the lineage-based or biological
idea inherent in the reference to the "holy seed" (Ezra 9). O n e should recognize,
however, that ideas of race are probably even more complicated than ideas of ethnicity.
Over the last four centuries, race has been analysed in terms of lineage, type, sub-
species, status and class. Whether such diversity has parallels in the ancient world is
a matter for detailed historical investigation. See further M. Banton, Racial Theories
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
27
Daniel Boyarin has summarized Paul's vision as "the new humanity of no
difference." See his, A Radical Jew: Pau.1 and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1994), p. 5.
28
Such a reading of Paul might seem to be stretching the concept of ethnicity
too far, and Esler concedes at one point that the new ethnos in Christ implies per-
haps only a "quasi-ethnicity." Several scholars have suggested that N e w Testament
recent trend in Matthean scholarship, represented in this volume by
David Sim, the polemic against Jews in that Gospel is primarily an
intra-Jewish affair, a case of "proximate otherness" generating more
heat than we find between "distant others." Sim argues that Matthew's
community is a Torah-centred but messianic Jewish sect which, unlike
the aposde Paul, regards the Jewish practice of circumcision as self-
evidently necessary for membership in the community ofJesus Christ—
necessary but not sufficient.
These considerations lead us into a forest of contested concepts.
O n e biblical concept of ethnicity seems to focus simply on blood-ties
and genealogy (Ezra/Nehemiah), while another concept of peoplehood
distinguishes between physical and spiritual descent (Gal. 4:29).
Matthew's community, apparendy, falls between these extremes by
re-defining its boundaries (much as did the Q u m r a n community) within
the Jewish ethnos. T h e Bible thus presents us with a series of iden-
tity-forming interactions the social description of which depends on
where one is standing. Is Matthew's Gospel "inside" or "outside" of
Judaism?
And what about the modern social historians who are attempting
to give some account of this whole process? Should their pre-fabri-
cated social definitions resolve the biblical diversity by deciding what
is "objectively" ethnic identity and what is not? It is indeed remark-
able to notice just how some of the basic conflicts in biblical theol-
ogy find a parallel in the recent social scientific debates about the
nature of ethnicity. For example, the "primordialist" position, associ-
ated in particular with Edward Shils and Clifford Geertz, suggests
that ethnicity is not just a function of interaction but a deeply rooted
and durable affiliation based on kinship, shared territory and tradi-
tion: "Congruities of blood, speech, custom, are seen to have an
ineffable, and at times overpowering coerciveness in and of them-
selves." 29 A different emphasis finds expression in "constructivist,"

concepts of peoplehood—and the early Christian self-description as a tertium genus—

are deliberately opposed to ^ny exclusive ideas of ethnicity (see Barclay, Stegemann
and Feldmeier). Esler's argument, however, is explicidy working with constructivist,
rather than "primordial," notions of ethnicity. See further below.
29
E. Shils, "Primordial, Personal, Sacred, and Civil Ties," British Journal of Sociology
8 (1957), pp. 130-45; C. Geertz, "The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments
and Civil Politics in the N e w States," The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic
Books, 1973), pp. 2 5 5 - 3 1 0 , 259. This is a revised version of the paper which first
appeared in C. Geertz (ed.), Old Societies and New States (Glencoe: Free Press, 1963),
pp. 105-57. A.D. Smith righdy emphasizes that Geertz's position should be seen as
 "instrumentalist" or "circumstantialist" positions which suggest that
ethnicity is more manipulable and variable; the agency of the sub-
jects concerned has a much higher profile. This it evidenced, for
example, in Fredrik Barth's classic introduction to Ethnic Groups and
Boundaries.3° Over against Ezra/Nehemiah's "primordial" nativism, one
might be justified in seeing Barth's volume as a kind of Pauline
constructivism.
Barth argues that some older theories of ethnicity occluded the
problems of boundary construction by imagining that cultures tend
to work in isolation of each other, developing "mainly in response to
local ecologic factors, through a history of adaptation by invention
and selective borrowing." O n the contrary, Barth suggests, although
ecology may explain certain kinds of regional variation and social
symbiosis with other groups, there are documented cases of single
ethnic groups "occupying several different ecologic niches and yet
retaining basic cultural and ethnic unity over long periods." 31 Barth's
notion of ethnic unity here is not, however, static: cultural features
which signal the boundaries of a community may change; organiza-
tional forms may change; structured interactions with other ethnic
groups may change; but the continuing distinctions between outsid-
ers and insiders permit us to identify the continuities of affiliation.
Indeed, stable ethnic boundaries can be crossed by a flow of person-
nel without erasing the boundaries themselves. T o mention just one
study, the Yao of southern China have shown a remarkable capacity
to incorporate outsiders into their kinship and ritual structures—10%
of their population in a generation. 32

"weak primordialism"; the claims are actor-oriented (emic) and not part of a strong-
er version advocated by certain sociobiologists. See Geertz's comment: "Simple
primordial determinism is no more defensible a position than economic determin-
ism." His main thesis is that although ethnic politics in Indonesia, Malaysia, India,
Burma, Morocco and Nigeria "rest on historically developed distinctions, some of
which colonial rule helped to accentuate (and others of which it helped to moder-
ate), they are part and parcel of the very process of the creation of a new polity and
a new citizenship" (p. 270). T h e replacement of colonial regimes with domestic
states have configured primordial attachments in a new way, requiring a new set of
social negotiations. See A.D. Smith, "The Politics of Culture: Ethnicity and Nation-
alism," in T. Ingold (ed.), Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology (London: Routledge,
1994), p. 707.
30
F. Barth (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference
(London: Allen & Unwin, 1969), pp. 9 - 3 8 .
31
See Barth, Ethnic Groups, p. 13 and the literature cited there.
32
Barth, p. 22.
 For these reasons, Barth makes the important claim that "cultural"
contents can vary
without any critical relation to the boundary maintenance of the ethnic
group. So when one traces the history of an ethnic group through
time, one is not simultaneously, in the same sense, tracing the history
of "a culture:" the elements of the present culture of that ethnic group
have not sprung from the particular set that constituted the group's
culture at a previous time, whereas the group has a continual organi-
zational existence with boundaries (criteria of membership) that despite
modifications have marked off a continuing unit.33

This thesis can be well illustrated by the Bible. In this sacred library
we find the literary deposits of a people who have been clearly influ-
enced by a range of ancient cultures—to mention a few: Egyptian,
Canaanite, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Hellenistic. Yet we
also find attempts to construct a continuity of peoplehood, even
through the discontinuities envisaged by prophetic judgments (see J o n
Levenson). There are, of course, limits to this continuity and varied
reflections on the parting of ways—not least in the New Testament—
but Barth's main point still goes through: any continuity an ethnic
identity achieves is not simply to be equated with the continuity of
a "culture." 34 This is particularly the case with regard to material
elements of a culture, which are often borrowed more readily than
ideologies. 35 Thus, the recent wave of scepticism regarding the ques-
tion of whether archaeologists can identify distinctively "Israelite"
artefacts in the premonarchic archaeological record would come as
no surprise to most anthropologists (see Diana Edelman).
Barth's argument is also relevant to the contemporary debates

33
Barth, p. 38. For a bold and detailed study along these lines, see Tony Swain's
attempt to trace the influences of Melanesian, Indonesian and European ideas on
Aboriginal worldviews in Australia, A Place for Strangers: Towards a History of Australian
Aboriginal Being (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
34
This is not to say that there is no connection between culture and ethnic identity,
only that the connection is more problematic than has often been realized. Jews, for
example, have usually regarded themselves as part of a unified "people," but the
creation of the modern state of Israel has given rise to more self-conscious "ethnic"
differences between Ashkenazi and Sephardic groups. These differences are largely
a matter of "culture." See further, C.A. Rubenberg, "Ethnicity, Elitism, and the State
of Israel" in J.F. Stack (ed.), The Primordial Challenge: Ethnidty in the Contemporary World
(New York: Greenwood, 1986), pp. 161-84; cf. the illuminating comparisons between
contemporary Israel and the conflicts in Ezra/Nehemiah in T.C. Eskanazi and E.P.
Judd, "Marriage to a Stranger in Ezra 9 - 1 0 , " in T.C. Eskanazi and K. Richard
(eds.), Second Temple Studies Vol. 2 (Sheffield: J S O T Press, 1994), pp. 2 6 6 - 8 5 .
35
See A.P. Royce, Ethnic Identity: Strategies of Diversity (Bloomington: Indiana Uni-
versity Press, 1982), p. 8.
concerning imperialism and its effects on dominated cultures. If Barth
is correct, as I think he is, then we would need to note that attempts
to preserve a "culture" do not, ipso facto, preserve the identity or
dignity of an ethnic group. Clearly, the dignity of social groups is
usually entwined with wider issues of economics and politics.36 But it
is also important to recognize ethnic identity can still be preserved in
spite of cultural changes and influences. 37 And as the studies in this
volume on the use of the Bible amongst indigenous people illustrate,
the introduction of new cultural contents—even cultural contents which
were imposed under the most unambiguously imperialist circum-
stances—may still be turned to serve the interests of a dominated
group. It is one of the great ironies of Christian mission that, in spite
of its dark history, indigenous peoples have in some contexts turned
the Christian faith to anti-imperialist purposes. 38 In short, a "cul-
ture" is not, in itself, a social unit. O r to put it another way, ethnic
groups are culturally permeable. 39
A related point has been made by Etienne Balibar in his illuminating
essay "Is There a 'Neo-Racism?" Balibar argues that many anthro-
pologists who have been involved in the struggle to preserve minority
or dominated cultures have taken the view that the mixing of cul-
tures is a contravention of nature—every culture is seen to be equally
valuable and has a natural right to separate existence. T h e unin-
tended consequence of this view is the expectation that inter-ethnic
exchanges will inevitably be characterized by defensiveness and ag-
gression.40 What was originally an anti-imperialist strategy has ironically

36
See Gottwald, "The Interplay of Religion and Ethnicity in Ancient Israel," and
his discussion of E. Staub, The Roots of Evil: the Origins of Genocide and Other Group
Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
37
In his classic article, "Nativistic Movements," Ralph Linton pointed out that
nativistic cultural revitalization was always selective: it is concerned with "particular
elements of culture, never with cultures as wholes." American Anthropologist 45 (1943),
p. 230.
38
A similar point can be made concerning the Maori Hau-hau rebellion against
the British in late nineteenth century N e w Zealand. T h e Hau-hau synthesized their
older religious traditions with their understanding of Judaism, seeing the British as
"Egyptian" oppressors of the new elect, the Maoris. They also absorbed some Christian
elements, such as the cross, which symbolized the crucifiction of natives at the hands
of the whites. See V. Lantenari, The Religions of the Oppressed (London: MacGibbon &
Kee, 1963), pp. 2 4 8 . 5 9 ‫־‬
39
Cf. John Barclay^ distinction between "acculturation" (e.g., the Jewish adop-
tion of Greek language and thought-forms) and social "assimilation." Barclay, Jews
in the Mediterranean Diaspora (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, forthcoming).
40
Balibar, "Is there a 'Neo-Racism'?" in E. Balibar and I. Wallerstein, Race, Nation,
been turned by recent right-wing movements in Europe into xeno-
phobia: since every culture has a right to separate existence, so this
response goes, people of other cultures should keep their distance.
There is an obvious parallel here between the resurgence of right-
wing movements in Balibar's France and the old apartheid system in
South Africa.
Building on the work of Balibar, Daniel Boyarin has distinguished
between rightist racism and liberal racism: the political goals of rightist
racism entail the subjugation or the expulsion of other "races;" liberal
racism, on the other hand, tends to advocate the construction of
new states within which the ethnic-nationalist aspirations for sovereign-
ty may be fulfilled. T h e latter option, for Boyarin, simply reinscribes
homogeneity—the idea of "the O n e " — a n d the basic intolerance
towards difference is replicated. 41 His alternative is to allow the mix-
ing of cultures while preserving a "polyphonic" ethnic identity. Al-
though Boyarin has no detailed discussion of Fredrik Barth, it is clear
that this approach would make no sense unless one presumed some-
thing like Barth's account of how culture and ethnicity overlap, yet
are distinct phenomena—ethnic identity with cultural permeability.
In his important concluding chapter, Boyarin takes up that long
tradition of defending Judaism against charges of a malign ethnocen-
trism, 42 suggesting that there is nothing wrong with ethnocentricity
(a) when it is "polyphonic," and above all (b) when it is a strategy of
survival amongst subordinate groups. He argues that although J u d a -
ism has revolved around a tension between ideas of genealogy and

Class: Ambiguous Identities (London: Verso, 1991), pp. 2 1 - 2 3 , implicating Claude Lévi-
Strauss in this problematic. T h e recent literature in sociobiology represents another
variant of this view by suggesting that altruistic sentiments "naturally" spread out-
wards from family to kin to ethnic group. Note, however, that some sociobiologists
argue explicidy that political ethics should seek to overcome this ethnocentrism;
sociobiology is an "anti-ethic." P. van den Berghe, The Ethnic Phenomenon (New York:
Oxford, 1981), p. 12; cf. M. Barker, The New Racism (London: Junction Books, 1981).
41
Boyarin, pp. 247-50; see especially Balibar, "Racism and Nationalism," in Race,
Nation, Class, p. 53: "Nationalism emerges out of racism, in the sense that it would
not constitute itself as the ideology of a 'new' nation if the official nationalism against
which it were reacting were not profoundly racist: thus Zionism comes out of anti-
Semitism and Third World nationalisms come out of colonial racism." Cf. Ν. Harris,
National Liberation (London: I.B. Taurus, 1990), p. 221: "In the long history that lies
behind the civil war in Sri Lanka, we can see multiple layers of oppression gener-
ating nationalist responses—the British on the Ceylonese, the Sinhalese ruling order
on the Tamil."
42
Cf. L.H. Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1993), pp. 123-49. See also the comparable charges laid against
early Christians, discussed by Reinhard Feldmeier below.
ideas of territory, genealogy should be given priority over territory,
and ethnicity should be separated from all forms of political hege-
mony. 43 In short, ethnocentrism is only malign when it is combined
with homogenizing political power. Genealogy is, in fact, opposed to
autochthony, and the Bible makes no claim to IsraePs autochthony;
the rabbis rightly renounced the land until the final redemption, he
suggests, and on this one point at least, his postmodern Jewish stance
is in agreement with the example of the Natorei Karta who refuse to
visit the Western Wall in Jerusalem without Arab "visas" because
the Wall was taken by violence. Boyarin , s view entails

renunciation of sovereignty, autochthony, indigeneity (as embodied

politically in the notion of self-determination), on the one hand, com-
bined with a fierce tenacity in holding onto cultural identity, on the
other.44

While such an approach might be perceived as "racism" in the hands

of a dominating group, it is "resistance in the hands of a subaltern
collective." 45 O n this view, ethics are not simply universalizable; what
is ethical cannot be decided independently of the social and eco-
nomic power of those concerned.
Boyarin makes a notable concession at one point, however, when
he argues that
somewhere in the dialectic between the Pauline universalized human
essence and the rabbinic emphasis on Israel a synthesis must be found,
one that will allow for stubborn hanging on to ethnic, cultural specific-
ity but in a context of deeply felt and enacted human solidarity. For
that synthesis, Diaspora provides the model, and only in conditions of
Diaspora can such a resolution be attempted. Within the conditions of
Diaspora, many Jews discovered that their well-being was absolutely
dependent on the principles of respect for difference. 6
This line of argument supplies the background for Boyarin's critique
of Galatians. Paul's gospel, he suggests, is shaped too much by his
Hellenistic background:

43
Boyarin, pp. 2 5 2 . 5 8 ‫־‬
44
Boyarin, p. 259. T h e phrase "cultural identity" is unfortunately ambiguous:
given the wider context, I read Boyarin to be advocating cultural mixing and ethnic
continuity. As suggested above, this apparently paradoxical approach is perfectly
intelligible within account of ethnicity provided by Barth.
45
Boyarin, p. 242.
46
Boyarin, p. 257. Cf. Julia Kristeva's suggestion that there is also a deconstructive
potential in the Torah's legal protection of aliens insofar as it is based on the defining
story of Israelites as aliens liberated from Egypt. She describes this defining story as
"a primal inscription of foreignness." Kristeva, Nations without Nationalism (New York:
 Paul was motivated by a Hellenistic desire for the One, which among
other things produced an ideal of a universal human essence beyond
difference and hierarchy. This universal humanity, however, was predi-
cated (and still is) on the dualism of the flesh and the spirit, such that
while the body is particular, marked through practice as Jew or Greek,
and through anatomy as male or female, the spirit is universal.47

Pauline Christianity renounced "embodiedness" in various forms; it

entailed "a disdain for the body, and disdain for the body entailed
an erasure of'difference.'" O n the other hand, in rabbinic Judaism,
we find "a commitment to such differences as race, parentage, and
native country [which] entailed a commitment to the body and to
'difference' in general." T h e spiritualizing of circumcision in bap-
tism, according to Boyarin, was a social practice with a hermeneutical
counterpart: the new community of the spirit was shaped by inter-
pretative habits of the spirit which supplanted the fleshly genealogy
of Abraham, the literal Torah, the literal land of promise. In short,
Jews refused "to be allegorized into a spiritual disembodiment." 48
But Boyarin himself provides us with some clues as to how this
opposition between rabbinic Judaism and Pauline Christianity may
be deconstructed. First, he seems to concede that his real target is
gnosticism when he says that Paul's universalized humanity is predi-
cated on a dualism of flesh and spirit. T h e orthodox interpretations
of Paul, as is well known, reacted against any gnostic or docetic
tendencies to dis-embody Jesus Christ; it is precisely this point which
lies at the centre of Christian debates about "incarnation." While it
is true that many of the classical manuals of spirituality encouraged
the loosening of family and local ties,49 the anti-docetic tradition is a
part of orthodox, not peripheral Christianity. O n e could argue that
liberation theology constitutes a radical re-claiming of incarnational
doctrine (see Pablo Richard). Second, we have seen that Boyarin
recommends the rabbinic renunciation of political self-determination:
the possession of the promised land is eschatologized, and diaspora
identity should be the model to replace national self-determination, 50
Within the New Testament documents, indeed up until the time of

Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 23. Cf. Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves ( N e w

York: Columbia University Press, 1991).
47
Boyarin, A Radical Jew, p. 7.
48
Boyarin, A Radical Jew, pp. 2 3 0 - 3 1 .
49
M. Miles, The Image and Practice of Holiness (London: S C M , 1988). Cf. Matt.
10:34-37.
50
Boyarin, p. 249.
Constantine, the situation is hardly different: the life of the Christian
is likely to be as that envisaged in 1 Peter—the life of a stranger and
sojourner (see Reinhard Feldmeier).
Indeed, it would not be too far from the truth to suggest that the
process of the separation of Judaism and Christianity took place in
historical contexts within which both religious groups were minorities.
Neither wielded significant political power, and it is really only when
Christianity took on the institutional forms of Christendom that anti-
Jewish rhetoric could be combined with political monopoly to form
systematic anti-Semitic violence. It is precisely Boyarin who provides
an ethical escape hatch both for rabbinic Judaism and early Chris-
tianity when he claims that ethnocentrism "is ethically appropriate
only when the cultural identity is that of a minority, embattled or, at
any rate, non-hegemonic." 51 O n this point, he cites E.P. Sanders:

We shall all agree that exclusivism is bad when practiced by the domi-
nant group. Things look different if one thinks of minority groups that
are trying to maintain their own identity. I have never felt that the
strict Amish are iniquitous, and I do not think that, in assessing Jewish
separatism in the Diaspora, we are dealing with a moral issue. (The
moral issue would be the treatment of Gentiles in Palestine during
periods of Jewish ascendancy.)52

T h e central ethical issue here is taken up by J o n Levenson in his

contribution to the present volume. O n the one hand, Levenson
implicitly follows Boyarin and Sanders in resisting the Kantian ver-
sion of ethics which requires universalizability (i.e., if a norm cannot
be advocated for everyone, on Kant's view, then it is not a properly
ethical norm). Judaism provides a paradigm counter-example: it does
not hold that all the commandments are binding on everyone. O n
the other hand, Levenson also resists

a common habit of stressing Jewish survival as a goal in its own right. . .

At its worst, the absolutization of Jewish survival leads to the denial of
ethical constraints on Jewry in danger. And since Jewry is usually in
danger, this grants the Jews a moral carte blanche—quite the reverse of
the biblical intent.

51
Boyarin, p. 256.
52
Sanders 'Jewish Association with Gentiles and Galatians 2.11-14," in R.T.
Fortna and B.R. Gaventa (eds.), The Conversation Continues (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990),
p. 181. Cf. W.D. Davies, The Territorial Dimension of Judaism (Minneapolis: Fortress,
1992), pp. 133-38. D. Smith-Christopher has also defended the ethnocentric ten-
dencies of groups suffering oppression in Smith, Religion of the Landless (New York:
Meyer-Stone Books, 1989).
Similarly, following the logic of Sanders, I would suggest that if
Christianity had a minority status before Constantine, it also would
be given a moral carte blanche against biblical intent. It is ethically
important to take asymmetries of power into account. But even if
we agree that ethnocentrism is only pernicious when imposed by
force, and it is a different matter when it is adopted as a strategy
for subaltern resistance, there are nevertheless some ethical issues re-
maining for subaltern collectives. Even if we decide that the New
Testament is not guilty of xenophobia, for example, the ethnic slurs
which it contains cannot be dismissed as morally irrelevant, espe-
daily when one considers their later influence in history (see Wolfgang
Stegemann). Dominated communities are not entirely free of ethical
constraints.
O n e further issue, arising from the political stance of Daniel
Boyarin's A Radical Jew, deserves discussion. Boyarin suggests that
territoriality should be expendable within a postmodern diaspora
Judaism. This might also be the case for Christians if they also re-
garded themselves as resident aliens on the model suggested by the
letter of 1 Peter (see Reinhard Feldmeier, who discusses the model
in relation to cultural resistance). It is not so clear, however, that
land is such a negotiable item in the construction of the social iden-
tity of indigenous peoples. Certainly in the case of Australian Ab-
origines, it is difficult to see how they could renounce any claim on
traditional land and still remain Aboriginal. 53 When the Aborigines
first came into contact with Europeans, they could not grasp the
significance of European setdement since in their own worldview to
leave one's communal land would be to commit a kind of spiritual
suicide. 54 Christian Aborigines are therefore placed in a dilemma
with regard to their attitude to traditional land (see Lynne Hume).

53
It is interesting, however, to note Swain's argument that there is a tension
between place-based systems and patrilineal genealogical systems in Aboriginal
worldviews. See Swain, A Place for Strangers, pp. 4 1 - 4 9 .
54
See Eve Mungwa D. Fesl, "Religion and Ethnic Identity: A Koori View," in
A.W. Ata (ed.), Religion and Ethnicity: An Australian Study Vol. 2 (Melbourne: Spec-
trum, 1989), p. 9. While Aborigines were not "pacifists," wars of territorial conquest
were initially inconceivable. See Swain, A Place for Strangers, who suggests that the
pre-contact Aboriginal ontology of "structured locative interdependence" means that
"to consume other people/lands is to destroy the world-pattern on which one de-
pends" (p. 54). Cf. T . G . H . Strehlow, "Geography and the Totemic Landscape in
Central Australia: A Functional Study," in R.M. Bernt (ed.), Australian Aboriginal Studies
(Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1970), p. 130.
Can they read themselves as aliens and sojourners as the New Tes-
tament suggests?
Speaking from their own experience in Mizoram, North-east India,
Thanzauva and R.L. Hnuni argue below that the Bible does have
resources for indigenous peoples, depending on how readers construct
their identification with social groups in the biblical stories. 55 They
tend to read "with the grain" of the biblical texts, and in this sense,
their method has some affinities with so-called "intratextual" theol-
ogy.56 David Jobling and Catherine Rose, on the other hand, read
the book of Samuel against the grain, or "contra-textually." What
difference does it make, they ask, to read the text from the point of
view of the Philistines? It is no accident that they begin their wide-
ranging discussion of Philistines, ancient and modern, by reiterating
a point made by Palestinian and American Indian critics: the bibli-
cal narratives are directed against the indigenous peoples of Canaan.
How is it possible for Palestinians and Indians, who have experi-
enced the violent consequences of being read "intratextually" as
Canaanites, 57 to turn round and read themselves in some kind of
continuity with "Israelites"?
Clearly, this is an important hermeneutical dispute, and it will
surely be a matter of priority to examine the whole range of biblical
theologies of land 58 and whether, or how, they should figure in the
research programmes of Aboriginal cultural studies. This is just one
of the questions for those of us who are struggling with the implica-
tions of multicultural politics for the discipline of biblical studies. T h e
present volume raises a great number of other issues, and it is my
hope that these diverse articles will generate more debate on the
theme of ethnicity.

55
Cf. Swain's comments on Aboriginal discourse concerning the "Promised Land"
(A Place for Strangers, p. 289) and Lantenari's discussion of Maori appropriations of
'Jewish" identity, above n. 38.
56
See my discussion in Brett, Biblical Criticism in Crisis? (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991), pp. 156-67.
57
See N.S. Ateek, Justice, Only Justice (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1989); S. Niditch, War in
the Hebrew Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 1-2; E. Said, "Michael
Walzer's Exodus and Revolution: A Canaanite Reading," in E.W. Said and C. Hitchens
(eds.), Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question (New York:
Verso, 1988), pp. 161-78; R.A. Warrior, "Canaanites, Cowboys and Indians," Chris-
tianity and Crisis 29 (1989), pp. 2 6 1 - 6 5 ; cf. K.W. Whitelam, The Invention of Ancient
Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History (London: Routledge, forthcoming).
58
See, for example, N. Habel, The Land is Mine: Six Biblical Land Ideologies (Min-
neapolis: Fortress, 1995).
 Some readers will, no doubt, wonder why such a diversity of top-
ics needed to be collected into a single volume. O n e of the virtues of
this collection is that it raises fresh questions for subjects which are
usually treated in isolation from each other. Interpretative issues which
are, strictly speaking, logically separable may nevertheless be enriched
by inter-disciplinary conversation. T h e goal is not to conflate sepa-
rate issues but to examine their inter-relationship. Even the essays in
Part I, which are focussed on the ancient world, often have an eye
on present political realities. While the degree of cultural hybridity
evidenced in post-colonial societies59 and postmodern cities is extreme,
this volume suggests that the ubiquity of cultural permeability might
cast a different light on the political questions of multiculturalism
(although we should be careful not to reduce the politics of identity
simply to questions of culture). T h e idea that cultures are, or should
be, hermetically sealed systems—all equally valuable, all equally need-
ing protection, all equally immune to critique—is probably as dam-
aging to the cause of dialogue as any presumed ideals of religion or
politics which propose the elimination of all cultural influences. 60

59
See the section of hybridity in B. Ashcroft et al. (eds.), The Post-colonial Studies
Reader (London: Roudedge, 1995), pp. 183-209.
60
See Taylor, "Politics of Recognition," pp. 67, 70; idem, "Understanding and
Ethnocentricity," pp. 123-24; J. Milbank, "The End of Dialogue," in G. D'Costa
(ed.), Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of Pluralistic Theology (Maryknoll: Orbis,
1990), p. 184.
 PART I
E T H N I C I T Y IN T H E BIBLE
 E T H N I C I T Y A N D EARLY ISRAEL

Diana Edelman

Introduction

Given the present state of textual and artifactual evidence, nothing

definitive can be said about the ethnicity of premonarchic Israel. This
realization has been growing during the last decade or so, as ancient
Syro-Palestinian archaeologists and historians of ancient Israel and
J u d a h have become more aware of the limitations of the evidence
and have paid attention to the complex nature of ethnicity and how
it functions in societies.1 T h e reasons for our inability to learn any-
thing about early Israel's ethnic composition and forms of ethnic
expression will be explored in the balance of this paper.
Recent sociological studies of the development of ethnicity and
forms of its expression have emphasized the genesis of ethnicity as a
result of specific historical processes that structure relations of in-
equality between discrete social entities. Ethnic consciousness involves
both an assertion of a collective self and the negation of collective
other/s, creating a world of asymmetrical "we‫־‬them" relations. 2 It is

1
See, for example, N.P. Lemche, Early Israel (VTSup, 37; Leiden: Brill, 1985),
p. 406; R. Coote, Early Israel: A New Ηοήζοη (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990), p. 78;
T.L. Thompson, Early History of the Israelite People From the Written & Archaeological
Sources (SHANE, 4; Leiden: Brill, 1992), pp. 154, 161-62, 223, 243-44, 281-82,
303-306, 314, 316, 322-23, 327; M. Skjeggestad, "Ethnic Groups in Early Iron
Age Palestine: Some Remarks on the Use of the Term 'Israelite' in R.ecent Research,"
SJOT 6 (1992), pp. 159-86, esp. 163-68, 177-86; G.W. Ahlström, The History of
Ancient Palestine from the Palaeolithic Period to Alexander's Conquest (JSOTSup, 146; Sheffield:
J S O T , 1993), pp. 3 3 7 - 4 3 . See esp. the following articles in I. Finkelstein and
N. Na'aman, (eds.), From Nomadism to Monarchy: Archaeological and Historical Aspects
of Early Israel (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1994): I. Finkelstein and
N. Na'aman, "Introduction," p. 17; A. Mazar, "Jerusalem and its Vicinity in Iron
Age I," p. 91; Z. Herzog, "The Beer-sheba Valley: From Nomadism to Monarchy,"
pp. 146-49; I. Finkelstein, "The Emergence of Israel: A Phase in the Cyclic History
of Canaan in the Third and Second Millennia BCE," p. 169; and N. Na'aman,
"The 'Conquest of Canaan' in the Book of Joshua and History," p. 242.
2
So J. and J. Comaroff, Ethnography and the Historical Imagination (Boulder: Westview,
1992), p. 56. I am indebted to my colleague, Rick Thompson, in the Dept. of
Sociology and Anthropology at James Madison University, for steering me to this
discussion. This "interactional" approach that involves both self-ascription and as-
cription by others has been acknowledged in previous discussions of the issue by
not an ontological feature of human organization, a "first cause" in
and of itself. While the meaningful construction of the world by classifi-
cation is a necessary condition of social existence, the substance of
the identities varies from group to group and is determined by spe-
cific historical circumstances. Once ethnicity emerges, however, as
the basis of social classification and status relations, it seems on the
experiential level to become an independent principle that determines
social status, class membership, and social relations. It may be per-
petuated by factors quite different from those that caused its emer-
gence and may have a direct and independent impact on the con-
text in which it arose. 3
T h e foregoing summary emphasizes that the factors leading to the
emergence of ethnicity within a given group cannot be predicted,
nor can the specific forms ethnicity will take and changes that it will
undergo over time. This means that there are no artifactual remains
that can consistently be used to understand a group's ethnicity; these
will vary from group to group, depending on historical circumstances.
While some cultural remains may reflect information about a given
group's ethnicity, it will not always be clear from the artifacts alone
how to extract such information and which artifacts can provide such
information. 4

Textual Evidence

In order to examine the emergence of ethnicity in early Israel, as

well as its persistence and transformation, we need texts that accurately
record and transmit information about Israel's emergence as a recog-

e.g., F. Barth ("Introduction,'' in Ethnic Groups and Boundaries [ed. F. Barth; Boston:
Little, Brown and Co., 1969], pp. 9-38), G. Berreman ("Bazaar Behavior: Social
Identity and Social Interaction in Urban India," in Ethnic Identity [ed. G. de Vos
and L. Romanucci; Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield, 1975], pp. 71-105) and K.A. Kamp
and N. Yoffee ("Ethnicity in Ancient Asia During the Early Second Millenium BC,"
BASOR 237 [1980], pp. 8 5 - 1 0 4 , esp. 87-88).
3
For a presentation of an analytic position that accounts for the genesis, persis-
tence and transformation of ethnicity and ethnic consciousness, see J. and J. Comaroff,
Ethnography, pp. 4 9 - 6 7 . I find this discussion more helpful than that, for example, by
R. McGuire ("The Study of Ethnicity in Historical Archaeology," Journal of Anthro-
pological Archaeology 1 [1982], pp. 159-78), which has been cited as a good source for
the issue.
4
K.A. Kamp and N. Yoffee (above n. 2) have suggested that ethnic identification
may be derived from material cultural remains by using high probability correla-
nizable entity, whether geographical, social or cultural. Unfortunately,
such texts do not now exist, and may never have existed. Moreover,
it is highly unlikely that any additional ones will turn up in the fu-
ture. We do need to examine, however, the potentially relevant
material in the Bible and the Merneptah Stele.

A. The Bible

As emphasis has grown on studying the final form of the biblical text
as a literary composition, whose meaning is the only level of mean-
ing that can realistically be approached by scholarship, confidence in
our ability to reconstruct the "original" form of a tradition has waned.
At the same time, the recognition has grown that the biblical texts
reflect the world view of the time in which their primary authors
composed them, even allowing for subsequent editorial changes and
"updatings." T h e primary composition of the books of Joshua and
Judges, which deal with Israel's occupation of the land and life prior
to the emergence of the monarchy, are variously dated to ca. 700, 5

tions of the way data clusters for the following three types of behavior: behavior
symbolizing ethnic identity; behavior resulting from socialization as a member of a
group; and behavior associated with political or economic strategy based on group
membership. T h e y emphasize that home manufacturing techniques and stylistic
preferences are especially good indicators ("Ethnicity in Ancient Asia," p. 96). Nev-
ertheless, early in their article they acknowledge that ethnographic data are sugges-
tive but in no way conclusive; researchers rely on many models (p. 93). Thus, since
high probability correlations will vary depending on which ethnographic model they
are measured against, or with which model they are compared, ultimately, all re-
suits will be tentative rather than conclusive. In spite of their optimism about being
able to derive ethnic identification through the application of their proposed method,
their results are not really open to verification when applied to ancient civilizations
that left few or no texts and so remain proposals, not facts.
5
So, e.g., H. Weippert, "Das 'deuteronomistischen' Beurteilungen der Könige
von Israel und Juda und das Problem der Redaktion der Königsbücher," Bib 53
(1972), pp. 3 1 0 - 1 9 , who points out reasons to posit a pre-Josianic date but does not
specifically propose a date; W.B. Barrick, "On the 'Removal of the high Places' in
1 - 2 Kings," Bib 55 (1974), p. 259; M. Weinfeld, "The Emergence of the Deuteronomic
Movement: T h e Historical Antecedents," in N. Lohfink, (ed.), Das Deuteronomium:
Enstehung, Gestalt, und Botschaft (BETL, 68; Leuven: Leuven University, 1985), pp.
76-98. A. Lemaire posits a Hezekian edition, but believes that the first assembling
of the extended history took place even earlier, under Jehoshaphat ("Vers l'histoire
de la rédaction des livres de Rois," £ A W 98 [1986], pp. 224, 230, 232) while
A. Campbell posits a northern prophetic record as the main base, dating to the
reign of Jehu in the late 9th cent, BCE {Of Kings and Prophets: A Ninth Century Document
(1 Samuel 1-2 Kings 10) [CBQMS, 17; Washington DC: Catholic Biblical Associa-
tion, 1986]).
ca. 600, 6 or pre-515 BCE,7 depending on one's preference for dating
the Deuteronomistic History. All dates are removed from the events
they recreate by hundreds of years and reflect the world view of a
monarchic society, either at the level of state or empire.
It is probably no coincidence that the office of "judge" as imagined
by the author of the book of Judges differs from that of kingship
only in hereditary succession, or dynasty. Both assign to the leader
the dual roles of military leadership and judicial leadership, which
specifically means holding the people to the terms of the Sinai cov-
enant. T h e first task is made clear in Judg. 2:16 and 1 Sam. 9:16,
while the second is expressed in Judg. 2:17 and 1 Sam. 9:17. 8 T h e
office of judgeship has been modelled on the only system of leadership
the author knew from his own time and experience, that of kingship.
T h e second trait in particular, judicial leadership, has been artifi-
cially imposed on the source material used by the Judahite o r j u d e a n
writer to create the book of Judges. Details in the various accounts
of the lives of judges suggest that he has adapted a series of stories

6
So, e.g., W.F. Albright, The Biblical Period (Pittsburgh: Pittsburg University, 1950),
pp. 4 5 - 4 6 ; J. Gray, I and II Kings (OTL; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963), pp. 3 5 ‫־‬
36; F.M. Cross, Jr., Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge: Harvard University,
1973), pp. 274—89; P.K. McCarter, Jr., 1 Samuel (AB, 8; Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1980), p. 15; R.E. Friedman, The Exile and Biblical Narrative ( H S M , 22; Chico, CA:
Scholars, 1981), pp. 1-26; R.D. Nelson, The Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic
History (JSOTSup, 18; Sheffield: J S O T , 1981), pp. 120-21; A.D.H. Mayes, The Story
of Israel Between the Settlement and Exile: A Redactional Study of the Deuteronomistic History
(London: S C M , 1983), p. 136; L Provan, Hezekiah and the Books of Kings (BZAW,
172; N e w York: Walter de Gruyter, 1988), p. 172.
7
So, e.g., M. Noth, The Deuteronomistic History (tr. J. Doull et al.) J S O T S u p , 15;
Sheffield: J S O T , 1981); R. Smend, "Das Gesetz und die Völker. Ein Beitrag zur
deuteronomistischen Redaktionsgeschichte," in H.W. Wolff, (ed.), Probleme biblischer
Theologie: Gerhard von Rad zum 70. Geburtstag (Munich: C. Kaiser, 1971), pp. 494—509;
W. Dietrich, Prophetie und Geschichte ( F R L A N T , 108; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1972); T. Veijola, Die ewige Dynastie: David und die Enstehung seiner Dynastie
nach der deuteronomistischen Darstellung (AASF B, 193; Helsinki: Soumalainen Tiedea-
katemia, 1975); idem, Das Königtum in der Beurteilung der deuteronomistischen Historiographie:
âne redaktionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung (AASF B, 198; Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedea-
katemia, 1977); H.D. Hoffmann, Reform und Reformen: Untersuchung zu einem Grundthema
der deuteronomistischen GeschichtsSchreibung (ATANT, 66; Zurich: Theologischer Verlag,
1980); and B. Peckham, The Compontwn of the Deuteronomistic History (HSM, 35; Adanta:
Scholars, 1985). Smend, Dietrich and Veijola recognize at least two layers of writ-
ing/editing but all date the initial composition to the exilic period.
8
T h e failure of the people to listen to the judge and their breaking of the cov-
enant by worshipping other gods indicates that the judge's role in peacetime, after
the overthrow of foreign oppression, was to tell the people the terms of the Sinai
covenant. T h e verb 'asar in 1 Sam 9:17 should be translated in its primary sense,
"to constrain." T h e king is to hold the people to the terms of the covenant. T h e
dealing with military victories by local heroes associated with various
regions that came to be or were part of the state of Israel to portray
his vision of life before the monarchy. Martin Noth's theory that the
minor judges stem from a list of supratribal judicial functionaries in
the premonarchic period has not prevailed in the face of literary or
historical investigations. 9 T h e minor judges seem rather to play the
specific literary function of marking the passage of time within the
schematized era of the judges, appearing in the incremental pattern
l - 2 3 . 1 0 ‫ ־‬Their stories may either have been presumed to have been
known by the ancient audience, precluding the need to retell them
fully, or they may have been obscure figures, like many of the so-called
major judges prior to their development at the hands of the author
of Judges. T h e author may have run out of potential weaknesses to
point out in judgeship as a form of leadership, or he may simply
have not been inspired by the details associated with these other six
individuals to expand them into full accounts. None of the so-called
major or minor judges seem to have been remembered for their
function in a judicial capacity; 11 this aspect of office appears to have
been assigned to them because it was an integral aspect of the royal
office and because it helped the author underscore his point that the
people continually chose to break the covenant in spite of their full
knowledge of the laws contained therein, made known to them by
their leaders.
In light of the centuries-long gap between the composition of Joshua
and Judges and the actual premonarchic time period, questions need
to be asked about the nature of sources that would have been ere-
ated in such a socio-political setting, their means of preservation and
transmission through the centuries, and how they would have be-
come available to the southern writer responsible for the two books,

opposite of this term, para', and its effects are illlustrated in Exod. 32:25, where
Moses accuses Aaron of having "let the people loose" by failing to hold them to the
worship of Yahweh.
9
For a convenient statement of the position in English, see M. Noth, The History
of Israel (New York: Harper & Row, 3rd edn, 1960), pp. 101-102.
10
So E.T. Mullen, "The 'Minor Judges': Some Literary and Historical Consider-
ations," CÖQ, 44 (1982), pp. 185-201.
11
T h e only one who might potentially have fulfilled a judicial role is Deborah,
but upon consideration of the sources used to create her story, this does not seem
likely. She was remembered as a prophetess/seer in the poem in Judges 5, which
served as the main source for the composition of the narrative in Judges 4. Her
connection with a tree landmark in the central hill country may also reflect her
historical status as religious functionary, since singular trees often had a sacred function.
given the amount of northern material contained within them.
It is generally agreed that poetic fragments incorporated into vari-
ous narrative frameworks in different biblical books derive from
pre-existing sources, though the nature and date of those sources
remains disputed in many instances. Of sources specifically quoted
by authors, there is the Scroll of the Wars of Yahweh (Num. 21:14)
and the Scroll of Yashar (Josh. 10:13; 2 Sam. 1:18). Both seem to
contain songs associated with wars, whether victories or defeats. Not
surprisingly, a number of the poems quoted in the so-called histori-
cal books deal with situations of war: Miriam's Song (Exod. 15:20
and the expanded form in 15:1-18); Deborah's Song in Judges 5;
the victory song claiming the capture of Heshbon in Num. 21:27-
30. Even if all the battles referenced in the poetic fragments cited
derive from the monarchic period, which is quite possible, it is still
likely that the creation of such victory songs and laments in response
to wars was a premonarchic practice that continued in the monarchic
period. Wars are waged in prestate societies and the results become
the basis of hero stories and poetic remembrances.
Whether any such literature, in story form or poetic form, either
written or oral, survived from premonarchic Israel into the monarchic
period cannot be known for certain, but it can be presumed that
such material would have been produced by early Israelite society.
T h e handing on of war-related traditions would explain the decision
by the author of the book of Joshua to opt for the form of origin
story common in ancient historiography that centered on claim to
land through its conquest by ancestors, as opposed to the other com-
mon form in which a deity led an ancestor peacefully to a new
homeland, found in the Abraham narrative. 12 If the writer had before
him sources that focused on war stories or collections of victory songs
stemming from early battles, he would logically have been swayed to
recreate Israel's origins in terms of the conquest model rather than
the more peaceful model. Even so, there is no guarantee that his
sources went back to the premonarchic era; they may well reflect
battles conducted during the monarchic period which, lacking spe-
cific dates or names of kings, were retrojected by him to the
premonarchic period.

12
For these two types of origin traditions, see esp. J. Van Seters, Prologue to His-
tory: The Tahwist as Historian in Genesis (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1992),
esp. p. 239. See also, M. Weinfeld, The Promise of the Land: The Inheritance of the Land
of Canaan by the Israelites (Los Angeles: University of California, 1993), pp. 1 - 5 1 .
 Judges 5 may well be such a monarchic-era battle that has been
used by the biblical writer to illustrate events in the premonarchic
period. T h e original form of the poem can no longer be determined,
but it appears that there have been a couple of stages of expansion.
T h e northern origin of the tradition is made clear from the chastise-
ment of various groups that did not participate; J u d a h and Simeon
are not among the tribes or groups listed, and Reuben's mention
should probably be connected with the tradition that places the stone
of Bohan at the eastern edge of the central hill country (Josh. 15:5).
T h e tribes named are traditionally associated with territory that was
controlled at one time or another by the state of Israel.
According to v. 19, the kings of Canaan fought against Taanach.
T h e battle was engaged between the Israelite forces from Taanach,
led by Baraq, and Sisera's forces outside of the city, in the plain
lying south of the Qishon River. T h e Israelites may have driven the
enemy forces back to the river, which served as a barrier to their
further retreat. T h e core details in the poem suggest that Taanach
was an Israelite city that was unsuccessfully assaulted by Sisera's
forces. 13
As a lowland city adjoining the central hill country, Taanach's
capture and incorporation into Israel has usually been dated to the
monarchic period, under David or Solomon. Judg. 1:27 lists it as
one of the Canaanite cities that fell within the tribal allotment of
Manasseh but whose native population was never dispossessed, and
it appears in the list of administrative districts attributed to Solomon
in the Jezreel-Beth Shean corridor, one of the areas that lay outside
of traditional tribal land, which was to have been created from newly
conquered "Canaanite" territory (1 Kgs 4:12).14

13
A. Rainey has suggested that Taanach was the mustering ground for the
Canaanite forces and should not be read as the place where the batde was joined,
but with the ensuing statement about the anticipated division of spoils ("The Mili-
tary Campground at Taanach by the Waters of Megiddo," Eretz Israel 15 [1981],
pp. 61 *-66*). From where, then, would Sisera , s troops have captured the expected
female war trophies and made off with the fine cloth? Certainly not from the Isra-
elite forces they engaged in batde in the open, since women were not part of the
armed forces of the day. T h e situation presumes an attack on a specific setdement
containing women, known for its fine cloth, and containing silver items worth spoil-
ing, although the latter could arguably have been plundered from the bodies of
slain warriors. His suggested interpretation can stand only if one argues that the list
of anticipated war booty is generic, being an expected feature of such a composition.
14
Whatever the date of the list, which could derive from a later Israelite admin-
istration, Taanach lies at the edge of the central hill country, the core of the territorial
 Does the failure of poetic fragments memorializing Israelite victo-
ries to appear in most of the battle accounts in Joshua mean that
poetic collections were not the primary source used by the author of
each book? Probably. Otherwise, we would have expected each nar-
rative account to have been followed by its victory song, on which it
was based. Were any other sources used? Again, without the ability
to confirm the use of sources, nothing definitive can be said. How-
ever, it is clear that the book of Judges is based on some sort of
collection of hero stories stemming from northern state of Israel and
not from the author's native J u d a h . Othniel is commonly acknowl-
edged to be a secondary addition to the collection. His story illus-
trates the pattern of judgeship to a tee with no extraneous details,
and quite suspiciously, he is the only judge from the south, who
coincidentally illustrates that judgeship can work as a form of lead-
ership, given the right person. T h e northern origin of the underlying
traditions for the remaining judges suggests the use of some sort of
source for this book at least. There is no way to know, however, if
the individuals portrayed therein lived in premonarchic Israel or
monarchic Israel or if they lived at all.
T h e book of Joshua appears to have been based in part on source
material. Its author seems to have employed different kinds of ad-
ministrative lists to delineate the division of the land into tribal allot-
ments. 15 Some explanation for how a j u d a h i t e or Judean author came
into possession of such lists for districts within the state of Israel must
be given. Although a date under David or Solomon might be pos-

state of Israel, in non-traditional Israelite land. It is noteworthy that Taanach is

mentioned in Egyptian accounts of the Battle of Megiddo (ca. 1468 BCE) and among
the towns/cities conquered by Sheshonq ca. 918 BCE. Otherwise, it only appears in
an 18th dynasty hieratic text among eleven towns that sent maryannu representatives
to Pharaoh's court. O n the basis of archaeological excavations, it has been surmised
that the site was destroyed ca. 1350 BCE and resettled sometime in the 12th century
BCE. Evidence for occupation during the 10th and 9th centuries was also uncovered.
O n the basis of currently available archaeological evidence, the site was not occu-
pied during the conquest period that typically is assigned to the end of the Late
Bronze Age (end of the 13th century BCE) or the early period of the judges, in the
first half of the 12th century. Such results need to be used with caution, however,
since exposure of early levels was very limited and the first excavations were done
before modern methods were fully developed. See conveniently, A.E. Glock,
"Taanach," in D . N . Freedman (ed.), Anchor Bible Dictionary: Vol. 6 (New York:
Doubleday, 1992), pp. 2 8 7 - 9 0 .
15
N. Na'aman has suggested that many of the battles contained in the first twelve
chapters of the book are based on later monarchic-era battles, dating from David to
the Assyrians. This is an attractive idea, even if it cannot be proven definitively
("The 'Conquest of Canaan,'" pp. 2 1 8 - 8 1 , esp. 251-81).
sible, which would have been the last time that J u d a h would have
controlled all this territory according to the author of Samuel and
Kings, it is not the only viable explanation.
Noting the presence of northern material in the Deuteronomistic
History, many scholars have argued that these traditions were car-
ried south by fleeing northerners in the wake of the capture of Samaria
in 721 BCE and the conversion of the former state of Israel to the
Assyrian province of Samerina. 16 T h e great expansion of population
in Jerusalem in the 7 th century, when a second city wall was built to
accommodate the new setdement outside the old city's perimeter,
has been connected with this hypothetical refugee movement. 17 I have
always found the picture of scribes fleeing the burning city with scrolls
tucked under each arm to be highly amusing, although arguably,
they could have carried their traditions in their heads and written
them down once resettled in the south. Why the intelligentsia of the
Jerusalemite court would have felt these traditions to be so superior
to their own that they would have adopted them instandy, theology
and all, has always been a mystery to me. Did they really have such
an inferiority complex?
While some northern traditions could have been mediated to J u d a h
by northern refugees after 721 BCE, two alternative explanations for
the bulk of them are more appealing. According to most of the bound-
ary lists in various books, Bethel and Gilgal were Israelite towns.
However, in Josh. 18:21, both towns lie within the boundaries of
J u d a h , in the northernmost district of Benjamin. Similarly, in Neh.
7:32 and 36 Bethel and Jericho are part of the Persian province of
Yehud. This list in Joshua is frequentiy dated to the reign o f j o s i a h ,
especially in light of the claim in 2 Kgs 23:4, 15-18 t h a t j o s i a h had
direct access to Bethel and defiled the former Israelite royal sanctuary
there. 18 Even though it is unlikely t h a t j o s i a h was able to take control

16
So, e.g., E.W. Nicholson, Deuteronomy and Tradition (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967),
pp. 5 8 - 8 2 , 94 and esp. 58, n. 1 - 2 and 59 n. 1 - 2 for others who have shared similar
views.
17
So, e.g., M. Broshi, "The Expansion of Jerusalem in the reign of Hezekiah and
Manasseh," IEJ 24 (1974), pp. 2 1 - 2 6 ; N. Avigad, Discovering Jerusalem (Nashville:
Thomas Nelson, 1983), pp. 5 4 - 5 6 ; Ahlström, History of Ancient Palestine, pp. 6 8 1 - 8 2 .
J. Hayes suggests that part of the population growth may have been due to north-
ern refugees, but that part might equally have been Judahites who were displaced
after the Assyrian confiscation of most of the land of Judah after 701 BCE (J.M.
Miller a n d J . H . Hayes, A History of Ancient Israel and Judah [Philadelphia: Westminster,
1986], p. 354).
18
So, e.g., A. Alt, "Judas Gaue unter Josia," PJB 21 (1925), pp. 100-111;
over most of the territory of the former Israelite state as Assyria's
empire crumbled, he could well have expanded his northern border
slightly to the north, in a test to see what the weakened Assyrians
would do. By taking control of Bethel and Gilgal, he would have
gained access to whatever northern records would have been pre-
served at those sanctuaries.
Two scenarios can be reconstructed on the basis of the citations
from Joshua and Nehemiah. T h e first is that control of a segment of
southern Mt. Ephraim passed from Samaria to the state of J u d a h
toward the end of the monarchy, perhaps during the reign of Josiah,
and remained connected to the South into the Persian period. T h e
second is that control of this region first passed to the South during
the Persian period, with the establishment of the province of Yehud,
when the old Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian district boundaries were
readjusted for some reason. In the latter case, the stories about Josiah
defiling the sanctuary at Bethel would be a retrojection to give fictional
credit for the change to this king, and the Benjaminite boundary list
would reflect the situation in the Persian period, not the late mon-
archy, as is frequently maintained.
Southern control over Bethel, whether established in the late monar-
chy or in the Persian period, would explain well the prominence of
Bethel in the biblical stories, and Gilgal, to a much lesser degree.
T h e stories of Elijah and Elisha tend to center around activities as-
sociated with these two sanctuaries, and the prophetical traditions of
Hosea and Amos could easily have been derived from Bethel's ar-
chives. A copy of northern royal annals might also have been kept
at the royal sanctuary, as a list of deeds performed by the kingdom's
earthly vice-regents on behalf of the national god. In fact, even a
cursory reading of the Hebrew Bible leaves the impression that Bethel,
not Samaria, was the most prominent northern royal sanctuary; there
are almost no traditions relating to the capital city proper, but many
associated with Bethel and Gilgal.
Since taxes were typically paid in the framework of religious festi-
vais, local district lists should also have been kept at both sanctuaries.
Perhaps lists of all the northern state's districts were kept at regional

N. Na'aman, Borders and Districts in Biblical Historiography (Jerusalem Biblical Studies,

4; Jerusalem: Simor, 1986), p. 229. Contrast Z. Kallai, who dates it to the reign of
Abijah on the basis of his purported conquests in the region, which are found only
in 2 Chronicles 13 (Historical Geography of the Bible [Jerusalem: Magnes and Leiden:
Brill, 1986], p. 398).
administrative centers like Bethel, and those at Bethel survived the
changeover to Assyrian administration. Certainly local lists would have
served as the basis for ongoing taxation and conscription, regardless
of the new head of state and the changes in population groups resident
in towns.
T h e collection of stories lying behind the book of Judges and some
of the boundary information and town lists for the North in the book
of Joshua could have been derived from archival materials preserved
at Bethel a n d / o r Gilgal. For those who doubt the historicity of David
or Solomon, or those who accept their existence as early kings over
the combined entities of Israel and J u d a h but who suspect that very
few records would have been preserved in the southern court from
this early monarchic era, the proposed access either during the late
monarchic period or during the Persian period by southern scribes
to archival records stored at Bethel and Gilgal offers an alternative,
viable explanation. It allows records from the end of the Israelite
monarchy to have served as a data base for Judahite authors in-
volved in the composition of a number of biblical books. 19

B. The Memeptah Stele

T h e most important text for information about premonarchic Israel,

the Merneptah Stele, yields almost no firm data about this unit or
entity. As pointed out initially by O . Eissfeldt, the foreign group
mentioned in line seven of the coda section, which describes a cam-
paign to Hurru-land or Canaan that took place prior to his cam-
paign against the Libyans, the main topic of celebration in the stele,
cannot even definitively be read as Israel; it could just as well be
Jezreel. 20

19
Since it is Jericho rather than Gilgal that appears in the town list in Nehemiah,
a late monarchic date for the Gilgal traditions is more plausible if one wants to
argue that they stem from actual sanctuary records. However, it could be argued
that all the traditions mentioning Gilgal were derived from records kept at Bethel,
since references to the two sanctuaries tend to cluster together. In this case, a date
of origin in the Persian period could not be ruled out.
20
This idea was put forward by O. Eissfeldt in the first version of his chapter in
the Cambridge Ancient History entided "Palestine in the Time of the Nineteenth Dy-
nasty" (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1965), p. 14. It was subsequently deleted
from later editions of the chapter. In an earlier discussion, G.R. Driver had pointed
out the possibility of this reading of the term on the stele, even though he had not
adopted it himself (Semitic Writing: From Pictograph to Alphabet [The Schweich Lectures
of the British Academy, 1944; London: Oxford University, 1948], p. 135). Recently,
 While ultimately a geographical term, Jezreel could have become
the designation for the people who settled in the region, just as Is-
rael, which is a personal name in form and thus, probably originated
as the name of a clan or group, came to be the designation of a
territory that included the area where the original group settled.
Assuming the name in line seven is to be read Israel, all that can
be learned definitively about this entity is that it existed somewhere
in ancient Palestine by the time of Merneptah's campaign in the
closing decade of the Late Bronze Age. It might have been a foreign
people, as the determinative suggests, but since it is not known whether
the Egyptian scribe who composed the stele had been involved in
the earlier campaign and had first-hand knowledge of Israel, nothing
certain can be concluded. It is equally possible that the determina-
tive was used loosely, mistakenly, or deliberately in a complementary
way to the three preceding city-states to express the pharaoh's con-
quest of both the territory and its people. 21
T h e geographical location of this Israel cannot be determined from
the information on the stele. Three proposals have been made: the
Galilee, Transjordan, and the central Cisjordanian hill country. T h e
first two presume that the order in which the three city-states and
Israel appear accurately reflects the course of the campaign. T h e
city-states move from south to north, up the coast, Ashkelon, Gezer,
and then turn east to Yeno'am. According to the first proposal,
Yeno'am is to be identified with el-'Abeidiyeh in the J o r d a n Valley
just south of Lake Kinneret and Israel would lie to the northeast, in
the Galilee. 22 T h e second proposal presumes Yeno'am is a Trans-
jordanian city located at Tell esh-Shihab west of Edrei on the Yarmuk
River, controlling the main road to Ashtaroth and Damascus. Ac-

O. Margalith has taken up this idea again and favors the rendering as Jezreel rather
than Israel ("On the Origin and Antiquity of the N a m e 'Israel'," 102 (1990),
pp. 2 2 5 - 3 7 , esp. 2 2 8 . 2 3 5 ,29‫־‬
21
A catalogue of the loose or careless use of determinatives in association with
foreign lands or peoples in texts dating from Merneptah's reign was presented by
John Huddlestun in a paper entitled "Merneptah's Revenge: T h e 'Israel Stela' and
its Modern Interpreters" at the 1991 Annual S B L / A S O R Meeting in Kansas City,
Kansas. For further discussion of this problem and related issues, see M. Hasel,
"Israel in the Merneptah Stele," BASOR 296 (1994), pp. 4 5 - 6 1 .
22
So, e.g., S. Yeivin, The Israelite Conquest of Canaan (Istanbul Nederlands
Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut in het Nabije Oosten, 27; Leiden: Brill, 1971),
pp. 29, 30, 85; B. Peckham, "Israel and Phoenicia," in F.M. Cross et al. (ed.), Magnolia
Dei The Mighty Acts of God, Essays on the Bible and Archeology in Memory of G. Ernest
WHght (Garden City, N Y : D o u b l e d a y , 1976), p. 2 2 7 ; and Y. Aharoni and
M. Avi-Yonah, The Macmillan Bible Atlas (New York: Macmillan, rev. edn, 1977),
map 46.
cording to this view, the Egyptian troops continued east down the
Beth She'an Valley and then crossed over the J o r d a n and continued
east up the Yarmuk. 23
T h e third proposal has been argued on the basis of two different
rationales. T h e first, proposed by G.W. Ahlström and D. Edelman,
assumes that the stela need not provide an accurate reflection of the
course of campaign; instead, it sees the four destroyed entities to be
a summary of the campaign highlights in which the first three rep-
resent lowland battles and the fourth a highland victory. It presumes
that the scribe deliberately arranged the account to use the lowlands
and highlands as complementary subdivisions of the land of Hurru-
Canaan. 2 4
An alternate approach has been taken by F. Yurco. 25 He has sug-
gested that the three city-states and Israel mentioned in the coda can
be correlated with the four batde scenes depicted on the eastern section
of the eastern wall of the Cour de la Cachette in the temple of
Karnak at Luxor. T h e four scenes appear alongside six other scenes
involving the binding of shasu prisoners, the pharaoh leading Canaan-
ite captives to his chariot, the pharaoh driving shasu prisoners back
to Egypt, shasu and Canaanite prisoners being presented to Amun,
and a final triumphal scene. Three of the batdes involve attacks against
cities while the fourth is a confrontation in open country with a host
of enemies dressed in Canaanite garb. Assuming that the four scenes
reflect the geographical sequence of the actual campaign, he suggests
that Israel is to be equated with the fourth scene and to be located
south of the Jezreel Valley, in the northern and central Cisjordanian
highlands, and eastward across the Jordan River, in the Transjordanian
highlands. He prefers this to the Galilee because he thinks that the
earliest and densest archaeological traces of Israelite settlement lie in
the former areas, not the latter area. Even if he is correct in his
equation, which is not certain, 26 the pictures do not provide further

23
So N. Na'aman, "Yeno'am," Tel Aviv 4 (1977), pp. 168-77, esp. 169, 171.
24
So G.W. Ahlström and D. Edelman, "Merneptah's Israel," JNES 4 4 (1985),
pp. 5 9 - 6 1 .
25
F J. Yurco, "Merneptah's Canaanite Campaign," JARCE 23 (1986), pp. 1 8 9 -
201. His idea has been taken up and expanded by L.E. Stager, who was familiar
with Yurco's work before it was published ("Merneptah, Israel and Sea Peoples:
N e w Light on an Old Relief," Eretz-Israel 18 [1985], pp. 56*.(*64‫־‬
26
For a rejection of Yurco's dating of the four scenes to Merneptah and a counter
proposal that they depict batde scenes from Ramses II, see D.B. Redford, "The
Ashkelon Relief at Karnak and the Israel Stela," IEJ 36 (1986), pp. 188-200.
A. Rainey has accepted Yurco's equation of the ten reliefs on the western face of
localization for Israel; the open country could be in the lowlands or
highlands, perhaps in an intermontance valley. It does not even help
settle the question of Israel's status as a people vs. some form of
state organization, since no details are known about the circumstances
under which the confrontation took place and the depiction is a highly
stylized portrayal. All four proposals about Israel's geographical loca-
tion are possible; none can be proven.
T h e Merneptah Stele probably indicates that some sort of entity
called Israel was present in ancient Palestine already at the end of
the Late Bronze period and had a well-established enough presence
to be considered a threat worth attacking by Merneptah. Even the
latter statement is presumptuous; a review of Sheshonq's subsequent
campaign list reveals that small villages are listed alongside larger
walled towns and cities. If the scribe who composed the coda section
had been working from such a detailed list, Israel need not have
been a significant entity. T h e scribe might have chosen it a m o n g a
n u m b e r of options because he wanted a population group, a people,
to balance his city-states, or because he wanted a highland encoun-
ter to balance the lowland ones. O t h e r reasons are equally possible.
It might have been a major confrontation or a minor skirmish; there
are too m a n y unknowns for us to second-guess why Israel is named.
W e remain in that scribe's debt for including it in his summary for
whatever reasons and can only lament his failure to provide more
specific information.

Summary

A study of the ethnicity of premonarchic Israel needs to be based on

specific texts that indicate the geographical location and boundaries
of such a unit and which, ideally, provide information about its
socio-political structure and some of its cultural mores. O u r inability

the western wall of the Cour de la Cachette with Merneptah's campaign that is
summarized in the coda section of the Merneptah Stele. He proposes, however, that
Israel is to be equated with the shasu depicted in the prisoner scenes and not with
the Canaanites being fought in the fourth battle scene ("Which Picture is the Isra-
elites? Anson F. Rainey's Challenge," BAR 1 7 / 6 [1991], pp. 5 4 - 6 0 , 93). His main
argument lies in his belief that the Bible has accurately portrayed the early Israelites
as semi-nomads and therefore, that they could not have used chariots, as depicted
in the reliefs. In response, F. Yurko points out that the four battle scenes should be
correlated with the four battles summarized in the coda section and that the shasu
do not fall within these scenes ("Yurco's Response," BAR 1 7 / 6 [1991], p. 61).
 to determine definitively which traditions now found in various bib-
lical books accurately reflect life and events in premonarchic Israel
precludes such a study. This is particularly true since whatever early
traditions might have used would almost certainly have been recast
to reflect the world view of their authors who lived in the monarchic
period or later. It seems likely that stories about local heroes and
war-related poetry would have been produced by a premonarchic
Israelite society. T h e same type of literature would also have been
produced in monarchic Israel, however, making it extremely diffi-
cult, if not impossible, to distinguish between the two, should any of
the first have survived.
As oudined previously in this paper, two new alternative explana-
tions can be proposed to account for the inclusion of a number of
northern traditions in books authored by Judahites or Judeans. In
addition to the possible use of southern records dating from the reign
of David or Solomon, or of northern records that made their way
south with refugees after the fall of the state of Israel in 721 BCE, the
Judahite court may have gained access to northern records preserved
in the archives of Bethel and Gilgal when these two sanctuaries were
added to J u d a h ' s territory during the reign o f j o s i a h . Alternatively,
J u d e a n scribes in the Persian province of Yehud may have gained
access to northern records preserved in archives at Bethel.
T h e Merneptah Stele probably provides the earliest datable refer-
ence to Israel's existence as some form of definable entity somewhere
in ancient Palestine but is not explicit enough to allow further con-
elusions to be drawn. A study of Israel's premonarchic ethnicity cannot
be built on such a slim reference. T h e mention of Israel on the stele
is best used as a clue to the minimum length of time that Israel
existed as a prestate entity, although even this use presumes the
accuracy of the characterization of Israel as a people, which is open
to challenge.

Artifactual Evidence

Even though ethnicity will be expressed in different ways by differ-

ent groups and there is no way to predict what specific forms it will
take in a given society, it is possible to draw up a list of ways in
which it typically is manifested in some form or another. It must be
remembered that the following list is not exhaustive and that ethnicity
need not find some form of expression for each item on the list in
every society. Typical forms of ethnic expression can include, but
are not limited to: ceramic repertoire, style, and forms of decoration,
architecture, diet, religious beliefs and practices, burial customs, lan-
guage, music, dance, clothing, hairstyles, lifestyles, customs, art, kinship
reckoning, phenotypes, modes of production, and social structure. 27
Only some of the forms listed above have traces that can be re-
covered through archaeological excavation as artifactual remains. In
the quest to understand the ethnicity of premonarchic Israel, aspects
of the following items have been analyzed using artifactual informa-
tion: pottery repertoire, styles and forms of decoration, architecture,
diet, religious beliefs and practices, burial customs, language, cloth-
ing, hairstyles, kinship reckoning, modes of production and social
structure.
In each case, a presumption has been made that a specific site
can be labelled "Israelite" or, in the case of the Karnak relief, that
the fourth battle scene depicts Merneptah's encounter with Israelites.
F. Yurco has drawn conclusions about early Israelite dress, hairstyles
and lifestyle based on his tentative identification of one battle scene
at Karnak with the reference in the Merneptah stela to the pharaoh's
defeat of Israel. He suggests that the Canaanite-style dress indicates
that a segment of early Israel had coalesced out of Canaanite society
and that they can be equated archaeologically with farmsteads in the
hill country in the late 13th and early 12th centuries BCE. At the
same time, he accepts the accuracy of "the pastoral, nomadic images
of proto-Israelites of Abraham's or Jacob's time" and thinks that early
Israel contained a partially pastoral element alongside the partially
settled element, even though this segment is not depicted on the reliefs
and so is not documented pictorially. 28 Since his equation of the text
and drawing is not certain, his conclusions need to be recognized as
hypotheses, not established, verifiable facts.
Most Syro-Palestinian archaeologists and historians have concluded
that premonarchic Israel can be located geographically by extending
the boundaries of the later monarchic state at its fullest extent back
in time to the premonarchic period or by accepting the main out-

27
For a good discussion of different ways in which ethnicity can be conceived by
a group and cautions about understanding the fluidity of such markers and their
multipurpose functions that are not restricted to ethnicity alone, see M. Moerman,
"Being Lue: Uses and Abuses of Ethnic Identification," i n j . Helm (ed.), Essays on the
Problem of the THbe (Proceedings of the 1967 Annual Meeting of the Ajnerican Eth-
nological Society; Seattle: University of Washington, 1968), pp. 153-69.
28
"Yurco's Response," p. 61.
lines of the location of Israel as portrayed by the authors of the
books of Joshua and Judges as essentially accurate. T h e second po-
sition fails to recognize that the boundaries as sketched in both books
reflect the world view of their authors who lived in the monarchic
period or later, rather than premonarchic reality, while the first as-
sûmes that the boundaries existed at some point in history and are
not ideals. Neither presumption can be proven through independent
information, and both are faulty.
Societies are not static units that remain unchanged over time; the
boundaries and make-up of a group at any point in time is not iden-
deal to its past or its future. It is methodologically unsound to pre-
sume that premonarchic Israel would have been coterminous with
monarchic Israel in its boundaries or its population composition. At
most, it can be presumed that the later state included within its
population some portion of the entity that had comprised pre-
monarchic Israel and that the latter constituents bore a certain amount
of power or prestige in the emergent state because their name was
adopted by or transferred to the new political structure.
If information in the book of Kings and Assyrian annals can be
presumed to reflect the boundaries of the later states of Israel and
J u d a h at specific points in time with some degree of accuracy, the
changing constituents that were included in either state fluctuated
greatly over time. Without texts to provide information about chang-
ing borders, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to chart
these changing borders and the groups in border zones that became
Israelite or Judahite for shorter or longer periods of time using only
material cultural remains.
Since the state of Israel emerged in the central Cisjordanian high-
lands, it would be safe to assume that premonarchic Israel was lo-
cated at least in part in this region in the period just prior to state
formation. As already pointed out, however, more specific bound-
aries cannot be identified on the basis of biblical texts or the
Merneptah stele. It might be tempting to try to use the list of dis-
tricts in 2 Sam. 2:9 that the biblical writer claims Eshbaal inherited
from Saul to establish the extent of premonarchic Israel on the eve
of the move to statehood. However, since it cannot be determined
how many non-Israelite regions Saul combined with Israelite regions
to create the territorial state of Israel sometime during the first half
of the 1 Oth century, this list, should it derive from a genuine Saulide-
era administrative list, cannot resolve the issue at hand.
A number of attempts have been made to identify ethnic markers
for premonarchic Israel in the material cultural Iron I remains of
the central Cisjordanian hill country. Specifically, ceramic style, ar-
chitecture, site layout, modes of production, diet, religious beliefs and
practices, and social structure/kinship reckoning deduced from ma-
terial remains have been argued to constitute distinctively "Israelite"
traits. None has proven to be an early Israelite ethnic marker in the
face of new data or further critical reflection.

A. Pottery as an Ethnic Marker

T h e collared-rim storage jar, which is ubiquitous in the central hill

country of Palestine on both sides of the J o r d a n River during the
Iron I period, was once held to be a marker of premonarchic Israelite
culture. 29 Its recovery at a number of small Iron I sites in territory
presumed to be Israelite because it lay within the tribal allotments
described in Joshua led to this postulation. As further excavations
were conducted in various regions, however, it became clear that the
storage jars were not limited to traditionally Israelite territory and
were also not found throughout traditionally Israelite regions. Ex-
amples were found on the one hand at Aphek, Megiddo, Tel Keisan,
Ta'anak, Aphek, Tel Mevorakh, Tel Zeror, Tell Qasile, and 'Afula
in the lowlands of Cisjordan and Sahab in the lowlands of Trans-
jordan. O n the other hand, examples were lacking in the northern
Negev and in the Galilee, where a variant form of the j a r with a
taller neck prevailed. T h e latter form was traced back to local Late
Bronze forms used, for example, at Hazor. 30
Further consideration of the function of the collared-rim storage
jars has now led to the suggestion that their prevalence is due to
their primary, though not exclusive use as water storage containers. 31
Water was a scarce and precious commodity required by all inhab-
itants in the highlands, explaining the ubiquity of the jars. I. Finkelstein
has suggested additional use of the jars for the storage of wine, not-
ing that such large containers would have been more suitable for use
in self-sufficient societies, which would explain their elimination in

29
This was first proposed by Y. Aharoni, "New Aspects of the Israelite Occupation
in the North,'' in J.A. Sanders (ed.), Mar Eastern Archaeology in the Twentieth Century,
Essays in Honor of Nelson Glueck (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970), pp. 2 6 4 - 6 5 .
30
So, e.g., A. Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible, 10,000-586 B.C.E. (An-
chor Bible Reference Library; N e w York: Doubleday, 1990), p. 348.
31
I believe this was first suggested by A. Zertal ("The Water Supply Factor in
the Israelite Setdement in Manasseh," in Settlements, Population and Economy in Ancient
favor of smaller, transportable jars during the monarchy. 32 A. Mazar
thinks that the jars were used to hold grain as well as water. 33 Varia-
tions in the shape and height of the rim of collared-rim jars have
been noted, and although efforts to use the variations as chronologi-
cal indicators have failed, 34 they may eventually provide evidence of
regional preferences or pottery workshops.
Extreme caution must be used in using pottery as an ethnic marker.
Even in rare cases like the Sea-Peoples, who brought with them their
Mycenean tradition of pottery forms and decoration when they setded
in Cisjordan, it is not always possible to distinguish among the different
subgroups such as Philistines, Shekelesh, Denyen, Weshesh, Sherden
and Teresh on the basis of locally made pottery that continues the
Mycenean traditions. Without the aid of texts, such a distinction would
not be possible.
T h e population groups that settled primarily in newly built farm-
steads and villages in the hill country in the Iron I may have pro-
cured their pots from local pottery workshops or itinerant potters,
regardless of their ethnic background. Pottery making is an acquired
skill requiring knowledge of tempers, kilns, clay beds, and, in the
Iron I, wheel techniques. There is no reason to believe that every
village would have been able to secure and support its own potter.
It is likely that regional pottery workshops 35 or itinerant potters 36 were

Israel: The Annual Memorial Day for Y. Aharoni, Abstracts of Lectures [Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv
University, 1985], pp. 5 - 6 ) (Hebrew).
32
The Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society,
1988), p. 285.
33
A. Mazar. "Giloh: an Early Israelite Settlement Site Near Jerusalem," IEJ 31
(1981), p. 30.
34
For details, see the discussion by Finkelstein, Archaeology of the Israelite Settlement,
pp. 2 7 6 - 8 3 .
35
T h e existence of the Galilean collared-rim storage jar has already been noted.
In addition, the "Manassite bowl," "punched ware" and possibly "Einun ware," all
of which were first identified by A. Zertal, may be regional Iron I phenomena (for
a convenient summary in English, see '"To the Land of the Perizzites and the
Giants: O n the Israelite Setdement in the Hill Country of Manasseh," in I. Finkelstein
and N. Na'aman (eds.), From Nomadism to Monarchy: Archaeological and Historical Aspects
of Early Israel [Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1994], pp. 51-54). These types
were initially discussed in his Ph.D. dissertation, "The Israelite Setdement in the
Hill Country of Manasseh, ‫ י י‬Tel Aviv University, 1986 (Hebrew with English sum-
mary). Zertal is uncertain whether the latter pottery, which is characterized by a
distinctive clay, should be dated to the Middle Bronze II period or the Iron I period
(ibid., p. 54). I. Finkelstein argues that it is M B II in date ("Emergence of Israel,"
p. 167). For a discussion of the possible role of pottery workshops in the production
of Palestinian pottery in the Late Bronze-Iron Ages, see B. Wood, The Sociology of
Pottery in Ancient Palestine ( J S O T S u p , 103; Sheffield: J S O T , 1990), pp. 3 3 - 5 0 .
36
T h e size of the collared-rim pithoi would have made transport extremely difficult.
responsible for supplying the local groups with their ceramic vessels.
Under such circumstances, peoples of diverse ethnic origins would
have quickly come to share a common ceramic tradition. T h e près-
ence at Kh. R a d d a n a of a multihandled krater decorated with bull
heads, whose closest known parallels are from the Old Hittite King-
dom, provides some support for the presence of more than a single
culture or ethnic group in Iron I Cisjordan. 37 T h e general homo-
geneity of the Iron I ceramic repertoire, which is considered by
ceramic experts to be a direct continuation of the Late Bronze
"Canaanite" ceramic tradition, should not erroneously be presumed
to reflect the presence of a similar, ethnically homogenous popula-
tion, nor necessarily be an ethnic marker.

B. Architecture as an Ethnic Marker

T h e four-room pillared house is another suggested ethnic marker of

premonarchic Israelite society that has not withstood further exami-
nation. This type of dwelling is typically characterized by a broad
room across one end of the structure, rooms along both sides, and a
central courtyard, although there are a host of variant forms that are
lumped together under the same rubric. T h e presence of a court-
yard area and pillars, rather than a particular layout, seem to be the
determining factors for the inclusion of a structure within this clas-
sification. A common variation is the "three-room house," with a
courtyard, an adjacent, parallel area whose roof was supported by
pillars, and a rear chamber across the back. 38
T h e pillared house was typical of the new small settlements that
sprang up in the hill country on both sides of the J o r d a n River in
the Iron I period, leading early excavators to propose it was a new,
specifically "Israelite" form. 39 However, ongoing excavations have

A logical deduction from this circumstance would be that itinerant potters made
them in situ in various villages. This theory needs to be tested against pétrographie
results.
37
For the jar, see J.A. Callaway and R.E. Cooley, "A Salvage Operation at
Raddana, in Bireh," BASOR 201 (1971), p. 17. While the item could have arrived
by trade, its probable use within the cult, which tends to be a conservative area of
culture, provides a strong reason to suspect that it represents the native cultural and
ethnic heritage of the settlers.
38
So Mazar, Archaeology of the Bible, pp. 3 4 1 - 4 2 .
39
So esp. Y. Shiloh, "The Four R o o m House: Its Situation and Function in the
Israelite City," IEJ 20 (1970), pp. 180-90.
revealed the use of pillared houses in lowland Cisjordanian urban
centers like Megiddo VIB, Tell Keisan, in Philistia40 and at Tell
esh-Sharia 41 and in Transjordanian urban sites like Sahab and Khirbet
Medeiyneh. 42 It has now been acknowledged that the form grew out
of the local, Late Bronze Palestinian urban architectural tradition
and is not a cultural innovation introduced by the arrival of a new
ethnic group in the area. 43 Rather, it appears to have been an adap-
tation of a local urban building style to suit the needs of setders in
the hills who had limited labor power and resources, and multi-use
needs.

C. Site Layout as an Ethnic Marker

Israel Finkelstein has proposed that the haser-style layout of certain

sites, in which housing units are built contiguously or continuously
to form an ovoid or circular enclosure belted by buildings with open
land in the center, is a marker of Israelite settlement in the hills and
proof of their builders' pastoral origins. 44 His proposal is based on
analogy with modern bedouin tent encampments, in which the large
central courtyard is used as a shelter to protect flocks and the outer
ring of tents as a windbreak and line of defense against hostile forces
and in light of geographical considerations. He suggests a development
among examples of courtyard-style layouts from excavated Iron I sites,
in which the earliest form contains a belt of single-roomed rectangu-
lar or elliptical structures forming a solid ring around an open court-
yard. Examples include 'Izbet Sartah III, Horvat 'Avot, Khirbet
et-Tina, a site published by Bar Adon in the Judean desert, and four

40
See e.g., G.W. Ahlström, "The Early Iron Age Settlers at Tel Masos (Hirbet
e1-Mšaš)," 2J)PV 100 (1984), pp. 3552‫ ;־‬L.E. Stager, "The Archaeology of the Fam-
ily in Ancient Israel," BASOR 258 (1985), pp. 2.12‫־‬
41
See E. Oren, "Esh-Sharia, Tel," in M. Avi-Yonah and E. Stern (eds.), Encycto-
pedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land (5 vols.; Oxford: Oxford University,
1978) 4, pp. 1059-69.
42
For details, see M.M. Ibrahim, "The Third Season of Excavations at Sahab,
1975 (Preliminary Report)," ADAJ 20 (1975), pp. 7 4 - 7 5 .
43
See especially K. Schaar, "The Architectural Traditions of Building 2 3 A / 1 3 at
Tell Beit Mirsim," SJOT 2 (1991), pp. 7 5 - 9 8 . H e has built on the earlier work of
G.W. Ahlström ("Early Settlers at Tel Masos;" "Giloh: A Judahite or Canaanite
Setdement?," IEJ 34 [1984], pp. 170-72). A. Mazar has suggested that the roots of
the style can be traced to large patrician houses that employed pillars iri their court-
yards, found, for example, at Late Bronze Tel Batash. Archaeology of the Bible, p. 247.
44
See esp. Archaeology of the Settlement, pp. 2 3 7 - 5 9 .
sites in the Negev Highlands, Ein Qadeis, Atar Haro'a, Rahba, and
Ketef Shivta. He then suggests a second stage characterized by
Beersheba VII and Tel Esdar III, in which a belt of three or four-room
houses are set contiguously to form an enclosure. T h e next major
step is reflected in the move to a continuous line of three or four-room
houses, whose rear broadrooms form a solid wall. Examples include
Ai, Beersheba VII (sic), Refed, Hatira, Shiloh, Tell en-Nasbeh, and
Khirbet ed-Dawwara.
For Finkelstein, these sites are Israelite because they lie within areas
that come to be Israelite in the monarchic period—an approach which
has already been challenged. They also are deemed Israelite because
they reflect a pastoral way of life, which in turn is assumed to be the
primary mode of production among prestate Israelites because of local
geography and ecology and, I suspect, their tribal organization as
reported by the biblical writers. T h e ecology, geography, and tribal
organization did not change after the emergence of statehood, how-
ever, 45 and many of the small villages maintained the same strategies
for production: a mixed economy based on dry farming and animal
husbandry. It is true that the state eventually encouraged specializa-
tion in certain regions, especially in olive production and viticulture.
It is conceivable, however, that such specialization already was in
place in the premonarchic period, made possible through the exist-
ence of interregional trade.
It is noteworthy that Finkelstein does not discuss the layout of
small sites in the hills during the Iron II period (under the monar-
chy) for comparative purposes, but this is probably due in large part
to the lack of data. It is unlikely that the king would have used state
resources to build a separate wall around every settlement within the
kingdom's boundaries. T h e haser-style layout is a logical approach
for any group of any background to use in a situation where they
want to have some measure of defense against hostile outside attack
with the minimum amount of investment in materials and labor.
Allowing house walls to serve double-duty as settlement walls and
having an open space in the interior of the site for the protection of
animals, one of the mainstays of the local economy, is a common-sense

45
With the emergence of kingship, a new administrative level was merely super-
imposed over the existing tribal structure in small towns; governance by local elders
remained intact and traditional ways of transacting business in most instances. T h e
bet 'ab and mišpahah units still functioned.
approach to living in the hill country. It reveals nothing about the
origins of the inhabitants of a settlement, since animals would have
been part of the economic strategy of all setdements, to a greater or
lesser degree, in regions where rainfall was the primary source of
water for crops. 46
As indicated, there is no basis on which any sites in the Iron I
period can be determined to be Israelite, because the boundaries of
this premonarchic unit, and how they changed over time, are un-
known throughout the period. T h e haser-style site layout is some-
thing that could have been used by different ethnic groups as well as
groups adapting different modes of production to life in the hill
country. Its use was determined by environmental and ecological
factors and concerns, not by socioeconomic or ethnic factors. 47

D. Diet as an Ethnic Marker

T h e biblical prohibition against the consumption of pork has been

put forward as another ethnic marker for premonarchic Israel that
can be verified through archaeological remains. 48 T h e collection of
animal bones has become routine at excavations in modern Israel
and J o r d a n only within the last few decades, so the data pool avail-
able is fairly small. Notwithstanding, preliminary results have led to
the conclusion that the law against the consumption of pork was
already in place among the Israelites when they setded during the
Iron I period because so few pig bones have been found at sites in

46
T h e determination of whether a haser-style site was setded by sedentarizing
pastoralists or groups of primarily agricultural or a mixed economic background
would be more profitably approached on the basis of ecology. T h e sites in the
Negev highlands and other areas of marginal rainfall are most plausibly associated
with sedentarizing pastoralists, since these areas are most conducive to grazing and
there do not seem to be many, if any, silos used to store grains. By contrast, such
courtyard-style sites in the central highlands often include a number of silos in the
common open courtyard area, a n d / o r grinding stones for processing grains, indicat-
ing an emphasis on grain production alongside the postulated keeping of herds.
47
I think that Finkelstein^ observations are likely applicable to the courtyard
setdements that have irregular, ovoid structures, which seem to reflect the least amount
of building skill and are the most reminiscent of bedouin tent-camps, although the
latter could be sheer coincidence. Ecological considerations, especially the location
of a number of these setdements in the Negev highlands, would bolster such a
deduction, regardless of the modern tent-camp layout.
48
So, e.g., L. Stager, "When Canaanites and Philistines Ruled Ashkelon," BAR
1 7 / 2 (1991), p. 31; R. Hess, "Early Israel in Canaan: A Survey of Recent Evidence
and Interpretation," PEQ, 125 (1993), pp. 125-42, esp. 138-39.
the highland areas associated with premonarchic Israel, while they
appear in larger numbers at lowland sites.
This is a sweeping assertion, given the small data base and its
incomplete nature. 49 It must be borne in mind that only a tiny frac-
tion of the hundreds of sites that have been dated to the Iron I
period have been excavated, and even among that small fraction of
excavated settlements, less than 10% of a given site is usually able to
be systematically dug. It is premature to draw any conclusions about
a dietary prohibition against the consumption of pork at highland
sites. As B. Hesse points out, it is not always possible to distinguish
between the bones of wild and domesticated pigs in existing samples.50
In addition, he emphasizes the consumption of pork could reflect
dietary distinctions within differing social classes at a given site.51 Given
the limited and random sampling of bones from the few sites that
have been excavated to date, there is no guarantee that the numbers
reflect trends throughout the entire site. It also needs to be noted
that the natural and preferred habitat for pigs is wet woodland, which
is found in the lowland areas but not in the highlands, although it
has been argued that wild pigs managed to occupy dry and rough
terrain not usually associated with them in most regions of the Le-
vant. 52 Should the absence of pig bones continue to occur as more
sites are dug, the influence of ecological factors would have to be
weighed carefully in a final decision about the reason for the ab-
sence. So, too, would the effect of social stratification on food bans
or avoidances, as well as economically or politically-based reasons
for avoiding certain types of food. 53
T h e biblical law cannot be dated from internal evidence and can-
not be presumed to have been in effect throughout the Cisjordanian

49
For a discussion of the issue and preliminary data, see B. Hesse, "Pig Lovers
and Pig Haters: Patterns of Palestinian Pork Production," Journal of Ethnobiology 10
(1990), pp. 195-225; idem, "Husbandry, Dietary Taboos and the Bones of the Ancient
Near East: Zooarchaeology in the Post-Processual World," in D.B. Small (ed.), Methods
in the Mediterranean: Historical and Archaeological Views on Texts and Archaeology (Leiden:
Brill, 1995), pp. 197-232, esp. 2 1 7 - 2 3 2 .
50
"Pig Lovers and Pig Haters," pp. 2 0 2 - 2 0 4 .
51
Ibid., pp. 2 1 2 - 1 4 .
52
D.L. Harrison, The Mammals of Arabia vol. 2 (London: Ernest Benn, 1964—1972),
p. 375.
53
For a good presentation of the various theories that could be applied to ex-
plain the avoidance of pigs and which ones would fit the preliminary study of pig
bone distribution in ancient Palestine from the Chalcolithic-Iron Ages, see Hesse,
"Pig Lovers and Pig Haters."
highland sites of the Iron I period: the location of premonarchic Israel
at a specific time during this 200-year period cannot be pinpointed.
Thus, the law should not be used as a primary source of evidence
for explaining the absence of pig bones in the Iron I highland vil-
lages. At some point in time it becomes an ethnic marker for Isra-
elites, Judahites, Judeans, or Jews, but when is unclear.

E. Aniconism as an Ethnic Marker

There is a widespread presumption that the law prohibiting the rep-

resentation of Yahweh or other deities in any known life form in the
Second C o m m a n d m e n t was in force among premonarchic Israelites
and set them apart from their neighbors. T h e date of this legislation
is uncertain, since there is no internal means by which to date the
biblical law codes or individuals laws. T w o recent studies have pre-
sented challenges to the mainstream presumption. First, B. Schmidt
has suggested that the wording of the prohibition is meant to ex-
elude single-form representations of deities as humans, birds, or marine
life in favor of hybrid forms. Such an understanding is consistent
with the drawings of Yahweh and his Asherah from the site of
Kuntillet 'Ajrud in the monarchic period. 54 A study of the use of
images on coins in Yehud, from their introduction during the Per-
sian period through the end of the Hasmonean dynasty, reveals the
use of single-form imagery of Yahweh and Athena in the Persian era
and a gradual move away from such imagery during the subsequent
periods. Thus, if the Second C o m m a n d m e n t existed prior to the
Persian period, it was not observed until after 333 BCE, and the mo-
tivation for the eventual avoidance of deified imagery could have
developed out of concerns other than the existence of the Second
Commandment. 5 5
Confirmation of the existence of the aniconic tradition already in
the premonarchic period has been sought in the archaeological record.
T o date, only two probable cultic sites have been excavated in the
Cisjordanian hills that date to the Iron I period: the Mt. Ebal site

54
B. Schmidt "The Aniconic Tradition: O n Reading Images and Seeing Texts,"
in D.V. Edelman (ed.), The Triumph of Elohim: From Yahwisms to Judaisms (Contribu-
dons to Biblical Exegesis and Theology, 13; Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1995), pp. 7 5 -
105.
55
See D . V . Edelman "Tracking Observance of the Aniconic Tradition through
Numismatics," in Edelman, The Triumph of Elohim, pp. 185-225.
and the Bull Site. T h e former appears to have been in existence
already at the end of the Late Bronze period, 56 while a proposal to
date the latter to the Middle Bronze II period has recently been put
forward. 57 T h e discovery of a bull figurine at the second locale,
Dhahrat et-Tawila, has led to interesting suggestions concerning the
identity of the deity being represented.
T h e Bull Site has been presumed by many who date it to the Iron
I to be "Israelite" because it lies in the eastern Samarian hills, within
the traditional tribal territory of Manasseh. 5 8 At the same time,
however, the bull figure has been seen to be a possible representa-
tion of three different deities: the "Canaanite" storm god Ba'al/Hadad,
El, or Yahweh. 59 T h e logical conclusion to be drawn, based on the
earlier deduction that the site was Israelite, is that the figure represents
Yahweh. This is not automatically done, however, probably because
it goes against the prohibition of representations of Yahweh in the
Second Commandment. While noting a tradition for the representa-
tion of Yahweh as a bull in the North, A. Mazar still concludes that
the figurine most likely was a "Canaanite" object obtained through
trade rather than a locally produced Israelite object. 60 G.W. Ahlström,

56
A. Zertal, "Has Joshua's Altar been Found at Mt. Ebal?," BAR 11/1 (1985),
pp. 2 6 - 4 3 . T h e cultic nature of the site has been challenged by A. Kempinski
( 1 Joshua's Altar—An Iron Age I Watchtower," BAR 12 [1986], pp. 42, 44-49). T h e
presence of exotic materials and huge amounts of animal bones, including deer,
tend to favor a cultic use for the site.
57
Finkelstein, "Emergence of Israel," p. 167. T h e cultic nature of the site has
been challenged by M. Coogan, who points to the lack of exotic materials apart
from the figurine ("Of Cults and Culture: Reflections on the Interpretation and
Context of Archaeological Evidence," PEQ 119 [1987], pp. 18‫־‬, esp. 1, 5). T h e
litde pottery and lithics that are present are otherwise consistent with a domestic
assemblage. T h e absence of almost all artifacts may suggest a deliberate abandon-
ment of the site, with the removal of valuable items, making its function hard to
determine. Also, the bull was found outside the walls of the building complex; was
it dropped by mistake, ritually buried, or perhaps an original foundation deposit?
58
So identified in the initial publication of the site by A. Mazar ("The 'Bull
Site'—An Iron Age I O p e n Cult Place," BASOR 247 [1982], pp. 36-38) and fol-
lowed widely by most others who have written subsequendy. An exception is G.W.
Ahlström, w h o argues that the site was used by an intrusive, non-Canaanite group
who settled from the North ("The Bull Figurine from Dhahrat et-Tawila," BASOR
280 [1990], pp. 77-82).
59
Mazar ("The 'Bull Site,'" pp. 2 9 - 3 2 , 40) for B a ' a l / H a d a d and Yahweh;
R. Wenning and E. Zenger ("Ein bäuerliches Baal-Heiligtum im samarischen Gebirge
aus der Zeit der Anfange Israels," %DPV 102 [1986], pp. 8 1 - 8 2 ) and Coogan ("Of
Cults and Culture," p. 2) for El, Ba'al or Yahweh; Ahlström ("Bull Figurine," p. 80)
for El or Ba'al, but specifically not Yahweh.
60
Mazar, "The 'Bull Site,'" pp. 32, 40.
on the other hand, has suggested that the figurine is a stylized depic-
don of a humpbacked Zebu bull, an animal not native to ancient
Palestine. H e concludes that it provides evidence of an intrusive,
northern, non-Canaanite group of people who took their native re-
ligious tradition with them when they setded in the Samarian hills.61
T h e ethnic identity or affiliation of those who used the sanctuary
at Dhahrat et-Tawila during the Iron I period cannot be established.
T h e site cannot be declared "Israelite" at this date on the basis of
later tribal boundaries; the problems with this common approach
have already been discussed above. While the approach by G.W.
Ahlström is sound methodologically, it is based on the questionable
identification of the figurine as a representation of a Zebu bull. It
needs to be noted that the "hump' 5 is formed by the wrapping of a
coil of clay over the top of the torso to form both front legs. T h e
same technique is used to create the hind legs, although in the latter
case, the coil is flattened out more than in the former. T h e result
creates a small " h u m p " in the front, which is perhaps accentuated
by the angle at which the legs are attached. What is not certain
under the circumstances is whether the " h u m p " effect was inten-
donal, meant to render the h u m p of a Zebu bull, or whether it is
simply the result of the technique used to create the figurine and is
not an attempt to depict a Zebu bull. H a d the rear legs not been
formed in the same manner as the front ones, or had the " h u m p "
been more pronounced to indicate that it was indeed intentional, the
bull figurine could have provided valuable evidence for the setde-
ment of people of northern origin in the Samarian hills in the Iron
I period, even though their original ethnic identity could not be
pinpointed. Given the uncertain nature of the figure as a represen-
tation of a Zebu bull, however, such a conclusion must remain an
unverified hypothesis.

F. Social Organization as an Ethnic Marker

As a final example, L. Stager has tried to link architectural com-

pounds excavated at various sites in the hill country of Cisjordan
with biblical references to the social unit known as the bet ,ab as a
means of illustradng a form of social organization that was charac-
teristic of premonarchic Israel and continued in use throughout the

61
"Bull Figurine," pp. 7 7 - 8 2 .
monarchic period. 62 By defining the period of investigation as the
Iron Age in general, or 1200-587 BCE, he includes both premonarchic
and monarchic Israel within the same study without further distinc-
tion. In so doing, he makes no attempt to date the various textual
references to social organization and establish that there is clear tex-
tual evidence to support the existence of the bet }ab within Israel in
the premonarchic period. Instead, he uses monarchic era texts as his
base and then presumes that the same organization would have existed
in the earlier, prestate entity of that name. This is the same ap-
proach that has been used to define the boundaries of premonarchic
Israel and the same weaknesses inhere in it. It can be noted that
Stager makes the common presumption that the boundaries of early
Israel correspond to those of the later state or are accurately delin-
eated in the monarchic-era biblical texts.
T h e architectural examples Stager cites to illustrate the bet Jab all
are problematic since they come from excavations whose area is so
limited that it often is not clear what lays contiguous to the walls
being put forward as living compounds. In some instances, large
segments of the walls themselves are hypothetical. Without knowing
what adjoins a wall or lies on its other side, it is difficult to be certain
that a whole complex has been uncovered and not just a segment or
a series of isolated buildings. At the same time, without knowing where
streets ran in relation to a postulated compound or how access was
gained to the compound from the public area, it is hard to decide
that a cluster of buildings in fact forms a larger intentional complex.
I have not found one of his examples clearcut and convincing.
It is also suspicious that his postulated layout of the bet }ab tends
to be found in larger settlements. It is conspicuously absent from the
Aaser-style setdements, which are characterized by contiguous dwell-
ings but no internally shared courtyards between dwellings. Instead,
there is the common "courtyard" in the center of the setdement.
Since a number of these setdements have been dated to Iron I con-
texts and considered "Israelite" because of their geographical loca-
tion in territory belonging to the later states of Israel or J u d a h — a
premise Stager accepts—it seems odd that not all villages exhibit the
architectural layout designated by Stager as illustrative of the bet Jab
social unit. Is this something that only crystallized in larger settie-
ments under social pressure? Stager certainly seems to suggest that

62
"Archaeology of the Family," pp. 1 - 3 5 .
the bet 'ab was the smallest basic social unit that was used through-
out premonarchic Israelite society, not just in certain tribes or seg-
ments of the society. If so, should we expect to find it expressed in
a single manner architecturally, or is it possible that it took on multiple
forms of architectural expression? If multiple, can they be contrasted
with other forms of expression that can be linked to another social
unit of organization? If no contrast can be established, the proposed
link is meaningless.

G. Burial Practices as Ethnic Markers

In the quest to delineate ethnic groups within Cisjordan during the

Iron I period, burial practices may be the best remains to use to
distinguish the presence of such groups, even though specific ethnic
labels cannot be assigned to each group so demarcated. T h e current
data on Iron I burials is scanty, given the very limited amount of
exposure of Iron I levels at excavated sites and the small fraction of
total sites that have been even partially excavated. Systematic study
of them is still underway. Even so, preliminary findings tend to in-
dicate a range of tomb types and ritual objects buried with the de-
ceased. 63 Since burial customs tend to be a conservative element within
culture or society, they should be a good indicator to use to distin-
guish between the presence of different groups. T h e problem, how-
ever, is how to relate the groups once they are distinguished; do the
distinctions reflect differences of status within a single larger society
or ethnic group, do they represent a series of separate social or eth-
nie groups living side by side, or do they represent a combination of
the two? Without texts that can be clearly dated to the Iron I period
that provide contemporaneous witness to the ethnic configuration of
the region, no specific ethnic labels can be associated with the groups
distinguished by their burial practices.

63
For details, see R. Wenning, "Eizenzeidiche Gräber in Jerusalem und Juda.
Dokumentation des lokalen Bestatungswesens. Eine archäologische Untersuchung der
Topographie, Architektur und Typologie der Gräber, der Grabinventare, der
Bestattungssitten und der Totenpflege" (Habilitationsschrift, Eichstätt, 1994). His
research is about to appear in print under the same tide in the O B O Series.
 Summary

No material cultural remains can be used as ethnic traits of pre-

monarchic Israel, because the location of this endty cannot be estab-
lished on the basis of current textual information. Without knowing
its territory, it is impossible to find distinguishing traits within its
cultural remains. Even if the boundaries of a given group can be
established, the practices or means the group used to express its
ethnicity and define itself over against neighboring groups may or
may not leave traces in the material culture it produced. 6 4 It is quite
likely that premonarchic Israelites used collar-rimmed storage jars,
built four-room houses, laid out some of their setdements by build-
ing a belt of buildings around a common, central open space, had a
mixed economy based on sheep/goats and agriculture, and had the
bet 'ab as the basic social unit. None of these traits was uniquely
Israelite, however, nor was the combination of all or part of them.
Informadon about cultic practice and diet is too scarce or ambigu-
ous to be adduced in a discussion of ethnic traits, and the uncer-
tainty of the correlation of the batde scene at the Temple of Karnak
with the coda section of the Merneptah Stele precludes any firm
conclusions about the dress and hairstyle of early Israelites. Burial
practices and tomb types seem to hold promise for the distinguishing
of different groups resident in Cisjordan during the Iron I period,
but without contemporaneous textual records, we have no way to
assign ethnic labels to the different groups so delineated. In addition,
some of these differences might reflect levels of social status within
the same ethnic group, so it is not clear that the different practices
would always reflect ethnic distinctions.

Conclusion

Litde positive can be said about the ethnicity of premonarchic Israel.

T h e lack of texts that can be firmly dated to the premonarchic era

64
M. Skjeggestad questions the ability to use the archaeological material record
to recover ethnic identity, pointing out that the remains need not necessarily corre-
spond to or reflect the actual ethnic behavior behind the artifact. "Unless ethnic
culture consists of artifacts, as if the artifacts as such constitute an ethnically defined
culture, the supposed equivalence of material culture and ethnic identity of the in-
habitants is objectionable" ("Use of the Term 'Israelite,'" p. 182).
precludes attempts to use material cultural remains to identify distin-
guishing traits or markers of the group. Biblical texts written in the
monarchic, exilic or postexilic periods about the early history of the
people of Israel cannot be taken at face value to portray life as it
was in the prestate era. Rather, they must be seen to reflect those
later societies' norms, political structures and customs; they represent
how the intellegentsia in those periods imagined life would have been
before there was a king in Israel. T h e writers may or may not have
had access to a few traditions that arose in premonarchic Israel. If
they did, they still would have framed those sources as they made
use of them, according to their contemporary worldviews. O u r in-
ability to isolate and verify the use of such sources means that we
must accept the inaccessibility of reliable, detailed information about
premonarchic Israel. T h e Merneptah Stele indicates that some unit
called Israel existed somewhere in Cisjordan by the last decade of
the Late Bronze period. Nothing further can be known about it based
on the present set of available texts.
Without the ability to locate premonarchic Israel and know some-
thing of its shifting boundaries over time, all attempts to use ele-
ments of the material cultural remains of Cisjordan in the Late Bronze
and Iron I periods to define distinguishing characteristics of this group
are also doomed to failure. Modern ethnographic studies have indi-
cated the complexity of the formation and maintenance of ethnic
identification and the inability to predict markers on the basis of
practices of various living groups or cultures. No single list of traits
can be generated and applied to all or any social unit(s). Defining
ethnic traits of observable cultures using texts, interviews with na-
tives and objects of their material culture is difficult and never yields
a definitive, final list, since ethnicity is not a static category. T o hope
to be able to generate a list of ethnic traits without texts or infor-
mants, using only material cultural remains from a region that could
have been home to a variety of ethnic groups, is to wish upon a star.
T o attempt such an undertaking is to put the cart before the ox.
 H U M A N SOLIDARITY AND ETHNIC IDENTITY:
ISRAEL'S S E L F - D E F I N I T I O N IN T H E G E N E A L O G I C A L
S Y S T E M O F GENESIS 1

Frank Crüsemann

T h e bloody excesses of new nationalisms illustrate, world-wide, how

little success there has been in bringing ethics and ethnicity, univer-
sal human rights and group-specific identity, humanity and "people"
(Volk), into a stable balance. "Hence, we stand before a dilemma," it
is said, in one of the many contributions to the questions which have
arisen out of this enigma: " O n the one hand, a universal orientation
towards the well-being of all is morally required. O n the other hand,
a group-related consciousness of identity, which particularizes the
universalistic attitude, seems to be indispensable for the maintenance
of our own personal identity." And this contradiction belongs "pre-
sumably, to the basic apona of the condition humaine.''''2 Whether genu-
ine insights arise out of the present alarm, and out of the new de-
bate, will depend not least on the extent to which the victims of past
excesses are considered, and there are many victims on all sides. A
fact which could turn out to have an important heuristic value is
that an anti-Jewish attitude seems to be potentially inherent to both
particularist and universalist orientations. As with almost the whole
history of modern nationalism, 3 so also the new nationalism has quickly

1
An abridged version of this paper appeared in a private Festschrift for Krisdan
Hungar marking his 60th birthday. It was also presented at the theological faculty
of the Ernst Moritz Arndt University in Greifswald and the Catholic Theological
Faculty in Paderborn.
2
R. Schmücker and R. Hering, "Der Begriff der Nation berührt nur zwei Iden-
titäten: Über Patriotismus, Nationalpatriotismus und die Suche nach Identität als
Ausweg aus Unübersichtlichkeiten," Rechtsphilosophische Hefte (June 1994), quoted from
Frankfurter Rundschau 142 (22.6.1994), p. 10.
3
Already in the controversy concerning antisemitism in Berlin, 1879-80, Theodor
M o m m s e n spoke of antisemitism as a "deformity of national feeling" and the "sui-
cidal drive of national feeling" (see W. Boehlich (ed.), Der Berliner Antisemitismusstrdt
[Frankfurt: Insel, 2nd edn, 1965], p. 213). Cf. T. Nipperdey and R. Rürup,
"Antisemitismus," in O. Brunner, W. Conze and R. Koselleck (eds.), Geschichtliche
Grundbegriffe Bd. I (Stuttgart: Klett, 1972), pp. 129-153: Antisemitism is "a symptom
of the loosing of radical and homogenizing nationalism from the moderate nation-
alism of the liberals" (p. 146).
shown itself to be enormously anti-Semitic. Even where there are no
more Jews, the memory of the murdered still disturbs. But also
movements orientated towards a universal ethic and a uniform hu-
manity, such as Christianity, 4 the Enlightenment, 5 and socialism,6 have
often turned against a people, who could not, and did not wish to,
abandon themselves for the sake of universal values and goals.
Against this background, I would like to explore the self-definition
of Israel in Genesis. Here, at the entrance to the Tora, Israel has
written itself into the world of peoples and has defined its location
within the framework of the entire humanity created by God. What
today often appears as a contradiction and an apona—humanness
and peoplehood—is here connected and mediated.

T h e chart on pp. 74—75 of this paper is an attempt to grasp the

entire genealogical system of Genesis. With around three hundred
names, and a representation of the relations between them, the chart
follows the traditional Hebrew text. It shows a rather closed system
of thoroughly patrilineal genealogies, i.e., pure father-son sequences.
T h e names of women, or the mentioning of anonymous women, occur
at relatively few, but central, places; 7 they are written in italics. For
reasons of space, the arrangement cannot consistentiy reflect the same
points of view. Thus, with respect to the names listed on the chart
beneath each other, one has to distinguish on the one hand between
father-son sequences where only the firstborn is mentioned—linear
genealogies like the successors of Seth (Genesis 5) or of Shem (Gen-
esis 11)—and on the other hand, the many sons of a father, segmen-
tary genealogies, where the names would be better placed next to

4
See K.H. Rengstorf and S. v. Kortzfleisch (eds.), Kirche und Synagoge: Handbuch
zur Geschichte von Juden und Christen 2 vols. (München: dtv. Wiss. Reihe 4478, 1988).
5
Cf. L. Poliakov, Geschichte des Antisemitismus Bd. 5: Die Aufklärung und ihre judenfeindliche
Tendenz (German trans.; Worms: Heintz, 1983). Examplary is Kant's statement "Pure
moral religion is the euthanasia of Judaism." In W. Weischedel (ed.), Werke Bd. 6:
Der Streit der Fakultäten (Frankfurt: Insel, 1964), p. 321. Cf. M. Horkheimer and T.W.
Adorno, "Elemente des Antisemitismus: Grenzen der Aufklärung," Dialektik der
Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente (Amsterdam: de Munter, 1968), pp. 199ff.
6
Cf. Ε. Silber, Sozialisten zur Judenßage (German trans.; Berlin: Colloquium, 1962).
7
See R.A. Freund, "Naming Names: Some Observations on 'Nameless Women'
Traditions in the M T , L X X and Hellenistic Literature," SJOT 6 (1992), pp. 2 1 3 ‫־‬
232.
each other on the same level, for example, the peoples descended
from Egypt, Canaan, or Joktan (Genesis 10), the sons of Nahor
(22:20ff.), or Jacob's grandsons (46:8ff.). T h e peoples listed from Gen.
14:5f. and 15:19 have neither a genealogical connection to each other,
nor to the larger system.
At the beginning stands the first-created human, Adam. At the end,
in Genesis 46, stands an enumeration of the grandchildren and great-
grandchildren of Jacob, i.e., the entire group which (according to the
Pentateuch) went to Egypt and from which the people of Israel origi-
nated. Here we reach the greatest depth of genealogical layering:
there are twenty-five generations from the first human to the great-
grandchildren of Jacob: Hezron and Hamul, Heber and Malkiel. Only
with the grandchildren of Esau is a comparable depth reached. This
depth of layering, however, does not simply mark a difference in
time, since all other names which stand at the end of a genealogical
branch are also present figures, living simultaneously with the de-
scendants of J a c o b and cum grano salis also with the readers of this
text. Thus, especially through the table of nations in Genesis 10, all
known humanity is grasped. T h e table of nations is arranged accord-
ing to the three sons of Noah: Shem, H a m and Japhet. For the sake
of a better graphical representation, the main line of descent through
Shem forms the centre of the chart. T h e numbers in brackets after
the names show the succession of birth. T h e three sons of Terah
(Abraham, Nahor and Haran) mark the next important branching.
T h e Abrahamites are divided into three by Abraham's wives: Sarah,
Hagar and Keturah. Finally, we find the two sons of Isaac, Esau and
Jacob, and their sons and descendants, listed according to their
different mothers.
Only a brief account of some of the literary, tradition-critical
(traditionsgeschichtliche) and historical aspects of the system is possible in
this context. We must refrain from discussing problems associated
with the identification and location of traditions, except for a few
marginal comments. 8
T h e genealogies summarized here, which pervade all of Genesis,

8
See the extensive material in C. Westermann, Genesis (BK 1 / 1 - 3 ; Neukirchen:
Neukirchener Verlag, 1966-1982), as well as the works mentioned in note 12;
T. Willi, Chronik (BK X X I V 1; Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1991), pp. 30ff;
also, J. Simons, The Geographical and Typographical Texts of the Old Testament (Leiden:
Brill, 1959); R.S. Hess, Studies in the Personal Names of Genesis 1-11 (AOAT, 234;
Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag, 1993).
form something like the skeleton of this book, a stable framework
which holds together and carries all other parts. This is true not
least because other elements which usually constitute the unity of
narratives, such as the temporal and spacial framework, are not al-
ways clearly or explicidy formulated in Genesis taken as a narrative
whole. It is, however, striking that I cannot find in Old Testament
scholarship any description of this system, 9 despite an intensified in-
terest in the genealogies since the work of Wilson in the 1970s.10 It
is also noticeable that, despite some new approaches," research is
still resolutely fixed on questions of the genesis of Genesis, i.e., the
diachronic stratification, so that the conception of the final, canoni-
cal text has been given little attention. This article is thus to be
understood as a contribution to the understanding of this final text.
Neglecting, for the moment, the problem of the unconnected names
in Genesis 14; 15 and 36, everything else can be brought together
into a thoroughly meaningful and overdy intended system. Undoubt-
edly, older materials have been assimilated; thus, one finds the typi-
cal contradictions and tensions. Given the traditional division into a
Priesdy and a "Yahwist" layer, say in the table of nations in Genesis

9
However, a rough sketch can be found in the work of the anthropologist K.R.
Andriolo, "A Structural Analysis of Genealogy and Worldview in the Old Testa-
ment," American Anthropologist 75 (1973), pp. 1657-1669; cf. already E. Leach, "The
Legitimacy of Solomon: Some structural Aspects of Old Testament History," AES 7
(1966), pp. 5 8 - 1 0 1 .
10
R.R. Wilson, "The Old Testament Genealogies in Recent Research," JBL 94
(1975), pp. 169-189; idem, Genealogy and History in the Biblical World (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1977; idem, "Between 'Azel' and 'Azel': Interpreting the Biblical
Genealogies," BA 42 (1979), pp. 11-22. Apart from the commentaries, see also:
M . D . Johnson, The Purpose of the Biblical Genealogies, With Special Reference to the Setting
of the Genealogies of Jesus (MSSNTS, 8; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd
edn, 1988); T.J. Prewitt, "Kinship Structures and the Genesis Genealogies," JMES
40 (1981), pp. 8 7 - 9 8 ; R.B. Robinson, "Literary Functions of the Genealogies of
Genesis," CßQ, 48 (1986), pp. 5 9 5 - 6 0 8 ; N. Steinberg, "The Genealogical Frame-
work of the Family Stories in Genesis," Semem 46 (1989), pp. 4 1 - 5 0 ; B. Renaud,
"Les généalogies et la structure de rhistoire sacerdotale dans le livre de la Genèse,"
RB 97 (1990), pp 5 - 3 0 ; T . D . Alexander, "Geneaologies, Seed and the Composi-
tional Unity of Genesis," Tyndale Bulletin 44 (1993), pp. 2 5 5 - 7 0 ; as well as (more
general) E. Blum, Die Komposition der Vätergeschichte (WMANT, 57: Neukirchen-Vluyn:
Neukirchener Verlag, 1984), pp. 438ff.; cf. K.F. Plum, "Genealogy as Theology,"
SJOT 1 (1989), pp. 6 6 - 9 1 ; G.A. Rendsburg, "The Internal Consistency and Histori-
cal Reliability of the Biblical Genealogies," VT 40 (1990), pp. 185-206.
11
Exemplary would be Blum (n. 10 above); G.A. Rendsburg, The Redaction of
Genesis (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1986); Ε. Fox, "Can Genesis be Read as a Book?"
Semeia 46 (1989), pp. 3 1 - 4 0 ; T.W. Mann, '"All the Families of the Earth.' T h e
Theological Unity of Genesis," Interp 45 (1991), pp. 3 4 1 - 3 5 3 .
 10,12 different linguistic realisations of the genealogies play a role,
like, for example, the reduction to pure lists of names or the connec-
tion with anecdotal additions; or, the twin occurrence of names like
Havilah and Seba under the descendants of Ham, on the one hand
(10:7), and under the sons of Joktan, descendants of Shem, on the
other hand (10:28f.). T h e name Uz, the home country of J o b (Job
1:1), occurs three times: as the oldest son of Aram (10:23), as the
oldest son of Nahor (22:21) and as the grandchild of Seir through
Dishan (36:28), thus, as Horite. Especially the data concerning the
names and origin of the wives of Esau in 26:34; 28:9 and 36 can
hardly be brought into agreement.
Thus, unambiguously diverse materials have been used, but the
confidence of source criticism proves to be misplaced. O n e need only
consider how contradictory and malleable are the genealogies which
have been empirically researched by anthropologists. Does the same
n a m e always imply the same figure? In any case, the present
configuration produces an intended—or a tolerable—meaning. It is
especially important to note that there are, among the texts usually
ascribed to P, clear and enormous tensions. This is the case in Gen-
esis 36, where, in the listing of the "princes" ('aluf) of Edom in w .
15ff., a different organization of the tribes is evidenced, over against
w . 4—14 (which our chart follows). Also worth mentioning is the
different classification of Aram, both as a son of Shem (10:22) and as
a grandchild of Nahor (22:21). But given such a widespread and
manifold phenomenon as the Arameans, are we really to seek for an
explanation simply in literary layers? AU this means that, on the whole,
the problem of the genealogies is not essentially different from the
rest of Genesis. Despite all the tensions, there arose a meaningful
unity the significance of which may be grasped. T h e connection of
narratives and genealogies, and indeed of priesdy and non-priesdy
material, is obviously thought through and consciously shaped. 13

12
E.g., Westermann, Genesis I (n. 8 above), and Johnson, Purpose (n. 10 above).
O n Genesis 10, cf. G. Hölscher, Drei Erdkarten. Ein Beitrag zur Erkenntnis des hebräischen
Altertums (SHAW.PH 3 [ 1 9 4 7 / 4 8 ] 1949); J. Simons, "The Table of Nations (Genesis
X): Its General Structure and Meaning," OTS 10 (1954), pp. 155-184. Cf. η. 33
below.
13
Cf. R.H. Moye, "In the Beginning: Myth and History in Genesis and Exodus,"
JBL 109 (1990), pp. 5 7 7 - 5 9 8 , esp. 590ff.; Robinson (n. 10 above); and esp. Steinberg
(n. 10 above). Following Todorov's narratology, Steinberg sees the great genealogies
in Genesis 11 ; 25 and 36 as representing a situation from which the narrative com-
plications proceed.
Research cannot remain fixed on the unconnected fragments which
are produced, not infrequently, by literary analysis. T h e basic pat-
tern of the genealogical system undoubtedly stems from P.14 But
whether, and at which points, Ρ employed and presupposed older
material—which might even stand in a contradictory relationship with
the content of P 15 —has not so far been clearly determined, and these
shall remain open questions here also.
T h e names and traditions which remain unconnected, outside of
the unified system, should perhaps be considered in a different way.
These are the "giants" (1ηφίιτη) in Gen. 6:4,16 the peoples mentioned
in 14:5f.—the Rephaites, Zuzites, Emites and Horites, pre-inhabit-
ants of the eastern Jordanian areas (cf. Deut. 2:8ff.)—and, in 15:19f.,
the Kenizzites, Kadmonites and Perizzites. With regard to the Horites:
in 36:20ff. one finds a detailed Horite genealogy within the frame-
work of the Edomite lists. There are also kinship connections with
Edom: Oholibamah is introduced in 36:25 as the daughter of the
Horite Anah; in the M T of 36:2, however, Anah is Hivite, i.e., des-
ignated as Canaanite. So should the Horites be identified with the
Hivites? O r should one really think of beings not stemming from
Adam, and thus "non-human beings"? Quite clearly, such is not the
case for the pre-inhabitants of the land promised to Israel; they belong
to Canaan (10:16ff.). Also the three additional names for the pre-
inhabitants, which only occur in Gen. 15:19f., cannot change this
fact. Yet, even if one presupposes the special position of Genesis 14,
and assumes a later literary addition to 15:19, questions remain here,
with regard to the genealogically unconnected names, which have so
far received answers that are hardly sufficient for an interpretation
of the whole text of Genesis.
An understanding of the Old Testament genealogies has really only
been reached through comparisons with the oral genealogies of tribal
societies.17 For all peoples who are not organized by a state system,

14
O n this point, see, e.g., Renaud (η. 10 above), as well as the attempts to in-
terpret the toledot schema, e.g., S. Tengström, Die Toledotformel und die literarischen
Strukturen der priesterlichen Erweiterungsschicht im Pentateuch (CBOT, 17; Uppsala: Gleerup,
1982); P. Weimar, "Die Toledotformel in der priesterlichen Geschichtsdarstellung, , ‫י‬
B Z 18 (1974), pp. 6 5 - 9 3 .
15
O n this concept, see Ε. Blum, Studien zur Komposition des Pentateuch (BZAW, 189;
Berlin: de Gruyter,1990).
16
O n this, see, e.g., L. Perlitt, "Riesen im Alten Testament. Ein literarisches
Modv im Wirkungsfeld des Deuteronomiums" NAWG 61 (1990), pp. 381f.
17
See especially Wilson (η. 10 above), as well as the discussion concerning the
genealogies play a role which hardly can be overestimated. 18 T h e
whole social order is described by means of them. T h e place of each
individual in society—and beyond that, in part, the entire creation—
is grasped by them, i.e., rank and status, claims and expectations of
all kinds.19 The kinship connections remain, wherever a state is young
or weak, the basic framework of order. T h e world is experienced
and described as family. Many of the basic features of such empiri-
cally researched genealogies can be found in the Old Testament.
There is their amazing flexibility and fluidity over the course of time,
which, with regard to basic questions, does not exclude a continuity
and confidence in the tradition. 20 There is a genealogical depth, which
rarely exceeds ten to fourteen generations, which is achieved by
dropping connecting links.21 Persons are "naturalized" into the kin-
ship system who, in a strict sense, are not biologically related but are
nevertheless socially integrated. 22 However, none of the parallels known
from ethnology, or from the ancient Near East, has a structure such
as the system of Genesis. Genesis encompasses single families and
entire ethnic groups, including connections with an ancestor from
primordial time. Indeed, a system with the propensity to encompass
all of humanity, all neighbouring peoples as well as the whole inter-
nal structure of one's own people, that is something extraordinary. 23

segmentary social organization of premonarchic Israel, firstly in A. Malamat, "Tribal

Societies: Biblical Genealogies and African Lineage System," AES 14 (1973), pp.
126-136. For an overview, see M. Oeming, Das wahre Israel: Die "genealogische Vorhalle"
1 Chronik 1-9 (BWANT, 128; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1990), pp. 9ff.'
18
Important ethnological material is easily accessible in F. K r a m e r and C. Sigrist
(eds.), Gesellschaften ohne Staat, Bd. 2: Genealogie und Solidarität (Frankfurt, 1978); C. Sigrist
and R. Neu (eds.), Ethnologische Texte zum Alten Testament, Bd. 1: Vor- und Frühgeschichte
Israels (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1989), esp. ch. 2.
19
Wilson, Genealogy (η. 10 above), pp. 37ff.
20
Wilson, Genealogy, pp. 27ff.; on the Old Testament material, cf., e.g., the di-
verse genealogies of particular tribes in S. Yeivin, The Israelite Conquest of Canaan
(Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Institut, 1971), pp. 126-233; on the
other hand, Rendsburg (η. 10 above).
21
Wilson, Genealogy (n. 10 above), pp. 2Iff.
22
Cf., e.g., W.E. M ü h l m a n n , "Èthnogonie und Ethnogenese: Theoretisch-
ethnologische und ideologiekritische Studien," ARWAW 72 (1985), pp. 927‫־‬: "I found
that the assimilation of allogenic and ethnically alien elements plays a quite consid-
erable role among 'primitive' peoples; this is termed 'Umvolkung' in European folk
history" (p. 10). "Above all, the surprising element of assimilation among 'primitive'
peoples stands in contrast to their ideological exclusiveness, their so-called 'ethno-
centrism'." (p. 11).
23
Thus, the judgment of F. Delitzsch (Neuer Kommentar über die Genesis [Leipzig:
Dörffling und Franke, 1887], p. 199) on the table of nations may still be valid:
"Nowhere can a comparable overview be found." In my opinion, this is true despite
 As a whole, this system belongs to the Persian period. Certainly,
some elements of the genealogical tradition of the Old Testament
stem from the time of a pre-state, purely tribal society. This might
be true of the basic features of the twelve-tribe system, but also of
the connections with the closely related neighbouring peoples. But
the beginnings of a written tradition are not to be ascribed to such
an early time. It can be demonstrated that genealogies of the exilic/
post-exilic time play an extraordinarily important role; one thinks of
the rich material in 1 Chronicles 1-9, 24 but also elsewhere in the
books of Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemia, and similarly, the Priesdy
texts. Quite clearly, the family and family-orientated thinking played
again an astonishingly important role after the breakdown of the state.25
T h e cohesiveness of the people, as well as their relationships with
other peoples, could be described and grasped by genealogical think-
ing, independendy of institutions like the kingship.
T h e hypothesis of a Persian date for the system cannot be contra-
dieted by reference to the absence of the Persians in the table of
nations. Babylon is also missing, although one can presume that it
probably lies behind the otherwise unknown name Arpakshad. 26 T h e
lack of these names cannot be explained simply by the hypothesis of
an earlier origin of the texts; why have they not been added later?
Not to mention the political power, under which Israel lived together
with the predominant number of the peoples mentioned here, was

the opinion of E. Meyer, that "the connection of the individual traditions and the
collection of all the tribes and peoples into a well-ordered whole" (by the "Yahwist")
are of the same kind "as those by which Hesiod, and the other genealogical poetries
of the Greeks, have systematically organised the Hellenists and the remaining known
peoples into genealogical trees" (Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstämme [1st edn 1906;
Hildesheim: Olms, 1966], p. 231, referring to Meyer, Forschungen zur alten Geschichte
I [1st edn 1892; Hildesheim: Olms, 1966), pp. 91f.144f.). O n the one hand, "the
relationships of the peoples around the Mediterranean Sea" are genealogically inter-
preted (W. Speyer, "Genealogie," RAC, 9 [1976], pp. 1154f.), e.g., the Greeks,
Egyptians and Barbarians are traced back to the same ancestors. O n the other
hand, the different Greek tribes are traced back to Deukalion, the Greek Noah
(e.g., Apollodor I, 7.2). Thus, there seem to be comparable starting points but no-
where a comprehensive system which tends to encompass all human beings. We
lack, however, a recent and thorough comparative investigation. For conversations
on this point, I thank my friend and colleague Prof. Dr. Jens-Uwe Schmidt.
24
For recent studies, see M. Kartveit, Motive und Schichten der Landtheologie in
I. Chronik 1-9 (Stockholm: Almquist and Wikseil, 1989); Oeming (n. 17 above).
55
O n the background, see, e.g. R. Albertz, Religionsgeschichte Israels in alttestamentlicher
Zeit (GAT, 8 / 2 ; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992), pp. 413ff.
26
Cf., e.g., M. Görg, "Arpachschad," NBL I, pp. 175f.; recendy, T. W‫ש‬i, Chronik
(η. 8 above), p. 37.
presumably simpler than to integrate it into such a system, in con-
tradiction to their own view of things. Still the most probable solu-
tion27 is that the Medes of 10:2 encompass the Persians, as is else-
where occasionally the case in the Old Testament and in Greece. 28
In any case, there is no doubt about where the readers find them-
selves. According to Nehemiah 11 and 1 Chronicles 9, there are
descendants of the sons of J u d a h , Perez and Zerah, and perhaps also
Shela, in postexilic Judah. 2 9 Along with these, of course, are mem-
bers of the lineages of the Levites and descendants of Benjamin. Yet,
unlike the Judahites, none of the ten sons of Benjamin mentioned in
Gen. 46:12 appear as ancestors of the postexilic Benjaminites. 30 Here
at the end, twenty five generations from the first human beings, the
post-exilic addressees of Genesis find their own ancestors, and thus
they find themselves.

II

We will explore now the relationship between humanity and a

"people" (Volk), the connections between Israel and the whole world
of peoples, without considering at this point specifically religious is-
sues. T h e system as a whole links humanity and the peoples into a
unity; or to be more precise, all of humanity and the kinships of
Israel are grasped in one single system; between them there exists an

27
In Genesis Rabba 37:1, "Tiras" of Gen. 10:2 is, among others, identified with
Persia. E. Lipinski ("Les Japhétites selon Gen. 10, 2 - 4 et 1 Chr 1, 5 - 7 , " ZAH 3
(1990), pp. 4 0 - 5 3 , 49f.) wants to read "Diphat" with 1 Chron. 1:6, instead of Riphat,
and draws on an Iranian tide dahyu-pati for his interpretation, which means "chef de
peuple," witnessed to in texts from Persepolis. Here he is thinking, however, of local
Median princes.
28
See Isa. 13:17; 21:2; Jer. 51:11, 18 (cf. also the commentaries) on the one
hand; on the other hand, Aischylos, Persians 236.765.791 and the linguistic usage of
Herodotus and Thucydides; Hölscher, Drei Erdkarten (η. 12 above), p. 54; cf. already
F. Schmidtke, Die Japhetiten der biblischen Völkertafel (Breslau: Müller & Seiffert, 1926),
p. 59, and others.
29
O n Perez, cf. Neh. 11:4, 6 and 1 Chron. 9:4; on Serach, Neh. 11:24 and
1 Chron. 9:6. Behind "Shilonites" in 1 Chron. 9:5 one often presumes with Num.
26:20 an original "Shelanites", e.g. H . G . M . Williamson, 1 and 2 Chronicles (NCBC;
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), p. 89; in opposition, O e m i n g (n. 17 above), p. 201.
30
T h e post-exilic generations of Benjamin, mentioned in 1 Chron. 9:7ff. and
Neh. 11:7 show, as far as I can see, no connections to the genealogies of the
Benjamites in 1 Chron. 7:6ff.; 8: Iff. (nor to the fragmentary genealogy of a Shaharaim,
1 Chron. 8:8ff.).
 abundance of intermediate stages and a continuous, sliding scale of
linkages. We can discern an increasing concentration on Israel as the
main line of descent: 31 of the three sons of Noah, Shem has special
significance; of the three sons of T e r a h the main concern is with
Abraham; of his descendants, it is Isaac, and then his younger son
Jacob, who are central. In each case, the necessary divisions are
described, and the aim is undoubtedly the origin of Israel. But who
this Israel is, can only be grasped within the framework of the whole;
this ethnic group is part of the entire coherence of humanity.
Humanity as a whole, which I will treat first, is traced back to a
primal couple and then unfolds itself after the deluge out of the three
sons of Noah. Thus, humanity is represented as family. Nothing less
is at stake than the essential unity of all h u m a n beings. 32 Everyone
is related to each other; human being as such presents no funda-
mental differences. Descendants of the other sons of Noah appear
without any disqualification in the genealogical tree of Israel; Asenath,
the Egyptian daughter of a priest, appears as the wife of Joseph
and mother of the important tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh (41:45,
50ff.); the daughter of the Canaanite Shua appears as the wife of
J u d a h (38:2) and a Canaanite woman as partner of Simeon (46:10).
T h e biblical prohibitions concerning marriage cannot be presupposed
here without further discussion, but they are in no way racially
grounded. This decisive point may be missed when "races of m e n / '
or similar terms, are occasionally used in relation to the table of
nations. 33 Some such concept might at most fit the ηφΕτη mentioned
in Gen. 6:4. T h e Genesis traditions lack any hint of an allusion to
skin colour, or to other racially utilizable points of difference. In the
Mishnah, the matter under consideration is formulated as follows:
"Why did God create only one h u m a n being? So that no-one can
say to a fellow human being: my father was better than yours" (Sanh.

31
E.g., Moye (n. 13 above), pp. 590ff. with reference to M. Fishbane, Text and
Texture: Close Readings of Selected Biblical Texts (New York: Shocken, 1979), pp. 27ff.,
and Andriolo (n. 9 above): "the separadon of God's chosen people from the rest of
humanity is the informing principle." (p. 592).
32
As one example among many, cf. Westermann, Genesis I (n. 8 above), pp. 706f.
with many references to older literature; recendy, e.g., Willi (n. 8 above), p. 47.
This is denied without any close reasoning by J. Grau, The Gentiles in Genesis: Israel
and the Nations in the Primeval and Patriarchal Histories (PhD. diss. Southern Methodist
University, 1980), pp. 124ff. in relation to the Canaanite peoples.
33
Incidentally, e.g., J. Scharbert, Genesis 1-11 (NEB: Würzburg: Echter Verlag,
2nd edn, 1980), p. 102.
 10.5). T h e allotment of the peoples to the three sons of Noah cannot
be explained unequivocally. In any case, neither linguistic categories
(Elam with the Semites; C a n a a n and Egypt in one group) nor politi-
cal categories (especially with Japhet; L u d / L y d e r at Shem etc.) come
into the question. Similarly, socio-cultural types are kept in the back-
ground. 34
O n e of the great strengths underlying genealogical thinking is its
capacity for complex differentiation. An important example is sup-
plied by the relationships between the sons of Jacob, i.e., between
the Israelite tribes: their assignment to the two main wives, Leah
and Rachel, or their implication in the differentiation of mistress and
maidservant (Zilpah and Bilhah), their succession of births, and fi-
nally the personal bias of J a c o b to Rachel, so that her sons, although
younger, achieve great significance—these are different, cross-cutting
possibilities for describing social status. Israelites, for example in post-
exilic times, who find themselves or their ancestors here, know that
the internal differentiation goes further, that many generations and
separations are necessary in order to grasp the position of an indi-
vidual. All those differences are occluded when a modern racial
nationalism wants to ground itself in pseudo-biology (and, for ex-
ample, makes citizenship dependent on " G e r m a n " origin). Even be-
sides the liberal and "naturalizing" integration of strangers into the
kinship system, already mentioned, 35 modernity lacks equivalents for
both intra-ethnic and extra-ethnic differentiation: the internal differ-
ences among the Israelite people, the descendants of Jacob, are as
great as those among the whole of humanity. And this point can be
taken literally: 36 in Gen. 46:47 the number of persons who, in Egypt,
belonged to Jacob's house is given as seventy (cf. also Exod. 1:5;
Deut. 10:22). There are also seventy peoples who, according to Jew-
ish tradition, originated from the sons of Noah, 37 a number which
quite exactiy accords with the number in Genesis 10 (if one does not

34
See B. Oded, "The Table of Nations (Genesis 10)—A Socio-cultural Approach,"
Z A W 98 (1986), pp. 14-31; on the Japhethites and especially the phrase "Insel der
Völker," cf. W. Horowitz, "The Isles of Nations: Genesis X and Babylonian Geog-
raphy," in J.A. Emerton (ed.), Studies in the Pentateuch (VTS, 41; Leiden: Brill, 1990),
pp. 3 5 - 4 3 . A map with the most important names is provided by W. Zimmerli,
I. Mose 1-11: Die Urgeschichte (ZBK; Zürich: Zwingli, 2nd edn, 1957).
35
See above n. 22.
36
O n the following, see B. Jacob, Das erste Buch der Tora. Genesis (Berlin: Schocken,
1934), pp. 295f.
37
See especially Targum Jonathan on Genesis 11 ; Sota VII,5 and others.
 count Joktan himself). 38 T h e song of Moses, in Deut. 32:8, already
suggests a correspondence between humanity on the one hand and
ethnic identity on the other, between the macrocosm of humankind
and the microcosm of Israel's people: "When the Most High (Elyon)
assigned to the nations their inheritance, he separated the human
children, he determined the boundaries of the peoples firmly, ac-
cording to the number of the Israelites." Thus reads the traditional
Hebrew text, and the statement is especially important if an older
phenomenon of religious history shimmers dimly through this text.
So far, I have spoken of a "people" (Volk), and certainly the text
is concerned with a social dimension which can be named as such.
Even so, we have to take special care with this terminology bearing
in mind all the problems which the concept of Volk carries within
itself.39 T h e problem is first of all discernable in the Genesis system
itself. There is no pure opposition of humankind and Volk; the sys-
tem knows many gradations in between. And many further layers lie
between the fathers of the tribes and the concrete individuals of the
time of composition. A human being is not just an Israelite but at
least a member of a household (bet ,ab), of an extended family or a
clan (mišpaha), as they appear here in the grandchildren of Jacob,
and of a tribe. All these are levels of collective identity. However,
the matter goes further, as our system illustrates nicely. There is not
just the level of the people, i.e., Jacob-Israel, but, for example, the
levels of the two sons of Isaac and all the descendants of Abraham.
T h e ideal marriage relations fall within the group of Terah; this seems
to be the ideal of endogamy. 40 What, then, of the level of the He-
brew peoples, to whom (apart from the sons of Terah) the peoples
stemming from Joktan also belong? T h e Hebrews are spoken of, as
is well known, many times in the Old Testament, especially in the
stories of Joseph, 41 Exodus, 42 and Saul, 43 and much evidence suggests
that such a social group could have been a political presence at some

38
For this counting, Jacob (n. 36 above), p. 296; S. Krauss, "Die Zahl der biblischen
Völkerschaften," Z A W 1 9 (1899), pp. 1 - 1 4 .
39
O n the history of the term, cf. F. Geschnitzer, R. Koselleck, Β. Schönemann,
K.F. Werner, "Volk, Nation, Nationalismus, Masse," in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe:
Bd. 7 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1992), pp. 1 4 4 - 4 3 2 .
40
See especially, Prewitt (n. 10 above).
41
Gen. 39:14, 17; 40:15; 41:12; 43:32, and, e.g., 14:13.
42
Exod. l:15f., 19; 2:7, 11; 3:18; 5:3; 7:16; 9:1, 13; 10:3.
43
1 Sam. 4:6, 9; 13:3, 7, 19; 14:11, 21; 29:13.
stage. 44 Naturally, the level of Shem descendants offers a correlation.
All of these levels are of importance, and many of them are not only
fictive elements, but socially operative. Thus, there are multi-layered
collective identities which encompass many peoples, such as the
Hebrews or Terachites, and also the descendants of Abraham—from
the closest connection which designates E s a u / E d o m a twin, through
the twelve tribe unity of the people, down to the level of the extended
families and households, which are determinative for everyday life.
Within the logic of genealogical thinking, all these levels are of
equal importance. What we call a "people" plays only one role among
many. Especially in comparison with all forms of modern national-
ism, the manifold layers of identity should be stressed. Of course, the
level of the people has importance, since this encompasses "Israel,"
the name which J a c o b receives. At the same time, however, internal
differentiation is also in view—the proximity and distance in relation
to many other identities. T h e over-riding significance within modern
nationalisms of the national layer, displacing all other relationships,
is unthinkable. (And also today, over against this dangerous height-
ening, we should set a many-layered collective identity of familial,
local, regional and international parameters.) Given these observa-
tions, one should take special care to keep a distance from the modern
concept of the nation. In order to understand what is meant by
"people" (in Hebrew, usually 'am), one has to start from ancient 45
and especially from ethnological perspectives. Linguistically, it would
be better, especially in scholarly terminology, to speak of ethnos or
ethnie. Observations concerning the origin of peoples—ethnogenesis 46 —
show that cultural differences play an important role. These can be
understood in terms of language, habits, customs of all kinds, as well
as religion. O n e speaks of a "limited" structure, a boundary which

44
See, e.g., K. Koch, "Die Hebräer v o m Auszug aus Ägypten bis zum Großreich
Davids," VT 19 (1969), pp. 3 7 - 8 1 .
45
See, e.g., Geschnitzer and others (η. 39 above), pp. 15Iff.
46
Especially Mühlmann (η. 22 above) and R. Schott, "Die Ethnogenese von
Völkern in Afrika," ARWAW 78 (1988), pp. 7 - 4 2 . T h e latter refers with emphasis
to Max Weber's differentiation of "common faith (Gemeinsamkeitsglauben)" and
"concerted action (Gemeinschaftshandeln)" (Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Bd. 1 [Köln:
Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1964], p. 307). T h e ethnological material is analysed by
E.A. Knauf (Die Umwelt des Alten Testaments [Neuer Stuttgarter Kommentar, Altes
Testament, 24; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1994], pp. 184ff.) arguing that an
identity like a "people" (Volk) did not exist before the time of the Persians. That
does not accord with the great significance of the different forms of ethnos.
enables distinctions between one's own and the other. 47
T h e possibilities of differentiation, both inside and outside of Israel's
own ethnos (consciously in accord with each other), prove themselves
in the ability to determine the proximities of the many ethnic iden-
tities to each other and to Israel. In the immediate neighbourhood,
Edom is described as the most closely related; M o a b and Ammon
are also close, as are the Arameans descended from Nahor. T h e
great abundance of proto-Arabie ethnie and tribes 48 are perceived in
a very differentiated way as descendants of Cush, Joktan, Keturah as
well as Hagar-Ishmael, but they are mostly perceived as quite closely
related. O n the other hand, the Canaanites, 49 Philistines50 as Hamites 51
receive a quite remote position within the h u m a n family, along with
all the Canaanite peoples who play an important role in the Deu-
teronomic tradition of the taking of the land. We should also notice
the differentiation by defamation, as it is depicted in the origin of
M o a b and Ammon in incest (19:30ff.), but also Israel's own position
arising out of pure deception (ch. 27). Of special interest is the inte-
gration of the peoples with whom Israel was connected by long and
violent animosities. Assyria, which is responsible for the end of Israel's
northern kingdom and most of the tribes, belongs to the descendants
of Shem (10:22). Esau-Edom, connected by a long history of vio-
lence and hatred, is the twin brother of the father of Israel, defrauded
of his blessing as the first-born.52 Midian, viewed so variously in the
Old Testament (Moses discovered the God of Israel in Midian [Exod.
3], yet Midian presents a deadly threat [Judges 6]), is an Abrahamite

47
Cf. Mühlmann (η. 22 above), pp. 18ff.
48
See, e.g., F.V. Winnett, "The A r a b i a n Genealogies in the Book of Genesis," in
Translating and Understanding the Old Testament: Essays in Honor of H.G. May (Nashville:
Abingdon, 1970), pp. 171-196, and especially E.A. Knauf, Midian: Untersuchungen zur
Geschichte Palästinas und Nordarabiens am Ende des 2. Jahrtausends v.Chr. (Wiesbaden:
Harrassowitz, 1988); idem, Ismael: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte Palästinas und Nordarabiens
im 1. Jahrtausend v.Chr. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1985).
49
Cf., e.g., A. van Selms, "The Canaanites in the Book of Genesis, ‫ יי‬OTS 12
(1958), pp. 182-213.
50
O n the problem of their origin, see G.A. Rendsburg, "Gen. 10:13-14: An
Authentic Hebrew Tradition Concerning the Origin of the Philistines," JNSL 13
(1987), pp. 8 9 - 9 6 .
51
See also E. Lipinski, "Les Chamites selon Gen. 10, 6 2 0 ‫ ־‬et 1 Chr 1, 8 - 1 6 , "
ZAH 5 (1992), pp. 135-162.
52
F. Crüsemann, "Herrschaft, Schuld und Versöhnung: Der Beitrag der Jakob-
geschichte der Genesis zur politischen Ethik," Junge Kirche 54 (1993), pp. 6 1 4 - 6 2 0 =
"Dominion, Guilt and Reconciliation: T h e Contribution of the Jacob Narrative in
Genesis to Political Ethics, , ‫ י‬Semeia 66 (1995), pp. 6 7 - 7 7 .
(Gen. 25:2).53 And Israel is connected even with Amalek—the memory
of whom God wishes to extinguish, and with whom God is at eter-
nal war (Exod. 17:14ff.; Deut. 25:17ff.)—not only by the strongest
antagonism, but also by a close blood relationship: he is the grand-
child of Esau (Gen. 36:2). This means that the worst enemies are
not the ones who are markedly strange or different, as every racism
perceives it; they belong to the closest relations.
Although everything is directed towards the special role of the one
people within humankind, Israel's self-definition is to be distinguished
fundamentally from all the decisive features of modern nationalisms:
There is the essential unity of humankind in all its diversity; there is
an internal differentiation within the people which corresponds to
the whole of humanity; there are many levels which are important
for a collective identity of which the ethnic level is only one.

ILL

If one attempts to connect the genealogies of Genesis with the book's

religious and theological themes, one has first to consider their rela-
tionship to the important theological narratives. In the process it
becomes evident just how complex the "theology" of the canonical
text is and how little research has been focussed on it. Its usual di-
vision into relatively discreet literary units gives rise to small digest-
ible pieces, a simplicity which becomes the yardstick of diachronic,
frequendy circular, reasoning. I will focus on a few basic questions,
especially on those where genealogical connections and theological
claims can illuminate each other.
Clearly, the blessing of creation (especially Gen. 1:28) and the com-
mission to fill the earth, both repeated after the deluge (9:1), take
shape in the abundance of the peoples listed in Genesis 10 and in
the continuity through many generations suggested by the long se-
quences of names in Genesis 5 and 11.54 Still before the expansion
of human beings is reported in the table of nations, one finds in the
form of the Noachic commandments (9:2ff.) the starting point for a
human ethic the core of which is the legal prohibition of the killing
of human beings, as well as the limitation of human violence against
animals.

53
See Knauf, Midian (n. 48 above).
54
Cf., e.g., Westermann, Genesis I (n. 8 above) concerning Genesis 5; 10; 11.
 What is decisive is the theological evaluation of the variety of the peoples
and cultures, including what one could call their religions. This is
finally dependent on an understanding of Genesis 11, the story of
the tower of Babel. Following on the table of nations, and before the
unfolding of the genealogical line through Terah and Abraham, the
story points to the collapse of a uniform humanity. According to
the usual reading, the story of the tower of Babel is concerned with
an infringement on God by the still-uniform humanity, which is pun-
ished with dispersion and linguistic diversity. O n such a view, a plu-
rality of cultures seems to be a "graceless J u d g m e n t of God." 5 5
C. Uehlinger's new interpretation of Genesis II 5 6 proves to be illu-
minating, also from the perspective of the text's function. He shows
that behind the speech which gives rise to the building of the city
and the tower, down to its linguistic details, stands the attempt of
the Assyrian empire to bring together deported peoples from all
countries, to homogenize their language and to have them work on
one task, the building of the capital and the palace. T h e story is
about the suppression of diversity. T h e nightmare of a uniform world
order is prevented by God. T h e punishment is, above all, an act of
liberation, the enabling of diverse identities. Every attempt to found
the unity of humanity through the abolition of its variety must threaten
Israel and finally destroy it.
Genesis is about the one creator-God and his distinct people in
the midst of a divinely intended diversity of cultures and nationali-
ties, to which belong also the diverse relationships with this God,
i.e., their religions. It is most intriguing how this complexity of rela-
tionships is depicted. T h e topic appears first in Gen. 4:26 with the
remark that the name of God has been called upon since Seth, i.e.,
including all of primordial humanity. At issue is the name, which is
revealed again not until the call of Moses (Exodus 3; 6). T h e con-
flicts among the sons of Noah, especially the outrage of H a m (the
father of Canaan!) in 9:20ff. lead not only to the founding of human
domination (9:25) but also to an assignment of the one God to Shem
alone: "Blessed be Yhwh, the God of Shem" (9:26), i.e., to only one
third of humanity, with space for J a p h e t in the tents of Shem.

55
So G. v. Rad, Das erste Buch Mose: Genesis (ATD; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, [1949] 9th edn, 1972), p. 117.
56
C. Uehlinger, Weltreich und "eine Rede": Eine neue Deutung der sogenannten Turm-
bauerzählung (Gen. 11, 1-9) (OBO, 101; Fribourg: Universitätsverlag, 1990).
 Genesis does not represent the process that Deuteronomic language
calls "election" as one great step from the table of nations to the one
nation. Instead, the texts form a most complex path which obviously
knows relationships with God of various "shades." In order to illus-
träte this point, I will read the three great promises to Abraham in
Genesis 12, 15 and 17 in relation to the genealogies of Abraham.
After T e r a h had left Ur, a kind of proto-exodus which concerns all
Terahites (11:31), Abraham is addressed by God with the famous
words in 12:1-3. A separation is commanded—from land, from kin,
and from the father's house—and this concerns all Abraham's de-
scendants. T h e divine promise, to become a great nation, to receive
a great name, but also the promise of the blessing, that all the fami-
lies of the earth would bless each other with his name, 57 all that is
valid for Abraham and that means for all of his descendants. There
is no differentiation here, nor is there one later. Thus, 12:1~3 proves
to be a key for understanding the canonical text of Genesis. All
Abrahamites receive a mediating role for God's blessing on the whole
human race, consisting of many peoples.
Gen. 15:1-5 contains the promise of God to Abraham that chil-
dren from his own body will be as numerous as the stars of the sky.
Again, the context allows no limitation; the promise concerns all
Abrahamites. Even the most solemn self-commitment of God in the
covenant ceremony of 15:7ff. is valid without limitation for the en-
tire seed of Abraham (and that independent of what ch. 15 suggests,
read in isolation). In the following chapter, the pregnancy of Hagar
is then reported and the first attempt of Sarah to get rid of her
competitor and child. T h e attempt fails, and the episode ends with
an explicit promise of untold progeny for Hagar (16:10).
Genesis 17, then, represents a narrowing of some promises of God
for a part of the children of Abraham. T h e initial promise of a
covenant of a great progeny, peoples and kingdoms (17:2, 5, 6), the
promise of the land (v. 8) as well as the sign of circumcision (v. lOff.)
is valid for all; it thus includes Ishmael and the sons of Keturah.
Then, however, a special word about Sarah follows in w . 15ff. This

57
For a discussion of the philological problem, see Blum, Komposition (η. 10 above),
pp. 350f. O n the relation of the verses to the preceding primeval history, also the
Priesdy texts within it, cf. F. Crüsemann, "Die Eigenständigkeit der Urgeschichte:
Ein Beitrag zur Diskussion um den Jahwisten'," in J. Jeremias and L. Perlitt (eds.),
Die Botschaft und die Boten. FS H. W. Wolff (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag,
1981), pp. 11-30, 29.
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is by no means a superfluous act, as is occasionally claimed.58 Abra-
ham, who wants to relate everything to Ishmael (v. 18), is corrected
by God, and Ishmael receives his own promise (v. 20). Recently,
Irmtraud Fischer has correcdy emphasized the significance of the words
to Sarah: she sees behind them P's consideration of the older narra-
tive in Genesis 18, with its central role for Sarah. A more basic issue
here, however, is the constitution of the special role of the branch of
Abrahamites which goes back through Sarah. The covenant is made
with Isaac alone (w. 19, 21); the promise to be God for him (v. 7)
is directed towards his descendants.
Yet Esau is also a son of Isaac, indeed, the older one. Only through
the tangled conflicts of the brothers, through deception, hatred to
final reconciliation—not least through the highlight of all those con-
flicts in the night wresding at the Jabbok (32:1 Off.)—is the special
blessing for Jacob and his descendants reached. They go to Egypt,
and their oppression is then the motive for the communication of
the divine name to Moses, which was honoured by all human beings
in primordial times.
Again and again, one is reminded at key points in the Pentateuchal
narrative that Israel's distinctive role is connected to the diversity of
the world of peoples created by God. The theme of Gen. 12:1-3
reappears, e.g., at the beginning of the sojourn at Sinai, where Israel
is described as a priesdy people for the whole of humanity (Exod.
19:6), and then at the very end of the Pentateuch. Here, at the
conclusion of the song of Moses, all peoples are called to praise the
God of Israel (Deut. 32:43; cf. Rom. 15:10).

Translated by Rainer Schack and Mark G. Brett

58
O n the following, see I. Fischer, Die Erzeltern Israels: Feministisch-theologische Studien
zu Genesis 12-36 (BZAW, 222: Berlin: de Gruyter, 1994), p. 10; she engages criti-
cally with W. Zimmerli's devaluation of this passage (/. Mose 1-11: Die Urgeschichte
[ZBK, 1; Zürich: Zwingli Verlag, 2nd edn, 1957], p. 72) as well as with the m a n y
attempts to emend the text, e.g., N. Lohfink, "Textkritisches zu G n 17,5.13.16.17,"
Bib 48 (1967), pp. 439f.
 T H E GĒR IN T H E PRIESTLY LAWS
OF T H E PENTATEUCH

Rolf Rendtorff

"When the Lord told Moses that his people should love the stranger
as themselves (Leviticus 19:34), who was the stranger?5' This question,
asked by an anthropologist,1 is not easy to answer for a biblical exegete.
First of all, for reasons of terminology: The Hebrew language uses a
number of different expressions to refer to persons who do not belong
to the majority, however the latter might be defined. Some of these
expressions are generally used in a more negative sense, always
emphasizing the otherness of those persons and their separateness
from the majority, such as nokri (e.g., Deut. 17:15) or ben-nēkār (e.g.,
Exod. 12:43), and zār (e.g., Isa. 1:7). In other cases the difference is
not as evident and not always emphasized, as with tâšāb which is
often used together with gēr (e.g., Gen. 23:4), the latter being the
most frequent among these expressions. The question of terminology
continues into translation: The "stranger" (e.g., JPS) is sometimes an
"alien" (e.g., NRSV) or a "sojourner" (e.g., The Dictionary of Clas-
sical Hebrew, s.v. ΓΠΠΚ).

I.

The most interesting and most important among these expressions is

the term gēr. This term shows a variety of aspects, and obviously its
connotation is not always the same in different parts of the Hebrew
Bible.2 Let us begin with some observations about the way the gēr is

1
M a r y Douglas, " T h e Stranger in the Bible," Archives européennes de sociologie 3 5 / 2
(1994), pp. 283-298.
2
There are two recent monographical studies on this topic: Christiana van Houten,
The Alien in Israelite Law ( J S O T S u p p l , 107; Sheffield: J S O T Press 1991); Christoph
Bultmann, Der Fremde im antiken Juda. Eine Untersuchung zum sozialen Typenbegnff 'ger' und
seinem Bedeutungswandel in der alttestamentlichen Gesetzgebung, (FRJLANT, 153; Göttingen
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992). See also Excursus 34: T h e "Ger'' in J a c o b Milgrom's
defined. First of all, it is important to note that the word gēr mainly
appears in the singular. There are only a few exceptions: In some
texts the term gērîm is used to describe Israel's situation in Egypt:
"for you were gērîm in the land of Egypt" (Exod. 22:20; 23:9; Lev.
19:34; Deut. 10:19). This remembrance of Israel's fate serves as a
reason not to oppress the actual gēr who in the immediate context
is mentioned in the singular. In another small group of texts the
term gērîm describes metaphorically Israel's position before God (Lev.
25:23; 1 Chr. 29:15; cf. Ps. 146:9). This use has no direct relation to
the present gēr as a real person. The Books of Chronicles use the
term gērîm in two contexts: First, to define the groups of non-Israel-
ites whom David and Solomon forced to labor for the building of
the temple (1 Chr. 22:2; 2 Chr. 2:16), which is an invention by the
Chronicler in order to avoid the idea that Israelites had been forced
to labor. Second, to specify "the gērîm who came out of the land of
Israel" as one of the groups that participated in the great passover
arranged by king Hezekiah (2 Chr. 30:25); this passover is also an
invention of the Chronicler so that the text only shows his idea of
Judah and Israel at the time of Hezekiah. Finally, in the Book of
Ezechiel it is said that in the future division of the land "the gērîm
who reside among you and have begotten children among you" shall
be like a native ('ezrāhf and therefore receive an allotment (Ezek.
47:22). In the following verse, for the detailed procedure of dividing
the land the actual gēr who shall receive it is mentioned in the sin-
gular (v. 23).
This shows that the gēr is mainly dealt with as an individual.
Another interesting aspect of defining the gēr is his being mentioned
together with certain other groups of persons. One characteristic com-
bination is that of gēr and tâšāb, the so-called "temporary resident."4
Both words are based on verbal roots meaning "to reside" or the
like: gûr and yāšab. In both cases the noun refers to a person that

commentary on Numbers (The JPS Torah Commentary; Philadelphia: JPS, 1989), pp. 2 9 8 ‫־‬
402.
3
See below note 8.
4
V a n Houten says that the juxtaposition of gèr and t0šāb in the "Priesdy legis-
lation" is "a new association, for neither in the C o v e n a n t C o d e n o r in the
Deuteronomic law was the alien classed with the temporary resident 1 ' (p. 125). But
this is only half the truth, because the two mentioned legal codes do not use—and
perhaps do not know!—the term t0šāb at all.
originally came from somewhere else and lives now in a surrounding
that is not his or her own. 5 So Abraham calls himself a gēr and tôsâb
among the inhabitants of the land (Gen. 23:4). This story shows that
the gēr does not possess any part of the land, but that there could be
friendly relations between him and the owners of the land and that
he could even buy a certain piece of land. In other narrative texts
that mention a gēr living in a foreign country, the emphasis sounds
less peaceful (e.g., Gen. 15:13; Exod. 2:22; 18:3).
Interestingly, half of the number of occurrences of the word tôsâb
(seven out of fourteen) appear in only one chapter, namely Leviticus
25. Here gēr and tâšāb sometimes are mentioned together, but it is
evident that they are not identical. Of specific importance is the divine
declaration in v. 23: "The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for
the land is mine; you are gērîm and tâšābîm with me." Here the
Israelites themselves are called gērîm and tôsâbîm, and the meaning
is obvious: the land does not belong to them in a final sense. There-
fore, in view of God the Israelites are in the same position as the gēr
and tôsâb living among them.
In some cases the tôsâb is mentioned in juxtaposition with another
social group, the šākÎr (Lev. 25:6, 40; cf. 22:10; Exod. 12:45). This
term describes a person working for wages, but being explicitly
differentiated from the slave (Lev. 25:39f.) because of his or her
personal freedom. The gēr is never mentioned together with the sākîr.
Even more notable is the fact that out of the families of the tôsâbîm
children that are born in the country can be taken as slaves (v. 45)
and even be left to the next generation (v. 46). Here the tôsâb is put
into the same category with "the nations around you" (v. 44) which
would never be the case with the gēr. This gives the impression of a
certain social hierarchy: gēr—tôsâb—šākîr—slave, whereby the first
three groups can be differently juxtaposed. But this hierarchy does
not mean that the gēr will always be the most wealthy of these groups.
In some texts he is mentioned together with the poor as to be given
the right of gleaning (Lev. 19:10; 23:22).
Gēr and tôsâb together play a specific role in the framework of the
law on slavery in Lev. 25:35-54. Here they are set in opposition to

5
In Lev. 25:6, 45 both words are combined: the tâšāb is one of those who reside
(gär) with the Israelites.
"your brother" (v. 35 etc.), that is, to the brother of those to whom
the law is directed. The gēr and the tâšāb do not belong to those
"brothers." But this does not matter as long as land or house are to
be sold (w. 25ff., 29ff.). If one "brother'5 has to sell it, there is no
specific mention about who might be the buyer. The reason is obvi-
ous: the land has to go back to the family of the original owner
anyhow, at the latest in the year of jubilee (v. 28). In case of per-
sonal poverty things are different. The first step is that the addressee
of the law, called "you" in the singular, has to support his brother
who is endangered to be reduced to poverty, so that he can live
alongside with him (v. 35). He shall do it as he would do with a gēr
and tâšāb.6 This is an important remark. It shows that for these priesdy
laws, even if they do not mention questions of charity too often, it
is quite self-evident to help one of the groups that do not belong to
the "brothers" (cf. in particular Lev. 19:33-34). The charity towards
those has to be the example for the behavior towards one's own
"brothers."
Later it is said that even if the "brother" has to sell himself he
should not be treated like a slave but like a tâšāb and šākîr (w. 3 9 ‫־‬
42, see above). But then an interesting variant appears: It might
happen that the gēr and tâšāb become(s)7 wealthy and the "brother"
has to sell himself to him (w. 47-54). Then, of course, the "brother"
is not allowed to be taken as slave, but only as šākîr (v. 53). But in
addition, he need not serve until the year of jubilee, as usual (v. 40),
but there will be a special right of redemption, as generally in the
case of landed property (w. 24, 29). The members of the family are
mentioned who could (and should) redeem him (w. 48-49), and if
he prospers he might even redeem himself (v. 49b). Thus his situa-

6
T h e text is a bit difficult because the two words ‫ נ ר ו ת ו ש ב‬are syntactically
unconnected with the context. L X X adds ώς, and most modern translators and
commentators understand the text accordingly, e.g., "as though" in N R S V and JPS.
Others, as e.g., Rashi and Ibn Ezra, understand it saying that he should help the
person "even if he is a gēr or tôiàb"·, but this is not convincing because in the next
verse the person is again called "your brother," and the remembrance of the exodus
in v. 38 refers also explicidy to the Israelites. Some commentators, like e.g., Elliger,
simply delete the two words because they do not understand the text.
7
In the first half of v. 47 the M T says ‫?ר ו ת ו ש ב‬, in the second half only 3‫ר‬
‫ ת ו ש ב‬. Is he taken to be only one person? At the end of the verse it only says "the
family of the gēr."
tion is qualitatively different from the one he would have been in
had he sold himself to another "brother.'5 His chance to get free is
definitely higher, at least according to the wording of the law. This
shows that the lawgiver would not exclude the possibility that a
member of the community would have to sell himself to a gēr (and
tôsâb), and there are no legal objections against that. But neverthe-
less, the family of this person, or even he himself, should have a
special chance to free him from this uneasy situation.
These last observations show two things: First, the gēr is taken to
be a permanent figure in the context of the society to which these
laws are addressed. As such he is accepted and integrated in the
rules of the daily life of the community. Second, he is still different.
This is particularly clear if a member of the majority becomes finan-
daily and socially dependent on a gēr. Then there are special rules
to make it easier to be extricated from this situation. But all this is
formulated in the law without any bias.

II.

So far we have dealt with texts that emphasize the difference be-
tween the gēr (and the tôsâb) and the majority of the community that
is addressed in the text of the law. I avoided calling the members of
the majority by any ethnic or otherwise defining terms. Only where
the text has a specific expression like "brother" I used it. On the
other hand, we found some terms with whom the gēr could be jux-
taposed, such as tôsâb and the poor. Both of these terms have a
clear social connotation. But then we find another term with which
the gēr is regularly juxtaposed: the term 'ezrāh. This juxtaposition
points in the opposite direction. The 'ezrāh is exactly what the gēr is
not: an original, native inhabitant of the land, a citizen. This word
appears almost exclusively in priesdy laws in the Pentateuch, 8 and in
the majority of occurrences it is used in immediate relation to the
gēr. The surprising fact is that in all those texts that mention the gēr
and the 'ezrāh together the point is not their difference or contrast

8
In Josh. 8:33 gēr and 'ezrāh are named together as integral part of the assembly.
For Ezek. 47:22 see above note 3. In Ps. 37:35 the meaning is uncertain.
but what they have in common. Many of these texts look formulaic,
albeit with several variations: "gēr like ‫ נ‬ezrāh‫ כ נ ר כאזרח( ״‬Lev. 24:16,
24:22); "all persons . . . gèr and 'ezrāh" fCŒ) ‫ב א ז ר ח‬ ‫ כ ל ־ נ פ ש‬17:15);
,
"the ezrāh and the gêr who resides among you" p ï l ‫ה א ז ר ח והנר‬
‫ ב ת ו כ כ ם‬16:19; 18:26); in a very definite way "You shall have one
ordinance (‫ )משפט‬for the gēr and for the 'ezrāh, for I am the Lord
your God" (24:22, cf. Num. 15:16); "There shall be one law (‫)חורה‬
for the 'ezràh and the gēr who resides among you" (Exod. 12:49, cf.
Num. 15:16); "One single statute (‫ )חקה‬shall be for you and for the
gēr, a perpetual statute throughout your generations; you and the
gēr shall be alike before the Lord" (Num. 15:15; cf. 9:14; 19:10). In
addition, there are a number of texts that do not use the term 'ezrāh
but instead speak of Israelites. They are even more formulaic, often
beginning with ‫ איש איש • ב י ת ישראל‬or ‫" מבני ישראל‬Anyone of the
house (or: the people) of Israel" and then continuing "or from the
gër that resides among you" (Lev. 17:8, 10, 13; 20:2; 22:18).
All these texts explain certain aspects of the law that are valid for
the gēr as well as for the ,ezrāh. The latter is here identified belong-
ing to the house or people of Israel. That makes it evident that the
gër does not belong to "Israel." But just from that point of view it
is highly important to see in which fields the things in common are
emphasized. The majority of these texts are dealing with cultic matters.
Leviticus 17 contains a number of specifications of rules for sacrifices
that are dealt with more generally in chs. 1-7. Here the gēr is fully
included. 9 According to v. 8 he is entided to offer lôlâ and zebah
sacrifices. Like the Israelite, he has to bring every sacrifice "to the
entrance of the tent of meeting," according to the basic laws in Lev.
1:3 and 3:2. Like the Israelite he is forbidden to eat any blood, be
it from a sacrifice (v. 10, 12) or from a hunted animal (v. 13), and
also to eat what has died or has been torn by beasts (v. 15). In
certain cases, he is also subject to the "cut off" (karet) penalty like the
Israelite (w. 9, 10) or he becomes unclean (v. 15).
Numbers 15 brings also additional regulations for sacrifices such
as additional grain and drink offerings. These rules are valid for
the ‫נ‬ezrāh (v. 13) as well as for the gēr (v. 14). The latter is spoken

9
Only in the first paragraph (w. 3—7) the gēr is not mentioned. It is disputed
whether he is therefore allowed to do things prohibited there, as e.g. to offer his
sacrifices to the goat idols (v. 7).
of as one who "resides" (gûr), or who lives among the Israelites since
generadons. 10 A series of three formulae finalizes this paragraph, say-
ing that there shall be one single huqqâ, a perpetual one (v. 15), and
one single tôrâ and mišpât (v. 16) for the 'ezrāh and the gēr. Another
special aspect of sacrifices is emphasized in Lev. 22:17-25: Every
animal presented for offering must not have and blemish "to be fa-
vorable for you" (v. 19, cf. Lev. 1:3"). This again is valid for the
Israelite and for the "gēr in Israel" (v. 18). Together with the Isra-
elite the gēr is responsible that the sacrifices are offered in a way
expected and accepted by YHWH.
In some texts the gēr is explicidy made co-responsible, together
with the 'ezrāh or Israelite, for the purity of the land. In the sum-
mary of the sexual rules in Lev. 18:24—30 it is said that neither the
,
ezrāh nor the gēr should do all the abominations (v. 26) by which
the earlier inhabitants had defiled the land. Not to defile themselves
and not to defile God's land is of high importance for the life of
both, Israelites and gērîm. Therefore, again both groups are respon-
sible to prevent anyone in their midst giving of their offspring to
Molech and thereby defiling God's sanctuary and his holy name (Lev.
20:1-5). There is also a perpetual huqqâ for the Israelites and the gēr
alike to purify themselves on the third and seventh day after touch-
ing a corpse. Otherwise they will remain unclean and by that defile
the Lord's tabernacle (Num. 19:10b13‫)־‬. For the same reason every-
one who blasphemes the name of the Lord shall be put to death, the
gēr like the 'ezrâh (Lev. 24:16). And at the end of this chapter it is
formulated anew: "You shall have one mišpât for the gēr and for the
‫נ‬
ezrāh, for I am the Lord your God" (v. 22).
The gēr is also included in the highest holy day of the year, the
day of atonement. The final paragraph of the law of this day (Lev.
16:29-34) begins with the statement that it is a perpetual huqqâ for
the 'ezrāh and the gēr, that they shall practice self-denial and do no

10
J . Milgrom in his c o m m e n t a r y (see above note 2) argues that l'dôrôtêkem in
v. 14 "belongs here at the beginning of the verse." T h e n he wants to understand
the "one who lives a m o n g you" as the nokrî "who does not actually reside a m o n g
the I s r a e l i t e s . . . but who sojournes or visits" (120). But it seems to m e quite impos-
sible to exchange the two terms gēr a n d nokrî. This chapter speaks continuously of
the gēr, and the nokrî does not a p p e a r in the priestly laws at all.
11
Cf. Rolf Rendtorff, Leviticus (BK III, 1; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1985),
pp. 30-32.
manner of work. There is disagreement among commentators whether
the gēr is only included in the commitment of doing no work or also
in that of self-denial. The New JPS Translation devides the verse by
semicolon in favor of the first mentioned alternative: "you shall prac-
dee self-denial; and you shall do no manner of work, neither the
citizen nor the alien who resides among you. , ' 2 ‫ י‬But then the ques-
tion arises, who is included in the "you" in the following verse. "For
on this day atonement shall be made for you to cleanse you; from
all your sins you shall be clean before the Lord" (v. 31). Is the gēr
included?13 He is clearly included in several laws regarding the purity
of the land (see above). Should he not be included in the cleansing?
Whatever the answer might be, the gēr is mentioned anyhow in the
perpetual huqqâ for Israel's highest holy day alongside with the 'ezrāh.
This group of texts shows the very close relations of the gēr with
the majority of citizens, in particular in the cultic field. In several
respects, the gēr is simply included in the cultic life of his surround-
ing. To what extent he remains unconcerned by certain laws is not
quite clear. One theory is that "the gēr is bound by the prohibitive
commandments but not by the performative ones.'"4 But it is diffi-
cult to decide. Here we have to keep in mind that the laws we have
before us in the biblical texts have not been worked out at one time
and on one level. Therefore the mention of the gēr might have been
added at certain places at different times and for different reasons
without a consistent drive for systematics and completeness. Never-
theless, the general picture is quite clear.

ΙΠ.

I include here some brief remarks on the role of the gēr in other law
codes of the Hebrew Bible. In the "Book of the Covenant," as well
as in Deuteronomy, the gēr is mentioned exclusively in a social con-

12
J a c o b Milgrom argues in detail in favor of this interpretation: see the Excursus
" G e r " in the c o m m e n t a r y on N u m b e r s (s. above note 2); also his Leviticus 1-16 (AB,
3; G a r d e n City: Doubleday, 1991), pp. 1055-56.
13
V a n H o u t e n (see note 2) does discuss this question while Milgrom (see note 12)
does not.
14
So Milgrom (see note 12).
 nection: "You shall not wrong or oppress a stranger, for you were
strangers in the land of Egypt" (Exod. 22:20; 23:9). The gēr is close
to widows, orphans, and the poor (22:21, 24, cf. also Deut. 14:29;
16:11, 14; 24:14, 17, 19, 21; 26:13; 27:19), and also to the Levites
(Deut. 14:29; 26:11, 13). But both these law codes never compare
the gēr with the surrounding majority. They never use the term 'ezrāh\
possibly they do not know it at all. But they also never compare the
gēr with the Israelite, as the priesdy laws constantly do. There is just
the opposition of "you" and "the gēr."
Now again: Who is the gēr? All the law codes agree that he is a
person who lives more or less permanendy among the Israelites but
does not become one of them. But only the priestly laws reflect upon
the relations between those to whom the laws are given and the gér.
We made the observation above that the term 'ezrāh can interchange
with "a person of the house of Israel" or "of the children of Israel."
Then the other question arises: Who are the Israelites? In order to
understand who is the gér that is not an Israelite we should know
who the Israelite is. But how can we know? In the Hebrew Bible the
term "Israel" or "children of Israel" and the like has quite different
meanings, beginning with the surname of the third of the patriarchs,
Jacob (Gen. 32r28[29]; 35:10), through the name of the Northern
Kingdom (1 Kgs. 12:19) up to the name for those who came back
from the Babylonian Exile (Ezra 2:2; 7:13). Alongside those chang-
ing meanings there is always a general use of the term "Israel"
embracing the whole people of the descendants of Abraham and Jacob
notwithstanding the current political situation. Obviously this is also
the case with the priestly laws for whom there is only one Israel.
But the moment there are persons who are not included in this
"Israel" the question of borders arises. Who is in and who is out,
who is an ‫ג‬ezrāh and who is a gēr? And why? We have seen how
close the gēr is to the 'ezrāh and how difficult it seems to be to
define the difference. The prophet Ezekiel has felt this problem, and
in his vision of the future he gave clear advice: The gērîm who live
among the Israelites and who have begotten children among them
shall receive an allotment, "and they shall be to you as an ,ezrāh of
the children of Israel" (Ezek. 47:22). According to this statement, the
only thing that distinguishes a permanent gēr from an Israelite is the
participation in the possession of the land. If this situation changes,
there will no longer be any difference at all. The gēr will become an
'ezrāh. Of course, this is an eschatological statement that could only
be realized in a moment when the whole land is distributed anew.
But we can learn from this what the difference between a gêr and
an 'ezrāh is really like.
Recently Mary Douglas wrote: "My idea is simply that the gēr
was one of the other descendants of Jacob, not descended from Judah,
nor from Levi or Benjamin, but those other remnants of the twelve
tribes who had been defeated and scattered by invaders and who
still lived in Canaan during and after the exile in Babylon. His spe-
cial status at law would be precisely that he was neither a foreigner
nor a Jew." 15 This seems to me to be exactly what Ezekiel had in
mind, and it fits precisely the role of the gēr in the priestly laws. For
the moment I want to stop here. It would be highly interesting and
important to develop this idea further and to ask for the different
connotations and implications of the terms "Israel," "house of Is-
rael," children of Israel and the like. One could say: The gēr is an
Israelite but not an "Israelite" according to the rule on which the
priesdy laws are based. Or: The gër is an Israelite but not a Jew. In
principal, this definition would be independent of the exact dating of
the priesdy laws, because some Israelites became landless at least
from the Assyrian invasion in the eighth century BCE.

IV.

And what about Ezra? It is obvious that the whole problem of

foreign marriages which Ezra treated in such a disturbing way is
incompatible with the role of the gēr in the priesdy laws. The term
gēr never appears in the Book(s) of Ezra/Nehemiah; nor does the
term 'ezrāh. Instead the discussion is about marriages of members of
the "people Israel," called "the holy seed," with women from the
"peoples of the land," called by all kinds of anachronistic names in
order to compare the present situation with that of the early times of
the conquest of the land (Ezra 9:1-2). While in the priesdy laws a
spirit of closeness prevailed, and even the integration of the gèr is
possible, in Ezra everything is dominated by the idea of separation

15
Cf. note 1, " T h e Stranger in the Bible," p. 286.
and even hostility. One might understand this behavior in the con-
text of the struggle for Israel's national and religious identity and
survival. But one thing seems to be clear: This Ezra cannot be cred-
ited with the codification of the Priesdy Torah as some scholars believe.
If Mary Douglas is correct, this theory has it the wrong way around.
It may be that the preservation of the laws of the gēr was direcdy
opposed to the marriage policies represented in Ezra.
 T H E IDEOLOGY OF IDENTITY IN CHRONICLES

Jonathan E. Dyck

Introduction

The books of Chronicles do not immediately come to mind in thinking

about ethnicity and the Bible. There are no texts to rival Ezra 9 and
Nehemiah 13, no language to disquiet our minds like the language
of "abominations,,‫" י‬the pure seed," and the "great evil" of "foreign
women." The sociology of the Persian period is by and large a so-
ciology of these and other texts in Ezra-Nehemiah which are the
closest thing we have to a direct window onto post-exilic Judah.
Chronicles scholars fall into two camps: those who paint Chronicles
with the same brush as Ezra-Nehemiah, labelling the Chronicler's
atdtude to outsiders as equally exclusivist, and those who resist this
tempting comparison and find the Chronicler to be rather more
tolerant of others, an inclusivist and maybe even an ecumenist. Nine-
teenth century scholars, most of whom fall into the former camp,
were not averse to judging openly "the good" and "the bad" and,
more often than not, Chronicles was lumped in with "the bad" on
account of his Judean-Jerusalemite-Priesdy tendencies. In more recent
scholarship there is a strong tendency to exonerate the Chronicler
(and often at the expense of Ezra-Nehemiah) and to place him in
the company of "the good." And times have changed even for Ezra-
Nehemiah which is now getting an equally sympathetic reading. The
community described therein is said to have had legitimate ethnic
concerns which at times required strong measures such as those relating
to intermarriage. The question of the Chronicler's concept of the
identity his people, the people he calls "Israel," is thus a comparative
one: What is the Chronicler's concept of Israel as compared to that
found in Ezra-Nehemiah?1 In fight of what we find in Ezra-Nehemiah,

1
T h e relationship between Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah also has a literary
aspect in that scholars who argue that Chronicles is exclusivist have also tended to
hold that Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah constitutes one larger "Chronistic" history. I
am not at this point concerned with the literary question for the simple reason that
one could defend either interpretations of Chronicles even if one judged it on its
is the Chronicler also though indirectly addressing the same contem-
porary problems? Would the Chronicler have supported Ezra and
Nehemiah's attempts to rid the post-exilic community of foreign
women or would he have sided with those who took wives from "the
peoples of the lands" and other groups outside "the assembly of the
exile"? Would the Chronicler have accepted these group divisions?
My aim in this paper is to not only to answer these particular questions
but to ask new questions which emerge from a closer examination of
the concept of ethnic identity itself. The concept of identity is, as I
hope to demonstrate in the following, a complex sociological notion
which requires sociological terms and categories that do it justice.

Exclusivist or Inclusivist?

It may be helpful at this point to take a closer look at the two main
positions taken with regard to the Chronicler's concept of identity
and the textual evidence adduced in support of them. I begin with
the exclusivist interpretation . . . an interpretation which goes all the way
back to de Wette's2 ground-breaking study of the biases of the Chroni-
cler. De Wette argued that the Chronicler showed a preference for Judah
and hatred of Israel.3 The textual evidence he adduces in support of his
interpretation forms the backbone of the exclusivist position. The most
obvious, yet still implicit evidence, is the absence of a history of Is-
rael after the division of the kingdom (2 Chron. lOff.), which con-
trasts sharply with the book of Kings. More to the point perhaps is
Abijah's speech to Jeroboam and the rebellious northern kingdom in
2 Chronicles 13 in which he claims that the Israelites cannot defeat
"the kingdom of God in the hand of the sons of David" (v. 8) for to
fight against the Davides is to "fight against the LORD" (V. 12). De
Wette also cites 2 Chron. 19:3 which describes the northern king-
dom of Ahab as "the wicked and those who hate the LORD."

own terms. Indeed, the first proponent of the exclusivist interpretation, W.M.L. de
Wette, treated Chronicles as an independent work. Neither interpretation of Chronicles
requires a particular view on the literary question. I will treat Chronicles as a sepa-
rate book though I will continue to use Ezra-Nehemiah as a point of comparison.
5
W.M.L. de Wette, Beiträge zur Einleitung in das Alte Testament: Bd. 1, Kritischer Versuch
über die Glaubwürdigkeit der Bücher der Chronik mit Hinsicht auf die Geschichte der Mosaischen
Bücher und Gesetzgebung (Darmstadt: O l m s Verlag, reprint edn, 1971).
3
De Wette, Beiträge, pp. 126-32.
 It was Wellhausen who first suggested the link between this par-
dcular anti-Israel bias and the Samaritan problem, which was, sup-
posedly, a major challenge facing the Chronicler's community. For
the Chronicler, argues Wellhausen, "Israel is the congregation of true
worship, and the last is connected with the temple at Jerusalem, in
which of course the Samaritans have no part."4 Wellhausen's minor
insight was transformed by Torrey and Noth into the theory of an
anti-Samaritan purpose,5 a theory which became an assured result of
biblical criticism. Noth reasons that if we observe what the Chroni-
cler included in his history we must come to the conclusion that his
motive (stated in positive terms) was "to demonstrate the legitimacy
of the Davidic dynasty and of the Jerusalem temple as Yahweh's
valid cult centre."6 If, on the other hand, we observe that the Chroni-
cler excluded those traditions which the Jews and Samaritans had in
common (i.e., those contained in the Pentateuch, Joshua, and Judges)
and that he neglects the history of the northern kingdom we must
conclude that the opposition he had in view was "the Samaritan
community with a cult of their own on Mt. Gerizim."7
A somewhat more subtle approach is von Rad's analysis of the
use of the term "Israel" in Chronicles.8 He observes that the Chronistic
history (i.e., Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah) contains different and conflicting
ideas of what Israel is. This conflict is a reflection of the clash between

4
J . Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel, trans. W. Robertson Smith
(Gloucestor, Mass: Peter Smith, reprint edn, 1973), pp. 187-8. "Die Samarier" is the
G e r m a n word used which is better translated "Samarians."
5
C . C . Torrey, " T h e Chronicler as Editor a n d Independent N a r r a t o r , " in Ezra
Studies (New York: Ktav, reprint edn, 1970), p. 209. H e follows Josephus in arguing
that the Samaritan priesthood was Jerusalemite in origin and that the Chronicler is
countering their claims to an ancient cultic legirimacy. A more recent study by
H. Kippenberg also suggests that J o s e p h u s ' account of the origins of the Samaritan
priesthood has a basis in history: Garizim und Synagoge: Traditionsgeschkhtliche Untersuchungen
zur samaritanischen Religion der aramische Periode (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1971), pp. 5 0 - 9 .
6
M. Noth, The Chronicler's History (trans. H . G . M . Williamson; J S O T S , 50; Sheffield:
J S O T Press, 1987), p. 100. Noth's stress on the "overall plan" was directed against
von R a d ' s view that the Chronicler's purpose in writing his history was to support
the claims of the Levites.
7
Noth, Chronicler's History. T h e anti-Samaritan t h e o n has fallen on hard times for
the simple reason that the sanctuary on M t . Gerizim was probably established in
the Hellenistic period. Thus, the rivalry between the J e w s and Samaritans as re-
ported in Ezra-Nehemiah is not to be thought of as a rivalry between Jerusalem
and Mt. Gerizim. T h e schism between the two c o m m u n i d e s cannot with certainty
be traced back to the fifth century (see R . T . Anderson, "Samaritans," in Anchor Bible
Dictionary, vol. 5, pp. 940-7).
8
G. von R a d , Das Geschichtsbild des Chronistischen Werkes (BWANT, 54; Stuttgart:
K o h l h a m m e r , 1930).
theory and reality—the ideal of Israel as made up of the twelve tribes
of Jacob clashing with the historical reality of the post-exilic commu-
nity of Judah, Benjamin and Levi.9 To be sure, von Rad does not
assign all the material in the Chronistic History to the Chronicler.
He takes the Ezra and Nehemiah "memoirs" to be a largely authen-
tic source material which gives us a direct insight into the Chronicler's
era.10 Of particular note in this non-Chronistic material is the use of
the words "Jews'"1 and "Israel"12 in these sources. The former is
used in political and organisational contexts whereas the latter is used
in religious contexts. Von Rad concludes from this that the post-
exilic community appropriated for itself, that is for Judah and Ben-
jamin, the name "Israel" and the promises inherent in it.13
Such is the self-understanding of the Chronicler's contemporaries
and of the Chronicler himself. In the Chronistic material in Ezra-
Nehemiah the word "Jew" is not used. The emphasis is entirely on
the continuity between the community of returned exiles and Israel
of old. The same viewpoint is also found in the genealogies of
Chronicles (1 Chronicles 1-9) where we find an enumeration of all
the tribes of Israel.14 But this ideal concept of Israel does, in von
Rad's view, eventually come into conflict with the narrower défini-
tion in the story of the divided kingdom, a definition rooted in the
self-understanding of the Chronicler's community. Von Rad argues
that when the Chronicler speaks of "all Israel in Judah and Ben-
jamin" (2 Chron. 11:3) he means to say that the kingdom of Judah
(and the post-exilic "remnant" of that kingdom) is the true Israel.15
The northern kingdom is completely illegitimate and has, as it were,
excluded itself from salvation history.
Torrey and Noth represent the Chronicler as one who accepts
this narrowing of Israel. Their interpretations of Chronicles are tied
to a particular understanding of his motives. If you are going to
argue, with Noth, that the Chronicler is a polemicist you cannot

9
V o n R a d , Geschichtsbild, p. 18. Even in the genealogy which, on the surface
at least, attests to the twelve tribe ideal, the three "faithful" tribes stand out [pp.
25-6],
10
V o n R a d , Geschichtsbild, p. 19.
11
Neh. 1:2; 2:16; 3:33, 34; 4:6; 5:1, 8, 17; 6:6; 13:23.
15
Ezra 2:59; 6:17; 7:28; 8:25, 35; 9:1; 10:lff., 5, 10; Neh. 8:1; 9:2; 13:18.
13
V o n R a d , Geschichtsbild, p. 24.
14
V o n R a d , Geschichtsbild, p. 29. V o n R a d also notes the m o r e lenient view of
intermarriage.
15
V o n R a d , Geschichtsbild, p. 31.
have a polemicist at odds with himself over such a fundamental is-
sue. Von Rad's interpretation also centres on the question of motive,
but he substitutes a political motive for a theological one. The Chronicler's
history was not an ordinary secular history but the history of salva-
tion, a history of the people of God. "Israel" is first and foremost a
theological idea and this allows the Chronicler to equivocate in his
use of it, argues von Rad. "All Israel" is readily transformed into
"true Israel" and back again. This difference of approach can be
seen in his interpretation of those texts in 2 Chronicles 10ff. which
either suggest a more sympathetic attitude towards the people of the
north (e.g., 2 Chron. 14:7ff.) or extend the sphere of influence of the
Davidides into the north (e.g., 2 Chron. 31:1). Whereas Noth ex-
plains their presence by claiming that they reflect contemporary re-
lations between inhabitants of Samaria-Galilee and Jerusalem or
perhaps a contemporary claim to northern territory,16 von Rad also
sees in them a theological commitment to a particular idea.17
Those who argue that the Chronicler is an inclusivist have much
in common with von Rad. Both Japhet 18 and Williamson, 19 for ex-
ample, are particularly interested in the "all Israel" emphasis through-
out Chronicles and in the "positive" notices about the North which
at times contrasts sharply with the line taken in Ezra-Nehemiah. 20
Again, in line with von Rad, both scholars think the Chronicler takes
this position because he is an "idealist;" neither of them thinks that
the Chronicler is pursuing a political agenda. The difference between
von Rad and the "inclusivists" is that the latter reach different con-
elusions as to the relative weight this textual evidence should have in
the interpretation of the communicative intentions of the Chronicler.
Their reassessment of the communicative intentions in turn necessi-
tates, in their view, a reappraisal of the Chronicler's motive which is
to be assessed independently from Ezra-Nehemiah. 21

16
Noth, Chronicler's History, p. 104.
17
V o n R a d , Geschichtsbild, p. 33.
18
S. J a p h e t , The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and its Place in Biblical Thought
(BEATAJ, 9; Frankfurt a M : Lang, 1989).
19
H . G . M . Williamson, Israel in the Books of Chronicles (Cambridge: C a m b r i d g e
University Press, 1977).
20
V o n R a d also notes this contrast, especially in relation to intermarriage [Von
R a d , Geschichtsbild, p. 29],
21
According to J a p h e t and Williamson, the literary argument is crucial, but, as
noted earlier, the exclusivist position is not absolutely dependent on the view that
Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah are one work.
 Japhet examines the use of "all Israel" in Chronicles,22 and con-
eludes that texts which apply this phrase to the Judah and Benjamin
are referring to the southern kingdom, not just Judah and Benjamin.
For example, a text such as 2 Chronicles 12:1, "When Rehoboam
was established . . . he abandoned the LORD, he and all Israel with
him," is to be understood in the context of 2 Chron. 11:13-17 which
describes how priests and Levites from "all the tribes of Israel" (v. 16)
were represented in the "southern kingdom."23 According to Japhet,
the Chronicler does not maintain the distinction between the ten
northern tribes and the one southern tribe as does the Deuteronomisdc
historian (1 Kgs 11:356‫)־‬. Contrary to von Rad, Judah and Ben-
jamin specify geographical regions in the phrase "all Israel in Judah
and Benjamin" (2 Chron. 11:3).24
What about the Chronicler's attitude towards the northern king-
dom? What about the texts which condemn the northern kingdom
as illegitimate (e.g., 25:7)? Japhet's answer is simple: the condemna-
tion applies only to the northern kingdom and not to the people of
the North for "the northern kingdom, for all its sins, is an integral
part of the people of Israel."25 It is this attitude which, according to
Japhet, contrasts sharply with the attitude to the inhabitants of the
north in Ezra-Nehemiah. Whereas Ezra 4:12‫( ־‬following 2 Kgs
17:24ff.) emphasises the foreign origins of the inhabitants in the North
who are said to have been brought there by the Assyrians, the
Chronicler continues to speak of Israelites in the North after the
Assyrian invasion. Hezekiah's Passover celebration includes "the whole
assembly that came out of Israel and the sojourners who came out
of the land of Israel" (2 Chron. 30:25).
Williamson's Israel in the Books of Chronicles is a study of the use of
the word "Israel" in Chronicles. Williamson contends, also contra
von Rad, that when the term "Israel" is applied to the southern

22
1 C h r o n . 11:4; 13:6; 21:1-5; 2 C h r o n . 1:2-3 are Chronistic additions for the
sake of special emphasis, where as 1 C h r o n . 14:8; 2 C h r o n . 7:4-6; 10:16; 11:3 are
added for stylistic reasons only [Japhet, Ideology, pp. 272-4],
23
J a p h e t , Ideology, p. 277.
24
J a p h e t ' s also discerns a steady expansion of the kingdom of J u d a h into the
North. T h e reign of Asa (see 2 C h r o n . 15:8-9), according to J a p h e t , marks the
beginning of this geographic expansion which gains pace in the reigns of Hezekiah
and Josiah reaching as far as Zebulun (2 C h r o n . 30:11) and Naphtali (2 C h r o n .
34:5-7) [ J a p h e t , Ideology, pp. 2 9 5 - 8 ] .
25
P. 318. This is underscored by the use of the term " b r o t h e r " (2 C h r o n . 12:40;
13:2 a n d 28:8).
kingdom it is not done in an exclusivist way.26 For example, when
the Chronicler applies the term "all Israel" to Judah in 2 Chron.
11:3, he is merely levelling the score between the North and the
South, for the term "all Israel" had already been applied to the
northern kingdom (2 Chron. 10:16). The Chronicler wanted to show
that the term "all Israel" could be used for either kingdom.27 In
extending its usage to include Judah, the Chronicler did not wish "to
exclude or contrast with the Northern Kingdom, but to make a positive
point that there was to be found in Judah an unbroken continuation
of the Israel of earlier days."28 In terms of motive, Williamson con-
tends that the Chronicler steers a middle course between assimi-
lationists and separatists. "On the one hand, there can be no doubt
about his unswerving loyalty to the Jerusalem cult. . . reconciliation
with rebels could only be based on their return to complete alle-
giance to the authority of this cult."29 On the other hand (and more
importantly), the Chronicler is trying to reach out to all Israel on the
basis of his belief in the unity of the twelve: "a faitïtful nucleus does
not exclude others, but is a representative centre to which all the
children of Israel may be welcomed if they will return."30
Evaluation. It should be clear from the above that ascertaining the
Chronicler's concept of identity involves two distinct though related
moves: determining the communicative intentions of the Chronicler and
determining his motives. The contribution of Japhet and Williamson
comes by way of offering a different interpretation of the Chronicler's
communicative intentions, giving due weight to those texts which offer

26
2 Chron. 11:3 reads "Say to R e h o b o a m son of Solomon king of J u d a h , and to
all Israel in J u d a h and Benjamin . . ." T h e parallel text in Kings reads "all the
house of J u d a h and Benjamin and the rest of the people" (1 Kgs 12:23). Williamson
disagrees with von R a d ' s claim that "Juda und Benjamin sind jetzt das wahre
Israel" [Von R a d , Geschichtsbild, p. 31].
27
Williamson, Israel, p. 109.
28
Williamson, Israel, p. 107.
29
Williamson, Israel, p. 139 (emphasis mine).
30
Williamson, Israel. H e expands on this interpretation in " T h e T e m p l e in the
Books of Chronicles," in W. H o r b u r y (ed.), Templum Amicitae: Essays on the Second
Temple Presented to Ernst Bammel ( J S N T S , 48; Sheffield: J S O T Press, 1991), pp. 15-
31. In it he argues that "the temple in Chronicles is not a litmus test of an ortho-
doxy that would exclude the non-conformist but rather a focus of unity for the
people of Israel as a whole" (p. 21). Taking his cue from modern ecumenical theory,
he suggests that the Chronicler (like any good ecumenist) links the T e m p l e to the
period before the divisions in Israel occurred. These "physical ties of unbroken
continuity" make the Jerusalem temple "a focus of continuity with the nation's earliest
history and one that should therefore override more recent differences" (pp. 24—5).
a "broader" view of Israel. In their opinion this precludes the idea
that the Chronicler was an exclusivist in terms of motives in line
with Ezra-Nehemiah. A different understanding of the Chronicler's
communicative intentions requires a different understanding of mo-
tive. But here both Williamson and Japhet run into trouble. Having
argued that we cannot paint the Chronicler with an Ezra-Nehemianic
brush, they reach for what appears to be the only alternative: the
Chronicler must have been an inclusivist. But this proposal presents
as many problems as it solves for what does one do with the texts
which present the narrow understanding of Israel? Japhet's geographi-
cal solution is not really a solution for although the text does clearly
recognise that there are representatives from all Israel in Judah, the
point surely is that Judah's territory is the representative centre of
Israel.
Williamson also asserts that Judah is conceived of as the represen-
tative centre of Israel, representing the "loyal" part of Israel. The
Chronicler, in effect, occupies the middle ground between "assimi-
lationists" and "exclusivists." There are a number of difficulties with
this picture. It is, of course, possible that the Chronicler was a proto-
ecumenist, but is it not just as reasonable to lump the Chronicler in
with the assimilationists? I would contend that Williamson, as well as
the other interpreters surveyed, has unnecessarily restricted his op-
tions to a choice which turns on the presence or absence of bound-
ary definitions. Yet his solution requires a middle ground seemingly
occupied by one person, the Chronicler. What is required, I would
argue, is a different approach to the question of ethnic identity that
begins with a sociological theory of identity of which the boundary
definitions are but a part.

Ethnicity and Identity

An ethnic group can be defined as a group which shares certain

characteristics or combination of characteristics including language,
religion, cultural traditions, and racial characteristics.31 More often
than not one is born into an ethnic group and the tendency is to
think of ethnicity in terms of descent and race. This approach, how-

31
A. K u p e r and J . Kuper, The Social Science Encyclopedia (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1985), pp. 267-72.
 ever, distracts attention from the constructive or dynamic nature of
ethnic identity. Members of an ethnic group must perceive themselves
to be distinct from other groups; thinking that one belongs is an es-
sential aspect of belonging. One can therefore speak of ethnicity as
a social construction of reality or as an aspect of the social con-
sciousness of a group. This point is perhaps best underscored by the
fact that ethnicity crystallises when different groups come into con-
tact. Ethnic groups are not in this sense natural nor is ethnic identity
a "given of all human association."32
Now there are, of course, important qualifiers to add to this dy-
namic definition of the ethnic group. Firsdy, there is the question of
the degree to which members of an ethnic group share in the sense
of identity. The sense of solidarity is often most keenly felt by the
ruling or elite classes. A similar case are those communities who have
an ethnic label imposed on them by a different and politically domi-
nant group.33 Here "perceiving oneself to be distinct" is transformed
into "perceiving that one is perceived to be distinct." Ethnic identity
is thus vulnerable to ideological distortion in the context of the struggle
for political power. As the title of this essay suggests, I want to raise
our sensitivity to these dimensions of identity in Chronicles.
Another important consideration with regard to the above défini-
tion of ethnicity is to recognise that humans are "bounded by mul-
tiple identities."34 The temptation is to use one rubric for exploring
the social dynamics of a particular situation. It is quite common, for
example, to divide Israelite history into the tribal (kinship group),
monarchic (nation and or state), and post-monarchic (ethnic group)
periods. It may be true that one or the other from of social orga-
nisation dominates one particular period, but not in the absence of
another. Nor are these group types stricdy delineated. The sense of
solidarity felt by members of the nation may concern the very things
which members of an ethnic group have in common: language, cul-
tural traditions, and race. That which makes nationalism distinctive
is "the people's" claim to sovereignty, a people which views itself
as "only superficially divided by the lines of status, class, locality,

52
A.D. Smith, " T h e Politics of Culture: Ethnicity and Nationalism,'' in T . Ingold
(ed.), Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 707.
33
N. Abercrombie and B.S. T u r n e r (eds.), Penguin Dictionary of Sociology (London:
Penguin, 2nd edn, 1988), p. 90.
34
Smith, "Politics," p. 709.
and in some cases even ethnicity."35 An ethnic group similarly contains
within itself kinship groups and may use kinship as a criterion of
membership.36 The state, on the other hand, should not be thought
of an extension of the nation or ethnic group. It does not lie on the
same continuum because it is not defined in terms of the group
perception. The state is defined in terms of the existence of institu-
tions of government which, like the nation, claim sovereignty over a
particular area. These institutions do not, however, exist in a vacuum,
but rather presuppose one or more of the other forms of group
identity.
The dynamic definition of ethnicity focuses attention on the fac-
tors that facilitate ethnic maintenance. 37 Smith puts forward the fol-
lowing four factors: territorialization, inter-state warfare, organised
religion and myths of common origin. Of these the last two are es-
pecially interesting. Myths of common origin and descent are rarely
if ever "secular" in nature. They are, for the most part, expressed in
religious categories which means that there is often considerable
overlap between religious and ethnic myths of origin. According to
Smith, myths of ethnic origin often contain "a myth of ethnic elec-
don, in which the ethnic community is promised redemption and
salvation on condition that religious or cultural obligations are prop-
erly fulfilled."38 They legitimate the communities "'title-deeds, or land
charter" and the "reward for the fulfilment of religious duties is the
enjoyment of the sacred land as belonging to the community 'by
grace'."39 Organised religion, then, can be a fundamental factor in
the maintenance of ethnic identity, and priests are often seen as the
primary guardians of ethnicity. Smith's "myth of common origin" is
part of what I call an "ideology of identity."

So far I have oudined a sociological understanding of ethnic identity

and have described factors which maintain identity over time. Prior
to using this theoretical perspective in a comparative analysis of ethnic

35
L. Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard,
1992), p. 3; cited in M.G. Brett, "Nationalism and the Hebrew Bible," i n j . Rogerson,
M.D. Carroll R., M. Davies (eds.), The Bible in Ethics ( J S O T S , 207; Sheffield; J S O T
Press, 1995), p. 141.
36
T h e post-exilic community is an example of this: see Ezra 2 / N e h e m i a h 7.
37
Smith, "Politics," pp. 711-13.
38
Smith, "Politics," p. 710.
39
Smith, "Politics," p. 712.
identity in Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah, it is necessary to intro-
duce a typology of ethnic groups that takes into account the degree
to which ethnic culture penetrates different ethnic groups or ethnie.
As a first s t e p , it is u s e f u l t o d i s t i n g u i s h b e t w e e n t w o p r o c e s s e s in e t h -
n i e life: o n t h e o n e h a n d , t o w a r d s a n e x t e n s i o n of t h e ethnie in s p a c e
a t t h e cost o f a n y social d e p t h , a n d o n t h e o t h e r h a n d , a social " d e e p -
e n i n g " of e t h n i c c u l t u r e a t t h e cost of its t i g h t c i r c u m s c r i p t i o n in s p a c e .
T h e f o r m e r p r o c e s s l e a d s t o w h a t m a y b e t e r m e d " l a t e r a l " ethnie, t h e
l a t t e r t o " v e r t i c a l " ethnie.40

The survival of vertical ethnie has to do with the deep penetration of

culture which results in a relatively unified demotic culture. In lat-
eral ethnie, identity is maintained on the strength of the group that
dominates the polyethnic state, but they also rely on a federalist
ideology which incorporates "lesser" vertical ethnie as "partners." Smith
cites the Hittites as an example of a lateral ethnic group comprising
a community of feudal nobles, priests and warriors who incorporated
lesser communities via an "unequal federalism" maintained in the
political sphere by treaties and in the religious sphere by a "spiritual
federalism." The argument to be presented here, that Ezra-Nehemiah
expresses a vertical ethnicity and Chronicles a lateral one, does not
mean that either is necessarily an ideal example of the type, but
rather that important characteristics of the ideology of identity of
both works can be elucidated with reference to these two ideal types.

Ezra-Nehemiah: A Vertical Ethnicity

Recent studies have suggested that Judah was a relatively small and
vulnerable community in the Persian empire. Carter's archaeological
survey suggests that Judah was a small province of approximately
620 square miles (excluding the Shephelah and the coastal plain)
with a population approximately 11,000 in Persian Period I (i.e.,
prior to Nehemiah's mission) rising to 17,000 in Persian Period II.41
These demographic figures are provisional at best but this does not
lessen the fact that they contradict the much larger estimates of the

40
Smith, "Politics," p. 713.
41
C.E. Carter, " T h e Province of Yehud in the Post-Exilic Period: Soundings in
Site Distribution and Demography," in T . C . Eskenazi and K . H . Richards (eds.),
Second Temple Studies: Vol. 2, Temple and Community in the Persian Period ( J S O T S , 175;
Sheffield: J S O T Press, 1994), pp. 106-45.
population of Yehud, such as Weinberg's 200,000, by a huge mar-
gin.42 The population in Jerusalem in Persian period II would have
represented approximately ten percent of the total province's popu-
lation, or 1250-1500, "well within the 5 to 10 per cent average of
urban centres in the pre-industrial age."43
This sort of evidence points in the direction of a community that
is tighdy circumscribed in terms of space. The ideology of identity
that we find in Ezra-Nehemiah "matches" this spatial dimension with
its emphasis on ethnic depth. The focus of the identity of the post-
exilic community is the experience of exile, and the story of the people
begins with the story of the return from exile (Ezra 1). This is, of
course, not a surprising claim for the writer of Ezra-Nehemiah to
make for it is indeed quite probable that the Jewish community of
the Persian period did in all likelihood originate in the return from
exile. Nor should we be surprised that the experience in exile had a
profound affect on their self-understanding.44 Even the kinship structure
of the community appears to be exilic in origin.45 Ezra 2/Nehemiah
7 claims to be a list of "the sons of the province who came from the
captivity of the exiles" (Ezra 2:1/Neh. 7:6) who are enumerated ac-
cording to ‫ בחי אבות‬which together comprise "the whole assembly"
(Ezra 2:64). These ‫ בתי אבות‬would, therefore, have helped to main-
tain the sense of a distinctly "exilic" identity long after the return.
This community of returnees has been described as a citizen-temple
community similar to those found scattered throughout the Persian
empire. 46 Membership in one of these communities, which were
organised along kinship lines, determined access to the cult and es-
tablished one's right to land.47 In this way the "exilic" concept of
ethnic identity, determined in the first instance by kinship, figured in
every aspect of community life, helping to concentrate and focus social

42
J . P . Weinberg, The Citizen-Temple Community (trans. D.L. Smith-Christopher;
J S O T S , 151; Sheffield: J S O T Press, 1992), pp. 34-48.
43
Carter " T h e Province of Yehud," p. 138.
44
For a comparative study of "exile" groups, see D.L. Smith, The Religion of the
Landless: The Social Context of the Babylonian Exile (Bloomington, IN: Meyer-Stone, 1989).
45
This is indicated by the unusually large size of the groups and preponderance
of post-exilic references. See Weinberg, Citizen-Temple, pp. 4 9 - 6 1 .
46
Ibid. See also M. Dandamaev, "Babylonia in the Persian Age," in Cambridge
History of Judaism. Vol. 1, Introduction: The Persian Period (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1984), pp. 330-1.
47
Cf. Ezek. 11:15-17 and Lev. 25:23; M . Smith, Palestinian Parties and Politics that
Shaped the Old Testament (London: S C M Press, 2nd edn, 1987), pp. 75, 8 1 - 2 ; and
J . Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah (London: S C M Press, 1988), p. 60.
interactions within the community and functioning as a redemption
myth that legitimated the community's claim to the land. All this
points in the direction of an ethnic group which emphasises vertical
depth and territorial compactness.
Though the concept of ethnicity that we find in Ezra-Nehemiah
was rooted in the experience of the exile, its full expression and further
development was determined by the nature of the relationship be-
tween the post-exilic community and its neighbours. The conflicts
mentioned in Ezra-Nehemiah centre on the building of the temple
and walls of Jerusalem (Ezra 4; Nehemiah 4), but there was un-
doubtedly also conflict over the land which the new returnees claimed
as their own. This is hinted at in Ezra 9 where the return is likened
to the conquest with the "remainees" in the role of the Canaanites
(Ezra 9:1 48 .(2‫ ־‬Because control of the temple and of the land are
thus linked, the concern for ethnic depth was part of the on-going
struggle of the community to survive as a distinct entity in the face
of outside pressures and competition. Or, to put it the other way
around, the conflict with neighbouring ethnie helped to crystallise the
ethnic identity of the returnees. The more rigorous the application
of the "exile" criterion the more the community was committed to a
vertical concept of ethnicity, and on this reading of the evidence, the
choice of a vertical ethnic identity is no choice at all but a necessity.49
But this analysis is only one half of the equation, for a vertical
ethnic identity paradoxically generates as many problems in terms of
survival as it solves. I have just described the conflict between the
returnees and their neighbours in roughly the same terms as it is
described in Ezra-Nehemiah: that it was a question of their survival
as an ethnically distinct community. But is this all that we need to
know in order to understand the issues involved? Are we supposed
to think (as the original readers were supposed to think) that a ver-
tical ethnicity is the only right response? One can begin to answer
these questions by observing the problem of intermarriage in the com-
munity in light of the inherent weakness of vertical ethnic groups. Its

48
H . Williamson, " C o n c e p t of Israel in Transition," in R.E. Clements (ed.), The
World of Ancient Israel (Cambridge: C a m b r i d g e University Press, 1989), p. 155; and
S. J a p h e t "People and Land in the Restoration Period,'' in G. Strecker (ed.), Das
Land Israel in biblischer Zeit (Güttingen: V a n d e n h o e c k & Ruprecht, 1983), pp. 1 1 2 . 1 5 ‫־‬
49
Κ. Hoglund argues that a n o t h e r reason for maintaining a vertical ethnic iden-
tity was because the Persian authorities required it [ " T h e Achaemenid Context," in
P.R. Davies (ed.), Second Temple Studies: Vol. 1, Persian Period ( J S O T S , 117; Sheffield:
J S O T Press, 1991), pp. 6 5 - 6 6 ] .
emphasis on ethnic depth tends to restrict the community spatially
and to reduce the scope for economic relationships with outsiders.
Yet these same tendencies can also increase the dependence of the
community on external relations, for the smaller the community the
less likely it is to be self-sufficient. In Judah's case the emphasis on
depth and separation threatened the economic relationships between
the various local regions, Samaria, Ashdod, the Shephelah etc. which
were important for all concerned. The requirements of a large temple
would have only intensified the need for the movement of goods and
people across ethnic boundaries. The approach recommended by the
writers of Ezra-Nehemiah did not give the community the flexibility
to address the need to broaden its territorial basis and to develop
social and economic relations with its immediate neighbours.
With this in mind, what do we make of the intermarriage problem
in Ezra 9 and 10?50 In keeping with the small Judah hypothesis,
Washington contends that intermarriage threatened the economic
stability of the province by threatening its land base. 51 Smith-
Christopher52 similarly understands Ezra's call for endogamy in terms
of group boundary maintenance. When a group's identity is under
stress it tends to fall back "on the primary ties of the kinship net-
work."53 So why did the Jews practice exogamy in the first place?
Again, starting with the small Judah hypothesis, Smith-Christopher
wagers that lower status Jewish males were marrying up among higher

50
T h e intermarriage problem in N e h e m i a h 13 involves a slightly different prob-
lern (intermarriage a m o n g the clergy) and will be left to the side for the purposes of
this paper.
51
H . C . Washington, " T h e Strange W o m a n of Proverbs 1 - 9 and Post-Exilic J u d e a n
Society," in Second Temple Studies 2, pp. 2 1 7 - 4 2 . Washington interprets the warnings
about the strange w o m a n in Proverbs 1 - 9 in terms of the social context of Yehud
in the Persian period. T h e best text for Washington's thesis is Prov. 2:21-2: "For
the upright will abide in the land, a n d the innocent will remain in it; but the wicked
will be cut off f r o m the land a n d the treacherous will be rooted out of it." T h e
strange/foreign (though not necessarily non-Israelite or even non J u d e a n ) w o m a n is
an economic threat to the golah community because within the patrilineal land
tenure system w o m e n were capable of inheriting a n d disposing of property. T h e
citation of N u m . 27:1-11 and 36:1-9 as evidence does not necessarily confirm the
point since these are about Israelite w o m e n marrying outside the clan.
52
D. Smith-Christopher, " T h e Mixed Marriage Crisis in Ezra 9 - 1 0 and Nehemiah
13: A Study of the Sociology of the Post-Exilic J u d e a n C o m m u n i t y , " in Second Temple
Studies 2, pp. 2 4 3 - 6 5 .
53
S m i t h - C h r i s t o p h e r , " M i x e d M a r r i a g e , " p. 252 [citing E.L. C e r r o n i - L o n g ,
"Marrying O u t : Socio-Cultural a n d Psychological Implications of Intermarriage,"
Journal of Comparative Family Studies 15 (1984), p. 28].
status females outside their community. 54 But these two observations
do not cohere. Is it possible for exogamy to be a widespread practice
and still be understood as a threat to the survival of the community?
Was not the practice of exogamy a reasonable balance between the
need for ethnic delineation and "lateral" interaction? Perhaps it was
reasonable to some and not to others, or was the community not
completely in touch with the consequences of the actions of its mem-
bers? Looking at it from another angle, what are we to make of
Ezra's objections to intermarriage? One possible explanation is that
immigrant communities are initially willing to accept exogamy but
that those who arrive later on, once the community is established,
reject it.55 In other words, economic necessity demands it early on
but as time goes on it is no longer a compelling enough reason to
override less pragmatic ethnic values. This mode of reasoning requires
that we abandon the economic explanation for exogamy altogether.
What we are left with are the contradictions or tensions between
different aspects of ethnic identity which constitute its internal dy-
namic. Ezra's concern for ethnic purity cannot be explained in terms
of some unambiguous rationale. He may well have thought that he
was acting in an unambiguous way, that he was protecting the unique
identity of the post-exilic community, but that does not mean that
his actions had these consequences. Nor can we assume that the
"foreign" wives of Ezra 9 and 10 were really foreign. Eskenazi and
Judd, 56 like Smith-Christopher,57 interpret the conflict in terms of a

54
Smith-Christopher, "Mixed Marriage," p. 249.
55
Smith-Christopher, "Mixed Marriage," pp. 252-3.
56
T . C . Eskenazi and E.P. J u d d , "Marriage to a Stranger in Ezra 1 - 9 , " in Second
Temple Studies 2, pp. 26685‫־‬. Eskenazi and J u d d interpret it as a conflict between
orthodox and non-orthodox Jews, especially as it pertains to the interpretation of
the T o r a h . T h e y compare this to the issue of marriage in modern Israel and the
Haredim (a group that takes its n a m e from the biblical text in question, namely
Ezra 9:4 and 10:3). New rules of who constituted a J e w in 1970 excluded people
who always considered themselves to be Jews. T h e Haredi call non-Harecü Jews
"gentiles" and marrying such is considered a mixed marriage. T h e Chief Rabbinate
a n d the H a r e d i rabbis will not recognize marriages because of their restricted
definitions of who is a Jew. T h e y also note that the foreigners are said to have
commited abominations. T h e same claim is made in Trito-Isaiah about the oppo-
nents and one should not, therefore, take them literally as refering to non-Jewish
practice but rather to less strict Jewish practice or different Jewish practice.
57
For Smith-Christopher the issue is the definition of a "mixed" marriage. Ezra
represents those who limit Jews to the returnees. T h e "outsiders 5 ' are Jewish remainees.
H e cites two types of evidence: more lenient texts (Isa. 60:1-6, R u t h , Jonah) and
the use of perjorative anachronistic terms to describe the "outsiders."
conflict between Jews over the definition of Jewishness and hence
over what constitutes a "mixed" marriage.58 The ideology of identity
expressed in Ezra-Nehemiah is thus more problematic than it may
appear at first glance. The ideology is clearly vertical in orientation,
but we cannot assume that the authors of this ideology were repre-
senting the interests of the community at large nor that they were
aware of the negative consequences such an ideology might have.
The fact that we have other texts from roughly the same period59
(including Chronicles) that present a different ideology of identity
highlights again the need for a dynamic definition of ethnicity.

Chronicles: A Lateral Ethnicity

The ideology of identity in Chronicles represents, in my view, a

different concept of identity—a lateral ethnicity versus a vertical one.
The model the Chronicler uses for his community, the united mon-
archy of David and Solomon, represents the golden age of a greater
Israel and contrasts sharply with the picture presented in Ezra-
Nehemiah of a small community within a large and all-powerful
empire. The contrast between the two ideologies of identity can be
illustrated by the following simple two-dimensional diagram:

EZRA-NEHEMIAH CHRONICLES

58
Sectarianism is another related explanation; cf. J . Blenkinsopp, "Interpretation
and the Tendency to Sectarianism: An Aspect of Second T e m p l e History," in E.P.
Sanders (ed.), Jewish and Christian Self-Definition: Vol. 2, Aspects of Judaism in the Graeco-
Roman World (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981), pp. 1-26; and idem, "A Jewish Sect of
the Persian Period," CÖQ. 52 (1990), pp. 5 - 2 0 .
59
M a r y Douglas adds Numbers to the list of less exclusivist texts such as Isaiah
60, J o n a h and R u t h [In the Wilderness: The Doctrine of Defilement in the Book of Numbers
( J S O T S , 158; Sheffield: J S O T Press, 1993)].
The outer boundaries of "Israel" are similarly defined in both texts.
Israel is clearly distinguished from her immediate neighbours such as
the Arabs, the Ammonites, the Ashdodites and Edomites (Neh. 4:7
and 2 Chronicles 20). The Chronicler's sense of Israel among the
nations is also presented in a systematic way in the genealogies.
1 Chronicles 1 begins with the generations from Adam to Noah (w.
14‫)־‬, continues with a list of the "nations" of the world after the
flood, those furthest away from Israel (the sons of Japheth; w . 5-7)
to those nearest to Israel (the sons of Ham; w . 8 1 6 ‫ ) ־‬, followed by
the sons of Shem (w. 17-23) and the generations from Shem to
Abraham (w. 24—27). The second half of the chapter deals with Israel's
nearest rivals, Ishmael (w. 28-33) and Esau (w. 34—54). The frame
of reference narrows in concentric circles from a view to the whole
world down to the real focus of the Chronicler's interest, the descen-
dants of Abraham, Isaac and Israel. Israel is a constituent member
of a world order established by God at creation.60
But the internal boundaries are radically different. Whereas Ezra-
Nehemiah makes a clear distinction between the "Israelite" commu-
nity and the other people living in the land of Israel, the Chronicler
maintains an "all Israel" perspective throughout the book. Again,
one can illustrate this with reference to the genealogies. In Ezra-
Nehemiah genealogies are used to establish the exilic origins of the
community. The focus is on that which most clearly distinguishes the
community of returnees from all the other inhabitants of the land of
Israel. The Chronicler, on the other hand, uses the genealogies to
present the Israel of the twelve tribes. The connection with pre-exilic
Israel is important in both works (cf. Ezra 2:59/Neh. 7:61) but the
Chronicler's genealogy links his community with all Israel. This is
vividly illustrated in the closing chapter of the genealogy. 1 Chron.
9:1b states that "Judah was taken into exile in Babylon." The text
continues with a note about the restoration using the same terms to
describe the returnees that we find in Neh. 11:3 and elsewhere,
namely, "Israelites, priests, Levites, and temple servants" (v. 2). But
in the following verse we read that "some of the people of Judah,
Benjamin, Ephraim and Manasseh lived in Jerusalem" (v. 3). This
claim is all the more remarkable because of the close parallels be-
tween this text and Neh. 11:3-19 which does not include Ephraim
and Manasseh. For the Chronicler, the exile and return does not

60
Cf. 2 Chron. 20:5.
leave Judah as the sole remnant Israel on the basis of which it can
then claim to be the sole inheritor of the name Israel. It does not
establish an inside/outside distinction.6'
To this text one could add all the texts cited by the inclusivist
interpreters such as those relating to Hezekiah's Passover. The reign
of Hezekiah saw the overthrow of the northern kingdom by the
Assyrians and the deportation of some of its people. The author of the
account in Kings represents this deportation as a more or less complete
de-population of Israel followed by the setdement of the land by
foreigners (2 Kgs 1 7 : 5 2 4,6‫־‬ff).The Chronicler on the other hand
makes no mention of this exchange of peoples. Instead he tells how
"Hezekiah sent word to all Israel and Judah, and wrote letters also
to Ephraim and Manasseh, that they should come to the house of the
LORD at Jerusalem, to keep the Passover to the LORD the God of
Israel" (2 Chron. 30:1). Though the majority sent their regrets (w.
10-11) the celebration was still a success and "the whole assembly of
Judah, the priests and the Levites, and the whole assembly that came
out of Israel, and the resident aliens who came out of the land of
Israel, and the resident aliens who lived in Judah, rejoiced" (v. 25).
Why the difference in approach? One could, of course, speculate
that the different approach stems from a different era when the
community felt more at ease with itself and could afford to be more
inclusive. One could also hypothesise that the Chronicler was ad-
dressing the contradictions inherent within a vertical ethnie, and was
seeking to take into account the need for interaction with communi-
ties outside of Judah. We do not, however, have access to informa-
tion which could confirm or disprove these attempts to specify the
Chroniclers motives. Nevertheless, if one looks at the long-term trend,
the Jewish community centred in Judah and Jerusalem did eventu-
ally become the dominant ethnic group in Palestine. This did not
come about merely through the accident of history but, to my mind,
would also have required an "all Israel" ideology of the kind that we
find in Chronicles.
One can, however, make more general sociological observations
about how the Chronicler transforms key elements of the vertical ideology of
identity into a lateral federalist ideology. One can, for example, compare

61
I have already mentioned above another important example of the same view-
point, namely, Hezekiah's treatment of the survivors of Sennacherib's invasion as
Israelites (2 Chronicles 30).
this federalist vision to the federalist system of the Persians. The Persian
empire of the Achaemenids was a federalist empire that grew out of
the federalist kingdom of the Persians and Medes. The Persian king-
dom is an example of large scale lateral ethnie.62 The federalism at
the kingdom level was, of course, an unequal federalism whereby the
ruling families dominated the lesser communities and maintained a
top-down ethnic and political identity. This same approach was used
in the running of the empire; in other words, lesser communities
such as kingdoms, city-states, tribes and ethnic groups of various kinds
were integrated into the empire in the form of an unequal federalism.
Of course the fundamental means of control in any empire is the
threat of force, and the Persians were not averse to acting on this
threat if need be.63 More to the point, however, are the non-coercive
means of administrative control and integration, such as ideology and
propaganda.
The beginning of the inscription called DNa (the first inscription
of Darius found at Naqs-i-Rustam) enunciates in a very straight-for-
ward way the key elements of Achaemenid ideology.
I a m D a r i u s the G r e a t K i n g , K i n g of Kings, K i n g of countries con-
taining all kinds of m e n , K i n g in this great e a r t h far a n d wide, son of
Hystaspes, a n A c h a e m e n i a n , a Persian, son of a Persian, a n A r y a n ,
h a v i n g A r y a n lineage (lines 8—15).64

Note that the Persian text the king is the "king of many" and the
"king of countries containing all kinds of men." The Achaemenids
saw themselves as ruling over a humanity that was ethnically and
nationally differentiated.65 Each nation also had its appropriate place.
A h u r a m a z d a , w h e n he saw this e a r t h in c o m m o t i o n , t h e r e a f t e r be-
s t o w e d it u p o n m e , m a d e m e king; I a m king. By t h e f a v o r of
A h u r a m a z d a I p u t it d o w n in its place; w h a t I said to t h e m , t h a t they
did, as was m y desire (lines 3 0 - 3 7 ) .

Koch sees in this "ein föderalistisches Prinzip durch, welches begreiflich

macht, warum die Grosskönige jene kultische Toleranz betreiben und

62
Smith, "Politics," pp. 713-14.
63
A. Kuhrt, "The Cyrus Cylinder and Achaemenid Imperial Policy," JSOT 25
(1983), pp. 83-97.
64
R.G. Kent, Old Persian: Grammar, Texts, Lemon (AOS, 33; New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2nd edn, 1953), p. 138.
65
K. Koch, "Weltordnung und Reichesidee im alten Iran, 1 ' in H. Frei and
K. Koch (eds.), Reichsidee und Reichsorganization im Perserreich. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 1984), p. 59.
Gesetze sammeln lassen, welche den Landesbrauch aufgreifen . . ."66
One can, in other words, observe a parallelism between Persian ide-
ology and Persian administrative policy. The administration of the
empire was a combination of central and local authorities that incor-
porated various local/national cultural and legal traditions within an
overarching administrative order.67 As Frei remarks, "Der Untertan
war nicht Untertan, er war Reichsangehöriger."68
The effectiveness of Achaemenid ideology is illustrated by the re-
markably positive attitude toward the Achaemenid rulers found in
the Old Testament, including Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah. The
author of Ezra-Nehemiah seems to accept the assembly's status as a
local administrative unit within the empire. Achaemenid imperial policy
allowed for local autonomy within a larger imperial order. From their
perspective, the empire was the centre and the local authorities were
the periphery, and so it would seem that the writers of Ezra-Nehemiah
were reconciled to the Achaemenid understanding.
The Chronicler seems to accept the basic premise that the Persian
empire was legitimate and indeed that it played a divine role in re-
establishing Israel after the exile (2 Chron. 36:2223‫)־‬, but the Chroni-
cler "recasts" Israel's place within the divine economy in terms of a
united federal nation in its own right, asserting cultic sovereignty over
the land of Israel. Instead of situating Israel within a large imperial
administration and ideology, he reapplies that same federalist model
to Israel, though on a smaller scale, setting Israel alongside the Per-
sian empire rather than within it.

A Hierarchy Within

Up to this point I have used the concept federalism in conjunction

with lateral ethnie without its important qualifier "unequal." The re-
construction of the Chronicler's ideology of identity in these terms is

66
Koch, "Weltordnung," p. 63.
67
H . Frei, "Zentralgewalt und Lokalautonomie im Achämenidenreich," in Reichsidee,
pp. 1-48. Frei cites a n u m b e r of examples in which the central administration rec-
ognizes and sanctions local law, including examples in the Old Testament. T h e
most important example is the 'Trilingual [stele] of Letoon' in which Satrap Pixodaros
endorses a local decree dealing with the establishment and maintenance of a local
Carian god.
68
Frei, "Zentralgewalt," p. 27.
perhaps an exercise in re-stating what Williamson and Japhet have
already said about the Chronicler portraying Judah as a representative
centre for all Israel. But this is only half the picture, for they do not
ask who is making this claim and why. Yes, one can find differences
between Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles which point in the direc-
tion of a more tolerant attitude to the inhabitants in all the land of
Israel, but why is it that Judah should be accepted as the centre?
Why is it that the history of the northern kingdom is to be consid-
ered solely in reladonship to Judah's? Yes, there are posidve inclusivist
notices but they occur within Judah's story. Thus the qualifier "un-
equal" is put on the agenda as much by a reading of Chronicles as
it is from adopting a particular sociological model.
The question asked in this final section is this: who's ideology of
identity do we find in Chronicles? Who had an interest in defining
Israel, of telling her story in this particular way? The thesis to be put
forward in this final section is that the ideology of identity in Chronicles is
at the same time an ideology which legitimates Jerusalem's role as the sole legiti-
mate centre of Israel in the Chronicler's day. I am not claiming that this
ideology of legitimacy is what is really going on and that the concern
for identity is an epiphenomenon. I would argue, for example, that
the Chronicler's concern for the identity of Israel as a twelve tribe
nation is a genuine concern, as is his concern for the legitimacy of
the Jerusalem and its temple. But what the Chronicler feels to be
two compatible ideas may not have been all that compatible to others.
His interests may not have been the interests of "the whole assem-
bly of Israel." Much of the evidence that supports this thesis has
already been cited. The texts which have been used to illustrate the
Chronicler's federalist vision of Israel can also be adduced as evidence
in favour of my thesis. Identity and legitimacy go hand in hand.
Sacred Land / Sacred Centre. In the genealogies, the issue is not only
the identity of all Israel but also the centrality and legitimacy of Judah,
Benjamin and Levi. This latter aspect is reflected in the two struc-
tural principles by which chs. 28‫ ־‬are organised: status and geogra-
phy.69 The genealogy moves from the centre (Judah and Simeon), to
the east (Reuben, Gad, E. Manasseh), to the north (Issacher, [Dan],
Naphtali), and, making its way back through the heardand of north-
em Israel (Ephraim, W. Manasseh), to the centre again (Benjamin).

69
Also indicated in listing of the setdements of the various tribes throughout the
genealogy.
Judah is prominent because it is the first genealogy and the geneal-
ogy of David is the central feature of the Judahite genealogy (2:3‫־‬
4:23). Levi occupies the central spot in the list and is the longest
genealogy (81 verses) after Judah's. The genealogy of Benjamin
achieves prominence because it is included in three places (7:6;12 ‫־‬
8; 9:35-44). 70 These structural features of the genealogy suggest a
strong interest in underlining Judah's legitimacy as the leading tribe
in Israel, Levi's central role in relation to the cult, and Benjamin
completing the list of the tribes that are identified with the return.
This together with chapter nine, which direcdy links Israel of the
past with the Israel of the return, allows us to construe these claims
as the contemporary claims to legitimacy and centrality.
But the fact that these claims are made via a comprehensive ge-
nealogy is itself of interest. The genealogical picture of Israel is just
that, a picture of Israel, not a story. The time between Adam and
David is not historical time, if time is the right word. The genealo-
gies describe Israel as it always was, its inner structure and hierar-
chy, and its geographical place.71 It treats of space not time. There is
no contingency, no development, no promise to Abraham, no Moses,
no exodus, no Sinai, no conquest,72 no point at which Israel came into
being. Israel emerged gradually and naturally from Adam, Abraham
and Israel. Israel emerged autochthonously in the land of Israel. This
is God's order. Israel among the nations. Israel as always in the land,
the sacred land with its sacred centre.
Redemption. The story of Israel really begins with the story of David
and Solomon, the account of Saul's death on Mt. Gilboa (ch. 10)
being a prelude to it. The story of David and Solomon is about two
things: the role of its first two monarchs in building the Temple and
organising the cult and the legitimacy of the Davidic dynasty. The
two issues, Temple and dynasty, are closely intertwined in the narrative
and in fact constitute one story. All the material from 1 Chronicles
11 to 2 Chronicles 9 is either direcdy or indirecdy related to the
Temple project. The concern to establish the legitimacy of the temple

70
T h e repetition of 8:2938‫ ־‬in chapter 9 is understandable since it deals with
Saul (the subject of chapter ten).
71
T h e genealogies a b o u n d with place names indicating the where of Israel: see
M . Kartveit, Motive und Schichten der Landtheologie in I Chronik 1-9 ( C o n B O T , 28;
Stockholm: Almquist & Wikseil, 1989), pp. 166-7.
72
S. J a p h e t , " C o n q u e s t a n d Settlement in Chronicles," JBL 98 (1979), pp.
205-18.
in Jerusalem is perhaps most obvious where the Chronicler parallels
David and the temple with Moses and the tabernacle. For example,
in the account of David's sacrifice on the threshing floor of Oman,
the future site of the Temple, the sacrifice is consumed by "fire from
heaven" (1 Chron. 21:26). Aaron's sacrifice was consumed in like
manner (Lev. 9:24) and the significance of this is not lost on David,
who concludes "Here shall be the house of the LORD God and here
the altar of burnt ofFering for Israel" (1 Chron. 22:1). The final transfer
of the altar site under Solomon is marked in the same way: "When
Solomon ended his prayer, fire came down from heaven and con-
sumed the burnt offering and sacrifices; and the glory of the LORD
filled the temple" (2 Chron. 7:1).73
The issue of the legitimacy of the temple does not, however, stand
on its own. It is a fundamental part of the larger story of Israel's
establishment as the people of God in the land of Israel. One notes for
example that the "all Israel" perspective of the genealogies is contin-
ued in the narrative of David's reign as a way of emphasising not
only that David had the support of all Israel from the beginning of
his reign (1 Chron. 11:1, 4, 10; 12:38) but that they supported him
in establishing the cult in Jerusalem (13:5). David and Solomon also
establish Israel in the land, even though this idea conflicts with the
genealogy's autochthonous tendency. The reason for this might have
something to do with the Deuteronomic tradition making the con-
quest of the land a precondition for the setting up of the permanent
sanctuary (Deut. 12:10-11). In the Chronicler's scheme of things, David
is the conquerer and Solomon the temple builder. In his farewell
discourse, David says to Solomon: "Has he not given you peace on
every side? For he has delivered the inhabitants of the land into my
hand; and the land is subdued before the LORD and his people"
(1 Chron. 22:18). Solomon is, therefore, to "build the sanctuary of
the LORD God so that the Ark of the covenant of the LORD and the
holy vessels of God may be brought into a house built for the name
o f t h e LORD" (V. 19).
But there were conditions attached to Israel's "land ownership."
In order for the people to maintain the state of redemption they had

73
T h e T e m p l e is also linked explicitly with the tabernacle in terms of its design.
David gives Solomon the temple plans ( 1:‫תניח‬C h r o n . 28:11-19) in the same way
as G o d gave the tabernacle plan to Moses (Exod. 25:9, 40); see W. Riley, King and
Cultus in Chronicles: Worship and the Reinterpretation of History ( J S O T S , 160; Sheffield:
J S O T Press, 1993), pp. 6 2 - 3 .
to "observe and search out \darash\ all the commandments of the
LORD your God; that you may possess this good land, and leave it
for an inheritance to your children after you forever5' (1 Chron. 28:8).
These "negative possibilities55 are anticipated in the account of Saul's
death at the hands of the Philistines. The closing verses of 1 Chronicles
10 are the Chronicler's own and are directed to the question of God's
rejection of Saul and his house.
S o Saul died for his unfaithfulness; h e w a s u n f a i t h f u l to the LORD in
t h a t h e did n o t keep the c o m m a n d of the LORD; m o r e o v e r , h e h a d
consulted a m e d i u m , seeking g u i d a n c e , a n d did n o t seek g u i d a n c e f r o m
the LORD. T h e r e f o r e the LORD p u t h i m to d e a t h a n d t u r n e d the king-
d o m over to D a v i d son of Jesse, ( w . 13-14)

The use of "unfaithfulness" (‫ )מעל‬and "seek" ( 74 (‫ דרש‬to describe the

end of Saul and his dynasty indicates the significance of this passage
for understanding Chronicles as a whole. "Unfaithfulness" is a key
word in Chronicles and in the Priestly tradition where it is used to
refer to unfaithfulness to the cult.75 "Seeking Yahweh55 is a matter of
showing proper concern for the legitimate cult.76 Faithfulness to God
results in rest in the land, unfaithfulness removal from the land.77
The implication of all this for the narrative of Saul's death is that, in

74
This text is an allusion to Saul's encounter with Samuel via the medium at
Endor (1 Sam. 28). In this encounter Saul asks Samuel for advice before the batde
with the Philistines. Samuel answers: "Why then do you ask me, since the LORD has
turned from you and become your enemy? The LORD has done to you just as he
spoke by me; for the LORD has torn the kingdom out of your hand, and given it to
your neighbour, David" (1 Sam. 28:16-17).
75
W. Johnstone, "Guilt and Atonement: The Theme of 1 and 2 Chronicles," in
J.D. Martin and P.R. Davies (eds.), A Word in Season: Essays in Honour of William
McKane (JSOTS, 42; Sheffield: J S O T Press, 1986), pp. 113-38.
76
There are two words used for seeking Yahweh in Chronicles:17)‫ ד ר ש‬x ; + lx
of Baal) and6)‫ ב ק ש‬x ) . The two words are synonymous as seen in the quote from
Ps 105:4 found in 1 Chron. 16:11: "Seek [‫ ]דרש‬the LORD and his strength, seek
[‫ ]בקסז‬his presence continually." The former is more important to the Chronicler
and is only used once in Samuel-Kings. Oddly enough the one time it is used is in
the story of Saul and the medium of Endor (2 Sam. 28:7). The Deuteronomistic
formulation of this idea maybe the basis for the Chronicler's use of it. "But you
shall seek the place that the LORD your God will choose out of all your tribes to put
his name there. You shall go there . . . " (Deut. 12:5).
77
This link between unfaithfulness and the land is reminiscent of Lev. 26:40-43:
"But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their ancestors, in that they
committed treachery [ ‫ ] מ ע ל‬against me and, moreover, that they continued hostile
to me—so that I, in turn, continued hostile to them and brought then into the land
of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled and they make amends
for their iniquity, then I will remember my covenant with Jacob; I will remember
also my covenant with Isaac and also my covenant with Abraham, and I will re-
member the land. For the land shall be deserted by them, and enjoy its Sabbath
the Chronicler's view, Saul's failure was a failure with reference to
the cult.78 The people of Israel did not, of course, experience an
exile in Saul's day, nor could Saul be faulted for not "seeking the
LORD" in his temple, but the story makes the point just the same.
The story does, however, have a paradigmatic, atemporal quality and
serves as a fitting introduction to the story of Israel's defining mo-
ment under David and Solomon. 79 This Urzeit80 has implications both
backward and forward in time and sets in motion a cyclical pattern
of punishment and forgiveness, exile and restoration.
Grace. This same pattern becomes the overarching thematic device
in the narrative of the post-Solomonic period. The reigns of Ahaz
and Hezekiah illustrate this pattern nicely. Ahaz did evil in the eyes
of the LORD by worshipping Baal and engaging in other "abomi-
nable practices of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the
people of Israel" (2 Chron. 28:4). He, therefore, suffers the conse-
quence of a partial "exile" at the hand of Aram (and Israel; v. 8)
who "take a great number of people captive" (v. 5). Hezekiah affects
a "restoration" by restoring proper worship (2 Chronicles 29-31).
This restoration under Hezekiah is, of course, the occasion of his
generous and inclusive offer to the residents from the North. The
letter of invitation, addressed to "the people of Israel" (30:6), advises
them not to be like their ancestors who were "stiff-necked" but
to "submit themselves before the LORD and come to his sanctuary"
(v. 8). This is the Chronicler's concept of grace. To enjoy the grace
of God requires one to recognise his sanctuary in Jerusalem. Yes,
this grace is available to all those in the land of Israel, it is rooted
in an inclusivist vision of all Israel under God, but this concept of Israel
is Judah's and Jerusalem's concept of Israel. All the texts cited in support
of the inclusivist interpretation are, like this text, about legitimacy.
The "positive" references to the North in 2 Chron. 11:13-17, 15:9
and 28:8-15 refer to residents in the North who have a loyal and
submissive attitude towards Judah and Jerusalem. These residents from

years by lying desolate without them, while they make amends for their iniquity,
because they dared to spurn my ordinances, and they abhorred my statutes." T h e
Chronicler also picks u p of the idea of the land enjoying its Sabbaths; it is empty
while the people are in exile (2 C h r o n . 36:21).
78
1 C h r o n . 13:3 makes this more explicit: " T h e n let us bring again the Ark of
our G o d to us; for we did not turn to it in the days of Saul."
79
R. Mosis, Untersuchung zur Theologie des chronistischen Geschichtswerkes (Freiburg:
H e r d e r , 1973), pp. 17-43.
80
T o use a term from Riley, King and Cultus, pp. 5 7 8 ‫ ־‬.
the North are included in the "all Israel in Judah and Benjamin" but
on Judah's terms.

Final Remarks

This brings us back to the model I used above to compare Chronicles

and Ezra-Nehemiah. This two-dimensional model now needs to be
modified into a three-dimensional model in order to represent the
hierarchical nature of the ethnicity propounded in Chronicles.

EZRA-NEHEMIAH CHRONICLES

This diagram illustrates how the distincdon between the post-exilic

community and the "people of the land" is in fact retained in Chroni-
cles though in the form of an internal hierarchy. The Chronicler's
immediate community is still the community of returnees and thus
he shares with the writer of Ezra-Nehemiah the "exile-(re)conquest"
tradition of origin. The focus of Israel's identity on the centre is a
transformation of the Ezra-Nehemiah ideology, not an abandonment
of it. I would go on to argue that this had more than a nostalgic
(von Rad, Japhet) or benignly ecumenical (Williamson) meaning in
the Chronicler's day. This was Jerusalem's claim to hegemony over all the
land of Israel.8‫ י‬Whereas the author of Ezra-Nehemiah merely asserts
the continuity between his community and pre-exilic Israel, the
Chronicler works this idea out in all its historical detail, amplifying
the significance of this claim in the process.

81
For an examination of the economic dimension of this claim see J . E . Dyck, The
Purpose of Chronicles and the Critique of Ideology ( P h D thesis; University of Sheffield, 1994).
 But to whom was the Chronicler speaking? According to Tulpin,
Persian ideology was "pardy a matter o f . . . manipulating high status
local interest groups and taking advantage of low status groups'
indifference to the identity of the ruling power,"82 of harnessing "the
energies and interests of native dominant classes to their own ends."83
The objective of Achaemenid ideology would have been, in the first
instance, the "self-indoctrination of [its own] ruling class"84 and, sec-
ondly, the indoctrination of the dominant classes in the conquered
territories. In the same way, I would contend, the Chronicler was
addressing, in the first instance, the ruling class in Jerusalem. The
Chronicler portrays Jerusalem as a centre in its own right, a centre
which has a claim to the region associated with all Israel. In my
opinion, this is representative of the self-understanding of the elite (especially the
clerical elite) within Jerusalem. The Chronicler is asking his audience to
imagine Jerusalem as the centre of a nation, not a small cultic com-
munity within an empire.85 Whereas the author(s) of Ezra-Nehemiah
exhibits a defensive posture, the Chronicler articulates the more
confident understanding of Jerusalem's role as the centre of Israel. In
comparison to Ezra-Nehemiah, the Chronicler recognised an oppor-
tunity for his community to expand its horizons, to claim its rightful
place over Israel, and thereby restoring all Israel to a state of grace.
This is not to suggest, however, that the Chronicler was only ad-
dressing this immediate audience or that his ideology of identity is
merely an expression of their limited interests. This is to misunder-
stand the nature of ideologies of identity and legitimacy. My conclu-
sion regarding the ideology of identity in Chronicles, that it "con-
tains" an ideology of legitimacy, does not mean that it could not
have functioned in a truly integrative way for the inhabitants of "all
Israel." If the Chronicler's motive was to create belief in his vision of
a greater federalist Israel among the people in general, we cannot

82
C. Tulpin " T h e Administration of the Achaemenid Empire," in I. Carradice
(ed.), Coinage and Administration in the Athenian and Persian Empires (BAR International
Series, 343; Oxford: BAR, 1987), p. 109.
83
Tulpin, "Administration," p. 112.
84
M. Liverani, " T h e Ideology of the Assyrian Empire, ‫ י י‬in M. Trolle Larsen
(ed.), Power and Propaganda: A Symposium on Ancient Empires (Mesopotamia, 7; Copen-
hagen: Akademisk Vorlag 1979), p. 302. This concept is supported from the theo-
retical side by N. Abercrombie, S. Hill, and B.S. T u r n e r , The Dominant Ideology Thesis
(London: Allen & Unwin, 1980).
85
As indicated in 1 Chron. 13:5, "So David assembled all Israel from the Shihor
of Egypt [= an eastern tributary of the Nile] to Lebo-hamath [in northern Syria on
the banks of the Euphrates] . . . "
assume that it did not in fact have this consequence. There is a
danger, however, in taking ideologies of identity at face value with-
out considering the social complexity of the concept of identity, without
taking into consideration that ideologies of identity are the point at
which the beliefs of the people are taken hold of for the purpose of
power.86 One is asked to believe, but can one disbelieve? In my view
the Chronicler^ ideology of identity, aimed at generating an inte-
grating belief in a greater Israel, was simultaneously an ideology of
legitimacy and power that functioned in the interests of Jerusalem,
its institutions and its ruling classes.

86
See C . Geertz, The Interpretation of Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1973),
p. 100; and P. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia (ed. G . H . Taylor; New York:
Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 2 5 9 - 6 1 .
 BETWEEN EZRA A N D ISAIAH: EXCLUSION,
TRANSFORMATION, A N D INCLUSION OF T H E
"FOREIGNER" IN POST-EXILIC BIBLICAL T H E O L O G Y

Daniel L. Smith-Christopher

"It is not p o p u l a r to speak of universalism in the H e b r e w Bible . . ."'

I. Introduction

It seems hardly coincidental that a volume of biblical essays is dedi-

cated to considering the theme of "Ethnicity and the Bible," and
that such a collection also includes modern discussions as well as
historical investigations. The two areas obviously relate closely—if
only because the questions we bring to historical texts are often in-
spired by what otherwise worries us when we leave the library.
As the world marches toward the 21st century, those who are com-
mitted to the survival of the human enterprise have anguished over
events that raise serious concerns about the possibility of co-exist-
ence. One of the most challenging aspects of modern conflict is the
return of religious symbolism as fuel for opposing interests. This ten-
dency, made complicated by histories of colonization and economic
stress, is also creating new tensions between ethnic groups influenced
by Christianity and Islam. Because of this, it is important to be re-
minded of the moments of hope within the annals of religious wars
and violence. Even during the paradigm struggle between faiths, the
Medieval Crusades, there were visions of alternative paths:

Force h a v i n g failed miserably in efforts to recover the H o l y L a n d ,

t h o u g h t f u l a n d pious m e n . . . b e g a n to insist that the crusades w e r e
misguided efforts. M e n of this type, as c a p a b l e of self-sacrifice a n d
m a r t y r d o m as the early crusaders, felt that the recovery of the H o l y
L a n d could only c o m e t h r o u g h the use of Christ's o w n m e t h o d s : the
p r e a c h i n g of the gospel. T h i s pacifist missionary ideal, revived d u r i n g
the early 13th century, was deeply antagonistic to the militant crusad-
ing ideal of the 12th c e n t u r y . . . 2

' David Peterson, Haggai & Zechariah 1-8 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984).
2
P. Throop, Criticism of the Crusade: A Study of Public Opinion and Crusade Propaganda
(Amsterdam: N.v. Swets & Zeidinger, 1940), p. 43.
Christians such as the Cistercian abbot, Isaac of Stella and the phi-
losopher Walter Mapp, opposed the military campaigns completely,
and advocated missionary-diplomats in their place.3 Even more signifi-
candy, these brave souls point the way toward new religious inter-
pretive strategies that could guide a renewed and authentic doctrinal
expression of co-existence that is developed from within religious
traditions, and their scriptural texts. In other words, as marginal as
these historic voices may have been or however brief their moments,
their importance for our future survival belies any attempt to dis-
count their significance against a banal "majority." After all, what
we seek is an alternative to the disappointing failures of the history
and theology of the majority. How would such an alternative per-
spective within biblical studies alter analysis of such themes as ethnic
tension in the biblical texts?4
Even the most casual familiarity with the Hebrew Bible enables
one to see that there are many texts that could be used to justify
racist and oppressive attitudes and policies toward anyone consid-
ered the "foreigner" or the "enemy." It is frequendy noted in bibli-
cal scholarship that some of the more hopeful statements made with
regard to the inclusion of foreigners in post-exilic Jewish worship
were intended to counter the more xenophobic attitudes such as those
of Ezra and his supporters who instigated the mixed-marriage crisis
discussed in Ezra 9 1 0 ‫־‬ and Nehemiah 13. Such exclusionary attitudes
were, suggested Burrows, "the immediate object of the gende but sharp
satire of the book of Jonah,'‫ י‬and Westermann argued that the open
universalism of parts of later Isaiah (Third Isaiah particularly) were
also directed against the attitudes reflected by Ezra and Nehemiah. 5

3
For those who bristle at the notion that this is a more "enlightened" strategy,
believing it to be still a form of imperialist colonialism with or without arms, I
suggest that readers merely consider what Saladin would have preferred, if given
the only historically valid choice between soldiers and u n a r m e d clerics.
T h e literature on opposition to the Crusades is a fascinating one. In addition to
the early classic by Palmer T h r o o p , Criticism of the Crusades, see Elizabeth Siberry,
Criticism of Crusading 1095-1274 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985); Benjamin
Kedar, Crusade and Mission (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
4
I have often thought of the possibility of a critical "Friedensexegese, ‫ י י‬an analy-
sis of scripture that presumes the task of highlighting the times and efforts, however
brief or subsidiary to more widely held beliefs, when peace and co-existence was
endorsed as the way of faith and righteousness. Such an approach would resemble
some of the methodologies of feminist scholars who speak of "interested" perspec-
tives in biblical analysis.
5
This view is widely held, but note particularly C. Westermann, Isaiah 1-12;
 In order to pursue this nodon more fully, we will need to re-visit
some traditionally vexing questions in the study of the post-exilic
biblical community such as the nature of atdtudes to gentiles and
the meaning of "conversion" to Judaism. Along these lines, Cohen
has recendy suggested seven ways that foreigners were portrayed as
showing "respect or affection" for Judaism, as noted in ancient sources:
(1) A d m i r i n g s o m e aspect of J e w i s h religion
(2) A c k n o w l e d g i n g the p o w e r of the G o d of the J e w s , o r including the
J e w i s h G o d in a p a n t h e o n
(3) benefiting o r otherwise b e i n g friendly t o w a r d the J e w s
(4) practising some, o r m a n y , of the J e w i s h rituals
(5) v e n e r a t i n g the J e w i s h G o d , a n d i g n o r i n g others
(6) j o i n i n g the J e w i s h c o m m u n i t y
(7) c o n v e r t i n g a n d ' b e c o m i n g a J e w ' 6

For the sake of argument, and also to facilitate the comparison of

texts, I propose to collapse these shades of behavior into three con-
trasting attitudes toward gentiles that emerged as different strategies
for the survival of the Jewish community (communities?) in post-
exilic biblical theology. These are: Exclusion, Transformation, and
Inclusion.
It would be misleading, however, to suggest that these different
values were "sequential" or "chronological." It appears that in most
periods of Israelite history, including the time of monarchical power,
exclusionary attitudes co-existed with idealistic laws which sought,
for example, to codify the traditions of "hospitality to the stranger"
(Exod. 22:20; 23:9, 12). I would argue, however, that the exile expe-
rience "raised the stakes" on this discussion because of the particular
circumstances of tension within the post-exilic communities seeking
to rebuild their lives in Palestine during the Persian period. There-
fore, the texts which I will discuss in this work will be limited largely
to the post-exilic period.
The main point that I wish to argue is that in the midst of the
theological voices of post-exilic biblical theology, there were those
who began to conceive of Israel's relation to "foreigners" in a way

13-39; 40-66 (English translation of 1966 work in German; Philadelphia: Westminster

Press, 1969) Vol. 3, pp. 312-313; M. Burrows, "The Literary Cateogry of the Book
of Jonah", in H.T. Frank and W.L. Reed (eds.), Translating and Understanding the Old
Testament [FS Herbert May], (Abingdon: Nashville, 1970), pp. 8 0 1 0 7 ‫ ־‬, esp. 105;
T. Fretheim, The Message of Jonah (Augsburg: Minneapolis, 1977).
6
S. Cohen, "Crossing the Boundary and Becoming a Jew," Harvard Theological
Review 82 (1989), pp. 13-33.
that ran counter to those who wished for the forced separation, if
not subordination, if not the death, of all foreigners and especially former
enemies.
It is important to clarify that the difference between these perspec-
tives, held in circumstances of political occupation and subordination
immediately following the Babylonian Exile and beyond, was not
whether the present circumstances of political subordination needed to
change. The difference between these perspectives was a strategic discussion ofhow
the change of circumstances should be brought about. To focus the difference
even more specifically—the difference of perspective was what must
happen to the foreigner in order for our present circumstances to change for the
better. With this in mind, let us turn to a brief examination of texts
that illustrate the three different strategies of dealing with the foreigner.

1. Excluding the Foreigner: The Nations vs. The 'Stranger Among Us'

Attitudes toward the foreigner in the Bible exhibit a curious contra-

diction. As a group, or as "nations," foreigners are typically por-
trayed negatively, yet "resident aliens" are often defended in the legal
tradition of Israelite society. These legal traditions appear to have
sought to codify folk-traditions of "hospitality to the stranger." An-
other example—even though "Hittites" are often listed among the
people to be "blotted out" (Exod. 23:23), yet Uriah the Hittite famously
served under David (2 Samuel 11) as a mercenary soldier who is
portrayed in a very favorable light by the Deuteronomistic Historian.
To suggest a simplistic dichotomy along the lines of: "foreigners as
groups are bad, as individuals they are to be treated justiy," is not
possible. There is a clear aversion to foreign women as marriage
partners in the later texts, which suggest that although individual
foreign residents may be tolerable; "you wouldn't want your son to
marry one."
Perhaps it is possible to trace a change over time? In her helpful
study of the status of the alien in Israelite law, van Houten argues
precisely this in relation to the laws regarding resident aliens. She
follows the development of legal attitudes from an early call for just
treatment in the older legal material (Covenant Code), to virtual
inclusion in the community in the later legal material (notably in
Deuteronomy): 7

7
C. van H o u t e n , The Alien in Israelite Law ( J S O T S , 107; Sheffield: J S O T Press,
1991), pp. 158-165.
 T h e laws dealing with the alien d e v e l o p e d a n d b e c a m e m o r e inclusive.
W h a t b e g a n as a n a p p e a l for justice f o r the alien in the C o v e n a n t
C o d e (Exod. 23:9), c o m e s to b e u n d e r s t o o d as a legal principle in the
Priesdy laws: ' T h e r e shall b e o n e law for the alien a n d n a t i v e - b o r n ' .
T h i s t h e n o p e n e d the d o o r f o r the inclusion of t h e alien into all the
rights a n d privileges of Israelite society . . . t h e inclusive t e n d e n c y is t h e
w o r k i n g out, in the legal tradition, of G o d ' s p u r p o s e to include a n d
save all. 8

But is there indication that other discussions of foreigners, outside of

laws pertaining to just treatment of resident aliens, developed along
similar lines?

(a) The Foreigner and the Foreign Woman

The observation that attitudes toward "the foreigner," especially in

the monarchical period, are often quite negative in the Bible is one
that hardly needs to be rehearsed in detail. Foreigners (often ren-
dered in Hebrew as "D "sojourner," or collectively as the • ‫ נ כ ר י‬, al-
though see also 1 Kgs 8:41, 43) are to be killed, conquered, or at
the very least avoided. The theme of the destruction of the Canaanites
at the time of the Conquest is a well-known theme in later biblical
theology (The famous "enemy nations" were related to Canaanites
in the Table of Nations: Gen. 10:16-17, and often repeated in cir-
cumstances where they are the people to be disinherited: Gen. 15:19-
20; Exod. 3:8, 17; 23:23; 33:2; 34:11; Deut. 7:1; 20:17; Judg. 3:5;
Josh. 3:10; 9:1; 11:3; 12:8, etc. But this continues in later periods:
Neh. 9:8 and see the rehearsal of the enemy nations in Jdt 5:16.
Finally, note the pejorative slur in Sus. 1:56, "You son of Canaan-
ites!"—discussed below). In allusions to historic enemies like the
Assyrians or Babylonians, there are typically also powerful motifs of
the "reversal of fortune" when the enemies will be punished (Ps. 63:10‫־‬
11, among the many examples in Psalms). These occupying foreign-
ers are the ones who once conquered Palestine and stole the fruits of
Jewish labor (Isa. 62:89‫ ;)־‬and the virulence directed at Babylon is
legendary among the late additions to Jeremiah in chs. 51-52 and
Psalm 137.
This attitude toward foreigners as enemies, however, was not only
a product of warfare or conquest—the avoidance of foreigners was
counseled in other matters of social intercourse, such as marriage.
Note, for example, that a very similar list of the nationalities of foreign

8
van Houten, The Alien, p. 175.
women that so revulsed Ezra in chs. 9 and 10 is also found in 1 Kgs
11:1-2, where Solomon , s wives are mentioned, among whom were
Ammonite, Moabite, Edomite, Sidonian and Hittite. 9 These stories
of Solomon contain one of the few references to romantic love in
the entire Bible (note also Isaac's love for Rebekah Gen. 24:67; Jacob's
love for Laban and Rachel, Gen. 29:18, 30, and 32; Amnon's love
for Tamar in 1 Sam. 13:1, 4) outside of Song of Solomon. The vast
majority of cases deal with pious or religious "love" between God
and the people. Furthermore, the only example of the phrase "I love
you" between a man and woman is Judg. 16:4, 15, which is also
dealing with a "mixed marriage" between Samson and Delilah. 10
The increasing interest in Proverbs 1-9 (but especially 5) shows how
love/romance can lead to assignations with the "alien" woman, the
results of which may be that, "your labors will go to the house of an
alien." It appears to be the case, then, that romantic love is dealt
with in the Bible with a certain circumspection, because it can lead
to the unwise marital ties with "foreigners," and Blenkinsopp has
suggested that the warnings about Solomon's wives now found in the
Deuteronomic Historian may come from the post-exilic era." The
overall impression in later biblical material is that passions must be
held in check, because unwise relationships may result.

(b) The Mixed Marriage Crisis in Ezra-Nehemiah

The paradigm case where aversion to foreigners is clearly observed

in late biblical theology is the mixed marriage crisis of Ezra 9-10,
also discussed in Nehemiah 13. In dealing with this episode in the
Persian period, contemporary commentators are frequendy unsetded
from typical "scholarly reserve" when they approach these events—
note Williamson's view that "The treatment described in these two
chapters of how Ezra tackled the problem of mixed marriages is among

9
T h e r e is a good discussion of this in J o s e p h Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah (Lon-
don: S C M Press, 1988), pp. 174-179.
10
Although Delilah is never explicidy identified as Philistine, when one notes the
parental concern over Samson's love for a Philistine w o m a n in ch. 14, this appears
to be a logical conclusion. See E. Lipinski, "Love in the Bible," columns 5 2 3 - 5 2 7 ,
Encyclopedia Judaica, Vol. 11, Jerusalem. Mieke Bal's work, Lethal Love—Feminist Liter-
ary Readings of Biblical Love Stories (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987) is an
interesting analysis of the S a m s o n / D e l i l a h text, although she deals with themes not
direcdy related to our concerns here.
" Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah, p. 175.
the least attractive parts of Ezra-Nehemiah, if not the whole Old
Testament," 12 and David Clines' view that he is "appalled by the
personal misery brought into so many families by the compulsory
divorce of foreign wives [and] outraged at Ezra's insistence on racial
purity, so uncongenial to modern liberal thoughts." 13
I have previously suggested that approaching these events from a
sociology of a threatened minority may shed considerably different light
on these actions—by considering such actions as attempts to preserve
identity and culture, etc.14 Furthermore, in that same context, I also
have argued that some of these "mixed" marriages—particularly in
Ezra—were probably not "mixed" at all in any truly racial/ethnic
sense of the term, and may well have represented marriages between
Jews who were not a part of the exilic-formed "Sons of the Golah,"
with those who were. While this is not the place to review these
arguments fully, it will be important to summarize the issue here.
Although there is some debate about whether Neh. 13:3 really
deals with the mixed marriage issue, it is dealt with at great length
in Ezra 9 1 0 ‫ ־‬, and again in Neh. 13:23-31. This issue has usually
been approached by commentators as two examples of the same
problem within the post exilic community. But it seems clear that
the Ezra texts deal with an intra-Jewish debate while it is only the
Nehemiah texts that actually discuss "foreigners" in any modern sense
of the term.
Note that sociologist Robert K. Merton describes mixed marriages
as "marriage of persons deriving from those different in-groups and
out-groups other than the family which are culturally conceived as relevant
to the choice of a spouse.'"5 This definition immediately raises further

12
H . G . M . Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah (Waco: W o r d , 1985), p. 159.
13
D.J.A. Clines, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther (NCB; G r a n d Rapids: E e r d m a n s 1984),
p. 116.
14
M y own thinking about this event was considerably changed in my discussions
with Native-Americans who express serious concern about native children being
adopted by non-Native parents. T h e Native American elders saw the issue in terms
of a threat to culture a n d identity. I have somewhat more sympathy for Ezra when
seen in this light, even though I agree with the tone of Williamson a n d Clines'
remarks as well. M y more complete a r g u m e n t on the mixed-marriage crisis is D.L.
Smith-Christopher, " T h e Mixed Marriage Crisis of Ezra 9 - 1 0 and N e h e m i a h 13: A
study of the Sociology of Post-Exilic J u d e a n C o m m u n i t y , " in T . Eskenazi a n d
K. Richards (eds.), Second Temple Studies, Vol. 2 Temple and Community in the Persian
Period ( J S O T S , 175; Sheffield: J S O T Press, 1994), pp. 243-265.
15
R . K . Merton, "Intermarriage a n d the Social Structure: Fact and T h e o r y , "
Psychiatry 9 (1941), pp. 361-374.
 questions about the biblical case by forcing modern readers to ask
about the considerations considered "relevant" by Ezra. Ezra defined
the terms of the marriage crisis both ethnically (by citing the national/
ethnic categories of Canaanite, Hivite, Perizzite, etc.) and religiously
(by citing such terms as "the Holy Seed"). In this case, acceptable
marriages would be those within a religious and ethnically defined
group. It is clear that Ezra concaved of "his" group as consisting only of
former exiles (Ezra 9:4). But even if this was a rigid definition for the
writers of Ezra,16 the possibility remains that these "mixed-marriages"
were considered "mixed" only by Ezra and his supporters, and not in
the first case by the married persons themselves. The issue is made
more precise by Merton's considerations of "endogamy":
E n d o g a m y is a device w h i c h serves to m a i n t a i n social prerogatives a n d
immunities within a social group. It helps prevent the diffusion of power,
a u t h o r i t y a n d p r e f e r r e d status to p e r s o n s w h o a r e n o t affiliated with a
d o m i n a n t g r o u p . It serves f u r t h e r to a c c e n t u a t e a n d symbolize the 're-
ality' of the g r o u p by setting it off against o t h e r discriminable social
units. E n d o g a m y serves as a n isolation a n d exclusion device, with the
f u n c t i o n of increasing g r o u p solidarity a n d s u p p o r t i n g the social struc-
t u r e by helping to fix social distances w h i c h o b t a i n b e t w e e n groups.
All this is n o t m e a n t to imply t h a t e n d o g a m y w a s deliberately insti-
tuted f o r these purposes; this is a description in f u n c t i o n a l , n o t neces-
sarily purposive, terms. 1 7

Cerroni-Long furthermore observes that:

W h e n a h u m a n g r o u p finds itself u p r o o t e d a n d isolated a n d f a c e d by
a strong pressure to c o n f o r m to alien s t a n d a r d s it instinctively falls back
o n the p r i m a r y ties of t h e kinship n e t w o r k b o t h to reaffirm its indi-
viduality in the face of threats of extinction a n d to m a i n t a i n s o m e f o r m
of n o r m a l existence a m i d s t u n f o r e s e e a b l e a n d stressful contingencies. 1 8

Ezra's exilic, minority consciousness led to his extremism when con-

fronted with a possible break-up of the recognized community of
former exiles during the Persian period. But note that in Ezra (re-
fleeting both the specific priestly terminology and interest in purity)
the sins of the Priests and Levites are prominent among the guilty

16
Although I accept the nodon that the books of Ezra and Nehemiah are now
actually one work, I think that differences in the history of the Nehemiah materials
which were later edited by the addition, among other things, of the Ezra material,
allows us to still speak of "Ezra" as opposed to "Nehemiah."
17
Merton, "Intermarriage," p. 368.
18
Cerroni-Long, E.L., "Marrying Out: Socio-Cultural and Psychological Impli-
cations of Intermarriage," Journal of Comparative Family Studies 15 (1984), pp. 2546‫־‬,
p. 28.
(9:1, and note that the Priests and Levites are listed first among the
guilty). The foreign peoples are blamed for "abominations" (TTÙJ?ÌF1).
Note the frequent cultic context of this term. Ezekiel uses it to de-
scribe the sins of the people, particularly their ritual/religious sins in
Ezek. 5:9, 11; 7:3, 8; 16:22; describing idols in 16:36 and 14:6. In
Proverbs, the term is used in reference to things that God "hates"
(Prov. 3:32; 6:16; 15:8, 9) but this includes justice issues, such as a
false balance or financial cheating (Prov. 11:1, 20 and 20:23). In
ritual law, Lev. 18:24—30 associates foreign practices (of the "nations
I am casting out before you'5 vs. 24) with "abominations.'‫ י‬The use
of this term is predominandy late, with some 33% of all instances
found in Ezekiel alone. In short, Ezra,s orientation reflects the priesdy
writers obsessions with "separations" (note the use of the term "bdl"
"to separate'"9) between the pure and impure. Such concern with
separation and identity maintenance in much of the priestly legisla-
don is consistent with a group under stress.
But if Ezra is written from a "priesdy'5 perspective, this raises trou-
bling questions. Why are priests involved in this mixed marriage
problem in the first place? We can establish quite clearly that it is
the priesdy writer of the exilic/post exilic period that is most passion-
ately concerned with the maintenance of boundaries of separation.
Ezekiel's concerns with purity are an excellent example of this, as
are the concerns of Haggai and Zechariah. Are we to believe, then,
that the mixed marriage "crisis" of Ezra, where the priests are so
heavily implicated, represents a mass dereliction of duty on the part
of exilic priests who abandon one of their central defining concepts?
Or do the priests involved simply disagree with Ezra as to what con-
stitutes a marriage that is actually "mixed"?
Van Houten's work on the priestly legislation regarding the resi-
dent alien tends to further support the notion that Ezra was engaged
in a serious dispute with other Priests on the issue of "foreigner" and
"insider." Van Houten argues that in a post-exilic redaction of priesdy
laws, the status of the alien "changed quite drastically."20 In this
later section, the laws tend to be cultic, and deal with the inclusion
of foreigners as members of the Israelite society:

19
D . Smith, Religion of the Landless (New York: Meyer-Stone Books, 1989), pp.
145-149.
20
van Houten, The Alien, p. 162.
 . . . the Israelite is instructed m a n y times to treat the alien as a native-
b o r n in all things. T h i s even includes a n a d m o n i t i o n to love the alien
w h i c h is parallel to a previous a d m o n i t i o n to love the fellow Israelite
(Lev. 19:18, 34). A c c o r d i n g to the law, the alien is given the s a m e
status as the Israelite in all things. W e d o not find h e r e the dualistic
morality that was evident in the D e u t e r o n o m i c laws o r the first level of
redaction of the Priestly laws. 21

If there was a significant number of priestly legislators who were

working on means of including aliens among the Israelite people on
the basis of cultic observance, then we appear to have grounds for
seeing Ezra 9 1 0 ‫־‬ as a disagreement between Jews, and. specifically priests
as to the acceptability of these people that Ezra is calling "foreigners."
But it is also quite possible that the only basis for Ezra's objection
is that those he called "foreigners" were simply Jews who were not
in exile. The strongest argument for this is the nature of the terms
used, and especially the term "Canaanite": the women with whom
these "mixed" marriages were sealed are identified partially with old
terms that almost surely have become stereotypically pejorative slurs re-
ferring to those ethnic groups who have long since either disappeared
or assimilated, but who were condemned historically as those unclean
peoples "justifiably" destroyed by Joshua in the legendary patriotic
tales of the founding of the Davidic House. Can one speak of
Canaanites, Amorites, Jebusites, Perizzites, or even Hittites in the
mid-5th Century BCE? If these are indeed terms of vilification, then
such slurs suggest a debate within the community about the identity
of the community itself in relation to others in the land. In short, I
would argue that "boundary maintenance" ideas about "mixed mar-
riage" (as emphasized by Merton and Cerroni-Long above) lead us
to question whether the Ezra documents are really talking about
"foreigners" at all.
Before developing this further, however, let us briefly note that
the circumstances in Nehemiah 13 seem clearly different. Here, "the
chief danger was perceived to come from outside Judah. "22 Political
considerations seem predominant in Nehemiah, giving the impres-
sion of treacherous power-grabbing in both Temple and government
through strategic marriages. Also in Nehemiah we are dealing with
specific cases which is the more typical biblical form for describing mixed
marriage (e.g., Solomon, Samson, etc.).

21
van Houten, The Alien, p. 163.
22
J . Blenkinsopp, "The Social Context of the Outsider Woman' in Proverbs
1-9," Biblica 74 (1991), pp. 457-473, p. 460.
 Tobiah ("the Ammonite") and Sanballat ("the Horonite"), for ex-
ample, were leaders of the opposition to Nehemiah's work of re-
building Jerusalem. It appears that they have local authority, although
the precise nature of their authority is not clear. Williamson suggests
that "The context clearly presupposes that they were the leaders of
those already in the land and not part of the group who returned
with Ezra. Thus the suggestion that they were district governors.. .
is attractive.5'23
The example that Nehemiah chooses to illustrate the problems of
foreign marriage is an example of political leadership: Solomon. From
Nehemiah, much more clearly than from Ezra, we gain the strong
impression that the problem of foreign marriages is centrally a political
problem, involving the Jewish aristocracy and local governmental
leadership. In his recent commentary, Blenkinsopp also considered
the political and economic advantages of such marriages: "As sparse
as our information is, it reveals a network of relationships cemented
by mariages de convenance between the Sanballats, Tobiads, and impor-
tant elements of the lay and clerical aristocracy in Jerusalem."24
What we are clearly dealing with in Nehemiah is the attempt to
intermarry the leadership of the Temple with the local political lead-
ership, while in Ezra, we have no such suggestion. Indeed, the example
of Solomon is only cited in Nehemiah, which suggests an even more
explicitly political concern in the Nehemiah texts. The politics of
associating with the descendants of Ammon and Moab is also much
more explicitly a reference to local leadership than is the case with
Ezra, where the ethnic categories in use seem more pejorative than
informative.
Ezra's use of term like "Canaanite" (and in the context of the old
lists of peoples to be driven from the land promised to Moses) is not
our only example of anachronistic vilification. Consider the case of
Susanna.

(c) The Examination of Judges in Susanna

Among the Greek additions to the book of Daniel in the Septuagint,
the story of Susanna stands in some of the Greek versions as the first
of the Daniel stories, previous to the Hebrew ch. 1, but follows ch.
12 in others. The motivation to place the story before the Hebrew

23
Williamson, Ezra, Nehemiah, p. 130.
24
Blenkinsopp, Ezra-Nehemiah, p. 365.
ch. 1 was undoubtedly because Daniel is portrayed in this story as a
very young man who is wise beyond his years.
Although many theories have been suggested for the origin of the
story (a midrash on the evil prophets mentioned in Jeremiah 29? A
late polemic between Pharisees and Sadducees on court procedure?
A folktale that exhibits well-known themes in folklore such as "the
wisdom of the elders overturned by a child?" )25 no single view has
commanded wide agreement. While it is a tale that has clear simi-
larities with the themes of Daniel 1-6, there is nothing within the
story that allows a clear date, or even socio-political context for the
Jewish community which treasured and maintained this story as part
of its religious folklore. It presumably reflects Hellenistic (post-333
BCE) developments of the Daniel legends.
Like Ezra (and unlike Daniel 1-6), Susanna is clearly set as an
intra-communal argument between Jews. The accusation brought
against Susanna in w . 36-41 a is adultery. But when one considers
the threat of their influence and power over Susanna, the behavior
of the corrupt elders is, in fact, a case of sexual harassment, which
itself can border on attempted rape. In order to cover for their own
lustful desire to rape Susanna,26 the two corrupt elders claim that
they saw her with another young man. This young man, they continue,
escaped when the elders tried to confront the young couple in the
course of sexual intimacy (the Greek terms used here make the sexual
nature of their accusation clear, see Gen. 19:5; 39:10; andjdt 12:16).
Although the entire community seems convinced by the corrupt elders'
accusations, Daniel is not. He calls out, in prophetic tones, that he
will not be a part of shedding innocent blood (compare Jer. 7:6 as
a classic example of this phrase in prophetic literature—it is used
extensively as an image of killing the innocent and especially God's
chosen messengers). Daniel is invited to come forward and finally reveal

25
These and other suggestions are explained in more detail, with references to
the technical literature, in both J.J. Collins, Daniel (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: For-
tress, 1993) and C . Moore, Daniel, Esther, and. Jeremiah: The Additions (Garden City:
Doubleday, 1977).
26
Glancy, J . , " T h e Accused: Susanna and H e r Readers," JSOT 58 (1993), pp.
103-116. Glancy makes it quite clear that rape is the issue here, not adultery. This
is supported by recent sociological a n d feminist studies of rape. See S. Brownmiller,
Against Our Will (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975), p. 256; L. Baron and M.A.
Straus, Four Theories of Rape in American Society (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1989); P.B. Bart and E.G. M o r a n (eds.), Violence Against Women (London: Sage Pub-
lications, 1993); J . R . Schwendiger and H . Schwendiger, Rape and Inequality (London:
Sage Publications, 1983).
what has been hidden from virtually everyone by their own prejudices.
Daniel separates the two false judges, intending to examine each
of them in turn. He requests that each judge be brought separately.
When their stories differ in significant details, they are revealed in
their treachery. But what is interesting is that Daniel greets each of
them with abuse. The first is called "An old relic of evil days"27 —
presumably referring to the era before the exile as the "evil days,"
for which the exile itself was punishment (Isaiah 40, etc.). The begin-
ning of the second interview in v. 56 mirrors the first in that, once
again, Daniel meets the elder with abuse, and once again, the spe-
cific terms of abuse are noteworthy—Daniel calls him a "son of
Canaan." Thus, such a use of the term "Canaanite" compares with
Ezra 9:1 and Neh. 9:8, where "Canaanite" is also a term of abuse.
It is possible that Ezek. 16:3 is intended to be a similar slur in the
context of delivering a judgment.
Susanna reflects, therefore, an interesting association of ideas. The
elders are condemned for their association with old sins by associating
them with old enemies—those "foreigners,'5 those "Canaanites.55 The
point is this—the tradition of a conquest of the Canaanite peoples
became symbolic of attitudes to foreigners—"outsiders55—long after
the historical reference became obsolete. The use of the term
"Canaanite55 is a measure of social attitudes of exclusion much as
the term "Babylon55 (to denote foreign regimes) became a rallying
point for Jewish spiritual and political resistance to empires that domi-
nated their traditional homeland.
To summarize, it would appear that in addition to military pro-
paganda about foreign nations, bigoted attitudes toward foreigners

27
M o o r e translates "aged in evil days" or "You who have grown old in wicked-
ness," but we argue that "old relic of evil days" makes more sense, especially in the
light of Daniel's second appeal to history in the second examination of the other
elder. Moore, Additions, p. 106.
As the "Day of Adversity" is noted in Isa. 50:9; 51:6; Amos 6:3, and J e r . 16:19,
one wonders if what is referred to here is precisely the exile! If this entire story
borrows from the Letter of J e r e m i a h in J e r . 29, then the "relic of evil days" may be
a reference to the sins of the generation that caused the exile in the first place! After
all, it was a central tenet of Deuteronomistic Theology (a theology where J e r e m i a h
has a not insignificant contribution) that the exile was brought on by the sins of the
people, and the leaders particularly. Daniel, therefore, delivers a searing condemnation
of the generation of the exile in words similar to a J e r e m i a h or Isaiah. In v. 53,
Daniel lists sins of leaders in a m a n n e r that is highly stylized in prophetic speech
(Jer. 7:6; 19:4; 22:3, 17; Isa. 5:23, 29:21) but is also noteworthy in Wisdom litera-
ture (particularly Prov. 17:15; see also 24:24).
(especially the threat of foreign women), complete with pejorative
terms, also co-existed within Israelite society with more open and
welcoming attitudes. Even in late texts such as Ezra and the Greek
additions to Daniel, we see a persistence of exclusionary attitudes at
the same time that we will note more universalist attitudes.

2. Transforming the Foreigner: The King in Exile Stories

In some post-exilic texts, an alternative manner of dealing with for-
eigners was suggested in texts dealing with circumstances of conflict:
the enemy will be defeated by its being transformed so that it is no
longer a threat to the Jewish people. The book of Jonah is one of
the boldest statements of this idea, but it was anticipated by other
passages with similar notions about the potential for transformation.
This idea can also be briefly illustrated in the attitudes towards the
foreign Kings within the Daniel stories (chs. 1-6; not including the
visions, which may reveal a more negative attitude).

(a) Transforming the King in Daniel 1-6

It has frequendy been argued in studies of the tales of Daniel 1-6

that the attitude toward the kings is favorable, or at least neutral.
Collins, for example, has disputed the assignment of the Daniel sto-
ries to a Hellenistic/Maccabean era largely on the basis of these
positive views of the foreign kings, which he considers incompatible
with Jewish contempt for Antiochus Epiphanes IV in 2nd Century
BCE (the undisputed date of Daniel 7 1 2 ‫ ) ־‬. Concomitant to this view
is the opinion that these tales reflect a Jewish appreciation for the
rewards of a diaspora lifestyle, or at the very least the belief that it
is possible to be successful in a foreign land.28 Collins states that "we
might assume that these stories reflect the aspirations and concerns
of upper-class Jews in the eastern diaspora.'529 Collins furthermore
states, in reference to Daniel 6, that:

The benign attitude of Darius may, however, be a clue to the social

setting of the tale. Problems for Jews in the Diaspora arose from envy
and rivalry, but the benevolence of the king is assumed. The author

28
T h e most important article along these lines, which began an extended tradi-
don of comment, was W.L. Humphreys, "A Lifestyle for Diaspora: A Study of the
Tales of Esther and Daniel," JBL 93 (1973), pp. 2 1 1 - 2 2 3 .
29
J o h n Collins, Daniel ( F O T L ; G r a n d Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), pp. 35-36.
 does n o t wish to question G e n t i l e rule as such. G i v e n the b e n e v o l e n c e
of the king a n d the m i r a c u l o u s p o w e r of G o d , a n y p r o b l e m c a n b e
o v e r c o m e . W e get the impression that the a u t h o r of this tale was h a p p y
with his lot u n d e r the Gentile king, f o u n d the political status q u o sat-
isfactory, a n d was n o t e a g e r to c h a n g e it. 30

Wills further comments:

. . . it is a p o p u l a r genre, b u t it p r o b a b l y does n o t e x t e n d to the lower
classes. It reflects the o r i e n t a t i o n of the administrative a n d e n t r e p r e -
neurial class. T h e scribal ideals i n h e r e n t in the stories m i g h t restrict
this circle s o m e w h a t to the e x t e n d e d c o u r t circles, for e x a m p l e , to the
local administrative courts t h a t m i g h t c o r r e s p o n d to the training offered
b y Ben Sira's school. 3 1

Similarly, the upper-class roots of Wisdom Literature, and the asso-

ciation of Wisdom themes with these tales (from the work of von
Rad especially) has resulted in an interesting attempt to play down
the defiance that is present in these tales. Lacocque suggests that
"Daniel's resistance lies in his constancy and faithfulness. There is
no bravado or provocation on his part,"32 and Plöger had earlier
argued that in ch. 6, for example, there was no intention to act in
a provocative manner against the laws of the king.33
Some recent commentators are not so sanguine about the atti-
tudes to foreign rulers, however. An important alternadve view is
represented by Fewell's study of the Daniel legends from a literary
perspective: "In every story in Daniel 1-6, the sage is called upon to
hold to values that somehow oppose the existent political authority."34
Along these lines, I would argue that although it is true that very
little hostility is ultimately shown toward the kings in Daniel 16‫־‬,
this is surely because they change. Their transformation is what elimi-
nates the threat of deadly power and megalomaniac exercise of cruel
and relendess oppression. The kings are originally portrayed as bru-
tal monarchs who demand total allegiance, who fling obstinate sub-
jects into fiery furnaces or lion pits—it is the change from precisely these
aspects of ancient Near Eastern oppressive realities that removes the threat to the
Jews. Let us examine two of these cases.

30
Collins, Daniel (1984), p. 72.
31
L. Wills, The Jew in the Court of the Foreign King, (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990),
p. 197.
32
Andre Lacocque, The Book of Daniel (Adanta: J o h n Knox Press, 1979), p. 113.
33
O. Plöger, Daniel (ΚΑΤ; Leipzig: Gütersloh, 1965), p. 98.
34
Dana Fewell, Circle of Sovereignty: A Story of Stories in Daniel 1~6 (Sheffield: Al-
mond Press, 1991), pp. 154-155.
 When Daniel succeeds in interpreting the dream of the great statue
for Nebuchadnezzar, in his relief at hearing the interpretation (even
though it predicted the demise of his empire), Nebuchadnezzar is
portrayed as saying: "Truly your God is God of gods, and Lord of
lords and a revealer of mysteries, for you have been able to reveal
this mystery!" (Dan. 2:47). The specific phrase "God of Gods/Lord
of Lords" is also significant. In other contexts, the term is related to
the greatness of God (Deut. 10:17) and particularly in the diaspora
context where the power of God is contrasted to the power of worldly
rulers (the exilic Psalm 136). While Collins suggests that this excla-
mation by Nebuchadnezzar may resemble Antiochus IV's supposed
deathbed confession (2 Macc. 9:17), 35 Goldingay is more inclined to
see the emphasis here on the elevation of Daniel, and therefore his
God, rather than a theological statement on Nebuchadnezzar's part.36
A statement of God's power and authority also follows Nebu-
chadnezzar's humbling "exile" among the beasts in Daniel 4: "I. . .
praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are
truth, and his ways are justice; and he is able to bring low those
who walk in pride" (Dan. 4:37). But these are not the strongest in-
dications of change. Daniel 6 goes a significant step further:
Then King Darius wrote to all peoples and nations of every language
throughout the whole world: "May you have abundant prosperity! I
make a decree, that in all my royal dominion people should tremble
and fear before the God of Daniel:
For He is the Living God
enduring forever
His Kingdom shall never be destroyed
and his dominion has no end . ..
(Dan. 6:25-26)
Collins wants to compare this to Persian declarations noted in Ezra
1-6, especially ch. 6, and thus see this as an expression of well-
documented Persian sensibilities about respecting the religious tradi-
tions of its subjects.37 Where the earlier statements by kings seem
directed at simply preventing the Jews from being harassed and threat-
ened, ch. 6 goes further in its statements about the "Living God"
and this God's sovereignty.
The emphasis in late biblical texts on the "Living God" was im-

35
Collins, Daniel (1993), p. 172.
36
J o h n Goldingay, Daniel (WBC 30, Dallas: W o r d , 1988), p. 52.
37
Collins, Daniel (1993), p. 191.
portant in the context of idolatry. Note the views of Isaiah 40 and
Psalm 115 about the impressive appearance of the idols of gold, sil-
ver, etc., but the fact that they do not live. Because they do not live,
their rule is not permanent or everlasting, in contrast to the ultimate
rule of the God of Israel. What is emphasized in the Daniel texts, as
noted by Collins, Goldingay, and others, is similar to what is even-
tually the celebration of the book of Esther—the deliverance of the
Jews as a result of the transformation of the foreign ruler.38 In short,
these transformations are more concerned with politics than religion.
The transformation does not mean that these foreign rulers are part
of the Jewish community—only that the threat of the enemy is changed, and
is no longer a threat. As such, this represents an alternative strategy of
dealing with foreign threat. If the first view we examined can be
summarized as separation from or destruction of "the Canaanite"—
this view is the transformation of the enemy.

(b) The Jonah Story as Hebrew Satyagraha39

Considering the theme of transforming the enemy helps to explain

the relevance of the book of Jonah to this argument.40 Scholars have
tended to see Jonah as a very late text in Hebrew history (4th—3rd
Cent, BCE),41 but in any case, the salient text of this short book is the
repentance by the residents of Nineveh:

58
D. Clines is less certain that Esther is transformative: "this story, however sin-
cerely it represents the position of the subject race self-evidently does not originate
from the masses. However m u c h they too may be affected by the imperial edict,
this is a court-tale, told by haitues of the seat of power, reflecting the intrigue typi-
cal of the palace and the harem. For this reason, the narrative must be described
as reactionary rather than progressive." (p. 45). In "Reading Esther from Left to
Right: Contemporary Strategies for Reading a Biblical Text," D. Clines, S. Fowl,
S. Porter (eds.), The Bible in Three Dimensions (Sheffield: J S O T Press, 1990).
39
T h e reference to Gandhi's use of satyagraha (lit. "soul force" or "truth force")
is intentional here. It was, after all, part of Gandhi's program that the enemy would
be transformed by the campaigns in India and South Africa, and not only defeated.
40
A. Lacocque, The Jonah Complex (Atlanta: J o h n Knox, 1981); J . Magonet, Form
and meaning: Studies in Literary Techniques in the Book of Jonah (Almond: Sheffield, 1983);
T . Fretheim, The Message ofJonah (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1977); H.W. Wolff, Obadiah
and Jonah (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1986); J . Sasson, Jonah (New York: Doubleday,
1990); J o h n Day, "Problems in the Interpretation of the Book of J o n a h , " Oudtestamen-
tische Studien X X V I (Leiden: Brill, 1990), pp. 32-47.
41
Wolff lists such arguments as Sirach's mention of " 12" Prophets; terminology
that is typical of post-exilic works such as " T h e God of Heaven" (Chronicles, Daniel);
Nineveh sounding like a Persian principality in organization; familiarity with the
Deuteronomic Theology of repentence; and the liturgical utterance of Yahweh's Mercy
which was so typical of post-exilic psalms. See Wolff, pp. 75-83.
 Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: "By the decree of the
king and his nobles: no human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall
taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. Human
beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry
mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the vio-
lence that is in their hands. Who knows? God may relent and change
his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.
(Jon. 3:6-9)

It is frequently noted in discussions of "conversion" in ancient Israel,

that the term most associated with such personal religious changes of
community is simply the Hebrew term for "turn" 42.‫ שוב‬But focus
on this term is not fruitful for understanding the nuances of transfor-
mation in these texts. Certainly this is the term used in the Jonah
passage to indicate a "change" in God's intentions. But Wolff em-
phasizes the symbolism of the king's actions in this passage:
By rising from his throne, he is stripping himself of his insignia as ruler
and judge (cf. Jer. 36:22; 1 Kgs 1:46). He throws aside his royal robe,
the token of his sovereignty; ‫( ו י ע ב ר‬hiph.il) is a powerful word for "put
away," and is used especially for things which are offensive to Yahweh
cf. 1 Kgs 15:12; Zech. 3:4; 13:2 . . . finally the king sets down "in the
dust" instead of on his throne . . .43

Further, Wolff's discussion of "violence" points out that the "vio-

lence of their hands" was bloodshed, also the "violence" that brought
on the flood (Gen. 6:5). What the people are repenting of, in short,
is the violence of empire—precisely that element which was most
threatening to the Jews. Fretheim agrees, suggesting that Jonah is
not a book about gentiles per se,44 but about enemies: "It is always
their violence or wickedness which is in view."45 Fretheim doubts
that this is to be read as a conversion passage, because the people
do not join the community—they are not viewed as streaming to
Jerusalem as in other passages such as Isaiah 2 or 60. The emphasis,
then, is not simply on "turning," but from what is one turning?
In summary, these famous passages of transformation do not have
as their aim a discussion of conversion—the expansion of the people
of Israel by the addition of gentiles as members in good standing.
The aim of these passages is to hold out the possibility that the stead-
fast, nonviolent resistance of faithful Jews may actually give witness
to God's existence and power, and thus invite a transformation of

42
Beverly R . Gaventa, "Conversion," ABD VŪ1. 1, pp. 1131-33.
43
Wolff, Obadiah and Jonah, p. 151.
44
See also Burrows, "Literary Category," p. 100.
45
Fretheim, Message, p. 22.
foreign enemies so that they are no longer a threat to the Jewish
people. That this transformation typically involves a recognition of
the power and/or wisdom of the God of the Jews should not lead to
the hasty conclusion that a theological issue of conversion is at stake.
The issue was political, not ecclesiastical, so to speak. Furthermore,
let it not be presumed that I am arguing for some kind of ancient
Hebrew "pacifist" ethic here—this transformation on the part of the
enemy occasionally resulted in a blood bath for those who had ear-
lier planned the destruction of the Jews (e.g., the end of Esther, Bel
and the Dragon, Daniel ch. 6, etc.). However, to hold out such a
possibility for change at least begins a process that will also leads to
a questioning of the validity, or efficacy, of military tactics. Such a
perspective is noted, for example, in the famous reference to the
Maccabees in Daniel 11:34 as "little help."
There is clear evidence, however, that a third possibility did actu-
ally begin to be entertained in the minds of some late biblical theo-
logians: the actual inclusion of gentiles as a part of the people of
Israel. The similarity of religious language in this context leads one
to suspect that this third option was a logical developmentfromthe earlier
possibility of transforming enemies from threatening emperors to defenders of Jew-
ish rights.

3. Including the Foreigner among the People of God

(a) Bel and the Dragon

We can see signs of this change already in the Greek additions to

Daniel, one of our main sources for the "transformation" motif. The
Greek addition known as Bel and the Dragon consists of two stories
that are only loosely related. There is considerable scholarly debate
as to whether these stories belong originally together—rather than
artificially joined when they were made a part of the Daniel tradi-
tion.46 Moore ingeniously suggests that just as the Susanna story re-
presents Daniel as a precocious and wise youth, so the stories of Bel
and the Dragon—taking place during Persian rule—represent the old
and wise Daniel still true to his faith.47 Certainly both parts of this
chapter deal with idolatry, although in one case the idol is fashioned

46
Moore, Additions, pp. 146-147.
47
Moore, Additions, p. 9.
by human hands, and in the other case it is a living animal. Both
obviously deal with the theme of idolatry in exile, already a major
concern in Second Isaiah and in the canonical stories of Daniel
1-6. As we are only interested in a short aspect of the second story—
specifically w . 2832‫־‬, we cannot comment on these debates at great
length here.48
Vs. 28 contains a starding concept. The Babylonians are angry
with Daniel's influence on the King, and to express their frustration
they use a surprising phrase:
'Ιουδαίος γέγονεν 6 β α σ ι λ ε ύ ς
" T h e K i n g has become a Jew!"

The salient feature of the quote is the equative verb "to become"—
the perfect suggesting "has become." Clearly, by the time of the
Hellenistic period, we are in a context of Jewish thought that can
conceive, even in a fiction, of a foreigner "becoming" a Jew—pre-
sumably referring to a convert. Collins objects that even this does
not necessarily refer to conversion in the modern sense,49 but do we
even know what "conversion" meant in this period? A clear transfor-
mation of character and religious observance is suggested by the
language of the passage. However, we must keep in mind that the
story does not so much suggest that the King did, in fact, convert,
merely that the Babylonians accuse him of this! In the context of a Jewish
story of the late Persian, or Hellenistic period, this accusatory con-
text lends credence to reading this phrase as an actual conversion
precisely because it would be considered so shocking (in other words,
the exaggeration fits the story). Furthermore, it is clear that in the
context of the Daniel tradition—to which this story was editorially
joined—this transformation is intended to be read in the context of
the more startling "confessions" of faith that we have noted in the
canonical stories of Nebuchadnezzar and Darius.
It can therefore be suggested that the confessions of the kings in
Daniel, although perhaps not intending to suggest conversion in the
first instance, eventually came to be understood as such by the time
of the Greek additions to Daniel such as the story of the "Dragon"
in "Bel and the Dragon." Do we have evidence that this possibility
was held out for other gentiles besides kings?

48
I go into detail on this matter in my commentary on Daniel for the New
Interpreter's Bible (Vol. 7; Nashville: Abingdon Press, expected October, 1996).
49
Collins, Daniel (1993), p. 415.
(b) "Proselytes" in the Greek Texts

W e have already noted in the study by van H o u t e n that the priestly

legislation moves decidedly toward a cultic inclusion of foreigners
under certain ritual circumstances. She further notes in an appendix
that by the time of the Hellenistic period and the translation of
the H e b r e w / A r a m a i c texts of the Bible into Greek, the term προσ-
ήλυτος had come to be used for virtually all occasions of the H e b r e w
term ‫ נ ר‬, suggesting that by the time of the translations into Greek,
the p h e n o m e n o n of proselytes was so c o m m o n a m o n g the Jewish
people (and presumably especially in Egypt?) that it was assumed
that this is what the texts were referring to, rather than resident
aliens, etc. 50

(c) "Those who join w i t h / t o you."

In addition to this movement in legal discussions, however, there are

a series of celebrated late biblical texts that speak of the inclusion of
gentiles (although never using the terminology of the conquered peoples
like "Canaanites") as equals a m o n g the people of God. In his study
cited earlier, C o h e n also illustrates that there is not a universal agree-
m e n t in the sources as to the exact m e a n i n g of " c o n v e r s i o n . "
However, C o h e n himself suggests that actual conversion requires all
of the following: (a) practise of Jewish law; (b) an exclusive devotion
to the Jewish God; and (c) integration into the community (presum-
ably the latter would take into consideration the wider communities'
assessment of this "inclusion"). It is noteworthy that a paradigm case
for Cohen's argument is clearly R u t h :

Where you go, I will go;

where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
and your God my God. (Ruth 1:16b)

Note the various levels at which R u t h consciously mendons her trans-

formation—including devotion to the G o d of the Jews and. clear
association with the people. H e r e we have a clear case of full-fledged
conversion. But is R u t h an exception? Cases of full inclusion of the
foreigner into the people of Israel can best be traced in an examina-
tion of the use of the H e b r e w term ‫ ל ו ה‬, which means simply to

50
van Houten, The Alien, pp. 179-183.
"attach to," or "join," but is used in a series of important passages
to refer to gentiles who are "joined" to the people of God.
In Ps. 83:9, the term "joined" is coupled with • ‫" ע‬with" to refer
to an alliance of enemies against Israel, while in Num. 18:4 the context
is the joining of the Tribe of Levi to the House of Aaron. Jer. 50:5,
as in other places, refers to the reunification of J u d a h and Israel.
In Gen. 29:34 it is used in the imperfect in reference to marriage
(obviously not, however, a common use for the term). But what is
noteworthy about this term is the number of occasion where it is
specifically used to refer to the inclusion of foreigners among the
people of Israel:

And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord,

to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord,
and to be his servants,
all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it,
and hold fast my covenant
these I will bring to my holy mountain,
and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar
for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.
(Isa. 56:6-7)

In reference to this passage, Westermann writes:

What is promised to the nation once it is delivered from Babylon are
not new victories of the subjugation of foreign nations, but increase in
numbers because of the distant and foreign people who come to Israel
and want to belong to her because of the God of Israel.51
Compare this to other significant uses of the term ‫ ל ו ה‬:
But the Lord will have compassion on Jacob and will again choose
Israel, and will set them in their own land; and aliens will join them and
attach themselves to the house of Jacob.
(Isa. 14:1)52
Sing and rejoice, Ο daughter Zion! For lo, I will come and dwell in
your midst, says the Lord. Many nations shall join themselves to the Lord on
that day, and shall be my people, and I will dwell in your midst.
(Zech. 2:10-11)

51
C. Westermann, Isaiah 40-66 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969), p. 285.
52
Westermann already had doubts about 14:1, suggesting that it did not fit the
context of the passage, and was probably added later (p. 25). Jensen, however, wonders
if the enslavement of foreigners might not better be read as a spirit of service, and
not in negative connotations at all. See J. Jensen, Isaiah 1-39 (Wilmington, Glazier:
1984), p. 143. Kaiser had some doubts about the relation of these verses as well:
"Aber der Gedanke an den Übertritt von Nichtjuden zum Gottesvolk kann auch
 The Jews established and accepted as a custom for themselves and
their descendants and all who joined them, that without fail they would
continue to observe these two days every year, as it is written . . .
(Esth. 9:27)53

These examples were enough for Westermann to suggest a "techni-

cal use" of the niphal participle of ‫ ל ו ה‬, as in Esth. 9:27. T h e term
is actually translated "proselyte" in important Greek texts. 54 A further
consideration of the Greek terminology in these various passages is
instructive. T h e first cited passage, Isa. 56:3, 6 refers to "foreigners"
ό αλλογενής who have "joined to," the participle form is προσκείμενος
which derives from προστίθεναι "to add, to be gathered" (see Gen. 25:8,
17, Bel 1, Acts 13:36—"gathered to fathers' 5 , a well-known Semiticism
in reference to death; see also "added to" in Matt. 6:27, 33, Luke
3:20). Forms of the same term are noted in Isa. 14:1 and Esth. 9:27.
T h e Zechariah passage, however, differs in the Greek, even though
the same Hebrew term is used. Here, the passage reads: καταφεύξονται
εθνη πολλά.
T h e term καταφεύγειν seems clearly influenced by Isa. 55:5: ". . .
nations that do not know you shall run to you . . ." (from H e b r e w
"run" ‫ ) ר ו ץ‬and Isa. 10:3 "to w h o m will you flee for help." J e r .
50:5, in the N R S V reads " . . . and they shall come and join themselves
( J u d a h and Israel) to the Lord by an everlasting covenant." How-
ever, the Hebrew features ‫ ל ו ה‬while once again the Greek reads
καταφευγείν as in Zech. 2:11 (Gk v. 15). T h e same sense of "fleeing

deshalb vorgezogen worden sein, um ν. 2 wirkungsvoller mit der Schilderung der

bevorstehenden Umkehrung des Verhältnisses zwischen den Bedrückern und den
Bedrückten schliessen zu lassen." Der Prophet Jesaja, Kapitel 13-39 (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1973), p. 23.
53
An interesting further case from Ezra is the following: "It was eaten by the
people of Israel who had returned from exile, and also by all who had joined them and
separated themselves from the pollutions of the nations of the land to worship the
Lord, the G o d of Israel" (Ezra 6:21). This verse has a number of difficulties. T h e
salient phrase, "all who joined them" is not specifically clear in either the Greek or
Hebrew texts. T h e term we are examining, ‫ ל ו ה‬certainly does not occur. C o m m e n -
tators are split with regard to who is being referred to here—Jews who separated
themselves from the pollutions of the surrounding peoples, or gentiles who separated.
If it were gentiles actually joining the community then this passage would alter con-
siderably the general impression given by the books of Ezra-Nehemiah on attitudes
to foreigners. For the view that gentiles are being referred to here, see J. Blenkinsopp,
Ezra-Nehemiah, pp. 132-133. That these are other Jews, on the other hand, is argued
by H. Schneider, Die Bücher Esra und Nehemia (Bonn: Peter Hanstein Verlag, 1959),
p. 128; L. Batten Ezra and Nehemiah (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1913), p. 153;
W. Rudolph, Esra und Nehemia (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, Siebeck, 1949), p. 64.
54
Westermann, Isaiah 1-13, p. 25
to/running to" in the Greek is captured in Ps. 143:9: "Save me from
my enemies, Ο Lord, I have fled to you for refuge" (the Greek use
of the form of κατέφυγον assumes, it appears, the Hebrew ‫" ח ס ה‬seek
refuge" rather than ‫" כ ס ה‬shelter, cover"). Does the use of the Greek
term suggesting "seeking refuge/fleeing" in the Zechariah passage
suggests that at least in some quarters, the "conversion" of gentiles
was among those gentiles wanting to escape to the Israelites—per-
haps to escape punishment or judgment? T h e translation may well
have been influenced by the imagery of Zechariah 2, which is about
the restoration of Jerusalem, and the call to the people in diaspora
to "flee" the nations, who are about to experience such punishment
that these nations will become subject to their own slaves.
In short, the "joining" of people to the Israelites appears to be an
aspect of restoration. This is all the more significant given that in other
texts, it was precisely restoration that involved the punishment of the
foreign nations (Isa. 11:13-16; Ps. 137:7-9).
We appear to have a strong case for a conscious distinction be-
tween post-exilic writers in their attitudes toward foreigners in the
time of restoration. Some writers look for a future bloody revenge, a
punishment of the enemies, while others see deliverance by means of
a dramatic transformation of the leaders of the enemy nations. Fi-
nally, a few writers begin to envision the possibility that some from
among the foreign nations, even from the enemy nations, would seek
to become a part of the worshipping people of God. T h e advocates
of this last view even have moments of an incredible new era of
multi-ethnic relations:

On that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing
in the midst of the earth, whom the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying,
"Blessed by Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and
Israel my heritage." (Isa. 19:24-25)

Summary

We have surveyed a considerable variety of opinion with regard to

Israel's relationship to the foreigner in post-exilic biblical thought.
T h e three options of exclusion, transformation, and inclusion clearly
co-existed. But what is the meaning of this exercise? How does this
relate to the thoughts with which we began this investigation—thoughts
about the future of human co-existence?
 I would argue that we can no longer can afford contemporary
reflections on these passages that exhibit the tendency to cancel the
universalist moments by attempting to "balance" them with texts
dealing with conquest, destruction, enslavement, and reversal of for-
tune, as if to blunt the impact of the moments of insight. Note, for
example, Stuhlmueller's comments on Zech. 2:11 which can be taken
to be representative of a common tendency among contemporary
scholars:
The prophecy of Zechariah does not lay down the conditions for the
admission of Gentiles, whether with dignity (Isaiah 56) or in chains
(Isa. 45:14). The other side of this movement condemns the nations and
separates Israel from them . . .55 (emphasis mine)
Such an exegetical perspective about "sides" of "one movement" seems
to involve a prior theological conviction that the Bible must speak
with one united theological voice, however incoherent that voice may
be after blending different strains of thought. The task of historical
critical analysis is to present the diverse views. It is the task of the-
ology, however, to attempt to deal with this diversity. But we need
not insist, when reading the fine moments of profound hope that
ancient Hebrew writers are capable of, that they be "balanced."
Hebrew visions of peaceful co-existence, and the possibility of in-
eluding the foreigner among the people of God, advocated a more
enlightened way to deal with enemies. These visionary passages are
as much a part of post-exilic Hebrew theological development and
religious life as are the motifs of exclusion. In short, the texts that
call for destruction of enemies, avoiding foreigners as impure, and
nationalistically reusing the terminology of the "impure peoples" who
were driven from the land cannot be allowed to overshadow or rule
out the tremendous hope engendered by a passage such as the last
two verses of Isaiah 19.
T h e identification of alternative voices, then, is the beginning of
an alternative history and exegesis that values the "brief moments"
(or what Mieke Bai, in the context of feminist exegesis, identified as
the supposedly "meaningless details" that nevertheless become very
meaningful in the light of feminist analysis)56 as lights on our path.

55
C. Stuhlmueller, Haggai and Zechariah·. Rebuilding with Hope (Edinburgh/Grand
Rapids: Handsel/Eerdmans, 1988), p. 72.
56
M. Bal, Lethal Love: Feminist Literary Readings of Biblical Love Stories (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1987), p. 2.
It is not a necessary step of critical analysis of the Bible that texts
like Isa. 19:24—25, for example, must have their "epiphanous" char-
acter "balanced out" (and thus removed) by mundane human attitudes.
T o return to our opening thoughts, then, it can be suggested that
a critical, exegetical model that assumes differences of view within
the biblical texts is a beginning of seeking alternative voices, and
alternative symbols, from within religious traditions that are involved
in conflict. T o suggest that Isaac of Stella, or Walter Mapp, are far
overshadowed by the thousands who marched to the "Holy Land"
to liberate the cross is to miss the point. It is Isaac and Mapp who,
like Isaiah 19:24—25, can light our path to a future co-existence by
means of insights and hopeful ideals that are developed from within
our textual and symbolic religious traditions.
 T H E UNIVERSAL H O R I Z O N OF
BIBLICAL P A R T I C U L A R I S M

J o n D. Levenson

I. The Ambiguities of "Universalism"

There is probably nothing in Judaism that has attracted so much

attention and generated so much controversy as the biblical idea that
the Jews are the chosen people. There were pagan authors in antiquity
who resented what they saw as Jewish exclusiveness, and early
Christianity often claimed to universalize the Hebrew Bible's suppos-
edly parochial view of the divine covenant, making it available to all
the nations of the earth. Anti-Semitism has historically focused on
alleged Jewish clannishness and has charged that Jews' absorption
with their own group leads to lack of concern for others. In response,
many Jews have stressed the universalism that they perceive in pro-
phetic ethics, downplaying evidence of Jewish particularism in the
Bible. Other Jews, in the aftermath of the Holocaust, have reasserted
and exaggerated the uniqueness of the Jewish people, even to the
extent of denying the applicability to Jews of the outside world's moral
standards.
Given this long history of polemics and apologetics, it is no easy
task to sort out the biblical material on universalism and Jewish par-
ticularism in a scholarly way. But such an exercise is needed, not
only to help non-Jews overcome confusion and bigotry about Judaism,
but also to enable Jews to understand their own biblical heritage and
its contemporary implications, for, as we shall see, the all-too-common
contrast between "universal" and "particularistic" religion is, in every
instance, simplistic, grossly misleading, and even dangerous.
T h e chief objective of the following pages is to reexamine the issue
of universalism and particularism in the Hebrew Bible with an eye
to the way in which the framing of the issue therein served a
foundation for later Jewish reflection. As may already be apparent, I
write not only as a student of biblical thought but also as a committed
J e w interested in defining a defensible contemporary appropriation
of the ancient legacy and in applying the resources of his tradition to
the wide and increasingly vexatious problem of ethnicity in the modern
world.
Predicated of a religious tradition, the term "universalism" can carry
a number of divergent meanings. It may simply refer to the univer-
sality of the deity: N o other god exists, and the whole world, without
exception, is his. Such universalism, however, still allows for pockets
of particularism. Although God may be lord of the world, he need
not care about the world in its entirety, or he may care about differ-
ent classes of creatures in different measures. H e may, for example,
favor persons over animals, although he is the creator of both, and
even permit persons to kill animals without incurring guilt, but not
the reverse. Or, he may single out one set of persons rather than
another—such as the people of Israel, the Christian Church, or the
Islamic ummah—for special favors and special responsibilities.
When this is held to have happened, hard questions have to be
faced. What is the relationship of those who have not been so singled
out to the universal deity and to his special group? T h e answers to
this are several. T h e outsider may be condemned as an offense to
the universal lord whom he does not acknowledge, or he may be
respected as a person of dignity who is not to blame for his status.
Or, again, he may be regarded as a person of diminished dignity
whose true worth can be realized only by his electing to join the
favored sub-group. Religious traditions that affirm both a universal
God and a particular group as his elect face an especially difficult
challenge on the question of moral standards and accountability. Has
the God of all imparted knowledge of his ethical norms to those who
have not experienced his revelation? If so, how? And what is the
relationship of the universal ethical norms, if they exist, to the norms
that govern the favored sub-group? If these two sets of norms are
identical, then one can speak of a moral universalism that has been
disclosed only to a special group: everyone should observe one group's
ethic. In this case, the particular religious tradition will tend to iden-
tify itself with humanness itself, and to imply either the subhumanity
of outsiders or their unwitting practice of the insider's religion, or
both. There is another alternative: some norms oblige all persons,
and others oblige only the sub-group. Here, universalism is affirmed
on one tier, and particularism on another.
Although some religious traditions may on occasion conceive of
themselves as representing or answering to a universal h u m a n con-
dition, as a matter of historical fact all religious traditions are par-
ticular, since none includes everyone. There is no evidence that
humankind has ever had only one religion. Religion is as much a
creature of culture as it is of nature, and human culture is inevitably
particular. T o be sure, while no religion is universal, some aspire to
be. In this sense, a "universal religion" may mean simply one that
accepts proselytes, that is, one that is willing or eager to extend its
particularity indefinitely. O r it may signify one that is found in a
large number of different cultures. In this case, the term "universal"
is misleading, since the religion has not transformed a highly diverse
humanity into one universal body. Instead, it has formed symbiotic
relationships with various enduring particularisms. In this case, the
variety of human cultures has been eroded but not overcome, and
there is no reason to assume that the erosion is irreversible, since
few things are more characteristic of human experience than the
fragmentation and disintegration of overarching structures of belief.
Yet another understanding of "universalism" may teach that in
some future consummation, human variety will disappear altogether
or submit permanently to an all-inclusive structure. In this case,
particularism may be predicated of the present aeon, and universal-
ism of the next. There is no contradiction between historical particu-
larism and eschatological universalism, limited or total.

II. The Universality of God and Human Dignity

Before we attempt to determine where the Hebrew Bible fits into

this rude typology of universalisms and particularisms, we must first
acknowledge frankly that there is no one "biblical" position on this
or on most other great theological issues. T h e Bible is an anthology
of writings composed over a period of about a thousand years, in
several lands, and by authors of various sorts. It presents a spectrum
of positions, and although the spectrum is not endless, neither is it so
limited as to facilitate generalization. Intellectual honesty requires us
to avoid the popular tactic of citing a passage that appeals to us as
if it were the entirety of the tradition. 1 Though the temptation to
read our own values into the text is nearly overpowering, it must be

1
O n the hermeneutical issues involved, see J o n D. Levenson, The Hebrew Bible,
the Old Testament, and Historical Criticism (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1993),
esp. chapters 1, 3, and 6.
resisted; complete objectivity is not humanly possible, but it remains
a necessary ideal.
In spite of its anthological character, in Judaism the Hebrew Bible
(especially the Torah, its first five books) is considered a coherent
entity, not merely a concatenation of incompatibles. This postulate
of coherence enables us to regard the separate elements as parts of
a total picture that may not in reality have been affirmed by their
original authors. Thus, some systematic statement is possible, so long
as it is loose enough to allow for exceptions and self-aware enough
to acknowledge its dependence on a canon that did not exist in the
biblical period itself.
Universalism in the sense of the universality of the deity is most
striking in those biblical traditions that speak of God as the creator
of the world. T h e placement of the story of cosmic creation by God
('elohim) at the beginning of the entire Bible (Gen. 1:1-2:3) establishes
a universal horizon for the particular story of Israel, which occupies
most of the rest of that sacred book. Especially noteworthy is the
lack of all spatial locality in that account of creation. Unlike the
following creation story, that of the creation of Adam and then Eve
by the Lord God (:YHWH 'elohim, Gen. 2:4—24), this first account men-
tions no landmarks, no countries, no rivers, not even a Garden of
Eden. Instead, men and women, created together, exist on undiffer-
entiated dry land. No spot on earth can claim the prestigious status
of primordiality: There is no "place" at which creation began and
where its energies may yet be available. T h e familiar world is en-
tirely and evenly the consequence of the creative act.
Here, it is instructive to contrast a Babylonian creation story, the
Enuma Elish, in which Marduk's creation of the world culminates in
the construction of Babylon, his city and therefore the capital of the
cosmos, and of Esagila, its temple and his palace. 2 Like ‫נ‬elohim, Marduk
is also a cosmic creator-god; his power is not limited to Babylon. 3
But, as is emphatically not the case in Gen. 1:1-2:3, his special re-
lationship to a particular community is embedded in the very struc-
ture of cosmic order.
In the biblical story, the only particular vestige of the act of ere-

2
See Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2nd edn, 1951), p. 48.
3
See H.W.F. Saggs, The Encounter with the Divine in Mesopotamia and Israel (London:
University of London/Athlone, 1978), pp. 3063‫־‬.
ation is a cultic rite, the Sabbath, through which Israel replicates the
rhythm of the protological events (2:1 4 .(3‫ ־‬In this sense, the Sabbath
is as universal as the deity whom Israel imitates, despite the fact that
it is disclosed to Israel alone, and not until the generation of Moses
(Exod. 20:8-11). In short, the "prestige of origins" 5 applies not to
something so particular as a place, but to a way of organizing some-
thing universal—time. Like Esagila, the Sabbath recollects the divine
repose after the work of creation, but in a nonspatial and therefore
universalizable way. Unlike the Enuma Elish, Gen. 1:1-2:3 does not
serve to buttress any particular political or cultic order.
It is also highly significant that in both creation accounts at the
beginning of Genesis (1:1-2:3 and 2:4—24), it is humanity in general
and not any people in particular that is created. Israel is not primor-
dial. It emerges in history, twenty generations after the creation of
the human species in the image of God (or the gods, 1:26-27). "Is-
rael," in the words of a contemporary scholar, "has no particular
supernatural status by birth and early history." 6 It is neither descended
from the gods nor divine itself. All people are created equally in the
divine image. T h e creation stories in Genesis serve as a powerful
warrant for a Jewish doctrine of human solidarity and as a formi-
dable obstacle to any attempt to mix Judaism and racism.
The relatedness of the members of the human family to each other
and to God is underscored and formalized in the announcement of
an eternal covenant with Noah in Gen. 9:1-17. Underlying this
covenant is a theology that places all peoples in a relationship of
grace and accountability with God. T h e subsequent establishment of
covenants with all Abrahamites (Genesis 17) and with all Israelites
(Exodus 24) is to be read against the background of this universal
covenant. Israel's relationship to God is thus both unique and universal:

* See Moshe Weinfeld, "Sabbath, Temple, and the Enthronement of the Lord—
T h e Problem of the Sitz im Leben in Genesis 1:1-2:3," in A. Caquot and
M. Delcor (eds.), Mélanges biblique et orientaux en l'honneur de M. Henri Cazelles (Alter
Orient und Altes Testament, 212; Kevalaer: Butzon and Bercker; Neukirchen-Vluyn:
Neukirchener, 1981), pp. 5 0 1 - 5 1 2 ; and Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence
of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988;
rept., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), chap. 6.
5
O n this, see Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality (New York and Evanston: Harper
and Row, 1963), pp. 2 1 - 3 8 .
6
Carroll Stuhlmueller, "The Foundations for Mission in the Old Testament, ‫ י י‬in
Donald Senior and Carroll Stuhlmueller (eds.), Biblical Foundations for Mission (Maryknoll,
NY: Orbis, 1983), p. 11. Stuhlmueller notes especially Ezek. 16:3.
no other people has it, yet all humanity has something of the same
order.
T h e Noahide Covenant, which is mentioned nowhere else in the
Hebrew Bible, assumes greater importance in Rabbinic Judaism, where
it serves as the functional equivalent of natural law, specifying the
seven commandments incumbent upon all humanity, J e w and gen-
die alike.7 T h e greater role of the Noahide Covenant in rabbinic
than in biblical Judaism calls into question the too common notion
that the rabbis abandoned the universal dimension of biblical theol-
ogy and retreated into a cocoon of ethnocentricity. Indeed, one of
the reasons for the absence of a missionary thrust in rabbinic theology
is the doctrine of human dignity in general, whether Israelite or not.
Those who think outsiders can have a proper relationship with God
as they are will feel less of an impulse to make them into insiders.
It is significant that the primeval history (Genesis 1-11) presents
humankind as primordially monotheistic and, in fact, YHWHÌSÛC (4:26).
Idolatry, which, according to the rabbis, violates a Noahide com-
mandment, is not intrinsic to human beings, and in the Hebrew Bible
a gentile is not generally assumed to be idolatrous. It is possible to
be a faithful and responsible worshiper of YHWH (the proper name of
the God of Israel) without being an Israelite. In this, the Y H W H i s t i c
source (J) in the primeval history goes beyond even the universalism
of Gen. 9:1-17, derived from the priestly source (P). For the latter
maintains that the name of YHWH was revealed only in the time of
Moses (Exod. 6:23‫ )־‬and therefore uses only the more general terms
'elohim and 'el shadday before the revelation of the tetragrammaton to
Moses. 8
T h e Y H W H i s t ' s lack of concern that the lips of a non-Israelite might
contaminate the sacred name reflects a larger tendency in biblical
tradition to acknowledge and honor gentiles who revere YHWH or
otherwise play a special, positive role in his designs, such as Jethro
(Exodus 18), Balaam (Numbers 2224‫)־‬, R a h a b (Joshua 2), Naaman
(2 Kings 5), Job, and Cyrus (Isa. 44:24-45:10). This broadly inclu-

7
See, e.g., b.Sanh. 56a. O n the Noahide commandments, see David Novak, The
Image of the Non-Jew in Judaism (Toronto Studies in Theology, 14; N e w York: Edwin
Mellen, 1983).
8
Conventionally, the proper name of the G o d of Israel, YHWH is translated "the
Lord," whereas the word 'elohim is translated "God." For a convenient presentation
of the hypothesis that underlies the source-critical distinctions, see E.A. Speiser, Gen-
esis (AB, 1; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964), pp. xxii-xliii.
sive theology demonstrates vividly the grave danger in using the term
"pagan" to denote both a non-Israelite and a practidoner of a reli-
gion odious to the God of Israel: T h e two are not coterminous. Not
every non-Israelite was thought to practice an abominated cult. In-
stead, biblical tradition seems to have thought that the knowledge of
God, even in its most concentrated, YHWHÌSÍÌC form was not neces-
sarily the result of some miraculous incursion into nature by the deity.
Rather, "YHWH is near to all who call upon h i m / t o all who call
upon him in truth" (Ps. 145:18). Quite apart from the specific self-
disclosure of God to Israel, then, the Bible assumes a natural knowl-
edge of God available to all humanity. 9
T h e technical term for this universally available religion is yir'at
,
elohim or YIR'at YHWH, "the fear of G o d " or "the fear of the Lord,"
and it is associated with moral rectitude. When the Philistine king
Abimelech demands to know from Abraham why he passed his wife
off as his sister, the latter responds, "because I thought there was
surely no fear of God in this place and they would kill me for my
wife" (Gen. 20:11). In the Hellenistic period, the term "God-fearers"
(phoboumenoi or sebomenoi ton theon) came to denote a class intermedi-
ate between Jews, on the one hand, and "pagans" in the derogatory
sense, on the other. T h e Noahide and the God-fearer, like the ger
toshav of rabbinic literature (with whom they may be identical), testify
to a theology that holds that the true religion is larger than the re-
ligion of the core of insiders, which it includes. T h e convenient di-
chotomy of insider-outsider is too crude to accommodate the Jewish
conception of the divine-human relationship. 10
This concept of the universal availability of God and his law re-
mained alive and was never displaced in ancient Israel by more
particularistic theologies. Wisdom teachers were especially inclined
to speak in non-national terms. T h e books of Proverbs, J o b , and
Qohelet never refer to the people of Israel, the Exodus, the Cov-
enant of Sinai, or the gift of the Land. Instead, they address what
they perceive to be the general human condition and ground moral
authority not in a historical revelation—there is no evidence the
authors of these books knew of a Torah of Moses—but in direct

9
O n this, see especially James Barr, Biblical Faith and Natural Theology (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1993), chap. 5.
10
O n the ger toshav and the God-fearer in rabbinic law, see Novak, The Image, pp.
14-28.
observation of the world." Whereas the Pentateuchal and prophetic
traditions celebrate the frightening irruption into the natural order of
a passionate and unpredictable God, Wisdom literature relishes the
reassuring constancy and reliability of nature and its creator. Inj us-
tice, like an imbalance in nature, cannot endure, for the world-order
rights itself:
He who digs a pit will fall into it.
And he who rolls a stone—it will roll back on him. (Prov. 26:27)
With its high esteem for universal truths, Wisdom theology shows an
inherent tendency toward cosmopolitanism. Israelite Wisdom writers
took pride in their great culture-hero, King Solomon:
Solomon's wisdom was greater than the wisdom of all the men of the
East and than all the wisdom of Egypt. He was the wisest of men,
wiser than Ethan the Ezrahite, Heman, Chalkol, and Darda, the sons
of Mahol. His reputation spread among all the surrounding peoples.
(1 Kgs 5:10-11)
It is telling that, although the biblical historian considers Solomon's
wisdom a charismatic gift from YHWH (V. 9), he also stresses the in-
ternational recognition of it. Solomon's sagacity, far from being some-
thing foreign and opaque to outsiders, is actually the quintessence of
something they have esteemed and pursued, with no small success.
T h e experience of Solomon's wisdom leaves the Queen of Sheba,
for example, breathless with admiration (10:5). There is no hint that
she is regarded as "pagan" in the pejorative usage, and her religion
does not seem to interfere with her appreciation of Solomon's per-
spicacity. O n the contrary, he passes her test (10:2-3).
In all likelihood, the Wisdom teachers considered the gods of the
gentiles, or at least of the sagacious and ethical gentiles, as not different
in kind from YHWH, the God of Israel. Perhaps they thought the dif-
ferent gods were really only different names for the one all-pervasive
reality, which can be intuited in general h u m a n experience. It was a
theology of this sort that enabled the Israelite sages to include in
their proverb collections the dicta of foreign savants, such as those of
the mysterious Agur b e n j a k e h (Prov. 30:1) and Lemuel, king of Massa
(Prov. 31:1-9), perhaps an Arabian emirate (cf. Gen. 25:14). T h e
likelihood that these two men were indeed non-Israelite sages has

11
See John J. Collins, "The Biblical Precedent for Natural Theology," Journal of
the American Academy of Religion 4 5 / 1 Supplement (1977), pp. 3 5 6 7 ‫ ־‬.
been advanced by the discovery that Prov. 22:17-24:22 is an Israel-
ite adaptation of the thirty-chapter "Instruction of Amen-em-opet,"
an Egyptian Wisdom text that probably dates from the seventh cen-
tury BCE.12 T h e biblical Wisdom teachers provide a solid precedent
for the Judaization of later philosophical movements, from Platonism
to existentialism. A telling way in which Jewish practice continues
this openness to non-Jewish wisdom to this day is the benediction
to be pronounced upon seeing a gentile wise person: "Blessed are
you, YHWH our God, master of the universe, who has imparted of
his wisdom to flesh and blood." 13

III. Purpose and Mystery in the Election of Israel

As the primeval history (Genesis 1-11) has it, the original unity of
humankind could not endure increasing wickedness. From the expul-
sion from the Garden of Eden through the first murder and the
iniquity of the generation of the Flood, the dominant note is one of
curse. With the incident of the Tower of Babel, the pristine unity of
humanity is shattered: Persons now speak a variety of languages and
dwell "over the face of the whole earth" (11:9). T h e familiar world
of human fragmentation and diversity has been born. Its mother is
rebellion, and its midwife, the curse of God.
At the beginning of the Patriarchal narratives, to our surprise, the
note of curse is replaced by one of blessing: YHWH promises a Meso-
potamian named Abram that he will inherit an unknown land, fa-
ther a great nation, and become a byword of blessing, indeed a source
of blessing to those who bless him (12:13‫)־‬. Apparendy, God's high
hopes for the world, continually frustrated throughout the dismal
course of primeval history, are now focused on one man who will
reverse the decline of a failing humanity. Unlike later rabbinic ex-
egesis, the T o r a h itself offers no grounds for the selection of Abram
for this awesome assignment. It makes no claim that he had earned

12
See J a m e s B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testa-
ment (Princeton: Princeton University, 3rd ed, 1969), pp. 4 2 1 - 4 2 5 . O n Wisdom Lit-
erature in general, see Joseph Blenkinsopp, Wisdom and Law in the Old Testament: The
Ordering of Life in Early Judaism (Oxford Bible Series; N e w York: Oxford University,
1983).
13
Cf. b.Ber. 58a, where the form is "to his creatures." O n natural theology in
Second Temple Judaism, see Barr, Biblical Faith, chap. 4.
it or that he was endowed with some innate predisposition that made
his selection rational. Instead, the T o r a h presents the revelation to
Abram as sudden and unanticipated, and his obedient response as
an unalloyed act of faith. T h e backdrop is still universal; the rele-
vance of his fate to the nations is announced at the outset (12:3). Yet
he alone bears the promise.
T h e relationship of YHWH and Abraham is soon formalized as a
"covenant" (Genesis 15 and 17), a treaty that the parties swear to
uphold. W h e n the parties are, as here, unequal, we speak of a
"suzerainty treaty. 5 ' T h e lord of the covenant, the suzerain, makes a
pact with his subject, the vassal. In some biblical instances, as in the
great covenant with all Israel concluded on Sinai, the treaty lists
stipulations, in this case the mitsvot (commandments) of the Torah,
which the suzerain enjoins upon his vassal.14 In other cases, such as
the covenant with Noah (9:1-17) and that with Abraham, the goal
of the suzerain is not to secure the undivided allegiance of the vas-
sal, but to reward his already demonstrated loyalty with a grant. 15
With Abraham, the grant includes a fiefdom, the land of Israel, as it
will come to be called, and a dynasty, the people Israel, in whom
kings will appear (17:68‫)־‬. In the second formulation of this cov-
enant of grant (17:9-14), circumcision plays a central role. It is a
visible "sign of the covenant" (v. 11), like the rainbow in the Noahide
Covenant (9:12-17) and perhaps the Sabbath in the Sinaitic Cov-
enant (Exod. 31:16-17).
It is significant that the Torah's promise to Abraham predates the
existence of a people Israel, which indeed comes into being only as
a result of YHWH'S mysterious grace and the equally mysterious but
edifying obedience of Abraham. By making the theology earlier than
the people, the Torah underscores "the necessity of viewing the great-
ness of the nation in light of the greatness of her God.'" 6 Indeed,

14
O n covenant, see Delbert R. Hillers, Covenant: The History of a Biblical Idea (Semi-
nars in the History of Ideas; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1969); and J o n D. Levenson,
lon:
Sinai and Z An Entry into the Jewish Bible (New Voices in Biblical Studies; Minne-
apolis: Winston Seabury, 1985; rpt., San Francisco: Harper and R o w , 1987), pp.
23-86.
15
See Moshe Weinfeld, "The Covenant of Grant in the Old Testament and in
the Ancient Near East," Journal of the American Oriental Society 9 0 (1970), pp. 184-205;
and J o n D. Levenson, "On the Promise to the Rechabites," Catholic Biblical Quarterly
38 (1976), pp. 5 0 8 - 5 1 4 .
16
Horst Seebass, ‫ ב ח ר ״‬bachar," in G.J. Botterweck and H. Ringgren (eds.), Theo-
logical Dictionary of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), Vol. 2, p. 84.
Israel exists only because of God's choice, and apart from God, it
has no existence at all. Even those biblical traditions that date the
selection of Israel from the generation of the Exodus and Sinai (e.g.,
Deut. 32:20; Hos. 11:1; Ezek. 20:5), rather than from Abraham,
assume the inseparability of peoplehood from theology. Israel has no
profane history, only a sacred history, a history of redemption, of
backsliding and return, punishment and restoration.
Ancient Near Eastern covenants, whose signatories tend to be kings,
illuminate for us the Bible's account of God's covenant with the Jewish
people at Sinai. T h e covenanted Israelites, vassals though they be,
are also described in royal terms:
And if you truly obey me and observe my covenant, you will be my
special possession from among all peoples—for the whole world is mine.
But you are to be my priesdy kingdom and sacred nation. . . . (Exod.
19:5-6)

It has even been argued that the word translated as "kingdom" ac-
tually means "king." 17 Whether or not this is so, the language de-
scribing Israel's chosenness in the Bible reflects the terms in which
ancient Near Eastern kings described their relationships to their di-
vine patrons. For example, an Egyptian text describes Hatshepsut,
the female pharaoh, as "she whom he [the god] chose to protect
Egypt." Mesopotamian kings were sometimes described as "the one
chosen by the faithful heart of god," "the Chosen O n e of the gods,"
or "the one to whom the eyes of the gods have been directed." 18
Nebuchadrezzar I, king of Babylon in the twelfth century BCE, is
described as "the prince beloved by Marduk—the king of the gods,
Marduk commissioned him," and his younger contemporary Tiglath-
Pileser I of Assyria is described as "the beloved prince, the desire of
your [i.e., the gods'] hearts, the exalted shepherd, whom in your
faithful hearts you have called. . . .'" 9
There are other biblical instances of God's referring to those he
has selected in similarly exalted language. David, chosen as king, will
say to YHWH, "You are my father," and YHWH "will make him [his]

17
William L. Moran, "A K i n g d o m of Priests,'1 in J o h n L. McKenzie (ed.), The
Bible in Current Catholic Thought (St. Mary's Theological Studies, 1 ; N e w York: Herder
and Herder, 1962), pp. 7 - 2 0 . But note that Moran considers the king in question
to be the priesthood collectively.
18
Jan Bergman and Helmer Ringgren, ‫ ב ח ר ״‬bachar" (see n. 16), pp. 7 3 - 7 4 .
19
J . M . Powis Smith, "The Chosen People," American Journal of Semitic Languages
and Literatures 45 (1929), pp. 7 4 - 7 5 .
firstborn son, highest of the kings of the earth' 5 (Ps. 89:27-28; cf.
2 Sam. 7:8-16, Psalm 2). Israel, too, appears in the privileged role of
YHWH'S first-born son, whose desire to serve the divine father not
even Pharaoh may thwart (Exod. 4:22-23). This concept of the people
Israel collectively as God's son grounds the demand that Israel's ways
are to be visibly different from the ways of the gentiles (Deut. 14:1‫־‬
2), but it also insures that God's grace will not allow even the grav-
est sins of Israel to provoke him to disown them (Hosea 11 ; Jer.
31:18—20).20 His paternal love elevates the covenantal relationship into
something far more than a quid pro quo deal between two self-inter-
ested politicians.
T o be sure, many Christian commentators have argued that God's
choice of the Jews was conditional and instrumental rather than fi-
nal. "In the thought of the Old Testament, it is always election to
service,55 wrote an eminent Christian scholar of the last generation,
"and it is held to be forfeited when it has no relation to that ser-
vice.5521 This interpretation of election has support in both the Near
Eastern analogues and in biblical texts themselves. Hammurabi, king
of Babylon in the late eighteenth century BCE, tells us in the pro-
logue of his famous law code that the gods singled him out "to pro-
mote the welfare of the people . . . to cause justice to appear in the
land, to destroy the wicked and the evil, that the strong might not
oppress the weak. . . .5522 In similar language, the biblical God speci-
fies his reasons for choosing Abraham, reasons that relate not to his
past, but to his and his dynasty's future: " T h a t he might charge his
children and his household after him to keep the way of YHWH by
doing what is right and just, so that YHWH may bring about for
Abraham what he has promised him" (Gen. 18:19). While it remains
mysterious why God needs a particular individual to realize these
ends and why Abraham should have been that person, and while it
might seem contradictory to promote the cause of justice through a
plan that favors one family over the rest of humanity, the choice
itself is neither mysterious nor autonomous. It is subordinate to a
larger plan encompassing goals that extend beyond the covenant
relationship itself—the essential goals of right action and justice.

20
See J o n D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1993), esp. chap. 5.
21
H . H . Rowley, The Biblical Idea of Election (London: Lutterworth, 1950), p. 94.
22
Ancient Near Eastern Texts (see n. 12), p. 164. Cf. Ps. 72:1-4, 12-14.
 Another rationale for the selection of Israel appears in the work of
the anonymous prophet of hope who wrote toward the end of the
Babylonian Exile (ca. 539 BCE):

You are my witness—oracle of YHWH—

And my servant whom I have chosen,
In order that you may know and believe in me
And understand that I am he:
Before me no god was formed,
And none will be after me. (Isa. 43:10)
In this case, the choice of Israel, or at least the Israelite community
in Babylonia, is subordinate to a theological purpose: to establish a
beachhead of monotheism, a sodality of witnesses to the uniqueness
and eternity of YHWH. This concept of a witness implies a third party
who receives the testimony, a judge or jury to be persuaded. Here,
again, the horizon of particularism is universal, YHWH has commis-
sioned Cyrus king of Persia
For the sake of my servant Jacob
And of Israel my chosen one. . . .
So that they may know from east to west
That there is none but me:
I am YHWH and there is no other. (Isa. 45:4, 6)

Once more, chosenness serves a larger purpose. T h e chosen people

does not withdraw from the h u m a n family, but exercises a special
office within it, an office defined by the character and will of their
universal God. They are the particular witnesses—and beneficiaries—
of universalism.
These texts and others like them support the claim that biblical
election was instrumental, telling of the ideas and values that God so
esteemed that he chose one people to manifest them. But there is
another side to the story. As we have seen, in much of the literature
Israel's apostasy was not viewed as cancelling its original election;
YHWH did not abandon it and try again with somebody else, though
he did threaten to do so on occasion (Num. 14:12, cf. Exod. 33:14—
15, Hos. 1:9 and 2:25). Thus, although the election was sometimes
articulated in terms of larger purposes, Israel's failure to serve those
purposes was not necessarily thought to have terminated the elec-
don. Conversely, simply serving those purposes—practising justice and
worshiping YHWH alone—did not make one an Israelite, even if it
did make one a responsible and worthwhile citizen of the universal
theocracy.
 T h e election of Israel was only partly grounded in universale. Even
after these have been taken into account, the singling-out of Israel
remains a mystery:
Not because you were more numerous than all other peoples did YHWH
take a passion to you (hashaq) and choose you—indeed, you are the
least of the peoples; but it was because YHWH loved you and kept the
oath that he swore to your Patriarchs that YHWH took you out with a
strong hand and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the
power of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. (Deut. 7:7-8)

Here, the choice of Israel is grounded in passion. It is telling that

the verb hashaq is also used of Shechem's tragic love for Dinah, whom
he raped (Gen. 34:8), and of the feelings of an Israelite warrior upon
sight of a captured woman whom he wishes to marry (Deut. 21:11).
It suggests an affair of the heart, with all the irrationality and
unpredictability of such things. W h o can specify the reasons why he
loves someone above all others of the same class, and even if he can,
do those reasons ever account in full for that love? In this theology,
God knows what he wants to do with Israel, but why he chose this
people rather than another still remains a mystery of his love.
There is, then, a duality in the Bible's concept of election. O n the
one hand, election is at times articulated in terms of larger purposes
that it is to serve, and, of necessity, those purposes extend beyond
the confines of the chosen people. O n the other hand, God bears
with Israel even when it fails in its mission. T h e purposes do not
override the chosenness, and chosenness cannot be reduced merely
to the commitment to certain values. The specialness of Israel is neither
altogether self-sufficient nor altogether instrumental. Should the Isra-
elites imagine that their election is totally self-sufficient, they are
reminded that their exodus is not unique (Amos 9:7) and that their
relationship with YHWH brings with it greater accountability, not only
greater privileges (Amos 3:2).23 And should they imagine that their
election is totally instrumental, depending only on their own very
flawed obedience, they are reminded that the Covenant insures them
an undeserved second chance (e.g., Lev. 26:39-45). Election implies
service, but service renews election. God's grace implies his law, but

23
O n Amos' putative universalism, see Harry M. Orlinsky, "Nationalism-
Universalism and Internationalism in Ancient Israel," in H . T . Frank and W.L. Reed
(eds.), Translating and Understanding the Old Testament: Essays in Honor of Herbert Gordon
May (Nashville: Abingdon, 1970), pp. 2 1 1 - 2 1 2 .
his law implies his grace. Neither takes precedence over the other;
they are inextricable.
For Jews in the post-Enlightenment West, where ideas of human
equality and democratic government hold sway, there is a powerful
temptation to stress the instrumental dimension of Jewish chosenness
and to deny or ignore the self-sufficient dimension. We are sometimes
told that the "chosen people" means the "choosing people,' ‫ י‬as if
passive and active participles were not opposite in meaning. Judaism
is often presented as a commitment to some rather amorphous "Jew-
ish values," which, on inspection, turn out to be universal values, in
which Jews and gentiles alike ought to believe. Covenant, if it is
mentioned at all, appears only as the basis for a warm, meaningful
community life. T h e fact that the Covenant distinguishes sharply
between insiders and outsiders—although both are God's—is ignored.
In large measure, such attitudes are dictated by the exigencies of
living as a minority in a mixed society with a high degree of openness.
It is simply not prudent to affirm a distinctiveness of ultimate signifi-
cance signaled by heredity, and what it is not prudent to express
publicly often loses credibility, becoming peripheral or taboo even in
private discourse. In addition, the contemporary theology in question
represents a cognitive surrender to a Kantian theory of ethics in which
morality entails universalizability: If the behavior cannot be advo-
cated for everyone, it cannot be moral. O n Kantian principles, Jew-
ish ethics—a norm for one group only—is a contradiction in terms. 24
Hence the common substitution of ethics for Torah. "Ethics," as
Michael Wyschogrod puts it, "is the Judaism of the assimilated." 25
Despite the centrality of ethics to Judaism and despite the very
real universalizing aspects of biblical thought, intellectual honesty
obliges us to acknowledge that in the Hebrew Bible the ethic of the
covenant-community was not thought to reduce to the universal moral

24
O n some implications of Kant for Judaism, see Emil L. Fackenheim, "The
Revealed Morality of Judaism and Modern Thought: A Confrontation with Kant,"
in Arnold J. Wolf (ed.), Rediscovering Judaism (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1965), pp. 5 1 -
76, reprinted in Fackenheim, Quest for Past and Future: Essays in Jewish Theology (Bos-
ton: Beacon, 1968), pp. 204—228 and in Menachem Marc Kellner (ed.), Contemporary
Jewish Ethics (New York: Sanhédrin, 1978), pp. 6 1 8 3 ‫ ־‬. In the last book, see also
Norbert Samuelson, "Revealed Morality and Modern Thought, ‫ י י‬pp. 84—99. O n the
parallel Christian problem, see James M. Gustafson, Can Ethics Be Christian? (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago, 1975).
25
Michael Wyschogrod, The Body of Faith: Judaism as Corporeal Election (New York:
Seabury, 1983), p. 181.
law. T h e Israelite, for example, may eat no carrion, since he is a mem-
ber of the "sacred people." T h e foreigner, however, may, and in
Deuteronomic law (Deut. 14:21), he incurs no guilt by doing so.26 In
the Sabbatical Year one Israelite is not to dun another, but he may
dun a foreigner (15:3), just as an Israelite may take no interest from
another, but may take it from an outsider (23:20-21).
What is the basis for such discrimination? In some instances, these
laws are based on Israel's sacrality, which must be guarded from
pollution, and are of the same character as those that protect the
priesthood. T h e Book of Ezekiel, for example (44:31), forbids priests
(kohanirri) any meat that is carrion or the result of tearing by beasts.
This law, which may perhaps not know of the Pentateuchal exten-
sion of the prohibition to all Israel, 27 derives from the consecrated
status of the priesthood, and it is reasonable that the people Israel,
themselves a "priesdy kingdom" (Exod. 19:6), should have fallen under
some of the same protections. O n the other hand, the prohibition on
interest-taking from a fellow Israelite probably derives from the cov-
enant theology and its concept of the special solidarity of the cov-
enantal community. Israelites relate to each other as fellow vassals of
the same liege lord; they relate to outsiders differendy. "With my
friend you shall be friend, and with my enemy you shall be enemy,"
a Hittite suzerain announced to his vassal.28 In Israel, covenantal
friendship seems to have involved the right to free loans. "You shall
love your neighbor as yourself; I am YHWH," one of the most memo-
rable verses in the Torah announces (Lev. 19:18). But the context
makes it probable that the "neighbor" is one's "brother," a fellow
worshiper of YHWH. 2 9
Three points must be made about this nearly ubiquitous biblical
phenomenon of the distinction—the discrimination—between Israel
and the nations. T h e first is that the distinction does not coincide
with the distinction between good and bad. T h e covenantal status of
Israel does not necessarily imply any genetic superiority over other

26
But cf. Lev. 17:15-16, where life in the Land seems to obligate the foreigner
to observe purity prohibitions, whereas in Deuteronomy ethnic identity rather than
place of residence seems to be the central factor.
27
Exod. 22:30; Lev. 17:15-16, Deut. 14:21. But note Lev. 22:8, which, like Ezek.
44:31, imposes the prohibition only upon priests.
28
Ancient Near Eastern Texts (see n. 12), p. 204.
29
See Orlinsky, "Nationalism-Universalism," p. 210. But see also Ernst Simon,
"The Neighbor (Re'a) W h o m W e Shall Love," in Marvin Fox (ed.), Modem Jewish
Ethics: Theory and Practice (Columbus: O h i o State University, 1975), pp. 2 9 - 5 6 .
nations, either before or after the fact. As we have seen, some bib-
lical texts (e.g., Deut. 7:7-8) go out of their way to affirm that God's
choice of Israel is not a response to any innate traits or special ac-
complishments, and others (e.g., Amos 3:2) see in the covenantal
relationship a heightened vulnerability to punishment. T h e same texts
that affirm Israel's specialness can also insist that the specialness has
its source in the God who molds them for his purposes, often despite
and not because of their character (e.g., Deut. 9:7). Whether, in the
theology of the Hebrew Bible, non-Israelites can be excused for their
ignorance of God and his will is doubtful. What is not doubtful is
that the Hebrew Bible does not generally condemn them for their
differentness from Israel. T h e difference between the chosen and the
unchosen is not (as it often becomes in Christianity) the difference
between the saved and the damned.
In light of this possibility of respect for the non-Israelite, my second
point should come as no surprise: T h e same literature that insists, in
intensely particularistic terms, upon the special, separate status of Israel
can also insist, in intensely universalistic terms, upon special solici-
tude for the "stranger" or "resident alien," who is to be not only
tolerated, but helped and even loved, in part because of Israel's own
experience as strangers in Egypt (e.g., Exod. 23:9; Lev. 19:33-34;
Deut. 23:8). In some instances, the "stranger" or "resident alien" is
apparentiy a fellow Israelite who has lost his access to his ancestral
land, but in others (e.g., Exod. 12:48) he seems to be a foreigner. It
should not go unnoticed that this intense empathy for and sympathy
with the outsider is not peculiar to the prophets, but, as the ex-
amples above show, is characteristic of the Priesdy and Deuteronomic
literatures, which insist at least as forcefully upon the importance of
the distinction between Israel and the nations. T h e antique but re-
silient notion that involvement in covenant, ritual, and purity is in-
herently exclusivistic or even misanthropic must be laid to rest.
My last point about these discriminations involves the very definition
of Israel. Here we must be very careful to understand the netdesome
problems involved in the conception of ethnicity in the Hebrew Bible.
In the modern world, especially in the United States, there is an
overwhelming tendency to define ethnicity according to physical
characteristics (such as skin color) or language. In ancient Israel, the
former seems to have played no role whatsoever, and not much more
significance was attributed to the latter (we do not even know for sure
what the Hebrews called their language, "Hebrew" never appearing
in this meaning). Here the table of nations in Genesis 10 is highly
revealing. T h e Canaanites, who among the primeval nations should
be thought to resemble Israel most in race and language, are seen as
descended not from Noah's son Shem, ancestor of Israel, but from
his brother H a m (v. 6). This makes the Canaanites brothers with the
Egyptians, whose language was much more distandy related to theirs
than was Hebrew. T h e point is as simple as it is easily missed in the
modern world: the ancients did not perceive ethnicity the way m o d e m
physical anthropologists and linguists do. 30 They did not think that
their chosenness rested upon racial and cultural superiority or that
the unchosen status of outsiders followed from some innate deficiency
because they did not have a concept of race or culture at all in the
sense in which the term is used by moderns, whether open-minded
or bigoted, nationalistic or cosmopolitan. Indeed, one of the hardest
points of biblical thought to understand is the concept of peoplehood,
which is familial and natural without being racial and biologistic.
Yet without a grasp of that concept, no understanding of the problem
of universalism and particularism in the Hebrew Bible is possible.
There is a kind of pluralism inherent in those laws that distinguish
Israel and the nations, a conceptuality that avoids applying the same
norms to all families and nations, as if familial and national identities
were insignificant. But the fact remains that just as classical Judaism
is incompatible with racism, so is it incompatible with contemporary
egalitarianism. T h e universalistic thrust of modern, democratic, capi-
talistic societies undermines all particularisms, especially those based
on the claim of historical revelation.
Even when a particular biblical norm does not distinguish insiders
from outsiders, something essential in the ancient vision is, for better
or for worse, lost when the norm is described in the language of
universal values rather than the language of commandments, as in
the Torah itself. Commandments presuppose direct address: the king
commands his subjects, the suzerain his vassal. T h e force of the
commandment follows from the relationship in which it is embed-
ded, in this case, the relationship of love and loyalty demonstrated to
the satisfaction of all when YHWH took Israel out of Egypt to be his
own. Values, however, which suggests meanings embedded in a uni-
form reality, presume no such relationship.

30
See Robert R. Wilson, Genealog)! and History in the Biblical World (New Haven:
Yale University, 1977).
 T o be sure, this world of values is not altogether alien to the bib-
lical traditions. Wisdom Literature, as we have seen, often speaks in
such terms and, unlike the Torah, it does not ground ethics in the
particularistic traditions of Exodus and Sinai. Even in the Torah itself,
the larger meaning is sometimes noted (e.g., Exod. 23:25-26); not
every commandment is a mysterious ukase incomprehensible to those
upon whom it is enjoined. There is, in short, ample warrant in the
biblical tradition for discourse in the language of values, and in con-
temporary Western culture, where claims of revelation are generally
considered illicit in public disclosure, 31 this resort to the language of
values is a necessity for the participation of religious Jews.
Nonetheless, we must not lose sight of the limitation that the struc-
ture of Judaism places upon such language. Unchecked, the tendency
to recast commandments (mitsvot) as values renders the very existence
of the Jews superfluous. Cut loose from their covenantal matrix, the
commandments cease to bind those who observe them to the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Thus, although the prerequisites of pub-
lie discourse are not to be slighted, Jews interested in upholding their
millennial tradition must guard against importing those extramural
priorities into the discourse that takes place within the religious com-
munity, where a dialectical usage of the language of commandments
and the language of values is appropriate. Neither vocabulary should
be allowed to vanquish the other. Commandments and values are
distinct but related.

IV. Judaism for the Gentiles

We have seen that one possible definition of a universalistic religion

is a religion that accepts converts. O n this issue, there seem to have
been some ambiguity and significant evolution in biblical thought.
Some texts suggest that foreigners could indeed be integrated into
Israel. O n e thinks, for example, of the "mixed multitude" (ferev rav)
that went out of Egypt with the Israelites (Exod. 12:38). Rashi, the
great medieval commentator, is perhaps correct in glossing this as a
"mixture of converts from various nations" (although rabbinic défini-
tions of Jewishness and conversion must not be anachronistically

31
See Franklin I. Gamwell, "Religion and the Public Purpose," Journal of Religion
62 (1982), pp. 2 7 2 - 2 8 8 .
retrojected into the biblical period). A more explicit case is that of
Ruth, whose moving declaration to Naomi ("Your people will be my
people/And your God will be my God," 1:16) may echo some sort
of liturgy of naturalization. And then there is the enigmatic verse
toward the end of Esther that reports that "many from the peoples
of the country identified themselves with the Jews, for the fear of the
Jews had fallen upon them" (Esth. 8:17), which may indicate some
form of conversion.
Even if this is so, the degree of integration of a foreigner into
ancient Israel remains shrouded in obscurity. Note that even after
her naturalization, Ruth is still "Ruth the Moabite" (Ruth 4:5), and
not the "Israelite. 5 ' And while texts that exclude some groups alto-
gether and admit others only after two generations imply the accepta-
bility of those not so designated (Deut. 23:4, 8-9), Ezra and Nehemiah,
in demanding the dissolution of all intermarriages, seem not to have
known of any possibility of conversion for the foreign wives (Ezra 9 ‫־‬
10, Neh. 13:23-31). Also, whereas biblical law insists that "the alien
(ger) shall be to you like one of your citizens" (e.g., Lev. 19:34),32 the
very same equalizing law provides oblique evidence for the survival
of his identity as an alien. In short, like the dichotomy of insider-
outsider, the dichotomy between a religion that accepts converts and
one that does not is too simplistic to accommodate the complex and
shifting realities of biblical Israel. 33
Whatever the precise status of the "foreigner" after his "conversion,"
it is clear that especially after the Babylonian Exile (sixth century
BCE), we hear much about a class of people who wished to attach
themselves (nilwah) to Israel, e.g.,:
Happy is the man who does this,
The person who holds fast to it:
Who observes the Sabbath and does not profane it,
Who guards his hand so that it does no evil.
Let not the foreigner say,
Who has attached himself to YHWH:

32
This "theology of the stranger 1 ' has been astutely called an "anti-election the-
ology" by Jeremy Cott, "The Biblical Problem of Election," Journal of Ecumenical
Studies 21 (1984), pp. 2 0 5 - 2 0 7 . O n the large and complex question of the identity
of the ger, see Christiana van Houten, The Alien in Israelite Law ( J S O T Sup, 107;
Sheffield: J S O T Press, 1991) and Christoph Bultmann, Der Fremde in antiken Juda
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1992).
33
See J a c o b Milgrom, "Religious Conversion and the Revolt Model for the For-
mation of Israel," Journal of Biblical Literature 101 (1982), pp. 169-176.
 "YHWH will keep me apart from his people."

As for the foreigners who attach themselves to YHWH,

To minister for him and to love the name of YHWH,
And to become his servants,
All who observe the Sabbath and do not profane it,
And hold tightly to my Covenant—
These I shall bring to my sacred mountain,
And to them I shall give joy in my House of Prayer.
Their whole-offerings and their sacrifices
Shall find acceptance on my altar,
For my Temple shall be called,
"A House of Prayer for All Peoples."
Oracle of the Lord YHWH,
Who gathers the dispersed of Israel:
I will gather more to those already gathered.
(Isa. 56:2-3, 634(8‫־‬
O n e should guard against the assumption that this text indicates the
absorption of gentiles into Israel, as became possible in a later stage
of Jewish history. T h e text does not imply naturalization—the for-
eigner may well remain just that—but it does endorse the accepta-
bility of a gentile's participation in the cult of the God of Israel in
Jerusalem, provided that the gentile, accepts the Covenant. Here the
sign of the Covenant is the Sabbath, which functions as the conditio
sine qua non for cultic participation, like circumcision in some
Pentateuchal texts (e.g., Exod. 12:48-49).
Whether the oracle excerpted above anticipates the full absorption
of the foreigner into Israel or not, it certainly envisions an interna-
tional community of YHWHÌSÍS centered upon the YHWH-temple in
Jerusalem. Another oracle from the same collection goes further, ar-
guably envisioning foreigners serving as priests (kohanim) and Levites
(1lewiyim), previously hereditary offices (Isa. 66:18-21). Here, as in the
previously quoted passage, the new Exodus, the return of Israel from
its Babylonian dispersion, attracts the attention of the gentiles and
converts them to the worship of YHWH in his holy city and through
his particular liturgy. Retrospectively, the image recalls the "mixed
multitude" that went out of Egypt with Israel (Exod. 12:38). Pro-
spectively, it anticipates the saying of the Talmudic authority Rabbi
Elazar that "The Holy O n e (blessed be he) dispersed Israel into exile
among the nations only so that converts may be added to them." 35

34
O n this oracle, see further J o n D . Levenson, "The Temple and the World,"
Journal of Religion 6 4 (1984), pp. 2 9 1 - 2 9 3 .
35
b.Pes. 87b.
 T h e fact that so much of late biblical eschatology envisions the
reorientation of the nations toward YHWH is highly significant. 36 It
suggests something like a restoration of the situation of the primeval
history (Genesis 1-11), in which humanity was united, monotheistic,
and YHWHistic. History has come full circle, except that Israel does
not disappear into an undifferentiated humanity. Rather, it and the
nations survive, only now centered upon the service of YHWH, the
universal creator, king, and redeemer, in his cosmic capital, Jerusa-
lem. Israelite particularism, in this vision of things, is not destined to
disappear. It is destined to reach its universal horizon.
In post-biblical Judaism, it was certainly licit for a gentile to be
absorbed completely into the people Israel without the retention of
his foreign origin. A Greek who became a Jew was no longer, in any
sense, a Greek; he was ethnically and religiously Jewish. It is this
radical understanding of conversion that made possible the Talmudic
discussion of whether a convert commits incest if he marries a close
relative once the latter has also converted. 37 T h e question could arise
only because of a presumption that conversion has created a new
person who is now part of a new family, the biological family of
Israel, and is no longer related to his blood relatives. So zealous were
the rabbis to protect converts from discrimination that quite early they
enunciated the ruling that a J e w may not say to a convert, "Re-
member your former ancestors," a remark that in their mind consti-
tuted the "oppression of the stranger" forbidden in Exodus 22:20. 38
Some, following in the footsteps of the inspiring early twentieth-

36
E.g., also Zech. 8:20-23; Isa. 19:1625‫־‬. It is important to note that this reori-
entation often occurs after the nations experience a catastrophic judgment of YHWH
(e.g., Isa. 19:16). The pattern of calamity followed by restoration was an old one in
Israel. O n the dynamics of universalism and particularism in post-exilic literature,
see Moshe Weinfeld, "Universalism and Particularism in the Period of Exile and
Restoration," (in Hebrew) Tarbiz 33 (1964), pp. 2 2 8 - 2 4 2 . O n the dynamic in later
Judaism, as illustrated through the 'aleynu prayer, see Eugene B. Borowitz, "The
Dialectic of Jewish Particularity," Journal of Ecumenical Studies 8 (1971), pp. 560-574.
37
E.g., b. Feb. 22a. See also Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot 'Issurey Bi'ah 14:10-16.
38
MR. Metz. 4:10 (b.B.Metz. 58b). See also Shulkhan Arukh, Hoshen Hammishpat 228:2.
This is not, of course, to claim that the full acceptance of converts was (or is) a
consistent social reality or that resistance to converts and suspicion of them is not
to be found in rabbinic sources (note that a hohen may not marry a convert). It must
not be missed, however, that powerful halakhic and aggadic currents oppose and
mitigate this resistance and suspicion. Ironically, when the classic religious norms
fall away, as they have for most Jews in modern times, the acceptance of the con-
vert becomes more problematic and in some respects more difficult, since it be-
comes unclear what they have to do to become accepted and what it is exactly that
they are to be accepted into. In some ways, religion—even a religion as all-encom-
passing as rabbinic Judaism—is more easily changed than ethnicity or culture.
century theologian Franz Rosenzweig, have described Christianity as
the rays that shoot out into the dark night of "paganism" from the
fiery star that is Judaism: Christianity is Judaism for the gentiles. 39
Be they right or wrong, they have surely obscured the essential fact
that Judaism itself can also be Judaism for the gentiles.

V. Election and Equality

T h e early Christian Church claimed that it represented the univer-

salistic eschatological fulfillment of biblical prophecy. According to
this view, Judaism is to Christianity as exclusiveness is to inclusive-
ness, closedness to openness, particularism to universalism, or, not to
put too fine an edge on the matter in this post-Enlightenment era, as
bad is to good. T h e often cited prooftext for this assertion comes
from an early letter of the aposde Paul:
You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. As many of you
as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ as a garment.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor freeman, neither
male nor female. You are all one in Christ Jesus. If you are Chrises,
then you are the seed of Abraham, and so heirs according to the
promise. (Gal. 3:2629‫)־‬

In Paul's thinking, the way a person, J e w or gentile, falls heir to the

Abrahamic promise is not, as it was for the rabbis, through birth or
acceptance of the Torah, but through the pneumatic experience of
baptism, which effects a spiritual transformation. Birth as a J e w and
observance of the mitsvot are insufficient: It is faith that makes one
an Israelite. Faithless Jews have lost the status of Abraham's offspring.
They are like Ishmael, rejected in favor of Isaac, and like Esau, born
of Isaac yet mysteriously rejected by God in favor of his brother
Jacob. 4 0 Jews are branches mysteriously (and perhaps temporarily)
lopped off the tree to make room for the gentiles graciously being
grafted on through faith in Christ. 41

39
See Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and
Winston, 1970), pp. 3 3 6 - 3 7 9 . This is a translation of the second German edition
(1930). For a thorough discussion, see John T. Pawlikowski, Christ in the Light of the
Christian-Jewish Dialogue (Studies in Judaism and Christianity; A Stimulus Book; N e w
York: Paulist, 1982), pp. 8 - 3 5 .
40
Rom. 9:6-13. O n this, see Levenson, Death and Resurrection, chap. 15.
41
Rom. 11:13-18. But Paul's ambivalence does not allow us to make systematic
sense of his letters. Note his implication of the continued election of the Jews in
passages like Rom. 11:1-6, 19-24.
 T h e community that Paul envisions in Galatians is indeed one
that has abolished fundamental Jewish distinctions. But Paul's think-
ing is hardly universalisdc. He does not affirm the irrelevance of
Israelite identity, but only the uniqueness of faith and baptism as the
means of access to it. Whether one is heir to Abraham's promise still
means everything to Paul; although he specifies a different rite of
passage from that of the rabbis, like them, he still assumes that whether
one is in Israel or not is of supreme importance. He says that there
is neither J e w nor Greek among those in Christ and that whether one
is circumcised or not is of no account in Christ.42 But he does not say,
his theology does not allow him or any other individual Christian to
say, that whether one is "in Christ" or not is inconsequential and
that whether one is baptized or not is of no account. Only if he said
these things could he be termed a universalist in a sense in which
the rabbis were not. Indeed, it is striking that Paul's theology seeks
to uphold gentile Christians as legitimate heirs not of Adam (whom
he makes into the negative antipode of the Christ in Rom. 5:1221‫)־‬
nor of Noah (whom he never mentions, despite the rabbinic tradi-
dons of Noah as the prototypical righteous gentile) but of Abraham,
the first Jew, as it were (see esp. Romans 4). T o call early Christian
theology "inclusive," as is now often done, is to obscure the crucial
fact that it sought to include people only within a very particular
sub-category of universal humankind and did not affirm them within
their natural, Adamic state.
In point of fact, both Judaism and Christianity, to the extent that
they are true to their respective foundational literatures, must con-
tinue to affirm the essential dichotomy between insiders and outsid-
ers, even as they mitigate and complicate the dichotomy in various
ways. T h e only difference is that the majoritarian character of West-
ern Christianity tempts Christians to imagine that their religion is
universal, whereas minority groups are not similarly tempted. But
this seems to be changing. In a shrinking and often secularizing world,
Christians are becoming increasingly aware of their own particular-
ity and culture-conditionedness. Undoubtedly, many of them will
continue to aspire to Christianize the globe; many will continue to
adhere to an exclusivism as extreme as any in all of Judaism and

42
Gal. 3 : 2 6 - 2 9 and 5:6. For a hard-headed assessment of Paul's actual social
views, see G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University, 1981), pp. 103-111; 4 1 8 - 4 2 5 .
 more extreme than most, the exclusivism that affirms, in the words
of the Jesus of Johannine tradition, "No one comes to the father
except through me." 43 Nevertheless, the naive and unreflective con-
trast between a closed, ethnocentric Judaism and an open universal
Christianity is likely to appear increasingly incredible.
Indeed, both Jewish and Christian identity are now threatened by
an egalitarian theory of justice that is especially popular in contem-
porary America. This theory identifies justice not, as in the older
liberalism, with equality before the law of the pluralistic state, but,
increasingly, with equality of condition: inequities are seen as ipso
facto proof of iniquities, and distinctive roles are seen as inherendy
oppressive, unless they are freely chosen (in which case they cease to
be distinctive roles and become "lifestyles," or the like). Discrimina-
tion becomes the gravest of sins. (One sometimes suspects that in
some people's ethics it is the only sin left.)
Neither Judaism nor Christianity can accede in toto to this egalitar-
ian theory of justice without abandoning critical features of its foun-
dational literature and undermining its own basis of existence, since,
as we have seen, neither community advocates a natural and un-
differentiated humanity, even one with the most commendable values.
Rather, each community claims to be Israel and to give its members
a unique and otherwise unavailable opportunity for participation in
divine sonship. Neither Judaism nor Christianity can fully endorse
an ethic of voluntarism in which obligations and roles are always
freely chosen and can be resigned at will. Indeed, both communities
call for a freely given assent to an identity not devised or chosen by
persons, but conferred graciously by a mysterious deity, and both
have classically refused to recognize conversion to another identity,
religious or secular. 44 In the Bible, one sees an especially striking
example of this curious simultaneous affirmation of choice and fate
in Joshua's covenant ceremony at Shechem. In one breath Joshua
offers Israel the choice of which god(s) to serve, and then in the next
breath avers that if they choose any other than YHWH, YHWH will
annihilate them (Josh. 24:15, 20). In classical biblical and rabbinic
thought, whether Jews accept the mitsvot or not is their choice. But if
they choose not to do so, they choose death (Deut. 30:15-20).
Judaism cannot survive the obliteration of the distinction between

43
J o h n 14:6.
44
Similar statements could, mutatis mutandis, be made of Islam.
J e w and gentile (unless or until the nations convert to Judaism). Any
theory of justice that engages in wholesale disparagement of acci-
dents of birth and fated roles willy-nilly disparages Judaism. We have
seen that the Bible offers impressive resources for a doctrine of hu-
man equality and that Talmud and midrash continue this stream of
thought, endorsing a model of peoplehood that is non-racial and
non-genetic, yet familial and earthly. But we have also seen that the
sacred literature of Judaism legitimates and even mandates certain
forms of inequality. Modern Jews, especially in the West, have been
enthusiastic advocates of equality, in part because of their tradition,
in part because a persecuted group stands to gain from equalization.
But we must not lose sight of the essential distinction between the
idea of civic equality and a thorough-going egalitarianism that under-
mines Jewish existence itself. T h e current tendency to identify equal-
ity with justice poses both a theoretical and a practical challenge to
Judaism that we must not shrink from confronting.

VI. Can Theology be Secularized?

O u r discussion of universalism and particularism in the Bible has

sought to demonstrate the inadequacy of either term in dealing with
the subde, nuanced, and shifting biblical world view. O n the one
hand, the universality of God and of his realm are generally assumed.
O n the other, a single undifferentiated humanity is not assumed, except
occasionally in primordial times and in some of the Wisdom Litera-
ture. T h e fractured unity of primeval humanity is to be restored in
the reorientation of the nations toward YHWH enthroned in Jerusa-
lem. Particularism is, on the one hand, very evident in the central
concept of covenant: Israel is God's special possession, his firstborn
son, who is assigned special obligations, special privileges, and a special
destiny. Yet Israel exists only by the will and grace of God, and is
constituted for divine service.
C a n this world view, assembled synchronically out of the varying
materials in Scripture, survive the demise of its theological matrix? I
think not. We have already noted that when commandments are
recast in the language of values, the effect is to undermine subtly
and usually unintentionally the very basis of Jewish existence. Here,
a convenient universalism is purchased at the price of an inconvenient
and undemocratic particularism.
 Ironically, secularization can also result in the opposite extreme,
an exaggerated particularism purchased at the cost of the universal
dimension of Judaism. I am thinking, for example, of the currendy
c o m m o n habit of stressing Jewish survival as a goal in its own right.
O n occasion, we even hear Judaism itself commended on the grounds
that it contributes to Jewish survival: " K e e p kosher so that your
children won't intermarry." Instead of Israel's existing for the service
of G o d , G o d exists for the service of Israel. At its worst, the
absolutization of Jewish survival leads to the denial of ethical con-
straints on a Jewry in danger. And since Jewry is usually in danger,
this grants the Jews a moral carte blanche—quite the reverse of the
biblical intent. If "ethics is the Judaism of the assimilated," 45 then
nationalism is the Judaism of the secularized.
Nothing is more delicate than the interplay of universalism and
particularism in traditional Jewish theology. Take away the theology,
and the interplay disappears or mutates. Observance is precious, but
observance alone cannot ensure a J e w that it is the theology, rather
than one of its modern derivatives, that is most active in his or her
life. T h e r e is no substitute for theologically sophisticated scrutiny of
the sacred sources.

45
See n. 25.
 C H R I S T I A N I T Y A N D E T H N I C I T Y IN T H E G O S P E L
OF MATTHEW

David C. Sim

T h e question of ethnicity was of paramount importance in the for-

mative period of Christianity. T h a t this was the case should occasion
no surprise. T h e Christian church originated as a sect within J u d a -
ism which expressed certain convictions about a first century Jewish
figure, Jesus of Nazareth. At that time, as in all periods of Jewish
history, the various traditions which comprised Judaism took very
seriously the notion of ethnicity, and the messianic movement asso-
ciated with Jesus of Nazareth was no exception to this rule. So im-
portant was this issue that it threatened to tear apart the early church
in the first few decades of its existence. In this paper I wish to revisit
this ancient conflict between the various factions of the early church
and focus in particular on the Gospel of Matthew. Is the question of
ethnicity central for Matthew and, if it is, where do the evangelist
and his community stand in relation to it? In order to answer these
questions, it is necessary first to establish the relevant historical back-
ground. T o this end, we shall discuss the issue of ethnicity in both
first century Judaism and the primitive Christian movement prior to
our analysis of the Gospel of Matthew and the community for whom
it was written.

Ethnicity in First Century Judaism

As noted above, the question of ethnicity was of fundamental impor-

tance in all the traditions which comprised first century Judaism, and
it was inextricably tied in with the distinctive Jewish notion of cov-
enantal nomism. 1 The Hebrew scriptures detailed that God had chosen
the Jews to be his elect people and that the two parties had entered
into a holy covenant. T h e election of Israel gave this people special
status vis-à-vis the other nations of the world; those born Jews were

1
See E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, (London: SCM, 1977), pp. 75,
180, 236, 4 2 2 - 3 , 4 2 6 - 8 .
immediately members of the elect, while those born into the other
nations were not. It was primarily this belief in the "racial" aspect of
the covenant which made Judaism, in distinction to other religious
traditions, a religion which emphasised ethnicity. But it should be
noted that accompanying this privileged position of the Jews came
great responsibility. T h e Jews, both individually and collectively, were
expected to uphold the commandments of God which were collected
in their sacred writings. This means that while Jews belonged to the
covenant community by virtue of birth, they maintained their mem-
bership only by obedience to the torah which God had given specifi-
cally to them. These laws included, amongst others, the worship of
one God, circumcision for men as a sign of the covenant, sabbath
observance, and purity and dietary regulations. 2 Transgressions of
these laws, which could place one outside the covenant and so liable
for punishment, could be atoned for by true repentance and the
performance of sacrifice as prescribed in the torah. Membership in
ancient Judaism therefore involved two fundamental requirements;
ethnicity (Jewishness) and the obligations which this entailed accord-
ing to the covenant agreement.
When we turn to the sectarian groups which emerged in the sec-
ond temple period, we find a slight variation on this basic pattern.
As we might expect from minority groups which consciously differed
from the mainstream, these sects had a more narrow definition of
those Jews who were true to the covenant. Those who belonged to
the sect were the faithful remnant, while the Jews who remained
outside the sect were perceived to be apostates. For this reason, sal-
vation was dependent upon membership in the sect rather than
membership of the Jewish people. Outsiders could become members
and so join the "true Israel," but they were required to submit to
certain entrance requirements and then observe the distinctive regu-
Iations of the group, including its interpretation of the torah. This
sectarian variation on the normal pattern is important and we shall
return to it in due course. But before we leave this subject, it is
important to bear in mind that despite their differences with the larger
Jewish society, none of the major Jewish sects of this time eschewed
the fundamental notion of the privileged position of the people of

2
For a recent discussion of those laws affecting the majority of Jews, see E.P.
Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63 BCE-66 CE (London: SCM, 1992), pp. 1 9 0 ‫־‬
240.
Israel or the role of the torah. Membership in each sect was open
only to Jews and obedience to the Mosaic laws (though interpreted
differently by each sect) was always obligatory.
It is necessary at this point to examine more closely this concept
of ethnicity within Judaism at the time of the formation of the Chris-
dan church. O n e point worthy of mention is that the Jewish empha-
sis on ethnicity did not lead the Jews to distance themselves from the
Gentile world by remaining in the Jewish homeland. Most Jews of
this period were content to live in the diaspora among larger popu-
lations of Gentiles, though they took steps to restrict their contact
with Gentiles in order to preserve their social and ethnic identity.
For example, there is good evidence that Jews were unwilling to share
meals with their Gentile neighbours. 3 But an even more important
point, particularly in view of the tendency of the Jewish people to
erect boundaries between themselves and the Gentiles, is that their
notion of ethnic privilege never led them to exclude those of the
Gentile world from participation in their religion. 4 It is well known
that in the ancient world many Gentiles were attracted to Judaism.
They were especially impressed by its antiquity, its strict monotheism
and its high moral character as expressed in the Hebrew scriptures
and as exemplified by many of the Jews themselves. 5 Many of these
Gentiles can be categorised as God-fearers or sympathetic supporters
of Judaism who attended the synagogue and adopted certain Jewish
ways but who had not converted completely to Judaism. 6 We find
such people in the book of Acts (10:2, 22, 35; 13:16, 26, 43, 50;

3
See the comprehensive discussion of this theme in P.F. Esler, Community and
Gospel in Luke-Acts: The Social and Political Motivations of Lucan Theology (SNTSMS, 57;
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 7 3 - 8 6 and literature cited there.
4
So correcdy S. McKnight, A Light Among the Gentiles: Jewish Missionar)) Activity in
the Second Temple Period (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), p. 30.
5
O n the attractiveness of Judaism to the Gentiles in the ancient world, see the
detailed analysis by L.H. Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 177-287.
6
It has been argued that no such Gentile sympathisers existed in the ancient
world. So A.T. Kraabel, "The Disappearance of the 'God-Fearers'," Numen 28 (1981),
pp. 113-26. But Kraabel's views have been jusdy criticised and scholars continue to
support the existence of these Gentiles, though it is still a matter of dispute as to
whether they alone were known in the first century by the technical term "God-
fearers." For discussion of these issues, see T . M . Finn, "The God-Fearers Reconsid-
ered," C ß & 4 7 (1985), pp. 75-84; J.J. Collins. "A Symbol of Otherness: Circumci-
sion and Salvation in the First Century," i n j . Neusner and E.S. Frerichs (eds.), "To
See Ourselves As Others See Us": Christians, Jews, "Others" in late Antiquity (Chico, Califor-
nia: Scholars Press, 1985), pp. 179-85; E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in
 16:14; 17:4, 17; 18:7) and the picture there is confirmed by refer-
ences in the writings of Josephus to Gentiles who revered and fol-
lowed Jewish customs and laws (Against Apion 2.11, 40; Jewish War
2.20.2; 7.3.3; Antiquities 3.8.9; 20.8.11; cf. also 14.7.2).7 Precisely which
aspects of Judaism were adopted by any given Gentile God-fearer
was presumably a matter of personal choice, but the evidence sug-
gests that the laws concerning sabbath observance and dietary re-
strictions had widespread currency. 8 T h e status of these Gentile
sympathisers is evidenced by a passage in Josephus where he speaks
of a group of Gentiles in Antioch who were attracted to Jewish cer-
emonies and in some measure were incorporated with the Jews (Jewish
War 7.3.3). T h e fact that these Antiochene Gentiles were incorpo-
rated with the Jews only in some measure makes it clear that they
remained on the fringes of the Jewish community and were not fully
integrated into it.9 We might conclude that from the standpoint of
the Jews themselves these Gentile sympathisers were clearly different
from and superior to those Gentiles who showed no interest in J u d a -
ism, but they were not counted as Jews and so they remained out-
side the covenant community. 10
This brings us to a further important point in terms of Judaism
and its emphasis on ethnicity. Although the question of race was
crucial to their religion, the Jews never restricted membership of their
elect community only to those born Jews (though it would have been
understandable had they done so). In his apologetic response to Apion,
Josephus well makes the point that the Jewish practice of admitting
non-Jews into the people of Israel is more humane and magnani-
mous than the practice of the Spartans (and other Greeks) who rarely
granted citizenship to foreigners (Against Apion 2.37). Membership of
the people of Israel was therefore open to all, no matter whether
they were born Jewish or born to another race, and provision was

the Age of Jesus Christ, revised by G. Vermes, F. Millar, M. Black and M. Goodman,
(3 vols, in 4 parts; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1973, 1979, 1986, 1987), III. 1, pp.
160-9; J.A. Overman, "The God-Fearers: Some Neglected Features," JSNT 32 (1988),
pp. 17-26; A.F. Segal, "The Costs of Proselydsm and Conversion" in D.J. Lull
(ed.), Society of Biblical Literature 1988 Seminar Papers (Adanta: Scholars Press, 1988),
pp. 3 5 0 - 3 and, more recendy, McKnight, A Light Among the Gentiles, pp. 1 1 0 - 1 4 and
Feldman, Jew and Gentile, pp. 342.82‫־‬
7
For non-Jewish and non-Christian references to such sympathisers, see Feldman,
Jew and Gentile, pp. 344—8.
8
See Schürer et al, History, III. 1, p. 169.
9
Feldman, Jew and Gentile, p. 350.
10
Schürer et al, History, III. 1, p. 165.
made in Judaism for the full assimilation of converts into the cov-
enant community. T r u e converts or proselytes differed from the
God-fearers or sympathisers insofar as they had chosen to embrace
in full measure the Jewish way of life and all that the Jewish religion
required. As a result of their conversion, proselytes were now counted
as Jews and thus, unlike the God-fearers, they received the full
benefits of membership in the elect community. Because the fully-
committed proselyte was considered far superior to the less-committed
God-fearer, it is probably accurate to say that the level of commit-
ment attained by the God-fearer was never accepted by the Jews as
an end in itself; it was merely a preparatory stage before the ulti-
mate act of conversion.
For men such a conversion would normally have entailed circum-
cision of the foreskin." This practice was a definitive sign of the
covenant (Gen. 17:9-14) and there is good evidence that circumci-
sion was the usual requirement for male proselytes in the second
temple period. In the book of Judith (c. 160 BCE), Achior came to
believe in the God of Israel, so he was circumcised and admitted to
the people of Israel (14:10). Josephus reports that foreign male rulers
who wished to marry into the Herodian household were expected to
become Jews and be circumcised (,Antiquities 20.7.1, 3; cf. 16.7.5). T h e
Jewish historian also refers to two other instances of conversion. O n e
of these concerns the conversion of the Roman general, Metilius, at
the outbreak of the Jewish war (Jewish War 2.17.10). Having wit-
nessed the massacre of his soldiers by the Jews, Medlius begged for
mercy and promised to become a J e w by being circumcised. T h e
other instance is the conversion of king Izates (,Antiquities 20.2-4). Izates
wished to convert to Judaism and supposed that to do so entirely he
would need to be circumcised. His mother Queen Helena, though
herself a Jewish convert, attempted to dissuade him on account of
her belief that his subjects would not accept his conversion. Izates
then consulted Ananias, a Jewish merchant who had taught the king
and the royal household about Judaism. Like the king's mother,

11
T h e entry requirements for women proselytes in this period are not known. It
is possible, as some scholars have suggested, that they were baptised but there is no
concrete evidence to support this. See McKnight, A Light Among the Gentiles, p. 148
n. 41 for scholars holding this view. T h e one text which details a female conversion
to Judaism, the book of Joseph and Asenath, does not mention baptism as an essential
ritual for the proselyte; on the contrary, the conversion of Asenath is accomplished
by the rejection of idolatry (10:12-13; 11:4-5, 7-9), a long period of sincere repen-
tance ( 1 0 : 1 1 4 - 1 7,8‫)־‬and the confession of her sins (11:3-13:15).
Ananias saw the political complications of such a conversion as well
as the dangerous situation in which he himself would be placed, so
he advised the king that he might worship God without being cir-
cumcised. God would forgive him this oversight on the grounds that
circumstances dictated it. Izates was then visited by a Galilean named
Eleazar who upbraided the king for not following what was clearly
set down in the law, and Izates finally submitted to circumcision.
This text is instrucdve insofar as it reveals that under certain condi-
dons, in this case a set of extraordinary political circumstances and
a sense of self-preservation, individual Jews were prepared to forgo
the requirement of circumcision for converts. But the importance of
this narrative lies in the fact that circumcision as the normal rite of
entrance into Judaism is taken for granted. That Ananias says that
God will forgive the king for not undergoing the operation is a clear
indication that even in his understanding God expected his followers
to be circumcised in accordance with his law. T h e point of view
expressed by Izates himself and later by Eleazar, that (male) Gentiles
must be circumcised for full incorporation into the Jewish people,
must therefore be taken as the normative one.
T h e case of Ananias alerts us to the fact that there were some
Jews who, for whatever reason, did not require proselytes to undergo
circumcision. Philo provides another instance of this viewpoint when
he speaks of certain Alexandrian Jews who dismissed physical cir-
cumcision in preference to an allegorical understanding of the ritual.
In responding to these people, Philo himself accepts the allegorical
interpretation of circumcision but maintains that the physical aspect
is still essential and must be observed (De Migratione Abrahami 92). As
interesting as these exceptions are, they should not be overemphasised.
T h e evidence is clear that while a tiny number of Jews might have
waived the requirement of physical circumcision, for reasons of ide-
ology or expediency, the greater majority did not. For most Jews of
this period, circumcision was an essential ritual which marked (for
men) the crossing of the boundary between the Gentile and Jewish
worlds. 12 It was no doubt the danger and pain associated with this

12
Most scholars would largely agree with this judgement, though they might differ
on how widespread were the exceptions to the rule. Those who play down the
exceptions and claim that circumcision was always (with very few exceptions) a
requirement for male converts, the correct view in my opinion, include Schürer et
al, History, III. 1 pp. 169, 173; Feldman, Jew and Gentile, pp. 157-8, 2 9 7 - 8 , 299, 346,
3 4 7 - 8 , 3 5 0 - 1 and J. Nolland, "Uncircumcised Proselytes?," JSJ 12 (1981), pp. 173‫־‬
operation that prevented many Gentile men from leaving the world
of the God-fearer and entering the Jewish world in a complete manner.
T h e entry into the people of Israel by circumcision for Gentile
men (and perhaps baptism for Gentile women) brought with it both
privilege and obligation. As full members of the covenant commu-
nity and no longer sympathisers on the fringe, proselytes were now
counted among the elect and were, despite their origins, heirs to the
ancient promises concerning the people of Israel. But alongside this
privilege came the obligation to obey fully the law of God as given
in the Hebrew scriptures (and as interpreted by the particular Jewish
group into which they converted). This is evidenced by Paul when
he tells the Galatians that any (Gentile) man who receives circumci-
sion is bound to follow the law in its entirety (Gal. 5:3). Like any
racial Jew, Gentile proselytes were expected to satisfy all the require-
ments for maintaining membership in the covenant community. By
making these demands of its converts, Judaism was able to accept
outsiders into its privileged community without sacrificing its ethnic
identity.

Ethnicity in the Early Christian Church

It is appropriate at this point to turn to the early Christian church.

What role did ethnicity play in the identity and character of this
movement? T h e first thing which can be said is that in the first few
years of the church all of its members were Jews. At this time the
church counted among its numbers the disciples and the family of
Jesus, all Jews by birth, and perhaps another hundred people (so
Acts 1:15) who must also be reckoned as Jews since Luke refers to
the whole group as 'Hebrews' (cf. 6:1). T h e author of Acts gives no
hint that in this initial phase the Gentiles were ever approached by
or accepted into the Christian community in Jerusalem. In his early
speeches in Acts, Peter, the leader of the church, limits his procla-
mation solely to the Jews (Acts 2:5, 14, 22; 3:12), and only Jews are
said to have been won over by his message (cf. 2:41), including priests

94. O n the other hand, the alternative view which emphasises the exceptions and
upholds that there was more diversity within Judaism on this issue is represented by
McKnight, A Light Among the Gentiles, pp. 7 9 - 8 2 ; Collins, "A Symbol of Otherness,"
pp. 170-9; Segal, "Proselytism and Conversion," pp. 3 5 3 - 6 0 and N.J. McEleney,
"Conversion, Circumcision and the Law," NTS 20 (1974), pp. 3 2 8 3 3 ‫ ־‬.
 (7:7) and Pharisees (15:5). Also converted at this early time were a
number of Greek-speaking Jews from the diaspora who now resided
in Jerusalem. Acts introduces these "Hellenists" in chapter 6 and
they are said to count one proselyte, Nicolaus, among their number
(6:5). It seems that the Hellenists conducted their own mission in the
Greek-speaking synagogues of Jerusalem and attracted the anger of
the Jews there (6:9) on account of their criticism of the basic institu-
tions of Judaism, the law and the temple (6:13-14). T h e reason for
this radical stance of the Hellenists is not immediately clear. Some
scholars speculate that they were merely building upon Jesus' criti-
cisms of the law and the temple cult, 13 but it is more probable that
these diaspora Jews were influenced by the tendency, which Philo
both noted and opposed, to allegorise the torah and abandon its
literal interpretation. 14 In any event, the opposition the Hellenists
encountered led to the martyrdom of Stephen (6:8-7:60) and the
persecution of the rest which resulted in their hurried departure from
Jerusalem (8:2). Though containing a large measure of legendary
material, these initial chapters of Acts are probably correct in affirming
that up to the time of the expulsion of the Hellenists the Jerusalem
church was exclusively Jewish. 15 This is understandable, given that
the church confined itself to Jerusalem which was the heart of the
Jewish world and included few Gentiles among its permanent resi-
dents. Since no Gentiles had been actively approached and the church
had no Gentile members (as distinct from proselytes who were counted
as Jews), the grounds of admission for Gentiles into the primitive
Christian movement had not yet become an issue on the agenda.
But this situation was not to last.
It was the expulsion of the Hellenists from Jerusalem which proved
to be the impetus for the Christian Gentile mission. And it was only
when Gentiles were actively sought that the question of ethnicity in
relation to the Christian movement became a practical problem.

13
So M. Hengel, Between Jesus and Paul: Studies in the Earliest History of Christianity
(London: S C M , 1983), pp. 2 2 4 ‫ ־‬and E. Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles (Philadel-
phia: Westminster Press, 1971), pp. 2 6 7 - 8 .
14
See H. Räisenän, Jesus, Paul and Torah: Collected Essays ( J S N T S S , 43; Sheffield:
J S O T Press, 1992), pp. 190-1.
15
Not all scholars agree with this conclusion. Some would argue that while in
Jerusalem the Hellenists took their distinctive message not just to the Jews but to
the Gentiles as well. So Räisenän, Jesus, Paul and Torah, pp. 1 8 6 - 8 and Esler, Com-
munity and Gospel, pp. 157-9. T h e problem with this thesis, however, is that there is
no concrete evidence to support it.
 Scholars are in general agreement that the initial approach to the
Gentiles was begun by the law-critical Hellenists who travelled to
Antioch (Acts 11:19-21). 16 Now situated in a firmly Gentile environ-
ment, the Hellenists took their law-critical attitude to its logical con-
elusion and announced to the Gentiles that they could become full
followers of Jesus the messiah without requiring complete conversion
to Judaism by circumcision (for men) and obedience to the require-
ments of the torah. In other words, they proclaimed a message about
Jesus of Nazareth which effectively abandoned the Jewish notion of
ethnicity and the privilege of the covenant community. It was this
version of the Chrisdan message which the converted Paul embraced
when he settled in Antioch after his initial visit to Jerusalem (Gal.
1:18-20; Acts 11:25-6), and it was Paul who was destined to be-
come its greatest defender. In taking up the banner of the Hellenists,
Paul could later proclaim that since Christ is the end of the law
(Rom. 10:4) there is no longer J e w or Greek (Rom. 10:12; 1 Cor.
12:13; Gal. 3:28; cf. Col. 3:11), circumcision or uncircumcision (Gal.
6:15); privilege now rests with all who have faith in Christ regardless
of ethnicity and racial origins (Rom. 3:22). T h e fateful step of the
Hellenists in initially granting full membership to the Gentiles with-
out requiring them to convert in the normal Jewish manner is per-
haps the single most important event in the entire history of the
Christian church, and it raised for the first time the issue of ethnicity
and the place of Gentiles within the fledgling Christian movement.
Both Acts and the episdes of Paul testify that this development was
strongly opposed by certain members of the Jerusalem church.
Luke describes these opponents as the circumcision party (oi έκ
περιτομής; Acts 11:2), converted Pharisees who demanded that the
Gentiles be circumcised (if male) and obey the requirements of the
Mosaic law (Acts 15:1, 5). Paul refers to this group also as the cir-
cumcision party (Gal. 2:12) or false brethren (Gal. 2:4), who compel
circumcision (Gal. 6:12) and mutilate the flesh (Phil. 3:2). Much of
Paul's theological agenda, particularly in Galatians and Romans, was
devoted to disproving their position and defending his own law-free

16
So most scholars: see W.A. Meeks and R.L. Wilken, Jews and Christians in Antioch
in the First Four Centuries of the Common Era (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1978), pp. 1 3 -
14; M. Hengel, Acts and the History of Earliest Christianity (London: SCM, 1979), pp.
9 9 - 1 0 0 ; J.P. Meier, "Antioch," in R.E. Brown and J.P. Meier, Antioch and Rome
(New York: Paulist Press, 1983), p. 33 and G. Luedemann, Early Christianity according
to the Tradition in Acts: A Commentary (London: S C M , 1989), p. 136.
stance. Despite the quite unflattering portrayal of these people in
Acts and the Pauline letters (and in much of the scholarly literature
for that matter!), these believers in Jesus as the prophesied messiah
should be treated with both sympathy and empathy. They were not
conservative legalists who failed to understand the implications of
the Christ event, but ordinary Jews who clearly took seriously the
ancient Jewish traditions in the Hebrew scriptures which emphasised
the eternal covenant between God and the nation of Israel, and the
role which the law played in the context of that covenant. Unlike
the Hellenists and Paul, the circumcision party 17 saw nothing in the
life, death and resurrection of Jesus the messiah which abrogated
this fundamental principle of Judaism. T h e new revelation of the
Christ complemented rather than rescinded the ancient covenant
between God and his people. Given the traditional views of these
people, their attitude towards Gentile converts to their messianic
movement within Judaism is both understandable and logical. Gen-
tiles were welcome to join their Christian sect, but in accordance
with the covenant agreement they were expected to join the Jewish
people by circumcision (if male) and obey the demands of the torah.
It is essential to note, however, that this was only a preliminary step.
Despite the impression given by Paul and Acts, the circumcision party
had no intention of merely making Jews of Gentiles; on the con-
trary, they wished to make the Gentiles followers of Jesus the Christ.
O n their terms this process involved Gentiles first becoming Jews in
the usual manner and then entering their messianic sect, probably
through the ritual of baptism. They would remain in the community
by obeying the law (as the circumcision party understood it) and by
adopting the distinctive sectarian beliefs and practices of this messi-
anic group, whatever they might have been at that time. These
additional demands of initiation and adherence to specifically Chris-
tian beliefs and practices would also have been expected of Jewish
converts, a point which is often overlooked because our sources deal
only with the issue of Gentile converts. But it stands to reason that
the circumcision party, like the Q u m r a n community and other sec-
tarian groups, believed that mere Jewishness and obedience to the

17
Despite the fact that the term "the circumcision party" was almost certainly
coined by their opponents and not used as a self-designation, I will retain it for
want of a better alternative. By contrast with Paul and the author of Acts, I do not
use the term in a pejorative sense; it is intended merely to be descriptive of the
viewpoint of these people.
 law were no longer sufficient for salvation. While these two elements
were still essential prerequisites for these followers of Jesus, they were
now joined by other demands such as faith in Jesus as the proph-
esied messiah who was killed and then raised from the dead. When
we look at the standpoint of these people from this perspective, it is
simplistic to claim that they were interested only in "judaising" Gen-
tiles. A fairer assessment would say that they were interested in con-
verting all people, both J e w and Gentile, to the movement initiated
by God , s messiah, and for Gentiles this entailed a preliminary step
of conversion to the Jewish community according to the ancient
covenant between Israel and God.
T h e factional conflict between the Hellenists and the circumci-
sion party posed such a serious threat to the primitive Christian
movement that the so-called apostolic council was convened in the
year 48 to setde the matter. T h e law-free gospel of the Hellenist
Antiochene church was to be assessed by the leaders of the Jerusa-
lem church—James, the brother of Jesus, and the disciples, Peter
and J o h n . Paul, Barnabas and at least one other person were chosen
to represent the church in Antioch (Acts 15:2; Gal. 2:1-2). Precisely
what happened at this important meeting is difficult to determine
since our two accounts of these events, Acts 15 and Gal. 2:1-10,
contradict one another at many points. O n e thing which can be said
with some certainty is that the account in Acts of the outcome of
this meeting is especially difficult to accept as it stands. James, the
brother of Jesus proposes a compromise, the so-called apostolic de-
cree, which is accepted by all the members of the church (15:13-29).
According to this decree, the Gentile Christians do not need to be
circumcised and obey the whole torah, but they must observe a
number of laws akin to the levitical rules governing foreigners in the
land of Israel (Lev. 17-18); they were to abstain from idolatry and
unchastity, and refuse to eat blood and the meat from a strangled
animal. This compromise of J a m e s in Acts means essentially that
Gentiles could become followers of Jesus without converting to J u d a -
ism in the normal fashion. It granted full membership rights to un-
circumcised Gentiles who obeyed some of the Jewish laws. In short,
according to Luke's understanding, the decree gave God-fearers the
same status as proselytes. 18 T h e narrative in Acts presents the solu-
tion of James as definitive. All parties agreed to it (15:22) and never

18
So too T. Callan, "The Background of the Apostolic Decree (Acts 15:20, 29;
again does Acts refer to the status of the Gentiles in the Christian
church. It is presumed that the edict from J a m e s became normative
(cf. 21:25) and that the issue of ethnicity in the church had finally
been decided. 19
T h e Pauline version of the apostolic council and its aftermath
gives an entirely different picture. Paul knows nothing of such a
compromise of James, and he contradicts the Acts account by de-
daring that he would not compromise his position (Gal. 2:5) and
that after hearing his defence of his gospel, the leaders of the Jerusa-
lem church added nothing to him (Gal. 2:6). Apart from Paul's tes-
timony, there is another reason to doubt the compromise of J a m e s
as Acts reports. Such a solution would not have satisfied any of the
disputants who were at extreme ends of the theological spectrum.
T h e requirement that the Gentiles observe only some of the Mosaic
laws would have been just as unacceptable to the Hellenists and Paul
who demanded freedom from the law as to those of the circumcision
party who demanded its full observance. 20 In addition to this and
again by contrast with Acts, the Pauline episdes also make it clear
that the conflict between the two factions continued after the meet-
ing in Jerusalem. Although Paul affirms unequivocally that he sue-
cessfully put his case to the Jerusalem church and was permitted to
continue his law-free mission to the Gentiles, it seems likely that the
situation was not as clear as Paul would have us believe. T h e old
conflicts were not resolved in Jerusalem and they soon flared again.
Immediately after his narration of the apostolic council, Paul describes
an important incident which took place in Antioch (Gal. 2:1114‫)־‬.
Not long after the meeting in Jerusalem, Peter came to Antioch
and ate with the Gentile Christians until certain men came from
James in Jerusalem. Upon their arrival and fearing the circumcision
party, Peter withdrew from table-fellowship with the Gentiles. H e
was followed in this by Barnabas and the remainder of the Jewish
Christians in Antioch. Paul then openly opposed Peter to his face
and accused him of hypocrisy. How could Peter live like a Gentile
and not like a J e w and yet compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?

21:25)," CBQ 55 (1993), pp. 2 9 5 - 7 and A.J.M Wedderburn. "The 'Apostolic D e -

cree': Tradition and Redaction," NovT 35 (1993), pp. 3 7 6 - 7 .
19
P.J. Achtemeier, The Quest for Unity in the New Testament Church (Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1987), p. 42.
20
So correcdy, Achtemeier, Quest for Unity, pp. 5 4 - 5 . Even so, Achtemeier still
accepts the historicity of James ; compromise.
 Although scholars vary widely over the precise meaning of these events,
the simplest explanation is that the men from James represented the
circumcision party and they came to Antioch with the blessing of
J a m e s to impose their point of view. Gentile Christians could no
longer be full members of the Christian movement unless they ful-
filled the preliminary requirements of conversion to the Jewish faith
by circumcision (for men) and observance of the torah. 21 T h a t this
was the case is suggested by Paul's statement that in abiding by the
wishes of the visitors, Peter now compelled the Gentiles to live like
Jews. As most scholars acknowledge, Paul lost the batde at Antioch. 22
He left the city and began new missions in Asia Minor and Greece
where he converted many Gentiles to his law-free version of Chris-
tianity. But as Paul's letters testify, his conflict with the circumcision
party did not cease in Antioch. We know from the epistle to the
Galatians that members of this group travelled to Galatia to impose
their own form of Christianity on Paul's Gentile converts, and it is
likely that they were expected to arrive in the Philippian church as
well (Phil. 3:2-11). This evidence demonstrates that the issue of
ethnicity within the Christian church and the related problem of the
requirements for Gentile converts was not resolved either in Jerusa-
lem or in Antioch; these important questions remained contentious
throughout the lifetime of Paul and his opponents.
And these unresolved issues continued in the church for generations
after the time of Paul. T h e successors of Paul upheld his conviction
that Gentiles did not need to become Jews in order to become
Christians and they disputed with any Christians who held the opposite
point of view. This is well evidenced in the pastoral epistles (cf.
1 Tim. 1:4, 6 - 7 , 14; 4:3-5, 7; 2 Tim. 4:4; Tit. 3:9) and the letters
of Ignatius of Antioch (Mag. 8:1-10:3; Philad. 6:1-2; 8:2-9:2). O n
the other hand, the heirs of the circumcision party showed no inch-
nation to relinquish their law-observant stance. We know of second
century Jewish groups, such as the Nazarenes, the Ebionites and the
Elkesaites, who not only required circumcision and torah-observance

21
For defence of this interpretation, see Esler, Community and Gospel, pp. 8 7 - 8 ;
F. Watson, Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles: A Sociological Approach ( S N T S M S , 56; Cam-
bridge: University Press, 1986), pp. 54—5; H . D . Betz, Galatians (Hermeneia; Phila-
delphia: Fortress Press, 1979), pp. 1 1 1 - 1 2 and G. Howard, Paul: Crisis in Galatia
( S N T S M S , 35; Cambridge: University Press, second edition, 1990), pp. 2 4 - 8 .
22
See, most recendy, N. Taylor, Paul, Antioch and Jerusalem: A Study in Relationships
and Authority in Earliest Christianity ( J S N T S S , 66; Sheffield: J S O T Press, 1992), p. 137
and literature cited there.
as requirements for membership into the Christian community, but
also were overtly critical of Paul. 23 Their theology is well preserved
in a number of documents, including the pseudo-Clementine Recog-
nitions and Homilies, and the Kerygmata Petrou. Bearing in mind that
this intra-Christian conflict over the privileged position of Israel and
the role of the law in the Christian church continued well after the
time of Paul and his opponents, we may now turn our attention to
the Gospel of Matthew and the community for whom he wrote. How
did the evangelist and his church stand on this fundamental issue?
Did they agree with Paul and the Hellenists, or were they in agree-
ment with the circumcision party?

Ethnicity in the Gospel of Matthew

T h e answers to these questions are to be found in Matthew's state-

ments about the conditions of entry to his particular Christian com-
munity. As many scholars have noted, the final pericope of the Gospel
is of absolute importance in this respect. Here the risen Lord in-
structs his disciples to make disciples of all the nations (μαθητεύ-
σατε πάντα τα εθνη) by baptising them in the name of the father,
the son and the holy spirit and teaching them to observe all Jesus
c o m m a n d e d them (28:16-20). For many commentators this final
passage establishes two important things about the evangelist and his
community.
First, it can be inferred from the command to evangelise all the
nations that the Matthean church was directly involved in a mission
to the Gentiles. T h e phrase πάντα τα εθνη in 28:19 obviously refers
to the Gentile peoples, though there is some dispute as to whether it
includes the Jews as well. While some commentators argue that the
phrase alludes only to the Gentiles and so excludes the Jews from
the Matthean mission, 24 others contend that it includes both the

23
For discussion of these and other Jewish-Christian groups of the second and
later centuries, see A.F.J. Klijn and G.J. Reinink, Patristic Evidence for Jewish-Christian
Sects (Leiden: Brill, 1973). O n the question of the antipathy toward Paul of
Jewish-Christian groups and writings in the post-Pauline period, see G. Luedemann,
Opposition to Paul in Jewish Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), pp. 119-99.
24
See D.R.A. Hare and D.J. Harrington. '"Make Disciples of all the Gentiles'
(Mt 28:19)," CBQ 37 (1975), pp. 3 5 9 - 6 9 .
Gentiles and the Jews. 25 T h e second alternative is clearly the better
of the two since it is fully consistent with the meaning of the phrase
elsewhere in the Gospel, and it agrees with the evidence of the mission
discourse in chapter 10 which implies that the Matthean community
was to be actively involved in the Jewish mission until the parousia
(cf. 10:23).26 In any event, all scholars would agree that the risen
Christ's command to evangelise definitely applies to the Gentile world,
in which case it can be accepted that the Matthean community
participated in the Gentile mission. The second inference usually drawn
from this pericope is that the condition of entry to Matthew's com-
munity was baptism alone. Since there is no mention of circumcision
in the charge of the risen Lord (or elsewhere in the Gospel), it must
be concluded that the Matthean church did not expect its (male)
Gentile converts to undergo this ritual operation. In other words,
there was no expectation that Gentiles were to become Jews in order
to become (Matthean) Christians. If this were the case, then by ex-
tension of the argument it can be concluded further that the Gen-
tiles in the Matthean church were not bound by the obligation to
uphold the torah. 27 O n this understanding of this text, the evangelist
and his community had abandoned the notion of Jewish privilege
and the necessity of the law in the light of the Christ event. Conse-
quendy, they stood in the tradition of Paul and the Hellenists.
Both of these inferences can be questioned. Despite the widespread
point of view that the Matthean community was directiy involved in
the Gentile mission, a careful reading of the Gospel supports the
conclusion that the Matthean community had never conducted a
Gentile mission prior to the time of the Gospel's composition and
probably did not entertain initiating one in the foreseeable future. 28
T h e only text which seems to point to such a mission is indeed 28:19,

25
See J.P. Meier, "Nations or Gentiles in Matthew 28:19?," CBQ_ 39 (1977), pp.
94-102.
26
For detailed arguments, see S. Brown. "The Mission to Israel in Matthew's
Central Section (9:35-11:1)," ^ A W 69 (1978), pp. 7 4 - 5 ; J. Gnilka, Das Matthäus-
evangelium, ( H T K N T ; 2 vols., Freiburg: Herder, 1986, 1988), I, p. 379 and W.D.
Davies and D . C . Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to
Saint Matthew, (ICC; 2 vols.; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988, 1991), II, p. 190.
27
So Davies and Allison, Matthew, I, p. 193; Meier, "Antioch," p. 62; R.T. France,
Matthew: Evangelist and Teacher, (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1989), pp. 234—5 and D.A.
Hagner, "The Sitz im Leben of the Gospel of Matthew," in K.H. Richards (ed.), SBL
1985 Seminar Papers (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985), p. 255.
28
See D.C. Sim, "The Gospel of Matthew and the Gentiles," J W 57 (1995),
pp. 3 9 - 4 4 .
but we should be careful not to confuse acceptance of the validity of
a mission with active involvement in it. This point can be illustrated
by recalling Paul's account of the outcome of the apostolic council.
According to Paul, the council agreed upon a strict demarcation of
the Christian mission. H e would continue his mission to the Gentiles
and the Jerusalem authorities would conduct the mission to the Jews.
If this version of events can be trusted, then it is clear that each
party accepted the validity of the other's mission while taking no
part in it. There is no reason why the same cannot apply to the
Matthean community. It might have accepted the validity of the two
missions, and yet only carried out such a mission to the Jews. O n e
point in favour of this hypothesis is the well known fact that in
Matthew's Gospel Peter assumes far greater importance than in any
of the other three Gospels. O n the basis of a number of texts (16:18‫־‬
19; cf. 7:24—7), it seems likely that the Matthean community saw
itself standing firmly in the Petrine tradition. Now if Peter was del-
egated the aposde to the Jews as Paul tells us in Gal. 2:7, then we
should expect that Matthew's Petrine church would have followed
suit. For our purposes, there is no need press this point. Even if it is
conceded on the slim evidence of 28:19 that Matthew's church was
involved in a mission to the Gentiles, does it follow that this was a
law-free mission in the tradition of Paul and the Hellenists? I would
argue that such a conclusion is not warranted by the evidence of the
Gospel. Scholars have focused too much on the ritual of baptism in
28:19 and not sufficiently acknowledged the other requirements of
the risen Lord in the following verse. T h e new disciples are certainly
to be baptised, but they are also to be taught all that Jesus com-
manded and obey these teachings. When we examine the teaching
of Jesus in Matthew's Gospel, we can hardly fail to notice that it
places strong emphasis on obedience to the Mosaic torah.
This is nowhere more clearly stated than in 5 : 1 7 1 9 ‫ ־‬. In this im-
portant section of the sermon on the mount, Jesus instructs his dis-
ciples on the continued validity of the law in the light of his mission.
He begins with the strong affirmation that it should not be thought
that he has come to abolish the law and the prophets. O n the con-
trary, he has come to fulfil them. Jesus then states that not one iota
will pass from the law until heaven and earth pass away (or all is
accomplished), and he concludes by saying that whoever relaxes even
the least of these laws and teaches others to do so will be called least
(by those) in the kingdom of heaven. Despite the variety of scholarly
interpretations of these verses,29 their meaning for Matthew is crystal
clear; the whole law remains valid and is not abolished in the light
of the Christ event. In typical Jewish fashion, the Matthean Jesus
summarises the law under the principles of love of God and neighbour
(22:34-40; cf. 7:12), but in agreement with 5:19 he emphasises as
well that the less weighty commandments, such as those which pertain
to tithing mint, dill and cummin, must be obeyed to the full (23:23).
It can be inferred from 5:18 that Matthew does set a temporal limit
to the observance of the torah: the law remains in effect only until
the time of the parousia (heaven and earth passing away).30 Until
that time, however, the demands of the torah remain valid and binding
and must be obeyed by those who follow Jesus the messiah.
In response to the question of how the law is to be followed, the
evangelist provides a christological answer. T h e torah is to be fol-
lowed according to Jesus' definitive messianic exegesis; his authorita-
tive exposition is what brings the law to its fulfilment. This is illus-
trated by the antitheses (Matt. 5:21-48) where the Matthean Jesus
radicalises the law to include internal emotions along with external
actions. T h e same can be said of the conflict stories in the Gospel
where Jesus debates with his opponents on the subject of the law. In
the Marcan tradition, Jesus disputes with the Pharisees over the validity
of the law; Jesus either breaks the law or speaks against it and so
comes into conflict with the law-observant Pharisees (cf. Mark 3:23-
8; 3:1-6; 7:1-23; 10:2-12). But there is none of this in Matthew, as
we would expect from an author who unquestionably affirms the
necessity of keeping the whole torah (5:17-19). Rather, the conflict
always centres on the proper exegesis of the law (cf. Matt. 12:1—14:
15:1-20; 19:3-9; 22:34-46). Jesus constantly opposes the Pharisaic
oral interpretation of the torah, but he never speaks against the written
law itself. These points cannot be defended here in detail. It is suffi-
cient to draw attention to those recent studies of Matthew's treat-
ment of the torah which reach these conclusions after close exami-
nation of the relevant texts.31

29
See the major commentaries; for example, Davies and Allison, Matthew, I, pp.
4 8 2 - 9 8 and U. Luz, Matthew 1-7 (Minneapolis: Augsburg Press, 1989), pp. 2 5 9 - 6 9 .
30
For discussion of this point, see D.C. Sim, "The Meaning of παλλιγγενεσία in
Matthew 19:28," JSNT 50 (1993), p. 8 n. 12 and literature cited there.
31
So, with varying nuances, R. Mohrlang, Matthew and Paul: A Comparison of Ethical
Perspectives (SNTSMS, 48; Cambridge: University Press, 1984), pp. 726‫ ;־‬J.A. Overman,
Matthew's Gospel and Formative Judaism: The Social World of the Matthean Community
 Matthew's emphatic insistence that the torah still remains operative
in the light of the Christ event has certain corollaries. O n e of these is
that Matthew and his community accepted the normative Jewish view
regarding the covenant between Israel and God and the role which
the Mosaic law plays in the context of that covenant. But although
Matthew agrees that the people of Israel are in a privileged position
vis-à-vis the other nations of the world, this point requires clarifica-
tion. T h e latest studies of the social setting of the Matthean commu-
nity have emphasised its sectarian nature vis-à-vis the remainder of
the Jewish world. T h e church for whom the Gospel was written was
a self-defined sect in opposition to the coalition of forces which com-
prised formative Judaism in the years following the first Jewish war. 32
In an attempt to legitimate his group's sectarian status, the evangelist
denounces in the strongest terms the leaders of the opposition parent
body, the scribes and Pharisees (cf. 23:4—39), and consigns these people
as well as those who follow them to the eternal fires of Gehenna
(3:7-12; 23:15, 33; cf. 8:11-12; 19:28; 25:31-46). Like other sectarian
Jewish groups of the period, the Matthean community no longer saw
membership in the people of Israel and obedience to the law as
sufficient for salvation (cf. 3:8). For the evangelist, salvation now lay
with following the Christ. Consequendy, Jews who wished to be saved
and not condemned at the judgement needed to take the extra step
of conversion to Matthew's messianic sect and adopt its distinctive
sectarian beliefs and practices with regard to Jesus the messiah, in-
eluding obedience to his definitive exposition of the torah.
A second corollary of Matthew's viewpoint on the law concerns
the question of his stance within the early Christian factional dis-
pute. T h e complete contrast between Matthew's position on the torah
and Paul's comment that Christ is the end of the law (Rom. 10:4)
could not be more obvious, 33 and it reveals that the Matthean com-
munity stood in the tradition of, and chronologically between, the

(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), pp. 7 8 - 9 0 and A.J. Saldarini, Matthew's Chris-
tian-Jewish Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 124-64.
32
See especially the comprehensive treatments by Overman, Matthew's Gospel and
Formative Judaism and Saldarini, Matthew's Christian-Jewish Community. Cf. also
B. Przybylski, "The Setting of Matthean Anti-Judaism," in P. Richardson and
O. Granskou (eds.), Anti-Judaism in Early Christianity, Vol. I (Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier
Press, 1988), pp. 1 8 1 - 2 0 0 and G.N. Stanton, A Gospel for a New People: Studies in
Matthew (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1992), esp. pp. 8 5 - 1 0 7 .
33
See the comparison between Matthew and Paul on the issue of the law by
Mohrlang, Matthew and Paul, pp. 4 2 7 ‫ ־‬.
circumcision party which opposed Paul and the later Jewish Chris-
dan sects which so vilified him. In the light of this, the compara-
tively rare hypothesis that certain texts in the Gospel are directed
specifically against Paul (e.g. 5:19) or his law-free gospel (7:15-23;
13:41-2) warrants far more attention than it currendy commands. 34
T h e third corollary follows on from this. Matthew's acceptance of
the continuing validity of the old covenant between God and Israel
can only mean that any Gentile who wished to become a follower of
the messiah must become a member of the Jewish people as the first
decisive step prior to entering Matthew's sectarian (Christian) Jewish
community. This means of course that any male Gentile converts
were obliged to submit to circumcision. From Matthew's perspective,
uncircumcised male Gentiles who claim to follow Jesus might be
preferable to the scribes and Pharisees who oppose him, but without
full conversion to the nation of Israel they remain outside the Matthean
community just as much as any of Matthew's opponents.
It is sometimes suggested by scholars who acknowledge Matthew's
insistence on obedience to the torah that the Matthean community
differentiated between Jewish converts and Gentile converts on the
issue of the law and the necessity of circumcision for Gentile men.
W.D. Davies and D.C. Allison, for example, argue that Matthew
wished Jewish Christians to keep the law (so 5:17-19), but exempted
Gentile Christians from this requirement (so 28:16 35 .(20‫ ־‬A similar
view is proposed by U. Luz who suggests that Matthew distinguished
between the many demands of the Mosaic law. T h e more weighty
commandments concerned the moral law which all were expected to
follow, while the cultic and ritual requirements (including circumci-
sion) were of less importance and may have been dispensed with for
Gentile converts. 36 Yet another argument is that recendy proposed
by A.J. Saldarini who builds his case on the diversity of Jewish opin-
ion concerning the necessity of circumcision for entry to the Jewish

34
Those who have argued for an anti-Pauline polemic in the Gospel of Matthew
(or its sources) include T.W. Manson, The Sayings ofJesus (London: S C M , 1949), pp.
25, 154; S.G.F. Brandon, The Fall ofJerusalem and the Christian Church (London: SPCK,
1951), pp. 232-6; F.W. Beare, The Gospel according to Matthew (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,
1981), p. 141; H . D . Betz, Essays on the Sermon on the Mount (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1985), pp. 2 0 1 ‫ ־‬and A.F. Segal, "Matthew's Jewish Voice," in D.L. Balch
(ed.), Social History of the Matthean Community: Cross-Disciplinary Approaches (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 1991), pp. 2 1 . 2 ‫־‬
35
Davies and Allison, Matthew, 1, pp. 4 9 2 . 3 ‫־‬
36
Luz, Matthew, I, p. 86
community. Like some other Jews of this time, the Matthean com-
munity might have waived this ritual requirement for its (male) Gentile
converts in favour of baptism. 37 T h e major problem with all these
views is that the Matthean Jesus stipulates obedience to the whole
law without qualification, no matter how the constituent parts of the
law are ranked and no matter how many other Jews (no doubt a
very small number outside the Christian sphere) had decided to
abandon the need for circumcision. And he makes no distinction
between those born Jews and those born Gentiles. T h e words of the
Matthean Jesus in 5:17-19 have universal application which would
have made it impossible for Matthew's community to have included
Gentiles who did not obey all the regulations of the torah, including
circumcision for male converts.
This point is supported by the often ignored material in 18:15-17
which relates to forgiveness within the confines of the Matthean
community. It concludes on the solemn note that if a wrongdoer
does not repent, then he or she is to be treated as a Gentile and a
tax-collector (cf. also 5:46-7; 6:7-8, 32). While most scholars agree
that what is enjoined is the expulsion of the offender from the com-
munity, 38 they fail to draw the correct inference from this observation.
Since the unrepentant sinner is to be excluded in the same way as
Gentiles and tax-collectors are excluded, it must be inferred that
Gendles per se were not a part of the Matthean church; the text
would make little sense if they were. While this does not necessarily
mean that there were no persons of Gentile origin in this church, it
does mean that Matthew no longer considered them to be Gentiles.
Consequendy, he must have perceived such Gentile converts to his
community as Jews who, like the ethnic Jews in his community, were
to avoid contact with the Gentile world. And if these people were now
counted as Jews and no longer as Gentiles, then it stands to reason
that they had taken the preliminary step of conversion to Judaism
before entering Matthew's sectarian Jewish community. This is as
much as we would expect from a community for which not one jot
or titde of the law had been abrogated by the coming of the messiah.

37
Saldarini, Matthew's Christian-Jewish Community, pp. 156-60.
38
See G. Forkman, The Limits of the Religious Community: Expulsion from the Religious
Community within the Qumran Sect, within Rabbinic Judaism, and within Primitive Christianity
(CBNTS, 5; Lund: Gleerup, 1972), pp. 124-32. Cf. also Davies and Allison, Mat-
thew, II, p. 785; Overman, Matthew's Gospel and Formative Judaism, pp. 1 0 3 - 4 and
Meier, "Antioch," pp. 6 8 - 9 .
 Matthew's position on this question need not remain a theoretical
proposition. He provides a concrete example of the manner in which
Matthean Christians (as Jews) are to deal with those of the Gentile
world, and the role model is none other than Jesus himself. P.F.
Esler has drawn attention to the fact that in their respective narra-
tives about Jesus, Matthew and Mark differ considerably on the issue
of table-fellowship between Jews and Gentiles and much of the fol-
lowing discussion is indebted to Esler's work. 39 T h e relevant section
in Mark is 7:130‫־‬. In w . 123‫ ־‬Jesus disputes with the Pharisees
about defilement. T h e Pharisees accuse the disciples of eating with
unwashed hands (w. 2-5) to which Jesus responds, "There is noth-
ing outside a man which by going into him can defile him, but the
things which come out of him are what defile him" (v. 16). The
things which come from within and lead to defilement are later
identified as evil thoughts, fornication, envy, slander and a host of
other wicked emotions (w. 203‫)־‬. As for the things which enter a
person but do not lead to defilement, Mark leaves his readers in no
doubt that what Jesus meant here were the foods which the Phari-
sees (or the Jews) believed to be unclean. He makes this point by
appending in v. 19b, "Thus he made all foods clean." This Marcan
episode amounts essentially to an abolition of the Jewish dietary laws,
and it is no coincidence that it is followed by a practical application
of this new principle by the Marcan Jesus (w. 24—30). Jesus travels
to the Gentile region of Tyre and Sidon and enters a house there.
While in this house he is asked by a Syro-Phoenician (Gentile) woman
to heal her possessed daughter and, after some discussion, Jesus com-
plies with her request. T h e significant aspect of this story for our
purposes is not that Jesus heals a Gentile (from a distance!), but that
he willingly enters the house of a Gentile and by implication eats
with the Gentile householders (cf. the discussion about bread in w .
278‫)־‬. Since Jews normally avoided such practices on account of the
potential impurity of the food offered by Gentile hosts, the Marcan
Jesus is putting into practice his earlier principle that all foods are
clean so that now there is no barrier to separate table-fellowship
between Jews and Gentiles. This very Pauline stance indicates very
clearly Mark's position within the factional dispute in the early church,
just as Matthew's redaction of this Marcan material informs us about
his particular point of view.

39
Esler, Community and Gospel, pp. 8 9 - 9 3 .
 Matthew's revision of Mark 7:1-30 appears in 15:1-28. In the
conflict with the Pharisees over defilement (15:1 20‫)־‬, Matthew makes
two significant redactional changes to his Marcan source. T h e first is
that he omits Mark's interpretative statement that Jesus actually de-
clared all foods to be clean. Secondly, he appends 15:20 which makes
the point that, contrary to the Pharisaic teaching, eating with un-
washed hands does not cause defilement. By editing his source in
these ways, Matthew completely alters the meaning of the pericope.
No longer does Jesus abolish the Jewish dietary laws concerning
unclean food: rather, he speaks against the specific practice of the
Pharisees with respect to handwashing prior to eating. In other words,
he rejects the oral tradition of the Pharisees but he does not negate
the demands of the torah. Matthew's acceptance of the Jewish food
laws which restricted social intercourse between Jews and Gentiles is
affirmed in his account of the Gentile woman who seeks Jesus' help
(15:21-8). By contrast with the Marcan version, Matthew has the
contact between the two occur out in the open and not in the house
of a Gentile. This editorial change presents Jesus acting fully in ac-
cordance with the social conventions which Jews adopted in their
dealings with Gentiles, and it forestalls any suggestion that he broke
down the barriers between J e w and Gentile by sharing a table with
a Gentile. T h e fact that Matthew follows Mark in having Jesus be-
grudgingly heal the woman's daughter does not alter this in any way.
T h e messiah might have compassion on sick Gentiles, but he still
observes the practices which preserved the social and ethnic identity
of the Jews. T h e example of Jesus clearly serves as a role model for
the Matthean community and it demonstrates in practical terms the
outsider status of the Gentiles in relation to it (cf. 18:17). Like most
Jews, including those of circumcision party which opposed Paul at
Antioch, the evangelist and his church would not countenance mix-
ing freely with Gentiles for risk of breaching the dietary and purity
laws. This typically Jewish attitude would have made it impossible
for there to have been uncircumcised (if male), law-free Gentiles in
the Matthean church alongside circumcised (if male) law-observant
Jews. Full incorporation of the Gentiles into this Jewish community
required no less than full conversion to the people of Israel as a
necessary preliminary step.
But if it is true that this Christian Jewish group demanded obedience
to the torah of its Gentile converts, including circumcision for men,
then why does Matthew in 28:19 mention baptism and not circum-
cision as the decisive ritual for entry into his Christian community?
This is a valid question to which I would suggest one of two answers
in response. T h e first of these takes as its starting point the thesis,
which was stated above, that the Matthean community was engaged
in a mission solely to the Jews and not to the Gendles. If this were
indeed the case, then a reference to circumcision as the mark of
entry to the Matthean community would be superfluous, since any
prospective male converts would already have been circumcised.
Matthew understandably mentions baptism alone for this was the
(Christian) ritual which inducted converting Jews to his messianic sect.
But if it is accepted in accord with the scholarly consensus that the
Matthean church conducted a mission to the Gentiles, then I would
offer a second response which runs along similar lines.
T h e evangelist's acceptance of the privilege of Israel and the ne-
cessity of law-observance for remaining in the covenant means that
only Jews could become followers of Jesus the messiah. It stands to
reason then that Matthew focuses on the entry requirements for that
ethnic group alone. There is no need to mention circumcision for
(male) Gentile converts because Matthew was concerned not with
the preliminary step of conversion to the Jewish nation, but with the
specifically Christian ritual which admitted all Jews, whether by birth
or proselytism, to his sectarian Jewish group. It is therefore presumed
by author and reader alike that any Gentiles who wished to join
their messianic sect must proselytise first in order to satisfy the basic
requirements for admission; circumcision for male Gentiles is simply
taken for granted. 40 We can illustrate this point by referring to the
admission procedures of a contemporary Jewish sect, the Q u m r a n
community. This sectarian group counted proselytes among its mem-
bers, even though they were ranked at the bottom of the hierarchy
(CD 14:4-6). Yet the complex admission requirements of this com-
munity which took years to complete (cf. 1QS 6:13-23) say nothing
about circumcision. T h e reason for this is that only Jews could join
the Q u m r a n community and its entry requirements simply presumed
that potential Gentile members would become Jews as a necessary

40
T h e view that Matthew assumes rather than states the necessity for circumci-
sion is affirmed by Mohrlang, Matthew and. Paul, pp. 44—5; A . J . Levine, The Social
and Ethnic Dimensions of Matthean Salvation History: 'Go nowhere among the Gentiles.. . '
(Matt. 10:5b) (SBEC, 14; Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1988), pp. 178-85 and
L.M. White, "Crisis Management and Boundary Maintenance: T h e Social Location
of the Matthean Community," in Balch, Social History, pp. 2 4 1 - 2 , n. 100.
first step. I would suggest that much the same applied to the Matthean
community. As further evidence that Matthew presumes the neces-
sity of circumcision, we might also mention that when the evangelist
refers to Pharisaic proselytism, he does not mention circumcision for
the obvious reason that again it would have been taken for granted
by his readers. Matt. 28:19 should not be read any differently. Fi-
nally, had the Matthean community waived this most Jewish of prac-
tices for Gentile converts, we should expect that some account of it
(and justification for it) would have been included in the pericopae
which treat his community's conflict with formative Judaism. 4 1 T h a t
there is no mention of this subject must be taken to mean that cir-
cumcision was not an issue between the Matthean community and
its opponents, and this could only be the case if both groups agreed
on the necessity of this ritual.

Conclusions

T h e purpose of this study was to examine the question of Christian-

ity and ethnicity in the Gospel of Matthew. T h e results, I would
argue, take to the logical conclusion the latest studies on the social
setting of the Matthean community which have emphasised its sec-
tarian nature vis-à-vis the remainder of the Jewish world. It was argued
that the sectarian Jewish Matthean community accepted the distinc-
tive Jewish notion of the privileged position of the Jewish nation in
the light of its ancient covenant with God. Consequently, it affirmed
that the covenant agreement entailed following the torah as written
in the Hebrew scriptures. T h e coming of Jesus the messiah in no
way rescinded this notion, but served rather to confirm and clarify
it. T h e Matthean community saw the revelation brought by the Christ,
in both his earthly and risen states, as complementing the old revela-
tion to Moses and providing it with its definitive interpretation. T h e
corollary of this position is that only Jews could share in the salva-
tion brought by the Christ. But Matthew is just as clear that not all
Jews would find the salvation which was offered to them. T r u e to his
sectarian standpoint, the evangelist maintains that membership of the

41
So correctly A.J. Saldarini, "The Gospel of Matthew and Jewish-Christian
Conflict," in Balch, Social History, p. 49 n. 38. In view of Saldarini's latest study, he
appears to have changed his mind on the significance of this point. See n. 37 above.
people of Israel cannot guarantee salvation; Jews must now become
followers of the Christ and join the messianic movement (or Matthean
community) which he initiated. This could be done by submitting to
the Christian rite of baptism and adhering to its distinctive Christian
beliefs and practices, including its exposition of the law.
Since Jews alone could be members of the Matthean community,
it follows that it would have accepted Gentiles only after they had
first joined the privileged but law-obligated people of Israel. For men
this would have involved circumcision of the foreskin as the definitive
mark of the covenant between God and his people, and for people
of either gender obedience to God's commandments as laid down in
the torah. After this necessary step such proselytes would then be
inducted into Matthew's sectarian Jewish group in the same manner
as those who were Jews by birth. Ethnicity was therefore part and
parcel of Matthean Christianity and the Gospel which represented
it. In terms of the factional dispute in the early church, the Matthean
community stands firmly in the tradition of the earlier circumcision
party which opposed Paul. By direct contrast with the proclamation
of Paul, Matthew attests that Christ is not the end of the law (cf.
Matt. 5:17-19) and that in view of the Christ event there is still J e w
and Gentile, circumcision and uncircumcision (cf. Matt. 18:17).
 'NEITHER J E W N O R GREEK': MULTICULTURALISM
A N D T H E N E W P E R S P E C T I V E O N PAUL

J o h n M.G. Barclay

What is at issue in Paul's critique of his contemporary Judaism? In

Galatians, where it first comes to expression, Paul contrasts "faith"
with "works of the law" (2:16), he plays off "spirit" against "flesh"
(3:3) and he declares that, in Christ, "there is neither J e w nor Greek"
(3:28). Such a multiplicity of motifs makes it possible to construe his
critique in many different ways. Is there a principle by which "faith"
is superior to "works (of the law)"? Is Judaism in some sense in-
herendy "fleshly"? Is the issue the equalizing of J e w and Gentile in
Christ? W h a t is it about his "former life in Judaism" (1:1314‫ )־־‬that
Paul now finds inadequate?
In their answers to such questions, interpreters of Paul reveal more
than simply their attentiveness to the text. T h e framework within
which they conduct their analysis of Paul indicates much about their
own intellectual and social context. T o assess how Paul's varied ar-
guments hold together, and to do more than simply repeat the terms
in which he expresses them, interpreters have to place Paul's theol-
ogy within a conceptual framework which makes sense in their own
day. T h e history of the interpretation of Paul shows the different
modes in which Paul's theology has been construed, modes which
naturally (and properly) reflect the social and cultural questions domi-
nant in the interpreter's environment.
When F.C. Baur took Paul to articulate "the principle of Christian
universalism as a thing essentially opposed to Jewish particularism,"
his reading of Paul was clearly influenced by nineteenth century notions
of cultural and historical progress: according to these canons, Judaism
was "a religion based on law" and had only "a subordinate and
secondary place in the history of the religious development of man-
kind," while Christianity constituted "the absolute religion, the religion
of the spirit and of freedom." 1 'Jewish particularism . . . is but a stage,

1
F.C. Baur, The Church History of the First Three Centuries Vol. I (E.T. by A. Menzies
from 3rd edition; London/Edinburgh: Williams & Norgate, 1878), pp. 47, 57; Paul,
The Apostle of Jesus Christ Vol. I (E.T. by A. Menzies from 2nd edition; L o n d o n /
Edinburgh: Williams & Norgate, 1876), p. 255.
a stepping-stone to the universalism of Christianity, in which all nations
should be embraced." 2 History determined that "it was necessary that
the particularism of Judaism which opposed to the heathen world so
repellent a demeanour and such offensive claims, should be uprooted,
and that the baselessness of its prejudices and pretensions, of the
privilege and the superiority it asserted, [be] fully exposed to the
world's eye. This was the service which the aposde did to mankind
by his magnificent dialectic." 3 From such soil grew the confident plant
of "Culture Protestantism" and in it the seed of anti-Semitism could
find fateful nourishment.
T h e new readings of Paul which developed out of the "theology
of crisis" in the middle decades of this century were no less indebted
to their social and intellectual milieu. From Bultmann's synthesis of
Lutheran theology and existentialist philosophy Paul emerged as
exposing a fundamental human perversion, our desire to justify our-
selves. In Paul, to live "according to the flesh" designates "to trust in
one's own self as being able to procure life by the use of the earthly
and through one's own strength and accomplishment"—an illusory
goal to which we are lured by the law. 4 Thus where Paul attacks
Judaism under the rubric of "flesh" and "works of the law," it is this
false hope of self-righteousness, and the false pride which it gener-
ates, which is his real target: "A specifically human striving has merely
taken on its culturally, and in point of time, individually distinct form
in Judaism." 5 Such a reading of Paul clearly represents a powerful
combination of Lutheranism and Western, specifically existentialist,
individualism.
At the present time a new reading of Paul has gained currency—
in some circles the status of consensus—which radically opposes the
"Lutheran" Paul and claims a greater historical sensitivity to the
dynamics of Paul's controversies. Of course this interpretation, like
all its predecessors, is influenced by current social and ideological

2
Paul, p. 309.
3
Church History, p. 73.
4
R. Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament Vol. I (E.T. by K. Grobel; London:
S C M Press, 1952), p. 239.
5
"Christ the End of the Law," in Essays Philosophical and Theological (E.T. b y J . C . G .
Greig; London: S C M Press, 1955), p. 43. Cf. Ε. Käsemann, "Paul and Israel," in
New Testament Questions of Today (E.T. by W.J. Montague, London: S C M Press, 1969),
pp. 183-87. For further analysis see F. Watson, Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 2 1 0 ‫־‬ and J.K. Riches, A Century of
New Testament Study (London: Lutterworth Press, 1993), pp. 5 0 - 8 8 .
currents, although such influences have rarely been noted and few of
its practitioners seem conscious of the fact. In this essay I wish to
outline, first, the main elements of this "new perspective" on Paul (I)
and then attempt to identify the social and cultural factors which
influence it and account for its popularity (II). I shall then describe
a new and important discussion of Paul by Daniel Boyarin, who has
built on the new perspective to address, from a Jewish standpoint,
modern questions of multiculturalism (III). Finally, in dialogue with
Boyarin, I shall outline my own reading of Paul as a potential re-
source for our multicultural society (IV).

I. The New Perspective on Paul

T h e new era in interpretation of Paul is generally recognized to have

its starting point in an essay by Krister Stendahl on "The Aposde
Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West." 6 Here, claiming
to "renew our acquaintance with Paul after nineteen hundred years"
(p. 78, note), Stendahl challenged not just the Lutheran-Bultmannian
consensus but the whole Western tradition of Pauline interpretation
which had read Paul from the standpoint of the individual's troubled
conscience and taken his doctrine of justification by faith to consti-
tute the solution to the sinner's quest for a gracious God. For Stendahl,
Paul's theology was primarily concerned not with any such general
human predicament (first invented, he argued, by Augustine) but with
the immediate social issue of the integration of Gentiles into the
Messianic community. T h e law was a matter of controversy for Paul
not because of its temptation to "legalism" but because some at-
tempted to impose it on Gentile converts, while he asserted that
salvation was "open to both Jews and Gentiles in Christ" (p. 80).
Thus in Stendahl's view the doctrine of justification by faith "was
hammered out by Paul for the very specific and limited purpose of
defending the rights of Gentile converts to be full and genuine heirs
to the promises of God to Israel." 7
It is important to note the words "specific" and "limited" in this
statement. In asserting that Paul struggled to make salvation "open

6
First published in English in 1963 and subsequendy available in Paul among Jews
and Gentiles (London: S C M Press, 1977), pp. 7 8 - 9 6 .
7
Paul among Jews and Gentiles, p. 2.
to both Jews and Gentiles," Stendahl's reading of Paul bears some
comparison with Baur's emphasis on Pauline "universalism" and might
appear to renew Baur's view of Judaism as "particularist" and "sec-
ondary." But Stendahl insists that Paul's doctrine is only apologetic:
it does not at the same time constitute a polemic against Judaism.
Paul was merely concerned to defend "the right of Gentiles to be
full members of the people of God;" he is only against "Gentiles sub-
mitting to circumcision and food laws." 8 Thus, although Stendahl is
conscious that his reading of Paul "opens up a new perspective for
systematic theology and practical theology," he is especially concerned
that it should not be employed for any form of Christian anti-
Semitism. 9
As is well-known, the figure who ensured the full impact of the
new perspective was E.P. Sanders, whose Paul and Palestinian Judaism
changed the course of Pauline studies in English-speaking scholar-
ship. 10 T h e most immediately significant aspect of this book was its
demonstration, from detailed analysis of a huge range of literature,
that Palestinian Judaism of the first century did not correspond to
the Christian caricature of a legalistic religion, but was based on
confidence in covenant grace, within which law-observance took place
(constituting what Sanders called "covenantal nomism"). Yet, unlike
Stendahl, Sanders saw Paul's theology as in some sense fundamentally
opposed to Judaism, and if this was not for the reasons advanced by
the Bultmannian consensus, what explanation could be offered? Sand-
ers' analysis of Pauline theology marginalized the theme of justifica-
tion by faith (following Schweitzer) and found the centre of Paul's
thought to lie in the notion of the believer's new location "in Christ,"
awaiting his imminent return ("participationist eschatology"). Thus,
the deficiency of non-believing Jews lay not in some inherent fault in
their religion, but simply in their not being in Christ: "this is what
Paul finds wrong in Judaism: it is not Christianity" (p. 552).
Sanders himself was aware that this was not an entirely satisfac-

8
Paul among Jews and Gentiles, p. 130.
9
Paul among Jews and Gentiles, pp. 95, 126-33. Note that the phrase "new per-
spective" was coined by Stendahl, and in a hermeneutical context: "a new perspec-
tive for systematic and practical theology" (p. 95, my italics). While combatting what
he understood to be anachronistic readings of Paul, Stendahl did not regard his
work as being of merely historical interest.
10
London: S C M Press, 1977. Although it has been translated into German, its
reception in German scholarship has been much less enthusiastic.
tory analysis, and he augmented it somewhat in his subsequent book,
Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People.11 Here he grappled at greater length
with Paul's polemic against the law, noting the many different ways
in which its deficiencies are described. H e concluded that Paul did
not critique Jews for boasting in the achievement of good works, but
still had two principal reasons for excluding "justification by works
of the law." O n e was Paul's Christological exclusivism (if justificadon
was made available through Christ, it cannot be by means of the
law, Gal. 2:21). T h e other was his commitment to the Gentile mis-
sion, which necessarily questioned the authority of the law and im-
plicitly bracketed out those aspects of the law which Paul did not
wish to have imposed on his Gentile converts (circumcision, Sabbath
observance and food laws).
Thus both Stendahl and Sanders highlighted the social dimensions
of Paul's theology, specifically his commitment to integrate Jews and
Gentiles in the church. Sanders encapsulated the novelty of this reading
of Paul when he wrote:
T h e s u b j e c t o f G a l a t i a n s is n o t w h e t h e r o r n o t h u m a n s , a b s t r a c t l y
conceived, c a n by g o o d deeds earn e n o u g h merit to b e declared right-
e o u s a t t h e j u d g m e n t ; it is t h e c o n d i t i o n o n w h i c h G e n t i l e s e n t e r t h e
p e o p l e of G o d . . . T h e s u p p o s e d conflict b e t w e e n " d o i n g " as such a n d
" f a i t h " as s u c h is s i m p l y n o t p r e s e n t i n G a l a t i a n s . W h a t w a s a t s t a k e
w a s n o t a w a y o f life s u m m a r i z e d b y t h e w o r d " t r u s t " v e r s u s a m o d e
o f life s u m m a r i z e d b y " r e q u i r e m e n t s , " b u t w h e t h e r o r n o t t h e r e q u i r e -
m e n t f o r m e m b e r s h i p i n t o t h e I s r a e l o f G o d w o u l d r e s u l t in t h e r e
being "neither J e w nor Greek."12

This new perspective on Paul has been widely adopted over the last
ten years both in Britain and in North America. 13 A particularly
prominent exponent has been J a m e s D.G. Dunn, who in numerous
essays and in major commentaries on Romans and Galatians has

11
Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983.
12
Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People, pp. 18, 159.
13
A m o n g British scholars one may note, besides J . D . G . D u n n (see below),
F. Watson, Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles‫׳‬, J. Ziesler, Paul's Letter to the Romans (TPI
N e w Testament Commentaries; London: SCM; Philadelphia: Trinity Press Interna-
ti û nal, 1989); N . T . Wright, The Climax of the Covenant (Edinburgh: Τ & Τ Clark,
1991); W.S. Campbell, Paul's Gospel in an Intercultural Context (Frankfurt am Main:
Peter Lang, 1992). I made my own contribution in Obeying the Truth: A Study of Paul's
Ethics in Galatians (Edinburgh: Τ & Τ Clark, 1988; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991).
In North America, besides J.G. Gager and L. Gaston (see below, n. 23) see, e.g.,
N. Elliott, The Rhetoric of Romans: Argumentative Restraint and Strategy and Paul's Dialogue
with Judaism (Sheffield: J S O T Press, 1990) and S.K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).
employed the new perspective in exegesis of the key Pauline texts. 14
Particularly noticeable in Dunn's reading of Paul is his exploration
of the social aspects of Paul's critical engagement with Judaism.
Highlighting the "social function" of the law in distinguishing Jews
from Gentiles, D u n n identifies the "works of the law" against which
Paul polemicizes as particularly those "boundary markers" which
identified Jews in Graeco-Roman society: circumcision, food laws and
Sabbath observance. Thus, like Stendahl and Sanders, D u n n consid-
ers that "the leading edge of Paul's theological thinking was the
conviction that God's purpose embraced Gentile as well as Jew, not
the question of how a guilty m a n might find a gracious God.'" 5 But
he develops this further than his predecessors in specifying that Paul's
polemic was directed against:
t h o s e w h o , in his j u d g e m e n t , w e r e p u t t i n g t o o m u c h w e i g h t o n t h e
distinctiveness of J e w s f r o m Gentiles, a n d o n the special laws w h i c h
f o r m e d the b o u n d a r y markers between them, those w h o rested their
c o n f i d e n c e in I s r a e l ' s " f a v o u r e d n a t i o n " s t a t u s , t h o s e w h o i n v e s t e d t h e i r
i d e n t i t y t o o f a r i n t h e p r e s u m p t i o n t h a t I s r a e l w a s set a p a r t f r o m " t h e
nations.'"6

In such statements it is possible to hear echoes of Baur's representa-

tion of Judaism as a "particularist" religion with special "prejudices"
and "pretensions." But it is important to note that Dunn's analysis is
shorn of Baur's claim for Christianity as the "absolute religion." Dunn
is also at pains to insist that Paul was not rejecting Judaism as such,
only a particular interpretation and application of the Jewish tradi-
tion. In Dunn's analysis, the objects of Paul's critique were "nation-
alistic presumption" and "ethnic restrictiveness," neither of which were,
in Paul's view, a proper interpretation of the Jewish Scriptures. 17 And
although these features may have been typical of the Judaism of his
day, Dunn is careful to keep his discourse strictly historical and not
to suggest that such features typify Judaism as such.iS

14
T h e chief essays are collected in Jesus, Paul and the Law (London: SPCK; Lou-
isville: Westminster/John K n o x Press, 1990). Dunn's commentaries are Romans 1-8
and Romans 9~16 (Word Biblical Commentary 38a and 38b, Dallas: Word, 1988);
The Epistle to the Galatians (Black's N e w Testament Commentaries; London: A & C
Black; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1993).
15
Jesus, Paul and the Law, p. 232.
16
The Epistle to the Galatians, p. 172.
17
Jesus, Paul and the Law, p. 248.
18
E.g., Jesus, Paul and the Law, p. 249: "Paul objects to covenantal nomism under-
stood as it then was consistendy throughout Judaism" (my italics).
 II. The Social and Ideological Milieu of the New Perspective

It is, of course, much harder to assess factors influencing contempo-

rary interpretation than it is to discern, with hindsight, the influences
on our predecessors. Nonetheless, there seem to be at least three
aspects of our present social and ideological environment which
undergird the new perspective and encourage its reception. 19

1. Theological Respect for Judaism

This is the most obvious influence on the current readings of Paul,

and is evident from the beginning in Stendahl's challenge to the
consensus. When he clarifies the framework in which he reads Paul,
Stendahl highlights his awareness of how, in relation to the Jewish
people, "the Christian use of Scripture, and not least of the Pauline
episdes, had caused developments of satanic dimensions." Thus he
explicidy reads Paul "in an attempt to get at the roots of Christian
anti-Semitism,'' 20 and refuses to interpret Paul in any way that leads
to "making Judaism a code word for all wrong attitudes toward God." 21
This is surely why, as we have seen, Stendahl is reluctant to accept
that Paul was engaged in any sort of critique of Judaism: he is only
defending Gentile converts, not attacking Jews. Indeed Stendahl sug-
gested that Paul never expected Jews in general to believe in Christ.
He took Romans 911‫ ־‬as the climax o f t h a t letter and was impressed
by the fact that the name of Jesus Christ does not appear once in all
of 10:17-11:36. Thus he suggested that "Paul's reference to God's
mysterious plan [for the salvation of all Israel] is an affirmation of a
God-willed co-existence between Judaism and Christianity in which
the missionary urge to convert Israel is held in check." 22 This read-
ing of Paul, which denies the presence of any serious critique of
Judaism and suggests the prospect of a Sonderweg for Israel, has been

19
In identifying these influences on the new perspective, I am not, of course,
attempting to disqualify the historical study which has been its hallmark. But histo-
rians should not need reminding that historiography is not a value-free enterprise:
it inevitably and properly operates within the framework of the social and cultural
questions of the day. As those questions change, new perspectives on history are
opened up, but careful historical research is not thereby to be dismissed, in a facile
way, as a purely subjective enterprise.
20
Paul among Jews and Gentiles, p. 126.
21
Paul among Jews and Gentiles, p. 132.
22
Paul among Jews and Gentiles, p. 4.
adopted by some other scholars as well, all acutely conscious of how
Paul could be, and has been, read to nourish Christian anti-Semitism. 23
Most exponents of the new perspective hold that Paul does mount
some critique of his contemporary Judaism, but all are sensitized to
the horrendous potential of anti-Semitism in Pauline interpretation.
Sanders' massive rebuttal of caricatures of Jewish "legalism" is evi-
dently a product of the new spirit of understanding between Jews
and Christians which characterizes our post-Holocaust, pluralist world.
Present unwillingness to portray first-century Judaism as a religion of
"works-righteousness" undoubtedly reflects our embarrassment that
Christians have for so long espoused such derogatory attitudes to-
wards Jews. Neither Baur's nor Bultmann's construction of the rela-
tionship between Paul and Judaism could flourish again in the present
climate, even if some aspects of Baur's interpretation have been re-
vived by Dunn and even if certain aspects of the Lutheran reading
remain influential and fruitful. 24

2. Community as the Goal of Christian Faith

The shift in the new perspective from an individualistic to a communal
reading of Pauline theology is surely related to significant changes in
the social context of theology in the last thirty years. Bultmann's exis-
tentialist reading of Paul is now both philosophically and theologically
passé and even at a popular level one is now less likely to hear sermons
warning believers against trying to earn their salvation by good works.
In an age of ecumenism, Protestants are less inclined to define their
identity by contrast with the supposed "works-righteousness" of Ca-
tholicism, and the churches are in general more exercised about their
social identity and social roles than about ensuring their members
are individually put right with God on the correct terms. T h e cur-
rent concern with ecclesiology—with the church as constituting and
creating community—thus dovetails neady with a reading of Paul's
doctrine of justification which emphasizes its social origins and effects.25

25
See e.g., J.G. Gager, The Origins of Anti-Semitism (Oxford: O U P , 1983); L. Gaston,
Paul and the Torah (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1987); S.G.
Hall III, Christian Anti-Semitism and Paul's Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993);
Stowers, A Rereading of Romans.
24
S. Westerholm, Israel's Law and the Church's Faith (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1988) represents a modified Lutheran reading of Paul, opposing some exaggerated
features of the new perspective.
25
A pioneer in this regard was N.A. Dahl, "The Doctrine of Justification: Its
 In the same post-60s climate social studies of early Christianity
have gained a new lease of life and the research of G. Theissen and
W.A. Meeks has focused attention on the social realities of the early
church. 26 T h e use of sociology and anthropology in analysing those
realities has discouraged a purely "theological" assessment of Paul's
controversies; instead it encourages attention to social groups (syna-
gogues and churches) and how they constructed and maintained their
identities. By reading Paul within this framework, the new perspec-
tive thus mirrors a general change in both ecclesial and academic
environments.

3. Multicultural Concerns

If the new perspective emphasizes the creation of communities in

which "there is neither J e w nor Greek," this may also be seen to
match contemporary concerns in multicultural politics. As we have
seen, Dunn repeatedly refers to Paul's target as "nationalistic presup-
positions" or "ethnic restrictions"—language redolent of social and
political issues in the contemporary world. O n e cannot miss echoes
of the contemporary rejection of colonialism and the current con-
cern with "the politics of difference," in a statement such as:
I t w a s t h e a t t e m p t t o e n f o r c e a u n i f o r m Jewish u n d e r s t a n d i n g o f t h e
g o s p e l in Gentile G a l a t i a w h i c h r o u s e d P a u l t o f u r i o u s i n d i g n a t i o n . I n -
t e g r a l t o t h e f r e e d o m o f t h e g o s p e l is f r e e d o m t o e x p r e s s it d i f f e r e n t l y ,
w i t h d i f f e r e n t e m p h a s e s in d i f f e r e n t c o n t e x t s . 2 7

Within the Christian community, the bad conscience of Western

churches in assessing their mission history, the development of non-
Western theologies and the sanctioning of "inculturation" have in-
duced a new awareness of the value of "difference." In the secular
realm, the cultural crisis in the West and the questioning of its

Social Funcdon and Implications," in Studies in Paul (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1977),

pp. 9 5 - 1 2 0 . Cf. my "Justification by Faith: T h e Root of Christian Tolerance,' 1 in
R.P. Carroll and A.G. Hunter (eds.), Words at Work (Glasgow: Trinity St. Mungo
Press, 1994), pp. 1 - 1 3 .
26
G. Theissen, The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity (E.T. by J.H. Schütz; Edinburgh:
Τ & Τ Clark, 1982); W.A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1983).
27
J . D . G . Dunn, The Theology of Paul's Letter to the Galatians (New Testament The-
ology; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 28. I was conscious of
using such a conceptual framework in referring to Paul as combating a Jewish "cul-
tural imperialism," Obeying the Truth, pp. 2 5 0 - 5 1 .
Enlightenment legacy have undermined the presumption of Western
cultural hegemony. Thus the possibilities and problems of an inter-
dependent and multicultural world have begun to loom large on the
agenda of serious thinkers. In this context it is understandable that the
Pauline motif of "neither J e w nor Greek' 1 should come to the fore.
Of these three features of the current milieu, the third has been
perhaps the least noticed by Pauline interpreters and the least ex-
ploited for the current theological and social task. Interpreting Paul
as a cultural critic and exploring his vision of community in which
there is "neither J e w nor Gentile" is an agenda still largely unad-
dressed by Pauline scholars. It has, however, been opened up in a
significant fashion by Daniel Boyarin, and we may best pursue this
Pauline potential in dialogue with him.

III. The Contribution of Daniel Boyarin

Daniel Boyarin's A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity28 is a

rich and deeply engaging reading of Paul by a "talmudist and
postmodern Jewish cultural critic" (p. 1). As a practising and non-
Christian Jew, Boyarin inevitably resists some aspects of Paul's the-
ology, but he reads Paul sympathetically enough to discern that he
issues an important challenge to Judaism, especially in its present
multicultural environment. Boyarin's refusal either to "blunt the force
of [Paul's] critique of Judaism" or to "render him a slanderer of
Judaism" (p. 6) enables him to resist some common temptations, and
his interpretation of Paul draws heavily on the main insights of the
new perspective. Ultimately he rejects Paul's universalism as naïve
and even dangerous, but he recognizes that equal dangers lurk in
the rabbinic insistence on Jewish "difference," especially if it is linked,
as in present-day Israel, with the possession of power and territory.
Foundational to Boyarin's interpretation of Paul is his conviction
that Paul was "motivated by a Hellenistic desire for the One, which
among other things produced an ideal of a universal human essence,
beyond difference and hierarchy" (p. 7). It is this "Greek longing for
universals" (combined with "Hebrew monotheism," p. 228) which
induced Paul to interpret Christ as enabling not just equality but
sameness (pp. 9, 156). For Boyarin, Gal. 3:28 indicates that Paul took

28
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
Christ to fulfil "the moral and religious necessity of humankind, namely
to erase all distinction between ethnos and ethnos, sex and sex and
become one in Christ's spiritual body" (p. 85).29
Such a universalizing strategy is displayed, for Boyarin, in two
interrelated features of Paul's theology: his dualism and his allegori-
cal hermeneutics. Paul's dualism is, Boyarin insists, at least partially
parallel to that of Philo: the two share a common background in
eclectic middle-Platonism which influenced many Hellenistic Jews and
encouraged them to operate "in a dualistic system in which spirit
precedes and is primary over body" (p. 14). Boyarin finds his strong-
est evidence in Paul's "spirit"/"flesh" dualism which he takes to rep-
resent not complete rejection of the body, but a hierarchical schema
in which physical and bodily phenomena are always subordinated to
their spiritual counterparts (pp. 57-85). And this schema undergirds
Paul's allegorization of Judaism. Whether in relation to circumcision
(Rom. 2:25-29), Abrahamic lineage (Gal. 4:21-31), "Israel according
to the flesh" (1 Cor. 10:18) or the Jewish interpretation of Scripture
(2 Corinthians 3), Paul continually spiritualizes Jewish particulars and
thus transforms the rites and the very existence of "a particular tribe"
into "an ahistorical, abstract, and universal human 'truth'" (p. 96).
Boyarin understands this strategy as Paul's response to the ten-
sions inherent in Judaism in which the God of all the world seems
to have a disproportionate concern for one ethnic group. 30 By alle-
gorizing circumcision and "the Israel according to the flesh," Paul's
Christian perspective makes it possible for Judaism to become a world
religion (pp. 230-31), but at the cost of eradicating Jewish difference
and disqualifying its vital genealogical identity. Paul's treatment of
circumcision is particularly crucial, and revealing, for Boyarin: it is
the very physical character of this Jewish mark of identity which is
fundamental to Jewish ethnicity, since it embodies the significance of
parentage, family and historical memory. By spiritualizing and uni-
versalizing circumcision, Paul in effect deprives genealogy and ethnicity

29
"Erasure" language is frequent: cf. pp. 24, 216, 231 etc. Elsewhere he talks of
Pauline universalism as "dissolving all others into a single essence" (p. 9; cf. pp. 95,
257), "suppressing cultural difference (p. 26) and "eradicating" cultural specificities
(p. 8).
30
Boyarin finds Paul's Christology symbolic here, and biographically foundational
for his whole theology: understanding the Christ "according to the Spirit" to super-
sede Christ "according to the flesh," Paul finds the "hermeneutic key to the résolu-
tion of that enormous tension that he experienced between the universalism of the
Torah's content and the particular ethnicity of its form" (p. 29).
of value. T o be sure, Paul does not oudaw circumcision (for Jews);
he regards it as an adiaphoron which counts for nothing compared
with "faith working through love" (Gal. 5:6; 6:15; 1 Cor. 7:19). But,
Boyarin insists, even this apparent "tolerance" of difference is ulti-
mately intolerant of the Jewish conviction that circumcision cannot be
a matter of indifference:
W h a t will a p p e a r f r o m the C h r i s t i a n p e r s p e c t i v e as t o l e r a n c e , n a m e l y
Paul's w i l l i n g n e s s — i n d e e d i n s i s t e n c e — t h a t w i t h i n the C h r i s t i a n c o m -
m u n i t y all cultural practice is e q u a l l y to b e tolerated, f r o m the rab-
b i n i c J e w i s h p e r s p e c t i v e is s i m p l y a n e r a d i c a t i o n o f the entire v a l u e
s y s t e m w h i c h insists that o u r cultural practice is o u r task a n d calling in
the w o r l d a n d m u s t n o t b e a b a n d o n e d or r e d u c e d to a m a t t e r o f taste,
(p. 32; cf. p p . 9 - 1 0 , 2 9 0 n. 10)

Thus Boyarin ultimately rejects Paul's multicultural transformation

of the Jewish tradition despite its attractive embrace of all humanity;
indeed, he regards the eradication of difference as a dangerous ver-
sion of "coercive sameness" (p. 236) which suppresses cultural differ-
ences by absorbing them into a dominant cultural system. Such a
strategy leads too easily into European cultural imperialism where
one specific culture masquerades as nonspecific. As a Jewish response
to the dilemmas of multiculturalism, Boyarin propounds what he calls
"diasporized identity," in which Jewish ethnic loyalties are combined
with cultural participation in their local environments and shorn of
territorial claims. This, he suggests, is the only viable synthesis which
can correct "in the 'Christian' system its tendencies toward a coer-
cive universalism and in the 'Jewish' system its tendencies toward
contemptuous neglect for human solidarity" (p. 235; cf. p. 257).
T h e above summary cannot convey the full richness of Boyarin's
intense and often captivating dialogue with Paul. 31 In some respects
it represents a Jewish riposte to Baur's Christian reading of Paul,
which now at the close of the twentieth century appears painfully
triumphalist and loaded with danger. In the light of European his-
tory it is remarkable that Boyarin can read Paul with such sympa-
thetic attention, and it is his concern to give Paul (and his many
interpreters) a fair hearing which constitutes one of the strengths of
this book. Nonetheless, I consider that Boyarin's often acute reading
of Paul sometimes misconstrues the aposde, and ultimately underval-

31
I have perforce omitted Boyarin > s discussions of gender, which he regards as
an aspect of "difference" parallel to that constituted by Judaism.
ues the contribution he could make to our contemporary tasks. I
shall therefore conclude with an alternative reading of Paul which,
in dialogue with Boyarin, offers a different employment of the new
perspective for our multicultural age.

IV. Paul and Multiculturalism

Paul's theology was forged in dispute with his contemporary Judaism

and needs to be understood in its social context. All Jews in the
Graeco-Roman world were affected to some degree by the dominant
Hellenistic culture, which they encountered not only in the Diaspora
but also in Palestine. Hellenization, however, had many different facets,
and it is worth distinguishing (in an approximate manner) between
"acculturation" (the adoption of Hellenistic speech, literary forms,
values and philosophies) and "assimilation" (social integration into
Hellenistic society). Highly acculturated Jews, who spoke and wrote
sophisticated Greek and were conversant with the Greek intellectual
tradition, were not necessarily highly assimilated: many indeed em-
ployed their Hellenistic training precisely to demarcate their social
life from that of non-Jews. T h e bond which held Jews together was
primarily social: their common life in observance of "ancestral eus-
toms." Of these customs the most significant for social relations were
aniconic monotheism (the refusal to participate in non-Jewish reli-
gion), the male mark of circumcision (which, among other things,
limited marriage relations), the dietary laws (which restricted social
intercourse) and the observance of the Sabbath (which affected em-
ployment relations). Such customs defined Jewish difference: they
created social boundaries between J e w and Greek, even where the
two might otherwise speak the same language and employ the same
thought-forms. Greeks who wished to become Jews (as some did),
needed to adopt precisely these social practices to achieve full inte-
gration into the Jewish community. 32
Paul's highly controversial claim was that Gentiles could become
"children of Abraham" and heirs of the covenant promises simply
by faith in Christ and receipt of the Spirit, thanks to the grace of

32
O n the distinction between acculturation and assimilation, and the social defi-
nition of Jewish identity in the Diaspora, see further my Jews in the Mediterranean
Diaspora (Edinburgh: Τ & Τ Clark, 1996).
God. T h a t led him to establish and maintain communities of be-
lievers whose common life could not be bounded or defined in the
same way as were Jewish communities. O n e of the defining "ances-
tral customs" he did in fact transfer to his churches: he continued
the ban on participation in Gentile religion, since his converts had,
as he put it, "turned from idols to the true and living G o d " (1 Thess.
1:9). But he did not allow the other three "social markers" to char-
acterize the common life of believers: Gentiles should not be required
to "judaize" in such matters as food (Gal. 2:11‫־‬T4), circumcision (Gal.
6:11-16) or the observance of "days" (Rom. 14:5-6). In this sense
Paul preached to Gentiles a partially "dejudaized Judaism" 3 3 and
attempted to create church communities which were multiethnic and
multicultural: in Christ "there is neither J e w nor Greek" (Gal. 3:28).
It is misleading, I believe, to interpret Paul as here engaged in a
"spiritualizing" or "allegorical" hermeneutic (pace Boyarin). Paul was
not reaching behind Jewish particulars to some abstract "essence" or
disembodied "ideal": he was placing alongside the Jewish community
another which was equally physical and embodied in social reality.
T o be sure, he can relativize circumcision by claiming that what
counts is "faith working through love" (Gal. 5:6), but that faith and
love are designed to take extremely practical shape in the life of a
community (Gal. 5:13-6:10). Similarly, he will not allow the R o m a n
churches to define themselves by distinctions in food or drink, but
the "righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" which he puts
in their place (Rom. 14:17) are meant to have immediate impact on
their common life, not least in their common meals (Rom. 14:1-
15:6). Hence Paul's apparent allegorization of Jewish particulars is
performed not in a quest for "the universal human essence," but to
enable an alternative form of community which could bridge ethnic
and cultural divisions by creating new patterns of common life.34

33
G. Theissen speaks of a "Judaism for non-Jews," Social Reality and the Early
Christians (Edinburgh: Τ & Τ Clark, 1992), p. 205.
34
In this respect there is far greater distance between Paul and Philo than Boyarin
allows. At first glance some of Paul's discussions of circumcision seem comparable
to Philo's allegorizations, and his practice as dangerous to Judaism as the allegorists
who advocated abandoning the practice of circumcision (Philo, De Migrations Abrahami
89-93). But Paul was not involved, like them, in an intellectual quest for the "hu-
man meaning" of Jewish customs: he was relativizing certain Jewish particulars in
the interests of establishing multiethnic communities. Paul was more assimilated than
Philo, but far less acculturated; hence the conceptual parallels between Paul and
Philo are in fact remarkably few.
 For the same reason, Paul does not, I believe, "erase" or "eradi-
cate" cultural specificities, but relativize them. Paul never loses his
respect for Judaism, even for circumcision, which he regards as a
sign of the advantage of the Jews (Rom. 3:1-2, even after 2:25-29!).
He can still list Israel's privileges in Rom. 9:4—5 (sonship, glory, the
covenants etc.) with genuine awe. It is important for him that Christ
was a J e w and thus a "servant of the circumcised, to fulfil the prom-
ises to the patriarchs" (Rom. 15:8). But it is also important that Christ
is now the Lord of both Jews and Gentiles, who call on him in faith
on the same terms, whatever their cultural identity. Thus Jews and
Gentiles are simultaneously affirmed as Jews and Gentiles and humbled
in their cultural pretensions. In much of what he presents as the
direction of the Spirit, Paul is indebted to his Jewish tradition, both
in his response to "idolatry" and in his sexual ethics. He can also
draw some resources from the Hellenistic cultural tradition, urging
openness to "whatever is true, whatever is just, whatever is holy . . ."
(Phil. 4:8).35 No one's culture is despised or demonized, but by the
same token none is absolutized or allowed to gain hegemony.
But from what vantage point does Paul relativize cultural specifici-
ties? Clearly, as he would say, from the vantage point of "the truth
of the gospel" (Gal. 2:14). But Paul does not present the gospel as if
it carries a whole new cultural package, designed to eradicate and
replace all others. It is rather a cluster of values, focused in love,
which enables the creation of a new community in which variant
cultural traditions can be practised. When he describes himself, fa-
mously, as being all things to all people (1 Cor. 9:1923‫ )־‬he indi-
cates his ability to adapt his behaviour—at one time living under the
law, at another without the law—because his ultimate commitment
is not to the law (or to lawlessness) but to Christ (he is ennomos Christou,
1 Cor. 9:21). That does not install Christ as the founder of a new
culture, but indicates how commitment to Christ can simultaneously
encompass various cultural particularities. Thus Paul, although he de-
thrones the law, never forbids its practice by Jews or Jewish Chris-
tians, and in Romans 14 goes to some lengths to defend their rights
to observe food and Sabbath customs. But as that chapter and oth-
ers display (cf. 1 Corinthians 8-10), all such cultural commitments
are of only penultimate significance: the overriding commitment is to

35
See now T. Engberg-Pedersen (ed.), Paul in his Hellenistic Context (Edinburgh:
Τ & Τ Clark, 1994).
love and the building of responsible and supportive communities. T h e
gospel is not, for Paul, a philosophical principle which reveals uni-
versai human truths. His investments lie not in the abstractions of
"knowledge" but in the practical and often complex demands of love
(1 Cor. 8:1-3).
Thus far I have suggested that Paul's stance towards cultural differ-
ence was neither as brutal nor as naïve as Boyarin has suggested. At
two points, however, I believe Boyarin is right to call attention to
major difficulties in the Pauline prescription. In the first place, he
rightly suggests that the very "tolerance" of cultural difference turns
out to be subdy intolerant of those for whom the maintenance of
their cultural traditions cannot be a matter of taste, but is the very
core of their identity (see the citation above, p. 208). This is, as he
says, one of the essential dilemmas of multiculturalisme since in this
respect tolerance itself appears flawed (pp. 9-10). As Romans 14—15
indicates, Paul's protection of the rights of law-observant Christians
to keep Sabbath and food laws in fact subdy undermines their social
and cultural integrity, since they are forced to acknowledge the equal
validity of non-observance even while being allowed (with some conde-
scension) to observe. 36 Thus even if Paul does not "eradicate" cul-
tural differences, his relativization of their significance somehow
threatens the very seriousness with which they are taken by their
practitioners. I can only agree with Boyarin that a dialectic between
common values and cultural difference must be maintained and that
"somewhere in this dialectic a synthesis must be found, one that will
allow for stubborn hanging on to ethnic, cultural specificity but in a
context of deeply felt and enacted human solidarity" (p. 257). I can
only add that I believe Paul's ethic and his creation of cross-cultural
communities is already pointing towards such "deeply felt and en-
acted human solidarity."
But isn't it true—and here we encounter Boyarin's second objec-
tion—that Paul's multicultural vision presupposes common commitment
to Christ and in this Christological exclusivism refuses to recognize
the "right" of Jews and others "to remain unconvinced by the gos-
pel" (p. 10)? Does Paul's subtly "particularist claim to universalism"

36
I have explored this irony in '"Do we Undermine the Law?' A Study of Ro-
mans 14:1-15:6," in J.D.G. D u n n (ed.), Paul and the Jewish Law (Tübingen: Mohr
(Siebeck), forthcoming), a paper written before I encountered Boyarin's book but
strongly supportive of his position at this point.
(pp. 205, 208) ultimately delegitimize Jews and all other non-Chris-
dans who cannot accept that they are simply "on the way to de-
struction" (1 Cor. 1:18)? Does Paul have anything at all to offer a
world that is not only multicultural but also multireligious?
I think myself that Paul partially deconstructs his own Christological
exclusivism by his pervasive appeal to the grace of God. 37 T h e foun-
dation of Paul's gospel, and the basis of his relativization of all cul-
tures, is his radical appreciation of the grace of God which humbles
human pride and subverts the theological and cultural edifices which
"flesh" constructs. T h e justification of the ungodly and the gift of the
Spirit are, for Paul, acts of grace which undermine absolute commit-
ment to the law (Rom. 4:4-5; Gal. 3:1-5); he himself had experi-
enced God's grace as calling into question all his previous cultural
assurances (Gal. 1:13-16; 1 Cor. 15:8-10). Paul discerns the gracious
initiative of God through Israel's history, and its paradoxical triumph
precisely through her unbelief (Romans 9-11), since the God who
has consigned all to disobedience will ultimately have mercy on all
(Rom. 11:32). This radical notion of divine grace, which Paul uses to
destabilize the church at least as much as those outside it (cf. 1
Corinthians passim), could serve both to affirm and to relativize the
Christian tradition itself. T h e church exists not for its own sake but
to bear witness to the grace of God. Paul himself is ultimately speech-
less before the mercy of God and cannot find even Christian lan-
guage in which to express its significance (Rom. 11:33-36). T o this
extent, even Pauline theology could be mobilized to serve a multi-
culturalism whose religious basis is the affirming and relativizing grace
of God.
Thus the new perspective suggests that Paul could serve as a valu-
able resource in our struggles to fashion a harmonious but multicultural
society. It reads Paul as the fashioner of multiethnic and multicultural
communities, which function not to erase but to moderate between
differing cultural specificities. It could be claimed that any commu-
nity which relativizes difference sets itself up as, in effect, a new
hegemonic culture. But I have suggested that Paul never intended to
found a "Christendom," and his prescription, at its most basic, could

37
This is a motif underappreciated by Boyarin who, influenced by Watson, takes
Paul's contrast of "grace" and "works" as the serological markers of different com-
munities (p. 206) and fails to allow for their theological significance. Cf. his dialogue
with Westerholm (pp. 2 9 5 9 6 ‫ ־‬, n. 30).
be taken as elevating only what accords with love and enhances
community. Any social framework in which differing cultures are
enabled to share a common life necessitates the establishment of some
"common ground," and I am not convinced that Boyarin's stimulât-
ing advocacy of Jewish "diasporized identity" can circumvent this
requirement. 38 O n one side we are faced by the injustices of cultural
suppression, but on the other lie the equally enormous dangers of
cultural incompatibility. And it is better that we create possibilities
for community on some common ground than that we tear the fabric
of societies whose cultural threads are already too interwoven to be
simply unravelled. A cautious use of our Pauline heritage could equip
us to undertake that long and difficult search for a polity which both
respects ineradicable difference and enables meaningful community.

38
Precisely in the Diaspora, without the power to impose territorial or cultural
claims, Jews need to establish on what basis they can accept the conditions of their
social environment and perhaps contribute to its cultural life. If a diasporized iden-
tity entails being both Jewish and American (p. 244), on what basis can an indi-
vidual (or community) justify the adoption of this double identity? In rejecting the
abstract notion of "a universal human essence 1 ' (p. 257), Boyarin leaves unclear the
basis of his own commitment to "human solidarity" (ibid) and "social justice"
(p. 259). Josephus, writing on behalf of Jews in the Diaspora, articulated the need
for some common ground in their relations with n o n j e w s : "It is most advantageous
for all men, Greeks and barbarians alike, to practise justice; our laws are specially
concerned with this matter and they make us (if we keep to them sincerely) kind
and friendly to all. Thus we properly expect the same attitude from them, for for-
eignness should not be defined as a matter of difference of customs but in relation
to one's proper attitude to civilized behaviour (καλοκαγαθία); for this is c o m m o n to
all and it alone enables society to survive" (,Antiquities 16.177-78). Josephus' καλοκαγαθία
is, of course, a cultural product, manufactured no doubt by a privileged élite. But
on what other basis could (or can) minority groups hope to receive respect for their
difference?
 G R O U P BOUNDARIES AND I N T E R G R O U P CONFLICT
IN GALATIANS: A N E W R E A D I N G O F
GALATIANS 5:13-6:10'

Philip F. Esler

Introduction: The Galatian Context and Gal. 5:13-6:10

T h e principal issue in Galatia to which Paul responds in his letter to

the congregations, the έκκλησίαι, which he had founded there, was
the pressure being exerted upon Gentile members to accept circum-
cision and the other requirements of the Jewish law. It is clear from
Gal. 6:12-13 that it was Jewish members of the congregations who
were actively running this campaign, although, as I have argued
elsewhere (Esler 1994: 5269‫)־‬, they themselves were conforming to
wider Jewish opinion. T h a t this campaign was making some head-
way in Galatia is clear from 4:10-11, even if circumcision had not
yet been widely accepted by the Gentile membership.
O n e of the great conundra of Galatians research, however, is that
in Gal. 5:13-6:10, Paul seems to shift away from the question of
circumcision and the primacy of justification by faith—and the forces
in the external environment impelling him to such a discussion—and
to turn instead to a problem internal to the communities of Galatia,
namely, the way their members should behave toward one another.
Further below I will oudine various solutions which commentators
have proposed to explain the alleged difficulty in relating the material
in Gal. 5:13-6:10, traditionally described as "ethical," to the issue of
circumcision.
In this essay I wish to outline a new approach to the problem.
For present purposes my interest is the historical one of investigating
what meaning or meanings this text conveyed to its original audi-
ence (listeners rather than readers). My starting point, however, is
that since the context in which Paul was seeking to make an impact
was a social one, we should augment traditional tools of historical

1
This is a revised form of a paper delivered at the SBL Conference in Chicago
on 21 November 1994.
analysis with perspectives developed during the last century or so of
research into the social dimensions of human existence undertaken
by anthropologists, sociologists and social psychologists. Ultimately,
the walls which many biblical scholars deliberately erect around their
work to keep out any ideas not stricdy "historical" are social con-
structs, purity boundaries of the type explained by Mary Douglas (so
Robbins 1995), and constitute an entirely unnecessary impediment
to the understanding of early Christianity.
For the moment, I will set out the bipolar thesis of this essay,
which ultimately derives from readily accessible social-scientific re-
search: first, that the significance of 5:13-6:10 can only be appreci-
ated in connection with the "external" forces, since both issues con-
cern boundaries between insiders and outsiders, and, secondly, that
this passage deals with Christian identity forged in a context of inter-
group conflict rather than "ethics." My approach to arguing this po-
si tion will involve five steps: (1) a short description of the data in
Gal. 5:13-6:10; (2) a brief account of existing approaches to the al-
leged problem of its relationship to the wider context of the letter;
(3) a résumé of my own view as to the underlying causes for the
demand for circumcision, which will lead to (4) the description of
certain social-scientific perspectives drawn from anthropology and
social psychology on the establishment of group identity in a situa-
tion of largely ethnic interaction across group boundaries, and (5) an
application of these perspectives to the textual data.

1. The Problem of Gal. 5:13-6:10

As already noted, New Testament commentators have traditionally

regarded Gal. 5:13 as marking an important transition in the letter,
in that here Paul seems to move on to an apparendy new issue, one
internal to the communities of Galatia, namely, the way their mem-
bers should behave towards one another. H e continues with this topic
as far as 6:10, when he returns to the impact of external forces.
Within Gal. 5:13-6:10 Paul deals with a number of related issues,
such as the meaning of Christian freedom as serving one another in
love (5:13-15), the type of behaviour which comes from living ac-
cording to the flesh as contrasted with the Spirit (5:16-24), particular
consequences of life in the Spirit for behaviour within the commu-
nity (5:25-6:6) and the ultimate fate of those who choose either the
flesh or the Spirit (6:7-10). It has become a traditional feature of
research into Galadans to categorise this material as "ethical" (espe-
daily Barclay 1988) or "paraenedc" (Dibelius 1934 and 1976). T h e
extent to which such a classification depends upon significant unstated
presuppositions and prejudgments and requires critical analysis will
be a prominent theme in what follows.
Although a few critics regard the transition at 5:13 as quite
unsurprising, 2 a far more common response has been to find the
presence of 5:13-6:10 in the letter difficult to explain. T h e heart of
the difficulty is that whereas in the first four chapters Paul has been
at pains to attack reliance on the Jewish law, because there were
Gentiles in Galatia attracted to adopting it (4:21: "You who wish to
be under law"), in 5:13-6:10 he seems to have in his sights people
who are acting in a lawless fashion. Thus, although he has previ-
ously told the Galatians they are free of the law, in this passage he
seems to re-impose law on them, beginning at 5:14 when he says:
"For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, 'You shall love your
neighbor as yourself'," citing Lev. 19:18, part of the legal prescrip-
tions given to Moses by Yahweh. T h e same theme emerges at 6:2:
"Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ." Schol-
ars tend to abbreviate the point by saying that Paul's problem is
"nomism" in the bulk of the letter but "anti-nomianism" or "liber-
tinism" in 5:13-6:10.

2. Existing Answers to the Problem

T h e range of existing answers to the question of how this passage is

connected with earlier parts of the letter, especially 2:15-5:12, has
been helpfully set out by J o h n Barclay (1988: 926‫)־‬. Commentators
who take up this issue fall into two camps: first, those who consider
5:13-6:10 is not well integrated into the work as a whole 3 and, sec-
ondly, those who think that it is.4

2
So Dunn (1993: 284—6), who sees the movement from "the exposition and appeal"
of 3:1-5:12 to the "exhortation 1 ' of 5:13-6:10 as similar to the "natural pattern"
found elsewhere in Paul, for example in the progression from Romans 1-11 to 12-15.
3
Such as O'Neill (1972), Dibelius (1934: 2 3 8 - 9 and 1976: 1-11), Burton (1921),
Lütgert (1919) and Ropes (1929).
4
Such as Schmithals (1972: 13-64) Betz (1979: 8 - 9 , 2 7 3 - 4 and 295-6), Howard
(1979: 11-14), Brinsmead (1982: 164-92) and Barclay himself.
 T h e most dramatic representative of the first approach is O'Neill
(1972), who argues that the whole section is a non-Pauline interpo-
lation. He cannot think that Paul would have been interested in the
question of anti-nomianism. Dibelius thought the passage was by Paul,
but was quite unrelated to the argument of the letter as a whole. It
did not represent the aposde's own ethics, but, along with similar
passages, 5 expressed a tradition of early Christian moral exhortation,
which Dibelius subsumed under the literary genre of paraenesis (1934:
238-9 and 1976: 1-11). For E. de W. Burton, on the other hand,
the passage was best understood as "an apologetic appendix" aimed
at assuring those who might misunderstand Paul to mean that free-
dom from the law had removed all restraints that keep h u m a n be-
ings from immorality (1921: 290). Another form of this broad ap-
proach was developed by Lütgert (1919) and Ropes (1929), both of
whom argued that Paul actually had two quite different types of
problem to cope with in Galatia: legalists who wanted to adopt the
law and spiritualistic radicals whose freedom from the law led to
anti-nomianism. In sum, they proposed that in this passage Paul was
opening up a "second front," by initiating action against an enemy
distinct from the main one in his sights.
O n e example of the second approach, which treats the passage as
integrated into the letter as a whole, is that of W. Schmithals, who
argued that Paul's opponents were Jewish Gnostics who advocated
circumcision but were libertines as far as morality was concerned.
His arguments for the presence of Gnostics in Galatia, however, have
run into strong opposition (Wilson 1968). A more plausible line is
taken by Betz, who suggests that one reason why the Galatians were
attracted to the Jewish law was as a way of controlling the immoral-
ity otherwise present among them and that once Paul has demon-
strated the error of taking on the law he must provide some alterna-
tive means of assisting them deal with the immorality which initially
made it attractive to them (1979: 8 4 ‫ ־‬9 , 2 7 3 ‫ ־‬and 295-6). For How
(1979: 11-14), on the other hand, 5:13-6:10 constitutes a continua-
tion of Paul's onslaught on the law, since what he attacks in this
section is precisely the condition of being under the flesh which is
a result of taking on the law. Similarly, Brinsmead sees the passage
as directed against the ethical traditions of Paul's opponents (1982:
164-92).

5
Romans 1213‫ ;־‬Col. 3:1-4:6; 1 Thess. 4:1-12; 5:lff.
 J o h n Barclay also considers that the passage is integrated into the
letter:
our analysis of circumcision and law-observance has highlighted the
dual aspect of the Galatian crisis: it raised questions concerning both
identity and behavioural patterns. These two, of course, cannot be sepa-
rated (73).

He proposes that in opposition to Jewish-Christian claims that the

introduction of Jewish rites and ceremonies would provide a means
whereby the Galatians could constantly reinforce their identity as
the people of God (72), Paul establishes a relationship between his
law-free Gospel and the moral life without which his earlier argu-
ments would lose much of their force. Those who are led by the
Spirit actually fulfil the law. Barclay's is the least problematic ap-
proach to the passage hitherto. We will see, however, that although
he is not adverse to illustrating his argument with insights from the
social sciences, especially the sociology of knowledge, his failure thor-
oughly to interrogate the heart of this proposal in social-scientific
fashion prevents his judicious reading of the text from realising its
full potential.
This brief discussion reveals the diversity of the attempts which
have been undertaken to make sense of the data in Gal. 5:13-6:10.
T h e fact that none of the other critics just mentioned, except (to a
limited extent) J o h n Barclay, have sought to utilise the social sciences
in their work on Gal. 5:13-6:10 seems to me a depressing indictment
of the narrowness of vision, and the consequent misinterpretation of
the evidence, which comes from mono-disciplinary biblical research.

3. The Causes of the Demand for Circumcision

T h e immediate explanation for the pressure upon Gentile members

of the congregations to become Jews was the scandal to wider Jewish
opinion caused by the practice of mixed table-fellowship, pre-emi-
nendy in the eucharistic meal. We need to distinguish between the
fact of opposition to such a practice and the reasons for the Jewish
prohibition on it. At a general level Jews regarded Gentiles as sinful
by reason of the idolatry in which they engaged. Some social inter-
course with them was permitted and some was not. T h e particular
reason for the ban on Jewish-Gentile eucharistic table-fellowship was
probably that passing round from Gentile to J e w the one loaf of
bread and, even worse, one cup of wine (cf. 1 Cor. 10:16-17), im-
plicated the Jews involved or, just as bad, might seem to implicate
them, in a specific act of idolatry (Esler 1994: 6 2 - 8 and 1995b).
Yet we must be wary of imagining that this factor standing alone
could explain the motivation for the Jewish position. T h e Jews con-
cerned were not acting purely from an abstract, that is to say, so-
daily disembodied, belief in the virtues of obeying the Mosaic law.
For the line they were taking also—perhaps we should say "princi-
pally"—involved defending and maintaining the Jewish ethnos in the
midst of a threatening Gentile world (see Esler 1987: 73-86). Mak-
ing sense of the Jewish context of Paul's letter to the Galatians de-
mands that we attend to the issue of ethnicity as much as to what
we moderns or post-moderns mean by "theology." Ethnicity is a field
which has been amply investigated by social scientists and in a moment
I will discuss how some of their findings shed light on Galatians.

4. Social-Scientific Approaches

Anthropology and the Boundary Question

Since it is clear from the rest of Galatians that the Gentile members
of the communities to whom Paul writes have crossed one boundary
which separates them from still-idolatrous Gentiles by becoming
members and are under pressure to cross another by becoming part
of the Jewish ethnos, the anthropological literature dealing with bound-
aries, boundary-crossing and boundary-consciousness, especially in the
context of ethnic groups, has an important role to play.
From an anthropological point of view the long-standing contro-
versy as to why Paul would discuss the relationship of the Galatian
communities with the Jewish ethnos (the boundary issue) and the in-
ternal functioning of those congregations in the one letter is mis-
placed. Such a phenomenon could only furrow the brows of those
unaware that similar connections are commonplace in many social
contexts. A body of anthropological evidence suggests that there is
often a very close relationship between the position of a group, such
as a religious community, with respect to the outside world and its
internal conditions. T h e movement from one or more groups to
another is often a difficult one and the tensions generated in those
who join a community by crossing the boundary between it and the
wider world of competing groups or allegiances, in this case both
Jewish and pagan, are likely to produce internal strains of the type
which underly Paul's concerns in Gal. 5:136:10‫־‬. T h e phenomenon
has been admirably described by Anthony Cohen, professor of social
anthropology at Edinburgh University. Drawing upon Arnold Van
Gennep's explanation of ritual as a three-stage movement consisting
of separation from an original group or status, an in-between or "limi-
nal" period and a re-aggregation into a new group or status (Van
Gennep 1960), Cohen rejects the idea that the confusion of liminality,
of being "betwixt and between," ends as soon as one has been re-
aggregated. H e writes:

Transformations of status, like crossing geo-political borders, require a

process of adjustment, of rethinking. . . They require a reformulation
of self which is more fundamental than admission to items of lore, or
being loaded with new rights and obligations. The difficulties inherent
in such self-adjustment may vary according to the nature of the fron-
tiers which are crossed; but our experience of politics and travel should
also alert us to the deceptively innocuous character of crossing be-
tween supposedly proximate statuses or cultures. . . Having crossed a
boundary, we have to think ourselves into our transformed identity
which is far more subtle, far more individualised than its predication
on status (1993: 10; also see Cohen 1994: 128).

In other words, not only cannot we draw any sharp distinction between
the boundary question and internal conditions of the group, but also
the effective incorporation of members depends more upon their
developing a new and appropriate sense of identity than the acqui-
sition of teachings or ethics. This latter point is fundamentally im-
portant, since it raises a suspicion (although little more at this stage)
that the categorisation of the material in Gal. 5:13-6:10 as ethics or
paraenesis, rather than (say) identity-description, may be due to the
thoroughly theological agendas of most New Testament critics, rather
than to the social realities of the congregations in Galatia, or elsewhere
in Paul's areas of activity. As we will soon see, a similar stress on the
importance of identity characterises the research of social psycholo-
gists into the dynamics of inter-group relations. Thus, rather than
following J o h n Barclay in seeing the "ethics" of the passage as distinct
from, although closely related to, the question of identity, we are led
to ask rather whether the passage itself should not be categorised as
relating to identity. In view of the obvious allure of Judaism for Paul's
Galatian converts, the further development of this idea requires a
consideration of the relevance of the ethnic dimension.
Ethnicity in Recent Anthropological Research

(a) Ethnic Boundaries: Insider and Outsider Perceptions

T h e publication of Fredrik Barth's symposium Ethnic Groups and Bound‫׳‬

aries in 1969 constituted a watershed in research into ethnicity. Prior
to its appearance research strategies were largely of a structural kind
and focused on relations between "races." In his celebrated intro-
duction to this volume, however, Barth located ethnicity "firmly in
the realms of the interactional, the transactional and the symbolic"
(Cohen 1993: 1). It is worthwhile to oudine Barth's position, with a
view to offering not an ontological description of ethnicity, but rather
a heuristic tool or model with which to investigate the data in Gala-
tians, especially in the critical area of boundaries, in a more socially
realistic fashion than is customary in this field.
Barth begins with the proposition that the constitution of ethnic
groups and the nature of the boundaries between them has not been
adequately discussed. His principal theoretical departure is the notion
that ethnic groups are categories of ascription and identification
employed by the actors concerned with a view to organising interaction
between themselves and others. Thus, an ethnic ascription is one which
classifies persons in terms of their basic, most general identity, presump-
tively determined by their origin and background (Barth 1969: 13).
T h e prima facie relevance of this perspective to Galatia is that the
Jews there were ascribing to themselves the status of an ethnic group
by reference to their descent from their glorious ancestors Abraham
(and Sarah) and that Paul sought to counter the appeal of such a
status by re-defining Abrahamic descent to include only those who
believed in Jesus as the Christ. Thus we find him saying, "So if you
belong to Christ, you are the 'issue' of Abraham and heirs by virtue
of the promise" (Gal. 3:29; JB) and again, "You see, then, my friends,
we are no slave's children; our mother is the free w o m a n " (Gal.
4:31; JB). It is clear that Paul is ascribing an ethnic status and iden-
tity to the Galatian Christians, even though we—and most Galatian
Jews—would regard them, "objectively speaking," as "Gentile." Even
Paul seems to appreciate he is stretching things a little here, since at
one point he distinguishes between physical and spiritual descent (4:29).
O n Barth's view, boundary maintenance, meaning how the actors
themselves envision and maintain the boundaries, assumes a central
importance. Other aspects, such as a distinctive culture, should be
 seen as the product or result rather than as the basis of ethnic differen-
dadon (Barth 1969: 911‫)־‬. Cultural features do not matter for "ob-
jective" reasons, but because they are the ones which the actors them-
selves regard as significant. Some cultural features are used as emblems
of ethnic distinctiveness, while others are played down or ignored.
T h e cultural contents of ethnic dichotomies assume two broad types:
first, overt signals or signs, the features that people look for and exhibit to
show identity (such as dress, language, architecture and life-style) and,
secondly, basic value orientations, the standards of morality and excellence
by which performance is judged. T h e second aspect is important for
its connection to the issue of identity: "Since belonging to an ethnic
category implies being a certain kind of person, having that basic
identity, it also implies a claim to be judged, and to judge oneself,
by those standards that are relevant to that identity' 5 (Barth 1969: 14).
It will be helpful at this stage to develop the argument by intro-
ducing a useful distinction which Anthony Cohen draws between two
senses in which a relevant social boundary is perceived by insiders.
Cohen distinguishes between (a) the sense insiders have of a bound-
ary as it would be perceived by people on the other side, that is, the
public face and "typical" mode of the boundary, and (b) their sense
of community as refracted through all the complexities of their life
and experience, the private face and idiosyncratic mode. T h e former
corresponds to Barth's "overt signals" and the latter to his "value
orientations." Of utmost importance for what follows is Cohen's view
that the private and idiosyncratic mode is more important than the
public mode, for here we have people thinking about and symboliz-
ing their community (Cohen 1989: 74—75).
This phenomenon can be illustrated from my own experience. Prior
to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, many Roman Catho-
lie children performed the devotion of attending morning Mass on
the first Friday of each month for nine consecutive months, rain,
hail or shine, with the aim of obtaining a plenary indulgence by so
doing. Although this was a practice which did much to solidify the
identity of the children as Catholics, it was not something of which
non-Catholics were aware or, accordingly, which figured in the pub-
lie face of Catholicism as seen by outsiders, or as Catholics under-
stood would be perceived by the outside world.
Unfortunately, some New Testament scholars, such as J.D.G. Dunn,
have adopted a notion of "boundary-markers" (or "identification-
markers") in exploring the inter-relationships between J e w and Gentile
in Galatia without reference to the subtleties of the concept as just
outlined. This is one of many areas where biblical critics employ
models without the explicit, or sufficiendy explicit, discussion of their
usefulness which characterises social-scientific interpretation. Thus,
Dunn argues that just as non-Jews regarded the very visible signs of
Judaism such as circumcision and food laws as marking out people
as Jews, so the "Jews regarded them in the same way" (1990: 192).
He summons this socially unrealistic proposition as key support for
his broad view that in this letter Paul means by "works of the law"
these visible signs of Jewishness ( 1990: 192-200) and, in particular,
that the reference to the law which is spoken of as fulfilled in Gal.
5:14 is not the "boundary-marking" torah, but the more inclusive
law, including the Mosaic ethical commandments, which he thinks
Paul wishes to retain (1990: 200). Through failure to engage with
the disciplined social-scientific research on point, Dunn and other
commentators who follow him (such as Matera 1992: 15) fall into
the error of supposing that the Jews did not regard the observance
of the less visible aspects of the law, the T e n Commandments for
example, as a vital part of the boundary between themselves and
non-Jews and, moreover, that Paul did not understand them to hold
that view. At a basic exegetical level, moreover, Dunn's attempt to
drive something of a wedge between the (boundary-marking) "works
of the law" and the "law" in all its fullness runs into the difficulties
that the two are treated as equivalent in Gal. 3:7-14 and that his
proposal would involve the unlikely consequence that righteousness
by works of law (2:15-21 and 3:2-5) was distinguishable from right-
eousness by law (Gal. 5:4). I will return to the implications of Dunn's
approach for the interpretation of 5:13-6:10 further below. Another
obstacle for Dunn's view comes from the Jewish context, in as much
as the expression • ‫ • ע ש י‬, sometimes used in connection with ΠΠΤΙ or
!‫ החורד‬or ‫ ב ת ו ר ה‬, an expression for which εργα νόμου is a Greek equiva-
lent, is widespread in the Second Temple period and onwards "as a
term specifically designating the laws or commandments of the Bible"
(Qimron and Strugnell 1994: 139).

(b) Ethnic Boundaries: Permeability and Resistance

Against the view that geographical and social isolation largely explain
cultural diversity, Barth offers two research findings of critical impor-
tance for what follows:
 First, it is clear that boundaries persist despite a flow of personnel across
them. In other words, categorical ethnic distinctions do not depend on
absence of mobility, contact and information, but do entail social pro-
cesses of exclusion and incorporation whereby discrete categories are
maintained despite changing participation and membership in the course
of individual life histories. Secondly, one finds that stable, persisting,
and often vitally important social relations are maintained across such
boundaries and are frequendy based precisely on the dichotomized ethnic
statuses (Barth 1969: 9-10).

Even if the cultural features which signal the boundary are changed,
a boundary itself must be maintained to preserve the dichotomization
between members and outsiders. Such boundaries persist even when
different ethnic groups are in contact with each other, even though
one might expect such a process to reduce the differences. This means
that there must be some structuring of interaction which allows the
persistence of cultural differences. T h e maintenance of inter-ethnic
relations requires:
a set of prescriptions governing situations of contact, and allowing for
articulation in some sectors or domains of activity, and a set of pro-
scriptions on social situations preventing inter-ethnic interaction in other
sectors, and thus insulating parts of the cultures from confrontation
and modification (Barth 1969: 16).

This is precisely the point I have previously made with respect to

the Jewish prohibition on table-fellowship in the first century:
But although Jews were happy to mix with Gentiles in synagogues or
possibly even in market-places or streets, eating with them was a very
different matter. Eating was an occasion fraught with the possibility of
breaching the purity code, one of the most crucial aspects of the Mosaic
law for the maintenance of the separate identity of the Jewish ethnos
(Esler 1987: 84).6

T h e primary importance of this for Galatians is that mixed Jew-

ish-Gentile table-fellowship was an area of interaction which the Jews
and strict Jewish-Christians of Galatia could not tolerate. They per-
ceived, quite correctly, that the Jewish identity of the Jews who took
part would be seriously imperilled by this practice.
Yet while his primary concern was to insist on ethnic (or at least
quasi-ethnic) boundaries for his congregations vis-à-vis Judaism, Paul

6
Critics (such as J . D . G . D u n n [1990: 12982‫ )]־‬who argue on the basis of more
general forms of Jewish interaction that Jews were also relaxed about dining with
Gentiles miss the point that while some contact was inevitable, there were, necessar-
ily, also situations where it was forbidden.
himself was also concerned with keeping at bay the sinful world of
pagan idolatry. This necessitated consideration of what types of in-
teraction could be permitted and what proscribed, with the explicit
practice of idolatry being among the most critical item in the latter
category (5:20).

The Social Psychology of Intergroup Conflict and Social Identity

T o explore further the way in which internal conditions of a group

might be related to its relationships with external entities and
forces, we turn to the area of social psychology. There has been a
steady stream of research carried out into the social psychology of
group dynamics since late in the nineteenth century (see Jones 1989).
For this paper I have relied principally, although not solely, on the
work of Henry Tajfel conducted in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s
because of its utility in prompting a fresh agenda of questions to
pose to a number of New Testament texts, including Galatians. Tajfel
was interested in exploring the manner in which group identity and
the identity of the members of groups were largely an incident of
intergroup relations. From his work, and research influenced by it
(Brown 1988), I have developed a seven part model of this process
which I will now set out and develop in detail below.

1. Identity and Group Membership

O u r sense of who we are, of our identity, is intimately tied up with

our group memberships. In joining a group we re-define who we
are. If asked "Who am I?," part of my reply will be in terms of the
groups to which I belong. Paul wanted the Galatians to see themselves
as members of έκκλησίαι (1:2), as "brethren" (αδελφοί: 1:11; 3:15;
4:12, 28, 31; 5:11, 13; 6:1, 18), those justified in Christ (2:15-17
etc.), members of the one household (6:10), sons of God (3:26), those
who are one in Christ (3:28-29) and as descendants of Abraham
(and Sarah). As already noted, the last of these involves a claim to
ethnic identity. But above all, as we will see below, Paul sought to
present the identity of his Galatian readers as those who had be-
come members of the congregations through their initial reception of
the Holy Spirit (3:2-3) and who must continue to live in the Spirit
thereafter (5:16-26).
Tajfel describes this recognition of belonging to a group as the
"cognitive dimension." But this is only one of three dimensions of
group belonging which he identifies:
(a) "Cognitive" - Recognition of belonging to a group,
(b) "Evaluative" - Positive or negative connotations of belonging,
(c) "Emotional" - Attitudes towards insiders and outsiders (Tajfel 1978:
28).

T h e evaluative dimension, and one which is positive in nature, is

readily apparent in the approbation obviously attached to many of
the modes of designating his addressees just mentioned, but also in
other features, such as his distress that they could turn away from
the Gospel which he preached (1:6). T h e emotional component
emerges principally in the degree to which antipathy is directed to-
ward members of various outgroups, to which we will return below.
Tajfel defines "social identity" to mean that part of an individual's
self-concept which derives from his or her knowledge of membership
of a social group (or groups) together with the value and emotional
significance attached to that membership (1978: 63).

2. T h e Dialectical Relationship between Social Setting and Group

Belonging

Tajfel argues that there is a reciprocal or "dialectical" relationship

between, first, social settings and situations and, secondly, the ex-
pression or reflection of them in subjective group memberships. There
are two aspects to this:

(a) The number and variety of social situations seen as relevant to group
membership will increase the stronger are a member's cognitive, evalu-
ative and emotional connections with a group.
(b) Conversely, some social situations will force individuals to act in terms
of group identification, however weak was their initial connection (1978:
39).

T h e main area of interest raised by this aspect of the model is the

question of the extent to which the community perceives itself to be
the subject of persecution by the outside world, Jewish especially,
but to a lesser extent Gentile. There is no sign of Gentile persecution
in Galatians, but persecution, or potential persecution, by the Jews is
mentioned (Gal. 4:29; 5:11; 6:12), no doubt motivated by the danger
which mixed table-fellowship posed to a critical ethnic boundary. This
persecution is, in turn, inducing the Jewish-Christians to put pressure
on the Gentiles to be circumcised and become Jews (5:2, 3, 11; 6:12).
Paul's message for the Galadans is delivered in and has been shaped
by a context of pronounced intergroup conflict.

3. Group Norms

Norms are values defining acceptable and unacceptable attitudes

and behaviours for group members. They bring order and predicability
to the environment, helping members to construe the world. They
also point to appropriate behaviour in new and ambiguous situations.
Norms enhance and maintain group identity (Brown 1988: 428‫)־‬.
Norms in this sense are related to "ethics" as employed by New
Testament interpreters. But we should notice two areas of differen-
tiation. We are not dealing here primarily with a topic which is dis-
tinct from identity, although related to it, as Barclay would have it,
since norms are actually an aspect of identity. Nor are we primarily
speaking of prescriptive assertions of what an individual should do to
stay right with God and neighbour. From a social-psychological
viewpoint, although its proponents would agree that ethical standards
which individuals must embody exist in religious communities like
those of the followers of Christ in Galatia, the emphasis falls on
the much larger issue of the creation and maintenance of a group
identity.
Thus, to employ a modern analogy, the ban on the consumption
of meat on Fridays in force in the Roman Catholic Church prior to
the Second Vatican Council did not merely function to specify a
rule which it would be sinful for an individual to breach, it also
served to stamp Catholics with a unique group identity. Gal. 5:10‫־‬
6:13 plainly falls to be understood in this light. It is to be interpreted
as describing who the Galatian Christians are, or should be, with the
notion of what they should do being subsidiary to that purpose. T o
see how and why, we need to set out further aspects of the model.

4. Group Conflict and Intergroup Behaviour

A critical aspect of the sense we have of belonging to one group is

the existence of other groups to which we do not belong (Brown
1988: 192-200). For present purposes, however, the richly agonistic
nature of so much of Galatians, where the agon is fought out in ethnic
terms, induces us to focus our enquiry on a specific aspect of intergroup
relationships, namely, the phenomenon of conflict between groups.
 T o understand the process of intergroup conflict, however, it is
necessary to recognise that there is a continuum between behaviour
which, at the one end, is entirely interindividual and, at the other, is
entirely intergroup. Purely interindividual behaviour is determined
solely by the personal characteristics of those involved and not by
reference to any social categories; it is, however, difficult to imagine
behaviour which is purely interindividual. Even a casual request for
directions made on a street corner to someone passing by will prob-
ably mean evoking the roles of tourist and local inhabitant. Purely
intergroup behaviour consists of behaviour solely determined by
membership of social groups which disregards individual differences
and personal relationships (Tajfel 1978: 44); an example can be seen
in the action of bomber pilots releasing a load of bombs upon an
enemy population (Tajfel 1978: 41).
Galatians reveals a strong intergroup emphasis, with barely any
sign whatever of interindividual conduct. At one point Paul actually
indicates that he does not know the identities of those who are dis-
turbing the congregations (5:10), unless this is a way of saying per-
sonal status will have no effect on the punishment which will flow
from such behaviour.

5. Stereotyping the Outgroup

T h e closer behaviour is to the intergroup extreme, the greater the

tendency to treat outgroup members as undifferentiated items in a
unified social category. This leads to:

(a) Clear awareness of ingroup-outgroup dichotomy,

(b) Attribution to all members of the outgroup of traits assumed to be
common to their group as a whole (= "stereotyping"), and
(c) Usually negative value judgments of those traits (Brown 1988: 231‫־‬
39).
Galatians has many signs of this. A good example is found at 6:12-
13 and the characterisation of the opposing groups as "flesh" is another.

6. Social Immobility and Intergroup Inferiority

Extreme forms of animosity towards outgroup members usually re-

quire sharp boundaries between the two groups, so that movement
from one to another is impossible (= "social immobility") (Tajfel 1978:
50-1). This aspect of the model, especially in view of the specifically
ethnic context of the issues, raises intriguing questions for Paul's letter
to the Galatians. In Galatia the position seems to be that the local
Jews, and the Jewish Christians doing their bidding, have begun to
insist that the Gentiles become Jews through adoption of circumci-
sion and the rest of the law. At a theological level Paul is insisting
that to do so means forsaking the truth of the Gospel: "For if right-
eousness came through law, surely Christ died in vain" (2:21). At a
social level, Paul is opposing what will essentially mean the end of
the mixed communities he has founded in Galatia. He is defending
a boundary between their members and the Jews which is ethnic in
its intent to enlist Abraham as the true ancestor of the members
rather than of the Jews. This explains the sharp animosity expressed
at 1:9 (where he wishes that the proponents of the rival Gospel be
accursed) and at 5:12 (where he wishes they would castrate themselves).
Although it is possible to leave the group, this is presented as
extremely undesirable, as shown most clearly in the reminder that it
was through faith and not the law that the Galadans received the
Spirit (3:23‫)־‬, no doubt with the ecstatic consequences described
1 Corinthians 1214‫( ־‬see Esler 1994: 37-51), and in the problem of
being cut off from Christ (5:4). Thus, group members faced with
various disadvantages, such as a sense of deprivation vis-à-vis the
local Jews, yet wishing to remain within the community and to se-
cure the benefits available within it, would have acted with the group
as a whole just as surely as if exit was impossible.

7. Group Differentiation Through Value Inversion

A group which does perceive itself to be subordinate to another in

terms of power and status will frequendy respond through forms of
group differentiation which attack the basis for the perceived inferi-
ority (Tajfel 1978: 67-76). Such responses involve sidestepping the
main dimensions of the comparison, either by changing those di-
mensions or inventing new ones. A possible strategy is the assertion
that the true positive values are the antithesis of those espoused by
the dominant group (Brown 1988: 250-251).
Based on the preliminary connection with this aspect of the model
that the Christian communities were probably no match for the local
synagogues in terms of power and influence, and that such dominance
was being exercised to persuade the Gentile Christians of Galatia to
become Jews, it is submitted that this strategy is pervasively present
in Gal. 5:13-6:10. As part of their advocacy of circumcision to end
the scandal of mixed table-fellowship, the Jewish or Jewish-Christian
opponents were advancing the claims of Judaism as a superior form
of identity by arguing that sin was the inevitable concomitant of being
a Gentile, even for those who had come to faith in Jesus Christ. This
argument is reflected in Gal. 2:15-17 when Paul insists: "We are by
nature Jews and not Gentile sinners (αμαρτωλοί)... If we seek to be
justified in Christ and we are found to be sinners (άμαρτωλοί), does
that mean that Christ is the agent of sin (αμαρτία)?"
Although the sin to which Gentiles most typically succumbed was
idolatry, the sin referred to in 2:17 may transcend this. Possibly there
was a measure of dissension within the έκκλησίαι (5:15) which gave
credence to accusations of άμαρτία. The Jewish advocates of circum-
cision in Galatia were unfavourably comparing the sinful (because
anomic) condition of the communities with the allegedly sinless (be-
cause nomic) one of the synagogue. Paul needs to sidestep the terms
of this comparison by re-defining its terms. His primary means of
achieving this is to stigmatise the world outside the congregations as
the realm of "flesh" (σάρξ) in contrast to the Spirit-conditioned life
within. In effect, he wants the Galatians to be able to define their
identity with the assertion "We are the people of the Spirit" as against
all others, J e w first but also Gentile, who are people of the flesh.
Having made this observation we are now able to undertake a de-
tailed application of the model to the textual data.

5. Detailed Application of the Social-Scientific Approaches to

Gal. 5:13-6:10

Paul actually lays the foundation for his strategy of redefining the
comparison being m a d e by his opponents between the alleged
sinfulness of the Christian congregations and allegedly nomic order
among Jews somewhat earlier in the text—at Gal. 3:2-5. T h e word
σάρξ occurs three times in the letter before this, on each occasion
meaning little more than "human being" (1:16, 2:16 and 2:20).7 At
3:3, however, Paul launches on a new tack by sharply contrasting
the condition of being under the law, designated as "flesh" (σάρξ),

7
For many of the subtleties of the meaning of σάρξ in Galatians, see Barclay
1988: 178-215.
compared with the experience of the "spirit" (πνεύμα), which char-
acterises the new dispensation (3:3): "Having begun with the Spirit,
are you now ending with the flesh?" (έναρξάμενοι πνεύματι νυν σαρκί
έπιτελεΐσθε;). H e reminds them of who they are by reference to the
circumstances of their turning to Christ. Since the context in which
they received the Spirit was presumably a meeting of the congrega-
don, this reminder inevitably brings to their attention the manner in
which they joined the new Christian groups 8 or became committed
to them. No doubt σαρξ evokes here the spectre of circumcision and
the works of the Jewish law which Paul has just argued have no role
in justification (2:15-21), but the word is capable of carrying a fuller
meaning, to refer (by the process of stereotyping) to the whole social
order which beckons beyond the boundaries of the group. This sense
of σαρξ also emerges a little later in the allegory in 4:21-31, where
Paul links his congregations with Sarah, who was born according to
Spirit, as opposed to Hagar, who was born according to flesh (4:29),
and who represents the present-day Jerusalem which is still in a state
of slavery along with her children (4:25). As we will see below, Paul
provides the fullest explication of this meaning in 5:16-25, by
stigmatising unacceptable aspects of community life and individual
behaviour, which typify σάρξ, in contrast to acceptable ones, which
pertain to πνεύμα (5:16-6:10). As already noted, none of this is sur-
prising. For his Gentile readers, having crossed a boundary separat-
ing them from pagan idolatry to join the Christian communities and
being under pressure to cross another by taking on Jewish identity
(which utilised a detailed ethical code to contribute to its inner sense
of the boundary between itself and the wider world), desperately
needed to appropriate their own distinctive identity.
T h e theme begins at 5:13. Paul has previously made it clear that
the imposition of the law was a form of slavery (2:4; 4:8-9, 25; 5:1)
being forceably advocated (4:29; 6:12) by persons who were them-
selves enslaved (4:25). Now, paradoxically and yet in a way which
typifies the redefinition of the respective roles of the relevant groups
suggested by the model, he asserts that Christian freedom is not an
opportunity for the σάρξ, but a form of slavery-through-love (άγαπή).
As at 3:23‫ ־‬he recalls the occasion when they obtained their new
identity and contrasts it with the realm of flesh: "For you were called

8
I am not suggesting that the word Christian was applied to them at this early stage.
 to freedom, brethren, only not freedom as an opportunity for the
flesh (σάρξ), but through love (αγάπη) be slaves to one another" (5:13).
He is changing the dimensions of the comparison by suggesting that
Christian freedom does not entail giving untrammelled licence to the
flesh, but actually implies a type of slavery, one which is based on
άγάπη. More signiflcandy, he is about to go on to say that unsuitable
modes of existence and activity within the congregations would leave
one in a mess similar to that of being under the law, since σάρξ is
an apt designation for both. T h e right identity and true positive values
which are an aspect of it, which he will soon refer to as πνεύμα (thus
revisiting the blunt contrast of 3:3), are, in this stereotypical perspec-
tive, the precise antithesis of those of the Jews.
Gal. 5:14 is central to this project. We have already seen that an
inadequate understanding of group boundaries led J . D . G . Dunn to
suppose that Paul meant that the ethical elements of the Mosaic law
were to be retained within the Christian congregations and Heikki
Räisänen also sees in this verse "the reduction of the torah to the
moral law5' (1986: 23-7). But these views mistake Paul's intentions,
which are, after all, expressed quite unequivocally at 5:18: "If you
are led by Spirit, you are not under law." T h a t Paul has the whole
law in mind is clear from 5:3: "Everyone who is circumcised is obliged
to carry out the whole law." When Paul taxes his opponents with
not keeping the law themselves in 6:13 it is more likely to be the
moral code thereof than the ceremonial elements to which he is
referring. Paul's point is that if you have love (which, of course, you
get as the first gift of the Spirit in the Christian community—5:22)
you do not need the law. Christians have independent access to the
best the law can provide: "If you are led by Spirit, you are not
under law." Love, derived from the Spirit and not from the law, is
being proposed as a substitute for the law. Paul has destroyed the
law (2:18). This is a better explanation than the one proposed by
J o h n Barclay—that "the moral standards of the law are taken up
into and fully realized in the life of the Spirit" (1988: 141). Paul opts
for substitution, not realization. Paul ditches the Mosaic law in its
entirety in order to create and maintain a boundary between his
congregations and the Jews.
At 5:15 Paul provides a revealing glimpse of what it might be like
if the Galatians do not serve one another in love, with people biting
and tearing one another to pieces like wild animals. It is possible
that Paul has actual conduct in mind, although this is not necessarily
so and the language used is certainly hyperbolic (Betz 1979: 2767‫)־‬.
Either way, the verse constitutes a hard-headed acknowledgment by
Paul that the process of acquiring a new identity could be a very
difficult one, which is just what we would expect from the social-
scientific material discussed above. T h e rival Jewish claimant to the
loyalties of the Gentile members offered a mode of identity which its
proponents were arguing provided a system of values which might
restrain such behaviour. Paul's answer involves recognising that the
Mosaic code does offer ethical guidance, encapsulated in the injunc-
tion to love neighbour as self in the previous verse, while setting out
an entirely different mode of access to its benefits, coupled with a
fundamental insistence that those advocating circumcision do not keep
the law anyway (6:13).
In 5:16-22 Paul sets out as a sharp antithesis the experience of
living in the σάρξ on the one hand and living in the πνεύμα on the
other. His language indicates that he is picking up a theme intro-
duced earlier, at 3:25‫־‬. Previously he had contrasted the beginning
of the Galatians' life in Christ with their current inclinations: "Are
you so stupid that having begun in Spirit (έναρξάμενοι πνεύματι) you
are now being completed in flesh (σάρκι έπιτελεΐσθε)?" (3:3) and here,
in very similar language, he expatiates in detail upon what it means
to proceed in Spirit rather than in flesh: "Walk in Spirit (πνεύματι)
and do not fulfil the desire of the flesh (έπιθυμίαν σαρκός ού μή
τελέσητε) (5:16). In 5:16-21 the link back to the earlier connection
between σάρξ and law is made even more pointed by the reference
to "law" (νόμος) in v. 18 and "works of flesh" (εργα της σαρκός) in
v. 19, which seem to constitute an ironic parallel with the expression
"works of the law" (εργα νόμου) used earlier (Gal. 2:16 (thrice); 3:2,
5 and 10). Paul is not suggesting that the works of the law are them-
selves works of the flesh, rather that those who rely on the law can-
not escape the sway of the flesh (cf. Gal. 3:10).
For present purposes it is unnecessary to enter the discussion as to
the extent to which Paul was directly indebted, if at all, to Jewish
tradition as represented in 1QS 3:134:26 9 ‫ ־‬or to Stoic philosophy
for the contents of the list in w . 1921‫( ־‬Barclay 1988: 187-91). Never-

9
Cf. 1 Q S 4:9-11 : "However, to the spirit of deceit belong greed, frailty of
hands in the service of justice, irreverence, deceit, pride and haughtiness of heart,
dishonesty, trickery, cruelty, much insincerity, impatience, much insanity, impudent
enthusiasm, appalling acts performed in a lustful passion, filthy paths for indecent
purposes, blasphemous tongue, blindness of eyes, hardness of hearing, stiffness of
 theless, the fact that "vices" 10 similar to those in Gal. 5:1921‫ ־‬have
been found in a Jewish text such as 1 Q S and attributed to other
Jews who were purportedly living in accordance with the law of Moses
strengthens the otherwise strong case that Paul primarily presents his
list as (allegedly) constituting pathological dimensions of the Judaism
proving so attractive to his Gentile converts in Galatia. Thus Paul
suggests that the Jewish law, as advocated by the Galatian trouble-
makers, will plunge those who adopt it into the realm of "flesh,"
which he castigated earlier (3:3). Although they are also seen as forms
of behaviour which lead to loss of the Kingdom of God (5:21), their
role in defining a reverse image of Christian identity is plain. At the
same time, since the works of the flesh manifested by Jews who do
not keep the law could also characterise idolatrous Gentiles, we should
not exclude the latter from the persons whom Paul seeks to have his
readers distance themselves from. T o this extent he is seeking to keep
them within the boundary they crossed in entering the congregations
as much as discouraging their crossing the other boundary between
themselves and Judaism. It may be that the inclusion of idolatry as
the first topic in v. 20 is meant to underline the continuing menace
of paganism. In the terms of the model from Tajfel's social psychol-
ogy set out above, Paul is employing the particular works of the
σάρξ listed in w . 1920‫ ־‬to stereotype the rival forms of ethnic and
religious identity on offer in Galatia and to warn his congregations
that they should be shunned.
Paul's interest in the group dimension of the works of the flesh is
quite noticeable. Of the fifteen negative characteristics, nine of them
relate to intra-community strife: sorcery (φαρμακεία), enmides (εχθραι),
strife (ερις), jealousy (ζήλος), outbursts of anger (θυμοί), selfish ambidon
(έριθεΐα), dissensions (διχοστασίαι), factions (αιρέσεις) and envy (φθόνοι).
In other words, the majority deal with aspects of inter-personal rela-
tions which have the potential to tear the community apart. They
constitute elements of rival group identity which Paul wants to play
no part in his congregations. T h e list tells the Galatian communities
who and what they must not be, by warning them what not to do.
Paul also adopts the tactic of asserting that the true values are the

neck, hardness of heart in order to walk in all the paths of darkness and evil cun-
ning"—Mardnez 1994: 7.
10
I hesitate to use this otherwise convenient word because it is somewhat too
evocative of individual ethics which I am arguing should not be seen as the focus
of the passage under discussion.
antithesis of those just described. H e does this in 5:22-3. This pos-
sibility was raised by the seventh aspect of the social-psychological
model. T h e fruits of the Spirit which are listed here, beginning with
αγάπη, image the proper identity of the congregations in Christ. It is
apparent that ethical norms are only one aspect of this identity, both
from the general consideration of their role within the overall con-
trast between σάρξ and πνεύμα as the diametric opposites charac-
terising rival groups and because of the inclusion of joy and peace in
the list. Joy and peace are difficult to classify as norms but are easily
recognised as badges of identity.
Many of the social and personal delinquencies listed in 5:1921‫־‬
were widely recognised as such in the social world of the first century
Graeco-Roman world. Yet the admonition at 5:26—"Let us not
engage in empty boasting (κενόδοξοι), challenging (προκαλούμενοι) one
another, envying (φθονοΰντες) one another"—raises a somewhat differ-
ent issue. What we have here is virtually a summary of Mediterranean
m a n , " always seeking to provoke others who were not kin to social
contests of challenge and response in order to win honour and to be
able to boast accordingly, as revealed to us by recent anthropological
research (Esler 1995b). In this verse Paul may have in his sights a gen-
eral problem posed by the social environment more than the par-
ticular issue raised by Judaism. In counselling his audience to distance
themselves from such an outlook Paul has in mind for them a cor-
porate identity which would be appropriate for members of one family,
who did not engage in the social pattern of challenge and response
with one another, since αδελφοί defend one another's honour. 12
And it is the family to which Paul immediately proceeds in 6:1,
with an address to άδελφοί beginning a new section which is closed
with the reference to the members of the household of faith in 6:10.
Family imagery frames this section. In 6:1-6 Paul offers advice on
how ethically appropriate behaviour can be encouraged, but within
the context of how the maintenance of the right type of identity can
be guaranteed. First of all he advocates peer pressure (6:1), as one
would expect in Mediterranean society, given its strongly corporate
nature and the pressure customarily brought to bear on wayward

11
T h e male gender is used deliberately. Challenge and response was a social
game played out between men in public.
15
J o h n Barclay, w h o never cites any works of Mediterranean anthropology in his
book on the passage, misses this aspect of the verse (1988: 156). I develop this point
in Esler 1997.
 group members to conform. Secondly, he proposes the mutual shar-
ing of burdens, suggesting, in one of the most difficult phrases in the
letter, that by so doing they will "fulfil the law of Christ 5 ' (άναπληρώ-
σετε τον νόμον του Χριστού—6:2). T h e word νόμος is used thirty times
in the letter and this is the only occasion on which there is any
doubt that it refers to the Mosaic law. T h e expression "the law of
Christ" is not likely to refer to a body of ethical teaching deriving
from the historical Jesus. Nor, as J o h n Barclay proposes (1988: 134)
does it mean the Mosaic law redefined by Jesus, since this view is
based on a failure to recognize that 5:13, in context, represents the
stark substitution of the new dispensation for the old. Rather, Paul is
employing "the law of Christ" as a bold metaphor for the manner in
which love, originating in the Spirit, now becomes the guiding force
in Christian life. This represents the high-point in the letter both of
Paul's ascription to the congregations of an ethnic identity and the
inversion of the values of the major group with which they are con-
flict: not only do the Galatian congregations have Abraham and Sarah
as ancestors, they have their own law.
Lastly, we have Gal. 6:6-10. According to Betz (1979: 306), Paul
expresses an "eschatological warning" in Gal. 6:7-9. T h e fact that
the warning concerns the hard truth that as we sow, whether in
Spirit or in flesh, so will we reap, suggests that it has a very general
import, covering the basic dichotomy Paul inaugurated at Gal. 3:2
and began to develop at Gal. 5:13. Eschatological punishment or
reward is attached to the choice his addressees make—either the way
of the σάρξ (especially in the adoption of Jewish law and identity) or
the way of the πνεύμα, meaning continued membership of the con-
gregations (without circumcision) and manifestation of άγάπη and the
other gifts of the Spirit. Life in the sarx leads to destruction, life in
the pneuma to eternal life. T h e connection between one's actions and
one's ultimate moral responsibility for them is very direct and, more-
over, not easy to reconcile with a Lutheran interpretation. 13 Even
here, however, ethical norms form part, but only a part, of the pref-
erable identity, which is created and maintained in the heat of inter-
group conflict. T h e extent to which even eschatology can be deployed
to legitimate the appropriate group identity is evident in the rever-
sion to family imagery in the conclusion of this section: "Therefore

13
Many of the difficulties of reconciling Paul with a Lutheran reading of his
theology have been set out in Watson 1986.
since we have time let us do good to everyone, but mostly to our
fellow-members in the household of faith" (6:10).

Conclusion

T h e analysis of Gal. 5:13-6:10 using social-scientific research into

group boundaries, ethnicity and intergroup conflict supports both
elements of the bi-polar thesis set out at the beginning of this essay:
first, that understanding the passage requires an integrated account
of the external and internal aspects of the context and, secondly,
that the passage focuses on identity, of which ethical norms are one
element, and that intergroup conflict has been fundamental in the
creation of that identity. We are not dealing here, as J o h n Barclay
argues, with "ethical maxims" attached to the issue of identity, but
with identity itself, in the establishment of which norms form only a
part. By building on the unique experience of the Spirit, which brought
the Galatian communities into being, as a means of sharply differen-
dating the life of the congregations from that of the Jewish and Gentile
worlds, and by an idiosyncratic use of Jewish cradition and a more
plausible application of family imagery, Paul seeks to forge an iden-
tity distinct from both J e w and Gentile. This is the social reality
underlying his affirmation that "there is neither circumcision nor
uncircumcision but a new creation" (Gal. 6:15).

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Qimron, Elisha, and Strugnell, John
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the Judean Desert X. Oxford: The Clarendon Press.
Räisänen, Heikki
1986 Paul & the Law. Philadelphia: Fortress.
Robbins, Vernon
1995 "Social-Scientific Criticism and Literary Studies: Pros-
pects for Cooperation in Biblical Interpretation," in Esler
1995a.
Ropes, J.H.
1929 The Singular Problem of the Epistle to the Galatians. Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press.
Schmithals, W.
1972 Paul and the Gnostics. E.T. by J.E. Steely. Nashville:
Abingdon Press.
Tajfel, Henri
1978 Differentiation between Social Groups: Studies in the Social Psy-
chology of Intergroup Relations. London et alibi‫״‬. Academic
Press.
Van Gennep, Arnold
1960 The Rites of Passage, E.T. by Monika Β. Vizedom and
Gabrielle L. Caffee. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Watson, Francis
1986 Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles: A Sociological Approach. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wilson, R. McL.
1968 "Gnostics—In Galatia?," in F.L. Cross (ed.), Stadia Evan-
gelica, 4, (= Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte
der altchrisdichen Literatur No. 102), 358-67.
 T H E ' N A T I O N ' O F S T R A N G E R S : SOCIAL C O N T E M P T
AND ITS T H E O L O G I C A L I N T E R P R E T A T I O N IN A N C I E N T
J U D A I S M AND EARLY C H R I S T I A N I T Y 1

Reinhard Feldmeier

T h e terms "nadon" and "stranger" are essentially sociological catego-

ries. As such they are opposed to each other: "nation" (German: Volk)
is a common culture and tradition, fatherland and mother tongue; it
is the part of the world I know and where I am known, the piece of
mother earth in which life is rooted. If the term "nation" implies
belonging, a homeland, also citizenship with its rights and responsi-
bilities, the label "stranger" can have the opposite quality: it is used
to separate off one group from those who do not, and are not sup-
posed to, belong to it. T h e term stranger is thus used primarily to
express something negative: not belonging, exclusion, mixed to some
extent with the denigration of this other person (a "barbarian"). T h e
state of being a stranger is experienced by those concerned as some-
thing that is per se thoroughly negative. This was especially the case
in ancient times, when it was only the possession of citizenship that
made someone legally and politically viable in the full sense.2
T h e title "the nation of strangers" thus appears at first sight to be
a contradiction in terms: either one belongs to the nation, in which
case one is a citizen and not a stranger, or one is a stranger, and
one does not belong to the nation. However, both terms are in 1
Peter key terms for Christian self-understanding—with an interesting
pre-history in the Jewish literature of the Hebrew Bible as well as a

1
Translated by David E. Orton and Alan Moss. This article is a development of
some ideas stemming from my Habilitationsschrift, Die Christen als Fremde. Die Metapher
der Fremde in der antiken Welt, im Urchristentum und im 1. Petrusbrief( W U N T 64; Tübingen,
1992).
2
In antiquity, which is oriented towards the ideal of the full citizen, the peregnnus,
the stranger, is a second-class person, with limited rights and opportunities, and it
was astonishing what an individual was prepared to put up with in order to leave
this status behind h i m / h e r and become a citizen (e.g., 25 years of service in the
reserve army!). And in ancient Israel too it is of course the member of a tribe who
stands in the central position. T h e stranger is, it is true, placed under the special
protection of divine law, alongside widows and orphans and other unfortunate char-
acters, but this is precisely because of his/her miserable status (cf. Sir. 29:23-28).
notable history of influence in Christian tradition! We shall sketch
both of these at this point. O u r focus is, however, on 1 Peter, which
is the first to make the exclusion of the "stranger' 5 a constitutive
element of the identity of the believer. It will become clear that in
certain areas of the Jewish and Chrisdan tradition the two apparendy
mutually exclusive terms complement and confirm one another in a
remarkable way. T o present the thesis of this article at the outset:
The affirmation and positive interpretation of their own strangerhood has contributed
substantially to the fact that Jews scattered in the diaspora—and even more so
Christians, who were in the minority, outsiders in society—were able to see them-
selves as the people of God, despite all attempts to make them into enemies, to
exclude them, and despite all pressure on them to assimilate. What follows will
not only justify this thesis but at the same time make a contribution to
the biblical understanding of "nationhood" or "peoplehood" (Volkstum).

1. "Strangers" in the Old Testament People of God

T h a t Israel is God's people is one of the basic statements of the

Hebrew Bible. T h e first thing that God does in the Bible after the
exodus from Egypt is to make this group of fleeing nomads his people
and thereby to give them their dignity and worth, at the same time
placing his stamp upon them, a stamp which has made an extremely
deep impression on the identity of Israel. However much Israel
suffered, from time to time, under this characterisation, whatever at-
tempts it made to divest itself of it, being God's people was (and is)
central to Jewish self-understanding. It is so much the more surprising
that the category of strangeness suddenly comes to the fore—even if
only occasionally—in the Hebrew Bible and in Early Judaism.

1.1 The Patriarchs: Identity by Identification

The first people whose foreignness is extensively mentioned in the

Bible are the patriarchs. 3 Ever since Abraham was called from his
familiar surroundings and set on the road, he and his descendants
have been strangers in the promised land. This foreignness is stressed
time and again in the patriarchal narratives. Thus when buying the

3
Cf. Gen. 12:10; 17:8; 19:9; 20:1; 21:23, 34; 23:4; 26:3; 28:4; 32:5; 35:27; 36:7;
37:1; 47:4; Exod. 6:4; Ps. 105:12 etc.
cave for his wife Abraham expressly describes himself to the indig-
enous population as "a stranger and a sojourner" (Gen. 23:4). There
is more than historical memory behind this. For on closer examina-
tion it is striking that among the Pentateuchal sources, the priestly
document in particular programmatically places "the time of the
patriarchs under the term 'sojourning'." 4 This is remarkable since
the priestly document was presumably written in the Babylonian
diaspora, 5 i.e. at a time and in a situation in which Israel had lost
everything that had previously characterised its life as a nation: It
had been driven out of the promised land of the fathers, no longer
had a king, its centre Jerusalem was destroyed, and above all there
was no longer a temple, the cultic centre of any religion. Israel, it
must have appeared, was at an end as a nation. In this situation the priestly
document now begins to retell the story of Israel and thereby also
the story of the patriarchs, all over again. 6 And one thing it under-
lines is that the patriarchs too were strangers, to whom no land
belonged. But though such strangers they had not been abandoned
by God. As "strangers and sojourners" they were people who went
on their way trusting in God's provision and were not disappointed!
T h e patriarchs thus become a sort of parable of living by faith, in
which God's word is valid even in foreign parts. Being a stranger is life
according to the promise. With these "strangers" the troubled Israelites
in the exile could identify themselves and thus gain in their desperate
situation the confidence they needed to enable them to survive.

1.2 Being a Stranger and Relating to the Foreigner

T h e reminder of foreignness does not only have a reassuring func-

tion, however. T h e exodus from the "house of slavery," Egypt, was
indeed the beginning of the existence of Israel, and this saving act of

4
J. Schreiner, "Muß ich in der Fremde leben? Eine Frage des alten Israel," in
Dynamik im Wort: Lehre von der Bibel. Leben aus der Bibel (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk,
1983), p. 140. According to Schreiner, Ρ thereby clearly differentiates itself from the
earlier narratives: "A sign that the patriarchs felt themselves to be foreigners or that
their sojourn in C a n a a n seemed problemadc to them, is not evident in this old
narrative layer (J)" (ibid., p. 135). This formulation is not, however very sharply
defined since the patriarchs are described as ‫ נ ר י ם‬in the old pentateuchal sources
too (cf. Kellermann, ‫נר״‬,'' p. 986).
5
Cf. Ε. Zenger, Gottes Bogen in den Wolken: Untersuchungen zu Komposition und Theologie
der priesterschriftlichen Urgeschichte (SBS 112; Stuttgart, 1983), p. 48.
6
Zenger (Bogen, p. 48) speaks of Ρ as a critical Utopia.
God became the foundational confession of the people of God, which
time and again formed the justification for the commandments: "I
am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt,
out of slavery" (Exod. 20:2; Deut. 5:6). T h e reminder that Israel's
roots themselves lie in foreign parts and that living in the land was
made possible only by God's action, repeatedly formed the critical
factor that stood in the way of an ail-too self-glorifying separation
from other strangers. Sometimes, meanwhile, a quite astonishing
enhancement of the stranger is brought about by means of the di-
vine commandment. In Lev. 19:33f., for example, we read: "When
a stranger lives with you in your land, you shall not oppress him. H e
shall live among you like one of your own, and you shall love him
as yourself, for you were strangers in Egypt. I am the Lord your God."
This is a remarkable special feature of Israel: Its ancestors are not
stylised as heroes of former times. One's origins lie not in demi-gods
but, on the contrary, in a "wandering Aramaean, near to death," as
the so-called concise historical creed puts it (Deut. 26:5)! T o reassure
oneself one does not here tell of "the fame of the deeds of the dead, " as
is customary among other nations, but of God's action, which created his
people from miserable "outcasts." T h e result of this is not only the
impetus to treat foreigners in one's midst in a different way, but
also—as is shown by our next point—a "thorn in the flesh" against
any kind of national hubris.

1.3 Self-Description as Strangers before God

Israel's unusual relationship with an intrinsically negative foreignness

is also evident in the fact that the nation, or at least individual Isra-
elites, can describe even themselves as strangers. This too seems to
have its basis in the post-exilic situation: "After 538 there is a partial
return to the old land, but this return is a return to a diaspora, it is
a return to a new foreign country." 7 T h e security-giving unity found
in a natural, common nation and faith can no longer be taken for
granted; 8 the second temple, from which the ark of the covenant is

7
R. Mosis, "Das Babylonische Exil Israels in der Sicht chrisdicher Exegese," in
R. Mosis (ed.), Exil—Diaspora—Rückkehr: Zum theologischen Gespräch zwischen Juden und
Christen (Düsseldorf, 1978), pp. 65f.
8
Cf. Mosis, Exil, pp. 67ff. O n the various ideas that followed from this sépara-
tion, see J. Hausmann, Israels Rest: Studien zum Selbstverständnis der nachexilischen Gemeinde
( B W A N T 124; Stuttgart, 1987), pp. 237ff. Hausmann also shows, however, that in
missing, was not able completely to replace the first;9 following the
loss of sovereignty the land is much more a pawn of foreign powers
and subject to their influence. 10 True, it is precisely the returning
ones who claim to be the true inhabitants of Judaea, but such texts
as Neh. 9:36f. testify to the feeling of no longer being at home, or
of not yet being at home, in one's own land. "So the Babylonian
exile leads to post-exilic Israel living as a minority, and often as an
undervalued and disadvantaged minority, both in J u d a e a and else-
where, and to its seeing itself as a diaspora people.'" 1 Typical in this
regard are laments such as Psalm 73,12 in which the individual right-
eous person is afflicted by his environment, which is no longer con-
cerned with God. T h e surprising thing is that Israel does not fall
apart as a result of these negative experiences but is able to interpret
this experience of alienation theologically and thus to integrate it in its self-
understanding and its relationship to God. This comes to expression for
example in the self-designation as "strangers and sojourners," which
is applied figuratively to the Israelites in the land.

the post-exilic concepts of "remnant" one cannot easily distinguish between nation
and cultic community, since the two things always belong together. In the post-
exilic situation there are, however, shifts in emphasis (ibid., p. 246).
9
This awareness remained alive in Judaism until later times (cf. 2 Bar. 68:5f.).
10
Mosis (Exil, pp. 64f.) suggests that "the recovered former homeland" is itself
experienced "as a kind of diaspora . . . Judaea is without hope and not even a 'prov-
ince' in the legal sense—perhaps not even an independent province but part of a
province of the Persian world empire. This remains essentially true when the Per-
sians are replaced by the Greeks, Alexander the Great and the Ptolemies and Seleucids,
and remains so under the Romans, who from around 200 BCE onwards gain control
of more and more of this area, until the destruction of the second temple and the
defeat of the first and the second Jewish revolts remove all state independence from
the Jews in Palestine." This general picture is certainly simplistic—the Maccabaean
and Hasmonaean periods were not only periods of relative independence but also
times of relatively great expansion and extension. T h e early Maccabaean period in
particular was seen as a period of liberation, in which the Jewish nation was able
successfully to resist being overwhelmed by foreign influences. Here too, however,
history was taking place in the shadow of the great powers, and it was only a
question of time before Israel again became fully dependent. T o this extent I would
agree with Mosis (with some qualifications).
11
Mosis, Exil, p. 66; cf. C. T h o m a , 'Jüdische und chrisdiche Exilserfahrungen
und Exilstheologien: Deutung des nachbiblischen Judentums aus christlich-theologischer
Sicht," in R. Mosis (ed.), Exil—Diaspora—Rückkehr, p. 81 : "Already in early Jewish
times it was taken for granted in Judaism that one could also be exiled and banished
in one's homeland: if one was in trouble and isolation or if one was suffering per-
secution and war. T o speak only of the allegorical use of the concept of exile, for
example when this occurs in the context of the Seleucid persecution (ca. 170—
ca. 160 BCE), is not to do justice to the Hebrew/Jewish mentality and forms of
expression."
12
O n the date of this cf. Kraus, p. 667: "The Psalm is to be situated relatively late."
 In Lev. 25:23 is found the ban on the selling of the land. This is
justified by God with the words: "For the land is mine, and you are
strangers and sojourners with me." T h e land is given, and is not
disposable at anyone's whim. But at the same time this state of being
a stranger is given a new reference point: God calls the Israelites
"strangers before me." This expresses a dual idea: O n the one hand
it is remembered that Israel is not "autochthonic," i.e. that it is not
what it is as a result of its own power and abilities, but that it receives
this time and again as a gift from God's hand. This has consequences
right through to the law of land ownership. 13 But this is not expressed
negatively in the limitation of the enforcement of land rights, but is
positively expressed in dependence on God alone. This is also liber-
ating, especially where the land is administered by foreign powers.
This line is continued in David's great prayer of thanksgiving in 1
Chron. 29:10ff. T h e building of the temple seems, after the posses-
sion of the land and the securing of the land by the king, to com-
plete the process of settlement by the people of God, in that God
now gains a definitive position in Israel. But precisely in this prayer
we find the interesting sentences: "What am I?" (the Chronicler's
David is speaking, 29.14fF.), "What is my people, that we were able
to give so much of our own free will? All things come from you; we
give you what has come from your own hand. For we are strangers
and guests before you like all our fathers. O u r life on earth is like a
shadow and gives no security." This prayer, authored around the
end of the Persian period or in the early Hellenistic period, 14 (in any
case in a time of great turmoil) does not only emphasise the gran-
deur of God. T h e text repeats: We are strangers before you! T h a t
fundamentally negative experience of the finiteness and uncertainty
of h u m a n existence, the lack of control of one's own life and its
fundamentals, is bound in with the relationship between finite hu-
manity and the lord of the world. As a critical factor against na-
tional hubris, such a self-understanding should not be underestimated.
At the same time, such estrangement is also an expression of the

13
According to H J . Boecker (Recht und Gesetz im Alten Testament und im Alten Orient
[2nd edn., Neukirchen-Vluyn, 1984], p. 77), Lev. 25:23 can be called "the Magna
Carta of the Old Testament land law."
14
K. Galling (Die Bücher der Chronik, Esra, Nehemia [ A T D 12; Göttingen, 1954],
p. 17) dated the authorship of Chronicles to the "end of the 3rd century." Recendy
Chronicles has been dated a little earlier (cf. H . G . M . Williamson, 1 and 2 Chronicles
[ N e w Century Bible Commentary; Grand Rapids/London, 1982], p. 16): "A dating
within the Persian period is much more likely."
general dependence on God and thus it contains a positive feature.
This recurs again in the prayers of Israel, the Psalms, in which this
self-descripdon is found variously in the context of petition and the
expression of trust. 15

1.4 The Stranger Metaphor in Early Jewish Literature

T h e relatively rare Old Testament self-description of the nation or

of individual believers as "strangers" is not taken up in vast tracts of
early Jewish literature. Indeed it is even suppressed. It is emphasised
that the Jews are, and always were, full citizens in Israel. An illumi-
nating early example is the speech of Achior in J d t 5:5-21 (LXX).
This oudine of Jewish history, which dates from the Maccabaean
period, 16 clearly reflects Jewish self-understanding. 17 It is striking how
Israel's, or its forefathers' residence outside the promised land is in-
variably described as a life in the state of sojourning: in the land of
the Chaldaeans (5:6), in Mesopotamia (5:7) and in Egypt (5:10). This
παροκείν in a strange land is distinguished—in deliberate contrast—
from living as κατοικείν in the land, which (all told, three times!) is
emphatically represented as a successful occupation of the land: the
ancestors already moved out of foreign parts and settled in the land
of Canaan and became wealthy (Jdt 5:9), and the same thing is
repeated after the exodus from Egypt (5:15) and after the return from
exile.18 Quite deliberately, then, living in the land as a situation of fulfilled

15
In Ps. 39:13, by reference to his own estrangement, God effectively becomes
duty-bound to help: "Hear my prayer, YHWH, and perceive my crying, be not silent
at my tears, for I am a sojourner with you, a stranger like all my fathers." And in
the famous Psalm 119 the twice emphasized alienation is just the backcloth against
which the protective nearness of G o d is requested or praised: "I am a stranger in
the land—do not hide your commandments from me" (v. 19); "Your command-
ments are my song in the house in which I am a stranger."
16
Cf. Ε. Jenni, art. 'Juditbuch," in RGG 3 III (1959), col. 1001.
17
Here Achior gives a view of history which is reminiscent of the Deuteronomistic
History; cf. Jdt 5:18f.: "But when they departed from the way which he (God) had
determined for them, they were destroyed by many wars for a very long t i m e . . .
But now that they have returned to their God, they have reappeared from the
dispersion in which they were dispersed. T h e y have reoccupied Jerusalem where
their sanctuary is . . ." It is not by chance that Achior, thrown out by the Assyrians
after his speech, is received again by the Israelites with enthusiasm.
18
Jdt 5:19: άνέβησαν έκ της διασποράς . . . καί κατέσχον την Ιερουσαλήμ. . . και
κατφκίσθησαν έν τη όρεινη . . . Here it is noticeable how the notion of estrangement
in relation to the Babylonian exile is no longer used but now the text speaks of the
διασπορά—so there is an implied distinction between the period before and the
period after the possession of the land.
promise is contrasted with the existence as strangers. T h e corollary of this is
that in its own land Israel is not a sojourner at all, but a full citizen,
designated as such by God. This connection is so close that even the
foreignness of the patriarchs, so frequendy emphasised in the book
of Genesis, is suppressed and the text is emended accordingly. This
attitude, expressed in an exemplary way here, which is clearly ori-
ented towards the common ancient ideal of the full citizen, is typical
of many parts of Judaism of the Hellenistic period. 19 Thus Josephus
also plays down the foreignness of Abraham, and instead emphasises
that he lived in the land, left it to his descendants,2° and possessed it.21 Ac-
cordingly Josephus is not at all inclined to take up the terms just
mentioned and use them in a self-description. 22 This attitude is ap-

19
In the "Praise of the Fathers" in Sirach, the motif of foreignness is entirely
absent. Instead, the inheritance promised or given to the fathers is emphasized (Sir.
44:21, 23). As regards the fathers in Pseudo-Philo's Liber Antiquitatum, emphasis is
also given only to the promise of the land and their dwelling in it. In 2 Maccabees
Jerusalem or Israel is described as πατρίς (2 Macc. 8:21; 13:10, 14; 14:18; cf. 4:1;
5:8, 9, 15; 8:33; 13:3); accordingly, the Jews are citizens and fellow-citizens (2 Macc.
9:19; cf. 4:5, 50; 5:6, 8, 23; 14:8; 15:30). T h e same emphasis is found in Josephus,
Contra Apionem—the law is even the "best version," and Judaism is a θεοκρατία as a
political unit (cAp 2:164f.).
20
Ant. 1:154: " . . . έν f| (i.e. in the land of Canaan) κατφκησε καί τοις άπογόνοις
κατέλιπε.
21
Cf. Ant. 1:157. In his efforts to show the full citizenship of the Jews, Josephus
even stresses that Claudius confirmed the Alexandrian right of citizenship for the
Jews (Ant. 19:280ff), which is formulated misleadingly, to say the least. In the extant
letter of Claudius (CIJ 153:88ff.) equal rights of citizenship are expressly ruled out.
It is disputed whether this is a case of deliberate falsification by Josephus (so e.g.
H. Conzelmann, Heiden—Juden—Christen: Auseinandersetzungen in der Literatur der hellenistisch-
römischen ίζάΐ [BHTh 62; Tübingen, 1989], p. 13, where other representatives of this
view are listed). A much more cautious view is expressed by E.M. Smallwood, The
Jews under Roman Rule. From Pompey to Diocletian (SJLA 20; Leiden, 1976), p. 229:
"Josephus . . . does not distinguish, possibly through ignorance, between the juridical
and popular senses of the term 'Alexandrian', and in some places uses it of the Jews
in such a way as to imply, deliberately or unconsciously, that they were Alexandrians
in the juridical sense." A. Kasher (The Jews in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt. The Struggle
for Equal Rights [Tübingen, 1985]) distinguishes between the citizens of Alexandria
and the Jewish πολίται (as members of the Jewish πολίτευμα). O n this basis he views
Josephus's statements much more positively, though he does admit that Josephus
does not use his terms very precisely: "Admittedly, calling the Jews 'Alexandrian
πολίται' may be misleading, but probably unintentionally so. It does not seem likely
that Josephus would have wanted to misinform his readers" (p. 275; on the mean-
ing of ισοπολιτεία in Josephus, cf. pp. 28 Iff). In whatever precise way this question
is to be resolved, Josephus's interest in depicting the Jews from their positive side is
in any case clear. Josephus's account is thus at best tendentious, if not misleading
(cf. M. Hengel, Juden, Griechen und Barbaren: Aspekte der Hellenisierung des Judentums in
vorchristlicher Zeit [SBS 76; Stuttgart, 1976], pp. 84f.)
22
πάροικος is found only three times in the whole of his work, twice dependent
parently continued into rabbinic literature, 23 which thinks and ar-
gues from the premise of the land. 24 The national map is paramount, so
to speak. However, there are two important exceptions:
T h e first exception is the community of the Essenes, who, in pro-
test against the pollution of the land, had withdrawn to Q u m r a n , in
order to live in the hope of God's coming. T h e Essenes deliberately
and provocatively describe themselves as those banished to the wilder-
ness, as those who have converted from Israel and dwell in a strange
land. 25 So for the Q u m r a n community there is a clear connection

on the language of the L X X , and once in a quoted letter. In all case πάροικος is
used only with its primary meaning, for the sojourner. Josephus of course knows of
the estrangement of the Jews in ancient society, but when he comes to speak of it,
he tries to justify it and to make it intelligible to the pagan mentality, for example
by referring to the striving for good that is c o m m o n to all (e.g., Ant. 16:174ff.; cf.
J.N. Sevenster, The Roots of Pagan Anti-Semitism in the Ancient World [ N T S 41; Leiden,
1975], p. 116).
23
It is noticeable that Strack-Billerbeck (III, 762fF.) gives no parallels to 1 Pet.
1:1; 1:17 and 2:11.
24
This is especially true of the Palestinian tradition; cf. G. Stemberger, "Die
Bedeutung des 'Landes Israel' in der rabbinischen Tradition," Kairos N F 25 (1983),
pp. 176fT.
25
T h e most illuminating of all the texts are two passages in the so-called D a m -
ascus Document, which already by its—probably symbolic—use of the name Dam-
ascus (cf. C D 6:5) indicates the existence of the community in exile (J. Maier [ed.],
Die Texte vom Toten Meer [2 vols.; München, 1960], II, pp. 49f.; T.W. Gaster, The
Dead Sea Scriptures [Garden City, 3rd edn., 1976], p. 5). In that passage a derivative
of ‫ נ ר‬is taken up, in order to describe the situation of the community. T h e context
is interesting in each case: In C D 3f. Israel, which has gone astray, is contrasted
with the community of those who keep God's commandments. G o d built them "a
firm house in Israel, which has not seen its like either before or since" (CD 3:19f.),
where as in other passages a description of the temple is applied figuratively to the
community (cf. H. Lichtenberger, Studien zum Menschenbild in Texten der Qumrangemdnde
[ S U N T 15; Göttingen, 1980], p. 152). G o d has destined this community "to eternal
life, and all the'-gjtory of Adam is theirs" ( C D 3:20). This statement is reinforced by
a quotation from Ezek. 44:15, in which "the priests and the Levites and the sons of
Zadok" are honoured for their loyal sacrificial observance in contrast to the apos-
täte people (CD 3:21-4:1). This word is interpreted in relation to the community:
"The priests are the retournees of Israel ( ‫ )שבי י ש ר א ל‬who had departed from the
land of Judah; (and the Levites are those) who have joined them. And the sons of
Zadok are the elect of Israel, those called by name, who will appear at the end of
days." T h e following verse is not fully preserved; but it is clear that the election is
connected with the contemporary situation, which is characterized by oppression
(CD 4:5) and which is described as the years of their banishment. In contrast to this
word to the community, in what follows judgment is announced to Israel, the rea-
son given being their corruption, again in contrast with the new community (CD
6:2ff.). Remembering the covenant with the forefathers God raised up "insightful
men from Aaron and wise men from Israel," w h o "dug the well," as the allusion to
Num. 21:18 puts it. This intitially rather cryptic allusion is then explained further:
"The well is the law, and those who dug it are the returnees of Israelwho departed from
between their election, the return to God's law and the withdrawal
from the land, the consequence of which is the existence in a strange
land. C D 19:33f. even speaks of the "new covenant in the land of
Damascus."
T h e other exception is the great religious philosopher, Philo of
Alexandria, who time and again represents the state of being a stranger
in this world as the only admissible state for the wise (i.e., the Jew).
T h e most detailed exposition of this theme is to be found in Conf.
Ling. 75-82. In the context of his interpretation of the narrative of
the construction of the Tower of Babel, Philo comes to Gen. 11:2:
"they migrated from the rising (of the sun) and found a plain in the
land of Shinar and settled there" (Conf. 60). T h e word κατοικησαι
provides the occasion for an excursus beginning with the contrast
between those who settie in evil-doing, and the oi κατά Μωυσην σοφοί.
T h e latter become more closely defined as being here on earth only
on a journey, and in a foreign land, but whose homeland is in the
heavenly place. 26 Philo now refers back to Abraham, and interprets
his saying, "I am a stranger and a sojourner among you" (Gen. 23:4)
in the sense of a radical opposition between two kinds of existence:
While some are "corpse-guardians and in-dwellers of the mortal,"
αυτόχθονες, "who esteem dust and rubble above the soul," Abraham
is one who "rose up from death-in-life and from the tomb." 27 This
will subsequently be explained in the form of an exhortation, culmi-
nating in the challenge now to put this existence as a stranger into
effect as a wise one, and as deliberate aversion from everything
material, 2 8 not yielding to passion. 29 T h e wise one finds his true
πατρίς—in the hellenised version of the popular conception—in the

the land, of Judah and dwelt in the land of Damascus, in the strange land, w h o m God has
called princes all" (CD 6:4-6). So the members of the Essene community are here
deliberately described as those who returned from Israel ( 6 : 5;4:2,‫ב יישראל‬
4:3f. further epithets of election are added to them. Both times, in connection with
this return (and the rejection of Israel) there is a deliberate, express emphasis on
their having departed from the land of Judah and having lived in a strange land.
26
Conf. Ling. 78: πατρίδα μέν τόν ούράνιον χώρον έν ω πολιτεύονται, ξένην δε τόν
περίγειον έν φ παρώκησαν νομίζόυσαι. T h e opposition is once more underlined by a
contrast between the colonist for w h o m the other city becomes home in place of the
mother-city (μητρόπολις) and the traveller who wishes to return again to the city that
sent him out.
27
Conf. Ling, 79.
28
Conf. Ling. 82: διαφέροντος ού μόνον ξένην την έν σώματι μονήν ώς 01 μέτοικοι νομίζων
άλλα καί άλλοτριώσεως άξίαν οΰκ έ'μπαλιν οίκειώσεως ύπολαμβάνων.
29
Conf. Ling. 81.
νοηταις άρεταΐς, immediately and directly equated by Philo with the
Word of God (meaning the Law of Moses). 30 This is at least condi-
doned by the situation of the Egyptian Jews in the first century, for
it was in Philo's time that Alexandrian nationalism began to turn
vehemently against the Jews. T h e R o m a n prefect Flaccus too falls
under the influence of nationalism, and belittles the Jews (some of
whom had already been resident in Egypt for more than six hun-
dred years) as "newcomers and foreigners." 31 There are eventually
encroachments and pogroms, heralding the conflicts which escalate
in the beginning of the second century and finally lead to the eradi-
cation of a flourishing Egyptian Judaism.
Whatever the differences between them, both Q u m r a n and Philo
have something in common: in virtue of their religious belief, they
were outsiders in their surroundings. As such, they took up in a positive
manner the Old Testament category of the stranger in order to provide
a theological basis for their existence on the fringe of society. What
is further striking in both of these is that now "being a stranger"
includes an elitist aspect. God's faithful are strangers because they do
not make themselves at home in a godless world. Strangeness here ex-
presses an alternative self-understanding resulting from a relationship to God.
Thereby those Jewish writers, with all that is special to them, pre-
serve an essential feature of a biblical self-understanding.

2. The Category of Strangeness in 1 Peter as Suggesting a Christian

Self-Understanding and Relationship to the World

Taken as a whole, the category of strangeness plays a rather subor-

dinate role in the New Testament. 32 T h e significant exception, which
moreover set in motion an enormous history of influence, is the First

3ω
Conf. Ling. 81: . . . κατοικεί δ' ώς έν πατρίδι νοηταΐς άρεταΐς, ας λαλεί ό θεός
αδιαφορούσας λόγων θείων.
31
Flaccus 54: ξένοι καί έπήλυδες.
32
O f course the N T is aware of what is designated by this, for example when the
Son of Man says of himself that he has nowhere to lay his head, but nonetheless
strangeness is not specifically spoken of. Paul can say positively that a Christian's
homeland is in heaven (Phil. 3:20), but the negative consequence, that Christians
are only strangers on earth, is not drawn. T h e deutero-pauline letter to the Ephesians
can even describe conversion as overcoming foreignness. Hebrews is an exception.
In chapter 11 it describes the life of faith of the Old Testament witnesses and there
repeatedly emphasises their state as strangers. That this is aimed at the Christian
community is apparent in that, at the end of the letter, it is once more made clear
Letter of Peter. Right at the beginning of the letter, thus in a deci-
sive position, Christians are addressed as strangers, and then once
more at the beginning of the main section, each time moreover with
a compound expression: as "strangers of the dispersion' 5 or "aliens
and sojourners." In addition there are other places where the state
of being a stranger is mentioned or alluded to. T h e metaphor of
foreignness is here not only one attribute amongst others. In a bold
recourse to a minor biblical and Jewish tradition, the negative expe-
riences of non-identity are interpreted as the specific characteristic of
Christian identity. And so, as already suggested at the outset, this
letter has had a significant effect up to the present time. This merits
further examination.

2.1 Aliens and Strangers—the Situation of the Addressees

No biblical writing speaks so often about suffering as 1 Peter. T h e
discussion of it characterises the whole writing. A close inspection of
the letter however reveals that "suffering" is not primarily what we
usually understand as Christian persecutions. O n the evidence of the
letter, the Christians have first of all problems with their immediate
society, which "is alienated" (4:4) from the new behaviour of its former
fellow citizens and hence excludes and defames the Christian com-
munity, even makes them into enemies and denounces them (2:12,23;
3:14-17; 4:4, 14—16). T h e same picture is revealed in the other New
Testament writings: Already in the earliest Christian writing, in
1 Thess. 2:14, in reference to both Jewish Christians and gentile Chris-
tians, there is mention of "suffering because of their fellow country-
men," and according to the presentation in the Acts of the Aposdes,
official proceedings against Paul always began with enraged citizens,33
and the persecution logia speak of Christians being delivered up to
judgment by their own neighbours, even by their own relatives. 34
T h e accounts in the Acts of the Aposdes surely show how dangerous
this could become: social discrimination meant a constant threat, and
included pogrom-like excesses which the authorities then stopped
mostly at the Christians' expense. T o provide a reason for these

in summary form that Christians have here no lasting city, but seek one that is to
come (Heb. 13:14). However even here the faithful are only indirectly designated as
strangers.
33
Acts 14:4f.; 16:19-22; 17:8,13; 19:23-40; 21:27-40.
34
Cf. Mark 13:9-13; Matt. 10:17f.; Luke 21:12-17.
excesses, we must first refer to the striking fact that the Christians
were inordinately hated. Nero's persecudon is a typical example, as
described by Tacitus. Apparendy Nero had set fire to Rome. How-
ever the opposition of the population deprived of their homes was so
great that Nero seized upon the most varied measures to quench the
people's rage. When these all failed, he adopted a classic procedure:
he sought a scapegoat. T h e ones best suited for this, it seemed to
him, were "those whom the people hated for their abominations and
whom they called Chrisdans." 35 He singled out the most hated group
to divert onto them the people's wrath. There are several remark-
able aspects to this: first, Nero did not proceed against the Chrisdans
on his own initiative, but only used them. More importantly, this
diversionary tactic succeeded where all other measures hitherto had
failed to divert the people's anger. Tacitus' judgment shows the ex-
tent of this hatred, for in his account of Nero's action, Tacitus of
course sees through the imperial tactic, and so in this case he does
not believe in the Christians' guilt, but approves the emperor's deed
as taking place in the interest of the public good: 36 the Christians are
guilty {sontes), and their cruel execution as a public spectacle is
justified. 37 "They were convicted less of arson than of hatred against
the whole human race." 38 T h a t Tacitus in his condemnation of the
Christians was no exception is shown by Suetonius. In his biography
of Nero he counts Nero's action against this "genus hominum super-
stitionis novae ac maleficae" 39 amongst the emperor's good deeds. 40
Now what reason is there for this plainly fanatical hatred of Chris-
tians which the most prominent Roman historians evidendy shared
with a large part of the population?
Amongst the various causes one is especially important. For the
ancients, religion was a public affair, the spiritual basis of state and

35
Tacitus, Annals, 15:44,2: ". . . quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Christianos
appellabat." Even if it is taken into consideration that Tacitus writes this informa-
tion about 50 years later and his opinion of Christians could be coloured by his
own times and the standpoint of Trajan's circle, still there is no reason basically to
distrust this assertion.
36
Tacitus, Annals 15:44, 5 fin. For this translation and interpretation of "utilitate
publica," cf. A. Wlosok, Rom und die Christen: Zur Auseinandersetzung zwischen Christentum
und römischem Staat (Stuttgart, 1970), pp. 22, 26.
37
Cf. ibid., 44:5.
38 44.4. « _ haud proinde in crimine incendii quam odio humani generis convicti
sunt."
39
Nero 16:2.
40
Cf. Wlosok, Rom, p. 7.
society. Each person could believe what he wished, the essential thing
being that due regard was shown for the received religion and thereby
also to the mos maiorum. This is precisely what the Christians did not
do. They took up a position as an increasingly larger group outside
ancient society's life and social structure. They formed a group with
a rival reference system all their own.41 The refusal of emperor worship
was only an outward sign of the fact that here was a group that
disputed the sacral foundations of state and society which were de-
terminative for the whole of antiquity, and, at the expense of the
wider community, they committed themselves to their particular "su-
perstition" with incomprehensible exclusiveness.
Clearly, this had social consequences. The Christians' religious sepa-
ration severed social ties. T h e prohibition to consume sacrificed meat
excluded in practical terms any eating in common with pagans. 42
This aroused indignation above all on the occasion of the feasts which
were so important for the community. Also the different burial eus-
toms 43 and burial grounds 44 created difficulty. Christianity had par-
ticularly destructive results in that this new belief and the new com-
munity formed by it invaded the hitherto prevailing social relationships
and threatened to destroy them. T h e New Testament refers to this
time and again. It is expressed in a plainly programmatic way in
Matt. 10:34—37 at the end of the mission discourse: "Do not think
that I have come to bring peace on earth, but the sword; for I have
come to set the son against his father, and the daughter against her
mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a
man's foes will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father
and mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves
son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." Also 1 Peter
suggests that through conversion to Christianity intimate bonds (cf.
3:Iff.) and neighbourly ties (4:3f.) were jeopardised or destroyed.

41
Cf. A. Wlosok, "Die Rechtsgrundlagen der Christenverfolgungen der ersten
zwei Jahrhunderte,' ‫ י‬in R. Klein (ed.), Das frühe Christentum im römischen Staat (Darmstadt,
1982), p. 280: "The christians appeared . . . to their pagan milieu as adherents of a
segregated organisation that rejected the pagans 1 way of life, in this respect deter-
mining its adherents' behaviour."
42
A good example is the hatred of the mother of the emperor Galerius for
Christians. According to Lactantius, De mortibus persecutorum 11, this developed from
the Christians absenting themselves from the sacrificial meals she celebrated almost
daily in her native place.
43
Cf. Minucius Felix, Octavius 38.
44
Tertullian, Ad Scapulam 3.
Finally, not to be overlooked is that Christianity also encroached
upon economic interests. This might often have been the concrete
occasion for proceedings against the Christians. 45
In every respect Christian belief and the way of life that came to
expression through it were felt to be an extremely provocative as-
sault on the most basic foundations of community life.46 Time and
again the charge of godlessness47 recurs, of hatred of humankind, 4 8
of unbearable arrogance and insurrection, 49 and the charge of form-
ing a race of their own that breaks away from common responsibil-
ity, and as a parasite destroys what it lives on. If, according to Plutarch,
the characteristic of the supersddous person is that "he does not enjoy
a world in common with the rest of the human race," 50 this applies
to Christians to particular degree. In short, the Christians had delib-
erately placed themselves outside life's religiously determined context,
were "strangers" to it.51 Accordingly ancient society saw them as a

45
This is already shown in Acts 19:23ff. Also Pliny's action against the Christians
seems at the least to have also been occasioned through economic problems (cf.
A.N. Sherwin-White, The Letters of Pliny: A Historical and Social Commentary (Oxford,
1985), p. 709, Letter X, 96:10.
46
The reason for the sentence pronounced on the Scilitanian martyrs is indicative
of this (Acta Scilitanorum 14).
47
The direct charge is found for example in Lucian, Peregrinus 13; Origen, Celsus
8:11; Minucius Felix, Octavius 8:1-9:2; in the Martyrium of Polycarp (Eusebius. Hist.
Eccl. 4, 15,6). O n this question see also Harnack's inquiry: Der Vorwurf des Atheismus in
den ersten drei Jahrhunderten (TU 28,4 = NF. Bd. 13,4; Leipzig, 1905). Further, W. Schäfke,
"FrühchristlicherWiderstand," in A N R W 2,23.1 (1979), pp. 460-723, esp. 6 2 7 - 6 3 0 .
48
The first was Tacitus, Annals 15:44,4. Cf. Tertullian, Apologeticum 37:8: "hostes
generis humani." Wlosok (Rom, p. 21) shows very nicely the link between this charge
and the Christians' (religiously based) isolation: the Christians "were separated from
the pagan milieu because of their exclusive religion and their community organisation.
O n religious grounds they had to renounce participation in public life, for there at
every step they were confronted with pagan worship. That applied to apparendy
non-political events like performances, public games, and common meals, quite apart
from public festivals, parades, and processions that related direcdy to the cult. Added
to this, the Christians were organised as a community. T o their surroundings they
appeared as adherents of an exclusive association that as a group rejected on prin-
ciple participation in public life. O n the Roman side that necessarily led to being
charged with an offence against state and society. Thus odium humani generis is 'an
antisocial mind-set,' a charge on moral and political grounds."
49
Celsus makes insurrection the origin and essence of Christianity (Origen, Contra
Celsum, 5:5ff.; cf. 3:14; 8:2, etc.), its effect consists in the production of chaos (8:68).
Christianity is the "Theology of Revolt" (C. Andresen, Logos und Nomos: Die Polemik
des Kelsos wider das Christentum (AKG 30; Berlin, 1955, p. 221), it disturbs the "world
of divine ordinances" (ibid., p. 222); cf. Tertullian, Apologeticum 35:1: 11publia hostes."
50
Plutarch Superst. 166c.
51
Tertullian vehemendy and aggressively stresses the opposition to broad areas of
civil life and in this context brings to pregnant expression the relation of Christians
to public office: "nobis . . . nec ulla magis res aliéna quam publica" Apologeticum 38:3.
foreign body, whose very existence jeopardised its foundations, whose
spread disturbed peace and order, and hence in every respect had
destructive effects.52 T h e people in general may not have been in a
position to understand it as clearly as did the historians and philoso-
phers, but their experience was certainly similar: In the calumnies,
the insinuations, and the ridicule, the separateness the pagan envi-
ronment perceived in Christians is everywhere clear. It is but the
consequence of this estrangement if in the end Christians were de-
nied the right to exist:53 "Non licet esse vos."5* Jesus himself formulated
it quite similarly in his last discourse: "You will be hated by all for
my name's sake" (Mark 13:13 par).

2.2 What This Self Description Achieves: From Social Non-Identity

to Christian Identity
When the author of 1 Peter singles out Christians and in a decisive
passage addresses them as "strangers" he formulates what they are
in their society: outsiders, marked people, foreign bodies. What is
special about 1 Peter, however, is that he makes this estrangement
from the milieu, this social defect a decisive feature of Christian
identity. This doubdess shows that he wants not only to react to this
situation, but to take the offensive. The Christians are strangers in this
society—and this is precisely their vocation; that is what they are supposed to be.
T h e language of sojourning in 1 Peter is noticeably different as com-
pared with both the biblical and the extrabiblical tradition. Christians
are addressed absolutely as "strangers and sojourners." Remarkably it
is not stated in which place they are alien, such as in the (wicked)
world, the evil cosmos and so on, though the concept of foreignness
seems plainly to require such after it.55 1 Peter's dispensing with an

52
Indicative in this context is how Suetonius (Nero 16:2) lists the emperor's action
against the Christians between his measures for containing luxury and his action
against the infringements of racing drivers, hence placing it in the context of other
ordinances of the emperor which Suetonius considered beneficial.
53
T h e right to exist is also denied Christians in Origen, Contra Celsum 8:55, and
in Justin, Apologies, Appendix 4:1, the grim summons to extinction is handed over:
"Kill yourselves, 2111 of you, and make haste to travel to God, and give no more
trouble."
54
Tertullian, Apologeticum 4:4. Right at the beginning of his Apologeticum (1:4)
Tertullian speaks of general hatred "erga nomen christianorum." This does not first
occur in Tertullian's time, as witness the censure of the people's hatred already
under Nero: Tacitus, Annals 15:44, 2.
55
This indeed is shown when not a few translations saw themselves constrained
to add a place indication to the Petrine statements about sojourning. Cf. the
antithetic object as a negative foil for comparison is revealing. It
shows that 1 Peter does not derive the Christians' self-understanding
as strangers in the first instance from their alienation from the soci-
ety around them. This is also made clear by the fact that by adopt-
ing the thought-world of the L X X the author deliberately relates
back to the experiences of the fathers, or the whole Old Testament
people of God, who became strangers by God's call. This sometimes
occurs in other New Testament places as well (cf. Hebrews), but
what is new in 1 Peter is not only his establishing this trait indirecdy
through reference to the Hebrew Bible, but his direcdy addressing
the Christians as strangers, and placing this stranger-existence in direct
relation with election to, and participation in, the people of God. 56
T o the chosen strangers in the dispersion—this is indeed how the
letter begins. In short, strangerhood is not understood from opposi-
tion to society, but from response to God, and from belonging to his
community, to his people.
At the same time in the context of the letter 57 the traditional lan-
guage of sojourning receives a clearly eschatological focus. T h e Chris-
tians are "strangers" because they are reborn as such (1:3,23; 2:2).
1 Peter enlarges upon what this means: they are now redeemed from
their fathers' futile way of life and placed in a new life context (cf.
1:18). They now have a future transcending this passing world. 58
Christian life, as constituted by "living hope" 5 9 is distinguished fun-
damentally from the self-understanding of the age we live in. Thus
the specific foundation of estrangement is that the Christian community
is moving towards God's future, 60 since living from hope places them

Einheitsübersetzung of 2:11: " . . . strangers and visitors . . . in this world"] Luther at 1:17:
"as long as you sojourn here in foreign parts." In this connection, an indicative list
particularly of the English translations is to be found in Elliott, Home, pp. 39ff.—
probably a result of "pilgrim theology," strongly represented in the English-speaking
world; cf. e.g. L.A. Barbieri, First and Second Peter (Chicago, 2nd edn., 1978), p. 34.
56
2:1 1, as externalisation of 2:9f.
57
Likewise in Hebrews 11-13.
58
Cf. the three a-privativa in 1:4 emphasising the other-worldly character of the
Christian "inheritance in heaven."
59
Cf. 1:3: "born anew to a living hope"; 1:13: τελείως ελπίσατε έ π ί . . .; finally in
1:21 it is stated that through the work of redemption, faith and "hope in God" are
rendered possible to the christians. W o m e n w h o hope in God are praised as ex-
amples (3:5), and in 3:15 Christians are supposed to account to others not for their
faith but for the "hope that is in you." In 1 Peter hope is one of the essential
elements, if not the essential element in Christian life.
60
Cf. L. Goppelt, Der erste Petrusbrief{ K E K , X I I / 1 ; Göttingen, 1978), p. 155: "To
be strangers is the emblem of Christians in society, for this expresses sociologically
the eschatological character of their way of life."
at a distance from this present age. Now if this be so, the problems
arising from such remoteness must no more "surprise, as though
something strange were happening to you" (4:12), but Christians can
even rejoice in them since they are the reverse side of belonging to
God. 61 T h e condition of social exclusion and persecudon can be thus
understood and embraced. Hence deliberately accepting estrangement
and its consequences will integrate social non-identity into Christian
identity, so that the hitherto worrying and faith-threatening expenences (cf.
1:6; 4:12) now tum into a moment for assurance of faith. T h e terms for
foreignness, clearly negative from their origin, when revalued and
preserved as a specific expression of Christian identity—according to
the biblical and Jewish tradition we have described—gain positive,
even elitist overtones. 62 1 Peter, however, achieves even more. By
distinguishing the "strangers'' from their surroundings, as appropri-
ate to the situation, he desires to free the Christians from pre-occu-
pation with suffering (cf. 4:12ff.) and, from a stance of faith, to make
possible a responsible public engagement with reality.

2.3 Consequences for Self-Understanding and Relationship to the World

(1) Hence, as we have seen, the Christians' negative experiences in

a society that rejects them are explained, by recourse to the Hebrew
Bible, as the reverse side of belonging to God's chosen people. There-
fore society's rejection of the faithful receives theological explanation.63 It must
no longer hinder Christians and make them focus on opposition. 64

61
However it remains true that 1 Peter does not say that Christians must suffer.
Unlike so many sects who seek opposition from others and suffering as confirmation
of their identity, this letter speaks very carefully about tensions and time and again
makes qualifications: if it be necessary, if it be God's will (employing the optative
rarely used in the NT). T h e letter wants to say that Christian living from hope can
time and again lead to tensions with a world that understands itself in terms of
what has already come to pass, and that this is nothing unusual. Or again, suffering
is not used as a means of self-approval. It is more a question of a reappraisal of
experiences from the perspective of God's future already opened up by Christ.
62
This is underlined also by the adjective έκλεκτός in 1 Pet 1:1 which emphasises
the positive reverse-side of strangeness in the sense of 1 Pet (cf. J. Calloud and
F. Genuyt, La Première Epître de Pierre: Analyse Sémiotique (LD 109; Paris, 1982), p. 33.
63
Accordingly, in treatment met in concrete situations suffering is not judged
from the perspective of persecution, but from that of discipleship and sharing in
Christ's passion (cf. 2:20ff).
64
T h e challenge posed by this rejection is clearly expressed in 4:12. Significandy
T h e significance given the situation from a theological perspective
enables it to be accepted and so releases energies ded up by resist-
ance. Thus this distinction of Christians from the world around them
has a liberating effect: for it is at least clear that estrangement, with
the suffering that may ensue from it, belongs to the Christians' ex-
istence. Non-identity in this society is precisely a characteristic of
Christian existence. O n this basis, then, relationship to the social sur-
roundings in regard to both activity and endurance can be consid-
ered afresh. T h e confirmation of their own identity also has liberating
consequences for their relationship to the world.
(2) T h e otherness of Christians, so much emphasised in 1 Peter
using the concept of "strangers," does not (as one might expect given
an effective history of the term that is heavily marked by hellenistic
philosophy and gnosis) justify the separation of the community from
society. T h e opposite is in fact the case (and comparison with other
N T writings strongly underlines this 65 ): the differentiation of Chris-
tians as strangers rather justifies a freedom from their environment,
which allows them not to succumb to the pressure of that environ-
ment, not to assimilate, to make their own identity clear, even in
their way of life (αναστροφή) as the expression of a value system of
its own. 66 But this is also expressed in a Christian freedom towards the
world and for the world. In order to appreciate this fully one needs to
compare the statements in 1 Peter with the way other oppressed and
isolated minorities have reacted in similar situations. This is espe-
cially clear if one looks at the nightmarish desires for revenge that
one finds for example in the Q u m r a n scrolls67 or in other early Jewish,

in this one verse the estrangement of Christians is rendered twice by ξενίζεσθαι and
by ώς ξένου accentuating its intensity.
65
It is interesting in this context to compare 1 Pet. l:13ff. with 2 Cor. 6:14ff.
Despite a similarity in the basic structure in the fact that belonging to God contrasts
with the surrounding world, the distinction is made much more sharply in 2 Cor. 6.
66
Colloud/Genuyt, pp. 33f., emphasises the connection between talk of the stranger
in 1 Peter and an alternative value system.
67
Cf. 1 Q S 2:4b9‫־‬: "And the levites shall curse all the men of the lot of Belial.
They shall begin to speak and shall say: Accursed are you for all your wicked,
blameworthy deeds. May he (God) hand you over to dread into the hands of all
those carrying out acts of vengeance. Accursed, without mercy, for the darkness of
your deeds, and sentenced to the gloom of everlasting fire. May God not be mer-
ciful when you entreat him, nor pardon you when you do penance for your faults.
May he lift the countenance of his anger to avenge himself on you, and may there
be no peace for you in the mouth of those who intercede." (F. Garcia Martinez, The
Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English [Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994]).
apocalyptically oriented writings, 68 but also in Christian apocalypses
such as the Apocalypse of Peter69 and not for the last time in the ca-
nonical Apocalypse of John 7 0 (and most of them have the emphasis
of exclusion and strangeness in common with 1 Peter 71 ). This is true
also with reference to other N T writings which though they have no
such apocalyptic scenarios, still emphasise the contrast to this world
and its people much more strongly than 1 Peter does, and which
criticise72 the world around especially from the perspective of rejec-
tion of its fundamental corruption 73 and its punishment in the judg-
ment. 74 T h e otherness of 1 Peter is noticeable here: the day of rec-
ompense will not in the first place be the day of revenge, but the
day on which those who still do evil to Christians are won over by
their manner of life, and praise God. 75 This clear reminder of a

68
T h e whole of 6 Ezra, for example, consists entirely of a threat and the associ-
ated woes.
69
T h e whole of the central part of this text (5-12) represents an extensive de-
scription of the torments of the individual sinner—probably one of the sources for
Dante's Inferno.
70
Cf. esp. Rev. 8:6-9, 21; 14:14-16, 21.
71
T h e Qumran community had already made its strangeness even over against
the rest of the nation clear by its exodus into the wilderness. In C D 4:26‫ ־‬thus
speaks in connection with the exodus, of those who have turned from Israel, out of
the land of Judah (4:2f.) and of their election (4:3f.) and then expressly also of their
sojourn in a foreign land, of the years of their banishment (DTIIXTI 4:5 ,‫שני‬f.).
Particularly characteristic of the self-understanding of the community behind the
Apocalypse is Rev. 12, the woman who has to flee into the wilderness in the face of
the confrontation of the dragon. T h e motif of the heavenly home is clear (in con-
trast with the attempt to make oneself at home here), also at the end of the Apocalyse
of Peter (16), where Peter, on his offer to build tabernacles (cf. Mark 9:5 par.), is
first set straight in no uncertain terms, but then is taught: "Your eyes will be opened
and your ears will open to understand that there is only one tabernacle: the one not
made by human hands, but my heavenly Father. . ."
72
Schärfke ( Widerstand, 560ff.) has shown how the expectation of God's revenge
on the persecutors has become a firm component of early Christian statements about
suffering and martyrdom.
73
We referred above to the frequent mentions of "this world" or "this age" es-
pecially in John and Paul; cf. also Eph. 4:18f.; 5:3f., 7f.; 2 Thess. 3:2; 2 Tim. 3: Iff.;
Jas 4:4ff; 1 J n 2:15ff; 4:3ff; 2 Pet. 1:4.
74
Cf. Eph. 5:5f.; 2 Thess. 1:5-9; 2:8-12; 2 Pet. 3:5ff.
75
2:12; similarly 3: If.; cf. also 3:15ff T h e meaning of the expression έν ήμέρα
έπισκοπής is disputed. While some see in it the time of the gracious visitation or the
conversion (cf. Ε. Schweizer, Der erste Petrusbnef[ZEK•, Zürich, 3rd edn., 1972], pp.
56f.; Β. Reicke, The Epistles of James, Peter, and Jude: Introduction, Translation, and Notes
[AB 37; Garden City, 2nd edn., 1982], p. 94), others take it to refer to the final
judgment (cf. Ν. Brox, Der erste Petrusbrief [EKK 21; Neukirchen-Vluyn, 2nd edn.,
1986], pp. I14f.). But however this datum is to be understood, in any case the
winning over of the opponents stands in the forefront, not the hope of revenge!
saying of Jesus 76 shows that in 1 Peter Christian existence is not
primarily determined by the expectation of revenge, but is oriented
towards reconciliation.77 From all this it is clear that for 1 Peter it is
not the separation from "the world" and the judgment of it that
stands in the foreground. He certainly does not want to prepare
spiritually for a holy war against the sons of darkness. Rather, he
encourages those he addresses, as far as possible in following Jesus
Christ to overcome this contrast to other people!
(3) The last reason for all this, however, lies in the hope which
1 Peter emphasises so much, i.e. in the certainty of the coming turn
of the eras, which is already taking place in Jesus Christ. By their
foreignness, one could even say, the Christians are the representa-
tives of this future of God's for a still fallen world. By a life that is
preparing for the heavenly inheritance (cf. 1:4) and the coming glory,
like newborns (1:3, 23; 2:2) the believers give account of the hope
that is in t h e m (3:15). In a world that is estranged from God, Christians
have been ransomed by Christ's blood (1:18), freed from their sins
(2:24), have access to God through Christ (3:18) and arefinallystrange
precisely because they have come home.™ For t h e m the inheritance is pre-
pared in the heavens (1:4), they have become one house and above
all one people, which God has mercifully accepted, has made his

76
Transmitted in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 6:16). Probably 1 Peter has
received it through oral tradition, since his version is evidendy more original than
that of Matthew (cf. especially the typically Matthean expression, "Father in Heaven").
77
This is confirmed also by the conclusion of the central admonitions: 2:13-3:7:
Alongside the love commandment (3:8), which has reference to the community, the
reminder of the dominical prohibition of revenge and the challenge that belongs
with the commandment to love one's enemies, to react to inimical acts not by swearing
but by blessing. Here the concern in 3:8f. is certainly not only for "harmony in the
household" (D.L. Balch, Let Wives Be Submissive: The Domestic Code in 1 Peter [SBLMS
26; Chico, 1981], p. 88). In 2:1 If. and 2:13-17 already, the opening bars of this
paraenetic section, the concern was for the relation of Christians to the world around
them, and this is clearly a central concern in 3:13ff also. Further, as we shall see,
the concern in 2:18-3:7, too, is not simply for "domestic harmony" (p. 88). H o w
important this is for 1 Peter is shown also in the correspondingly portrayed example
of Christ: In 2:23 believers are shown Christ as the example they should follow,
who represents the one who "did not revile when he was reviled, who did not
threaten when he suffered, but gave (his case) in the hands of him who judges
rightiy." This continues in the admonition to seek peace (3:11) as well as in the
challenge associated with this not to counter aggressively the unjust accusations and
reproaches towards being a Christian, but to meet them "with meekness and fear of
God" (3:16).
78
Almost paradoxically 2:25 describes the conversion as a return from dispersion,
hence from the state of estrangedness: "For you had gone astray like sheep, but
now you are come home to the shepherd and bishop of your lives."
own possession (2:5; 2:9f.)—all terms which express the protective
character of the new existence of the Christian churches. 79 It is pre-
cisely as strangers that they belong to the divinely elected community. T h e term
λαός (people) is used as many as four dmes in this context—without
going into the fact that this label is first and foremost a Jewish one.80
The special position expressed by this term is not only one of privi-
lege, however, but also carries with it the responsibility for those
"strangers" to point the world around, caught up as it is in igno-
ranee (1:14; 2:15), futility (cf. 1:18) and emphemerality (1:24) because
of its separation from God, to the one who has already called them
from darkness into his glorious light (2:9). As a visible foretaste of
God's future, by means of their existence as strangers—such is the
sense of the whole paraenesis of 2:11-3:9—they are to lead even
their persecutors to the praise of God (2:12) and thus become a blessing
to t h e m (3:9).81 "Foreignness" and membership of the people of God are thus
opposite sides of the same coin. The (Christian) people of God sees itself as the
counterpart to a peoplehood that dtfines itself from traditio and the mos maiorum.
This also has consequences, finally, for the inner composition of this
community—for its whole ethics, and for the way it deals with the
social boundaries of the society and its evaluation of the "under-
dogs."82

79
This is the particula veri of the study of J. Eillott, with the programmatic tide: A
Home for the Homeless: A Sociological Exegesis of 1 Peter, its Situation and Strategy (Philadelphia,
1981). For fundamental criticism of Elliott see Feldmeier, Fremde, pp. 2 0 3 - 2 1 0 .
80
From our present-day perspective, it is strange how matter-of-factly a central
Jewish epithet is appropriated here by the Christians, without the merest reference
to the Jewish people (at most, a salvation-historical break is alluded to in 2:10, there
from an exclusively Christian perspective). This third-generation "forgetfulness" with
regard to Israel (contrast e.g. Rom. 9 - 1 1 ) marks a not unproblematic departure
from the Jewish root. Account should of course be taken of the fact that the près-
sure from the pagan environment, and the effort to stand firm against it, clearly
peripheralised such questions and finally—regrettably—made it possible for them to
be forgotten.
81
It might be considered whether—at least indirectly—yet another aspect of for-
eignness plays a role here: otherness not only repels but also attracts. T h e foreign
is not only something threatening, but also something promising, which opens up
new horizons.
82
O n this cf. Feldmeier, Fremde, pp. 153fT.
 3. Παροικία as Community Name
The Self-Understanding of Christians in the First Centuries

The Second Letter of Clement, composed between 130 and 15083

describes the existence of Christians in this world as a sojourn in a
foreign land (παροικία), which should be left behind (5:1), and he
justifies this on the grounds that the followers of Jesus are like sheep
among wolves in society (5:2). This statement shows in an exem-
plary way how the Christians of the first centuries understood them-
selves: "All Christians placed their citizenship in heaven. On earth
they were but pilgrims and strangers."84 So παροικία—the sojourn of
the non-citizen in a foreign place, then foreign parts per se 85 —also
became the self-description of the Christian community. It is significant
that already in 1 Clement, which is more or less contemporary with
1 Peter,86 the self-designation έκκλησία ("congregation of the people'5)
made more specific by means of a παροικούσα with a following acc.
loci. Similar formulations are found in the inscriptio to the Martyrdom
of Polycarp, the inscriptiones of the letters of Dionysius of Corinth 87 and
the letter of Irenaeus to Victor of Rome, 88 and the letter of the
gallic communities concerning their martyrs.89 It is not by chance

83
K. Wengst, Didache (Apostellehre), Bamabasbrief, ^weiter Klemensbrief, Schrift an Diognet.
Eingeleitet, herausgegeben, übertragen und erläutert (SUC 2; Darmstadt, 1984), pp. 2 0 3 - 8 0
(227).
84
R.H. Bainton, "The Early Church and War," HTR 39 (1946), p. 203, concern-
ing the self-understanding of the early church in its relationship with the world; cf.
already A. von Harnack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten dm
Jahrhunderten (2 vols.; 4th edn., Leipzig, 1924), pp. 268f.: Christians saw themselves
as "pilgrims and denizens; they walk in believing and not seeing, and their whole
lifestyle is characterised by escape from the world, and is determined only by the
kingdom of the world beyond, to which they are hastening." T h e meaning of this
self-description is underlined also by C. Andresen, Die Kirchen der alten Christenheit
(RM 29.1,2; Stuttgart, 1971), pp. 25ff. and Κ. Aland, "Das Verhältnis von Kirche
und Staat in der Frühzeit," in W. Haase (ed.), ANRW 11.23.1. Religion (Berlin,
1979), pp. 230ff., though Aland righdy underlines the political connotations of the
terminology used here.
85
W. Bauer, Κ. & B. Aland, Griechisch-deutsches Wörterbuch zu den Schuften des Neuen
Testaments und der frühchristlichen Literatur (Berlin, 6th edn., 1988), col. 1270; H.G. Liddell
& R. Scott (eds.), A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford, 9th edn., 1968), col. 1342.
86
J.A. Fischer (Die Apostolischen Väter. Eingeleitet, herausgegeben, übertragen und erläutert
[SUC 1; 9th edn., Darmstadt, 1986], p. 19) comes to the conclusion that the letter
must have been written before the end of the first century.
87
Eus. Hist. Eccl. 4, 23, 5 cf. 4, 23, 7.
88
Eus. Hist. Eccl. 5, 24,14f.
89
Eus. Hist. Eccl. 5, 1, 3.
that in the third and fourth century the term παροικία then found its
way into the terminology of church administration 90 as "parish", "pa-
rochial" etc. The Latin equivalent, peregrìnati0,9‫ י‬also terms the Chris-
tians' eschatologically oriented form of existence as "foreignness:"
"usque in huius saeculi finem inter persecutiones mundi et conso-
lationes Dei peregrinando procurrit ecclesia."92 The meaning in Augus-
tine is not, as in mediaeval Latin, "pilgrimage ;"93 rather, perignnari
etc., as Schmidt 94 has shown in detail, means the "foreignness" of
Christians: "The metaphor derived from Augustine is a concept that
goes back to the primitive church: the Christian is a 'stranger and
denizen 5 with no citizenship on earth." 95
With the concept of foreignness, expression is given not only to
the situation in which they found themselves, but also to a claim and
a task; the "state of affairs," one might say, in which the Christians

90
P. D e Labriolle, "Paroccia," RSR 18 (1928), pp. 6 0 - 7 2 ; see further Harnack,
Mission, pp. 42Iff.
91
O n one occasion in the N T the Vulgate renders παροικείν by peregrinan (Lk.
24:18). O n two occasions it translates παρεπίδημος by peregrinus (1 Pet. 2:11; Heb.
11:13V More frequently, in the O T it translates with peregrinus etc. where the L X X
has πάροικος κτλ (cf. Gen. 15:13; 23:4; Lev. 25:35, 47; Num. 35:15; Deut. 14:21; ψ
118:54 (Ps. 119:54).
92
Aug. Civ.D. 18:51 (quoted again in Lumen gentium 8); cf. idem, En. in Ps. 136:1.
T h e vitality of this tradition in liturgy is attested to, for example, in the preface to
the communion in the dedication of a church: "This house, in which you gather
your pilgrim church, was erected in your honour. . . . Here you turn our eyes to the
heavenly Jerusalem and give us the hope to see your peace there" (Schott-Meßbuch ßir
die Sonn- und Festtage des Lesejahres A. Originaltexte der authentischen deutschen Ausgabe des
Meßbuches und des Meßlektionars [Freiburg, 1983], p. 437).
93
Apart from the meaning it has in c o m m o n with παροικία, "sojourn in foreign
parts" (peregrinus = foreign), in classical Latin peregrinatio also, in the majority of cases,
means foreign travel (so, the Oxford Lahn Dictionary, ed. P.G.W. Glare [Oxford, 1968‫־‬
1982], col. 1335, with reference to Cicero, Seneca, Tacitus, Pliny et al.; cf. also
K.F. Georges, Ausfiihrliches latinisch-deutsches Handwörterbuch [2 vols., Tübingen, 9th edn.,
1951], I, 1581). It is instructive to note that in ecclesiastical Latin peregrinatio was
understood as "pilgrimage,' 1 taking up the second meaning (just as, correspond-
ingly, the theology of the ecclesia peregnnans is a theologia viatorum).
94
O n philological grounds alone, E.A. Schmidt (Zeit und Geschichte bei Augustin
[SHAW.PH 1985 Bericht 3; Heidelberg, 1985], pp. 84-88) rejects the translation of
peregrinatio in Augustine as "pilgrimage to a destination" as a "mistranslation" (p. 84).
"The concept of pilgrimage is impossible for the 'city of God', in the first place
because Augustine never uses the prepositional construction 'peregrinari a d . ..'. H e
uses the verb absolutely, links it with locative prepositions or in constructions with
a (ab, abs)" (p. 87). Instead, Schmidt emphasises the continuity of Augustine's peregrinatio
statements with primitive Christian ideas.
95
Schmidt, Zeit, p. 86. Further, the fact that "captivity" is a partial synonym of
"peregrinatio" shows that the "archetype of the Augustinian 'peregrinatio1-concept is the
Babylonian captivity of the Jews with their sighing for Jerusalem, their home."
saw themselves situated, and on which their self-understanding rested,
is being described. Clement of Alexandria demands—in the form of
a regulation—this foreignness as a Christian duty: ώς "ξένοι καί
παρεπιδημοΰντες" πολιτεύεσθαι όφείλομεν.96 The consequence of such
an understanding of what constitutes the foreign is then the paraenetic
exposition of this category, an exposition which—according to the
character of the writing in question—can differ considerably. For the
Shepherd of Hermas,97 which stands in the apocalyptic tradition, the
consequence of Christian foreignness98 is the radical break with this
world, the rejection of the acquisition of everything that goes beyond
the essentials of life, because this world "stands under the power of
another" (Herrn. 1:3). The human being is thus situated between the
competing law of two πόλεις99 and must decide; there can be no
compromise, and the consequence of a wrong decision is the irre-
versible banishment from the heavenly home (1:26‫)־‬. The descrip-
tion of Christian self-understanding and relationship to the world in
the Letter of Diognetus, composed in the second or third century, 100
sounds similarly fundamental, but much less radical on the matter.
Externally, Christians are in no respect different (according to Dg
5:Iff.) from other people; they do not live in different cities, and do
not lead remarkable lives. They are, however, marked by a special
inner attitude to all these things, which Dg 5:5 describes with the
words: Πατρίδας οίκοΰσιν ιδίας, αλλ' ώς πάροικοι, μετέχουσι πάντων ώς
πολίται, και πάνθ' ΰπομένουσιν ώς ξένοι, πάσα ξένη πατρίς έστιν αυτών,
καί πασα πατρίς ξένη. Corresponding with this explanation of for-
eign parts is the fact that for the Letter of Diognetus the foreignness of
Christians (basically a re-reading of 1 Cor. 7:29f. in a stoic light)
is evident not in their complete antithesis to the world, as in the
Shepherd of Hermas, but in an attitude which—in obedience to the

96
Clem.Alex. Strom. 111,14. Tertullian puts it similarly: "Non enim et nos milites
sumus . . . non et nos peregrinantes—in isto saeculo—sumus. Cur autem ita dispositus
es, ο Christiane, ut sine uxore no possis?" (De Exhotatione Castitatis 12:1).
97
According to B. Altaner & A. Stuiber (Patrologie: Leben, Schriften und Lehre der
Kirchenväter [Freiburg, 8th edn., 1978], p. 55), the time of composition is likely to be
the decade before 150.
98
Cf. 1:1 : έπί ξένης κατοικείτε.
99
It is noticeable how the biblical image of the two masters (Mt. 6:24; Lk. 16:13)
is replaced by the more political image of two cities.
100
According to Wengst ( S U C 2, pp. 305ff.), the only thing that can be said with
certainty about the origin of the writing is that it was composed between the end
of the second century and the beginning of the reign of Constantine; Altaner (Patrologie,
p. 77), however, assumes an origin in the second half of the second century.
traditional laws—is manifested precisely in the supersession of these
laws by their own lifestyle!101
The self-designation "strangers" is thus also meant offensively, since
it has an elitist connotation. 102 The category of strangeness can thus
be directed critically against a church or a Christian society that
setdes too comfortably in this world.103 Already in early Christian
times, and then again and again in the history of the church, there
had been outsiders in church and society who—often combined with
direct criticism of a now worldly church and a worldly Christianity—
saw themselves as "strangers" living from God's future, who do not
intend to have their roots in this world. Frequently it was from these
people that stimuli for a renewal of the church emerged. In the first
place monasticism should be mentioned here, which consciously in-
terpreted its form of existence as peregrinatiom and as a result not
infrequendy functioned as a critical factor within the church. 105 This
monastic self-understanding—whatever its precise contours in indi-
vidual cases—not only forms a link between the most varied move-
ments of western monasticism such as the Iroscots,106 Francis of Assisi107

101
D g 5:10: . . . τοις ιδίοις βίοις νικώσιν τους νόμους.
102
This is clear also in the Martyrdoms, when the Christians answer the question
of their origin with Χριστιανός εΐμι (or "Christianus sum"), and thus provocatively
link their not belonging to the earthly Polis with their belonging to God's πολίτευμα
(as in the report about the martyrs of L y o n / V i e n n a , Eus. Hist. Eccl. 5,1,20; cf.
Musurillo, Acts 22).
103
In De dvitate Dei, Augustine had emphasised the eschatological orientation of
the church with peregrinatio, and used it to criticise a Christianity which had identi-
tied itself to a great extent as an imperial religion with the Imperium R o m a n u m
and had correspondingly met with a crisis situation after the sack of R o m e by Alarich
in 410. Augustine was certainly no isolated case.
104
Cf. the data in C. du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis (5 vols., repr.
Graz, 1954), VI, p. 270. T h e roots of this idea stem from the ξενιτεία of early
monasticism; cf. A. Guillaumont, "Le dépaysement c o m m e forme d'ascèse dans le
monachisme ancien," Aux origines du monachisme chrétien (Spiritualité Orientale 30;
Bégrolles en Manges, 1979), pp. 8 9 - 1 1 6 .
105
It is no coincidence that the renewal and reform movements (up to the time
of the Reformation) emerge from monasticism.
106
T h e Iroscottish monks saw their life and their mission as "peregrinatio propter
Christum."
107
In the régula bullata, the definitive rule of the lesser brothers, these are called
in the 6th chapter to strict poverty. T h e y are not to acquire any property, including
shelter, but rather to serve their Lord in this world "tamquam peregrini et advenae."
In his Testament Francis expressly extends this lack of possessions to cover the posses-
sions of a church; without any kind of possessions the brothers are to comply with
their vow of poverty, "semper ibi hospitantes sicut advenae et peregrini" (Testamentum
7). In both cases Francis of Assisi quotes 1 Pet. 2:11 ("peregrini et advenae").
and Ignatius of Loyola,108 but is also found in eastern monastieism.109
These traditions are taken up also in the Protestant world, where
from the "Pilgrim Fathers" of the 17th century to ZinzendorFs "Pil-
grim Church" to the social-critical "Sojourners" movement of our
own day, the concept of foreignness has found its way even into the
self-designations of individual movements.
If one takes an overall view of these aspects of the history of the
category of foreignness, the category's clear situation-relatedness is again
striking here. It is characteristic that παροικία became the self-desig-
nation of the persecuted martyr-church of the 2nd century. Nor is it
a coincidence that Augustine rediscovered the peregrinatio as a central
category after the sack of Rome and the crisis in the Christian view
of the empire that was caused by it. Mutatis mutandis, similar things
will be true of later times: it is not accidental that J . Bunyan wrote
his Pilgrim's Progress in a prison cell, after the failure of attempts to
bring about the kingdom of God on earth. Dietrich Bonhoeffer dis-
covers estrangement as an ecclesiological category, when in connec-
tion with the experiences of the church's struggle he seeks to deter-
mine the stand and the task of the followers of Jesus Christ in a

108
In his memoirs, Ignatius never refers to himself by name, only by the term
"pilgrim."
109
Examples worth mentioning here would be Ephrem the Syrian, w h o in a
penetradng homily describes the stranger-existence as in correspondence with G o d
himself and thus as the only appropriate form of discipleship: "Whoever seeks Christ,
should look for him in foreign parts (‫)באכסניא‬. And behold, he will indeed find him,
God, in foreign parts ( ‫)בנו א כ ס נ י א‬." (v. 15), tr. A. Hafïher, Die Homilie des heiligen
Ephräm von Syrien über das Pilgerleben. Nach den Handschriften von Rom und Paris herausgegeben
und übersetzt (SAWW.PH 135,9; Vienna, 1896), p. 13. Haffner's translation of the
word ‫( ב א כ ס נ י א‬derived from Greek ξένος) as "pilgrimage" or "pilgrim existence" is
not, however, accepted. According to J. Payne Smith (ed.), A Compendious Syriac Die-
twnary, Founded upon the Thesaurus Syriacus of R. Payne Smith (Oxford, repr. 1985), p. 16,
‫ ב א כ ס נ י א‬has the meaning "strange or foreign country, living abroad, exile." O n this
etymology it can then mean also the lifestyle of the Anachorete, a meaning which
certainly plays a role here: T h e anachorete realises Christian existence in the most
perfect way. T o render the word with "pilgrim existence" hides the danger of a
considerable anachronism. In the forefront is the idea of an existence in abstinence
and also in social exclusion, as is clear in paragraphs 6 f f : "And while everyone else
makes himself comfortable in his house,/ a soul is tormented,/ and he is despised
like a cripple,/ and contemned with importunity./ O n e calls him a thief,/ and the
other a bad slave,/ one calls him a beggar,/ and the other a vagabond./ O n e calls
him a seducer,/ and the other an enemy of his country,/ one calls him a spy,/ and
the other a burglar./ O n e calls him possessed by the devil,/ and the other igno-
rant./ And again one calls him T h o r , / and the other irrational./ Such and like
insults/ are prepared for the whole of life in foreign parts."
society which is no longer the "Christian West."110 John XXIII, on
the basis of his insight into the necessity of an aggiomamento, a funda-
mental reform of the fossilised church, takes up the peregrinatio into
the self-understanding of the church, and in Lumen gentium now un-
derlines, over against the hitherto usual one-sided emphasis of the
institutionalised side of the church, its eschatological orientation as
ecclesia peregnnans. Its "being" is defined as being en route: "Dum vero
his in terris Ecclesia peregrinatur a Domino, . . . tamquam exsulem
se habet, ita ut quae sursum sunt quaerat et sapiat."111
The history of influence ( Wirkungsgeschichte) thus confirms the sur-
prising findings of the exegesis: to be found again and again are
indeed the world-fleeing tendencies of a "pilgrims' theology," which
interprets the estrangement as the self-egotising of Christians over
against the evil earthly "vale of tears." But this should not be al-
lowed to obscure the fact that taken as a whole the category of strange-
ness has developed a primarily positive, reality-embracing (and not
reality-excluding) effect:
— not least as a corrective against the identification of the people
of God and the earthly nadon, it demanded again and again as a
critical ideal the distinction (not separation) of Christians from the world
around them;
- this brought them especially in difficult situations into public

110
Cf. D. Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge (München, 9th edn., 1967), pp. 83f.: "The world
celebrates and they stand aside; the world cries: Enjoy life, and they mourn. T h e y
see that the ship on which the festive rejoicing is taking place, has sprung a leak.
T h e world fantasises about progress, power, future, the disciples know about the
end, the judgment and the coming of the kingdom of heaven, for which the world
is not at all suited. Therefore the disciples are strangers in the world, unwelcome
guests, trouble-makers who are rejected . . . They stand as strangers in the power of
him who was so alien to the world that they crucified him." Bonhoeffer goes on to
develop this idea of the "alien church"—to some extent as an ecclesiological coun-
terpart to the crucified Christ—and returns to it several times (cf. 84, 89, 94, 146);
further, the quotations of corresponding songs by Teerstegen (p. 149) or Richter
(p. 245), while the latter concludes the section "The visible church" (220-45) which
basically leads to the right understanding of foreignness as the Christian community's
form of existence (cf. esp. 242-44). This idea also determines the following section
about the church as "the saints", where the sanctification is described as the sepa-
ration of the church from the world—determined by God's election: "Like a sealed
train in a foreign land, so the church goes through the world" (253).
111
^weites Vatikanisches Konzil: Dogmatische Konstitution über die Kirche. Authentischer
lateinischer Text. Deutsche Übersetzung im Auftrage der deutschen Bischöfe. Mit einer Einleitung
von f . Ratzinger (Münster, 1965), art. 6. According to the example of the peregrinatio
of Israel in the wilderness, the church too is on the way to an "abiding city" (art.
9), and is thus Ecclesia peregnnans (art. 14; 48, cf. 8; 21), or Ecclesia viatorum (art. 50).
These designations are then also applied to believers (art. 7; 13; 62, cf. 58).
discussion and thus made possible a theological perspective on crises
and the overcoming of crises—in the life of a church community,
but also in the life of individuals (cf. the hymn book);
- it thereby opened up the possibility of a constructive reorienta-
don on God's word, a renewed self-understanding and reladonship
to the world.

4. Prospects: The Existence of Believers between Foreignness and 'Nationhood‫י‬

Membership of the people of God could, in early Judaism, imply a

clear distance from the endeavour to overcome state and political
constructions in a religious manner. This was especially the case where
other peoples and cultures had made their mark on the milieu. But
Philo already shows clearly that this did not have to be understood
in the sense of complete separation. Rather, precisely the self-under-
standing of believers as "strangers" implied both things: distinction
and encounter, loyalty to one's own belief and coming to terms with
the foreign. This tendency is continued in 1 Peter: his addressees
had been alienated from their milieu by their conversion, and had
become strangers. Despite the enormous difficulties of the early
Christians, this letter affirms state and society, with their various tasks.
It does not go the way of sectarian self-isolation which rubbishes
everything else. The maintenance of such a legally and politically
secured environment is, for him, also an act of practical worship! At
the same time, however, this primitive Christian pastoral letter sharply
distinguishes itself from any religious overexaltation of this "human
creation," as 1 Pet. 2:13 deliberately calls the state. Any attempt to
derive their identity from what they have become, from their inher-
itance, the traditions of their fathers, is rejected." 2 Alongside an
acceptance of the nation and the bonds to it, being a Christian also
implies a distance from nationalism where this has become absolute
and takes on quasi-religious features. The polemic of 1 Peter against
the "futility of the lifestyle inherited from the fathers" (as 1 Pet. 1:18

112
It should be borne in mind that the opposition to pagan religiosity in 1 Peter
leads to a sharpness of conflict which we must not replicate. O n the other hand, the
nation with its history, its traditions and its symbols can become an idol even in our
own century. This is always the case where the notion of people or nation becomes
the determinative measure of self-understanding and thus denigrates everything that
is foreign.
puts it) is conditioned by the particularities of the situation, but its
one-sidedness brings to expression something decisive: The future home,
towards which believers are walking, is not the unbroken extension of the earthly
one. The expectation of God's new world applies a critical yardstick
to the old world, a measure to which Christians, as members of the people of
God, are also committed in thár own nation. As regards their nation and land,
their task remains to work not just to reaffirm it, but also to be παροικία,
practising strangers.
 ANTI-SEMITIC AND RACIST PREJUDICES IN
T I T U S 1:10-16'

Wolfgang Stegemann

Racism in all its forms is a fundamental evil in humanity and remains

the cause of many conflicts in and between nations and states. The
task of attaining the most objective possible knowledge of its historical
preconditions is ever more urgent. The points of departure and refer-
ence will always be the two most extreme forms of racism: Auschwitz
for racial hatred and apartheid for race discrimination.

With the sentences just quoted, I. Geiss begins his Geschichte des
Rassismus, which was published in 1988.2 Since then the world has
been able to see the end of institutionalized racism in South Africa,
as well as the end of the confrontadon between East and West, in
my country the fall of the Wall and the unification of the two German
states. People are speaking of the end of the era of the Cold War or
the Post-War period. Many things seem to have come to an end—
but unfortunately not anti-semitism and racism. Acts of violence against
foreigners and asylum-seekers in Germany and elsewhere, race riots
in Los Angeles (1992), the Bosnian Serbs' war of conquest against
the Bosnian Moslems, to which the aweful phrase "ethnic cleansing"
has been applied, but also a new increase in anti-semitic attitudes
and actions (e.g., in Germany, Italy and Switzerland), all these things
make us painfully aware of this fact. The renewed kindling of na-
tionalistic feeling, xenophobia, ethnocentrism and anti-semitism has
a social, economic and political background. But the way has been
prepared by spiritual authorities, and in the case of anti-semitism
these unfortunately include the Christian churches and Christian
theology. U. Tal, among many others, has analysed this relationship,
taking as an example the situation in Germany before the Nazi period,
and has come to the conclusion that racist anti-semitism and the
subsequent Nazi movement were not the result of mass hysteria or
the work of individual propagandists. The racist anti-semites, despite
their opposition to traditional Christianity, learned much from it and

1
Translated from the German by David E. Orton.
2
I. Geiss, Geschichte des Rassismus (Frankfurt, 1988).
successfully created a well-prepared, systematic ideology with a logic
of its own, which reached its climax in the Third Reich. The French
historian and writer, J. Isaac, was one of the first to make a careful
analysis of the significance of anti-Judaism in the Christian churches,
which he characterized as "instruction in contempt for the Jews"
and a "system of denigrating the Jews." 3 R.R. Ruether, similarly,
states:4 "The Nazis, of course, were not Christians. They were indeed
anti-Christians . . . Nevertheless, the church must bear a substantial
responsibility for a tragic history of the Jew in Christendom which
was the foundation upon which political anti-Semitism and the Nazi
use of it was erected." 5 Ruether then comes to the thesis that Chris-
tian anti-semitism is to be found not just in later periods of Church
history but already in the earliest period of the origins of Christian
communities, including the New Testament period itself. Anti-semitism
is the "left hand" of Christology, the negative side of the Christian
claim that Jesus is the Christ. 6 The connection between religious and
secular anti-Judaism is confirmed also by modern empirical-socio-
logical findings.7
If exegetes are to take seriously the task demanded by Geiss, to
analyse the "historical preconditions' 5 of racism and anti-semitism "as
objectively as possible," then a critical analysis of New Testament texts
is also unavoidable. On the question of anti-semitism in the New
Testament such an analysis has long since been undertaken, though
the assessments—sometimes regarding the very same New Testament
texts—vary. This is evident for instance in the most recent discussion
about the Lukan relationship to Judaism. According to bias, the range

3
O n this see, for example, J. Isaac, "Hat der Antisemitismus christliche Wurzeln?,"
EvTh 21 (1961), pp. 3 3 9 - 3 5 4 .
4
R.R. Ruether, Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism (New York,
1974), p. 184 (German translation: Nächstenliebe und Brudermord, München, 1978).
5
Ruether, Faith and Fraticide, p. 184.
6
Ruether, Faith and Fraticide, pp. 6 4 - 6 5 . Cf. also R.L. Wilken, The Myth of Chris-
tian Beginnings: History's Impact on Belief (New York, 1972), p. 197: "Christian antisemitism
did not arise by the importation of ideas foreign to Christianity through some his-
torical accident. Christian antisemitism grew out of the Christian Bible, i.e., the
N e w Testament, as it was understood and interpreted by Christians over centu-
ries... We must learn, I think, to live with the unpleasant fact that antisemitism is
part of what it has meant historically to be a Christian, and is still part of what it
means to be a Christian."
7
O n this cf., e.g., C. Glock & R. Stark, Christian Beliefs and Anti-Semitism (New
York, 1966); G. Lämmermann, "Chrisdiche Motivierung des modernen Anti-semitis-
mus? Religionssoziologische und—pädagogische Überlegungen zu einem sozialen
Phänomen," Ε 28 (1984), pp. 5 8 - 8 4 .
of verdicts stretches from anti-semitic to pro-Jewish.8 The debate also
concerns the question of what constitutes "anti-semitism.' ‫ י‬And it
appears that the anti-semitism of the history of Christian exegesis
(professional exegesis expressly included) is rather more serious than
the anti-Jewish tendencies of the New Testament itself. Less atten-
tion, however, has been paid to questions of ethnocentrism, xenophobia
or even racist prejudice in the New Testament. 9 This has also no
doubt to do with the New Testament itself and the earliest groups of
Christian believers represented in it. For in the first place they are
characterized by their crossing of ethnic-religious boundaries.

Overview and Thesis

In my first section I would like briefly to show that ethnicity or an

ethnocentric self-understanding could play no role in the beginnings
of Christian communities. For these newly forming groups defined
themselves on the basis of their religious identity as a third entity along-
side the nations and Judaism. While Paul resorted to religious sym-
bols from Judaism in the self-definition of Christian believers and
took account of the different heritage of believers from the nations
or from Judaism, in the Pastoral Episdes, for example, there was a
dominant perspective which evened out these differences. The claim
to superiority associated with this is reflected in religio-ethical terms
here too, but not ethnically. The letter to Titus does however con-
tain xenophobic prejudices, which will be considered in more detail
in my second section where I make provisional observations con-
cerning Tit. 1:10-16. In my third section this text will be analysed
from a sociology-of-deviance point of view. It can be demonstrated
that the xenophobic prejudices against Jews and Cretans by the author
of the letter to Titus can be placed in the framework of a so-called
"negative labelling" of a heterodox Christian group. In my fourth
section the two xenophobic prejudices will again be considered in
more detail and evaluated as anti-semitic or racist. Finally, the fifth
section suggests some considerations regarding the use of this text.

8
O n this see the collection of essays: J.B. Tyson (ed.), Luke-Acts and the Jewish
People: Eight Critical Perspectives (Minneapolis, 1988).
9
W.R. Herzog, "The N e w Testament and the Question of Racial Injustice,"
American Baptist Quarterly 5 (1988), pp. 12-32; J. Brown, "Racism in the Bible" (1/2),
in R. Rollason (ed.), Racism in Australia in the 1980's (Sydney, 1981), pp. 3 6 4 7 ‫ ־‬4 2 , 4 3 ‫ ־‬.
 1. Christian Self-understanding beyond Ethnic-Religious Boundaries

A fundamental given as far as the earliest Christian communities is

concerned is this: ethnic or religious borders were crossed in the course
of the establishment of permanent Christian communities in the cit-
ies of the Roman empire. Their (presumed) historical origin in Syr-
ian Antioch is a relevant example in this respect. For it was here
that Christ-believing Jews and non-Jews (εθνη) first formed a commu-
nity in which an unrestricted social intercourse was practised (Gal.
2:1 Iff.). It is evidendy not by chance that Luke connects this occur-
rence with the new label Χριστιανοί for the disciples, male and fe-
male (Acts 11:27). I cannot go into this matter more deeply at this
point. The important thing for the moment is this: urban Christian-
ity, in the process of development outside the land of Israel, could
certainly not resort to ethnic identities in its self-definition. Ethnicity—
that is bonding through common racial heritage, territory, history,
concepts, feelings and actions, which at the same time differentiate
them from others—was necessarily unable to play a role in the de-
termination of "Christian" identity. It is true that the awareness of a
differentiated ethnic-religious origin of Christ-believers was present for
a long time, expressed from the perspective of Judaism in the asym-
metrical opposing concepts of "Israel"—"the nations/heathen," or
"Jews"—"Greeks." Earliest Christianity stands in a well-profiled tra-
dition. For in the differentiation of one's collective identity from others,
"asymmetrical opposing concepts,'" 0 such as "Greeks" and "Barbar-
ians," "Romans" (Romani) and "foreigners" (peregrini), were in use
already in antiquity. Examples can also be found in the New Testa-
ment. I would refer simply to the Pauline letters in this respect."
There we encounter for example the differentiation between "Israel"
and "the nations" (εθνη),12 and the contrast between "Greeks" and
'Jews," 13 or between "circumcision" and "uncircumcision." 14 Pejorative

10
O n this, cf. R. Kosellek, "Zur historisch-politischen Semantik assymetrischer
Gegenbegriffe," in R. Kosellek, Vergangene Zukunft: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten
(Frankfurt, 1979), pp. 2 1 1 - 5 9 .
11
O n Paul as a whole see U. Heckel, "Das Bild der Heiden und die Identität der
Christen bei Paulus," in R. Feldmeier & U. Heckel (eds.), Die Heiden: Juden, Christen
und das Problem des Fremden (Tübingen, 1994), pp. 2 6 9 . 9 6 ‫־‬
12
Cf., e.g., Rom. 9:30f.; 11:25; in contrast to the "Jews": Rom. 3:29; 9:24;
1 Cor. 1:23; Gal. 2:15.
13
Rom. 1:16; 2:9f.; 3:9; 10:12; Gal. 3:28; 1 Cor. 1:22, 24; 10:32; 12:13.
14
Rom. 2:25-27; 3:30; 4 : & 1;12‫־‬Cor. 7:18f.; Gal. 2:7; 5:6; 6:15.
associations certainly play a role here, for instance by reference to
the immorality or the idolatry of the "heathen." 15 But the aposde
can also use the differentiating concepts in a neutral way. Paul, in-
deed, wants to be a Jew to the Jews, to those without the law as one
without the law (1 Cor. 9:20-22). And according to Gal. 3:28, in
Christ the religious-national differences between Jews and Greeks are
removed. 16

Double Self-understanding

The special character of the self-understanding of the έκκλησία, for

Paul, lies in the fact that he developed the notion for the Christian
community that they were on the one hand something new, a third
entity, in relation to Jews and Greeks (or the heathen/the nations),
while on the other hand he kept the specific affinity with Judaism
alive by calling them, for instance, "God's beloved" and "called to
be saints" (Rom. 1:7), and even "the seed of Abraham" (Rom. 4:11-
14:16). But it should be recognized that Paul distinguishes the έκκλησία
from empirical Judaism, "Israel" or "Israel according to the flesh"
(1 Cor. 10:18). So Paul speaks of the έκκλησία from the nations not as
"Israel" or even as "the true or spiritual Israel.'" 7 He sees them not
as part of Judaism, as a Jewish movement or sect, but as an
eschatological community in its own right, called from the nations.
He is thus able to express the particularity of the Christ-believing
group also as the removal of ethnic-religious differences between
pagans and Jews (Rom. 3:22; 10:12; Gal. 3:28; cf. Eph. 2:1 Iff.). This
"double" self-understanding 18 found expression in the second cen-
tury in the notion of the church as tertium genus. There are already
hints in this direction within the New Testament. 1 Cor. 10:32, for
example, makes it explicitly clear that the Aposde Paul sees in the
έκκλησία a third empirical entity alongside Jews and Greeks (cf. also

15
E.g., 1 Thess. 1:9; 4:5; Gal. 2:15; 1 Cor. 12:2; Rom. l:18ff.
16
I will not enter into the complex discussion of this verse at this point.
17
T h e Pauline formulation, "Israel of God" (Gal. 6:16) could mean Israel itself
or the community of God in Judaea, that is, the early church; cf. Ε. Stegemann,
"Zwischen Juden und Heiden, aber "mehr" als Juden und Heiden? Neutestamentliche
Anmerkungen zur Identitätsproblematik des frühen Christentums," Kirche und Israel 9
(1994), pp. 5 3 - 6 9 (62); cf. also 1 Pet. 2:9, where Israel's tides of honour are trans-
ferred to the churches; similarly, Heb. 3:1; 8:7ff.
18
I am borrowing this concept from E. Stegemann "Zwischen Juden und Heiden."
2 Cor. 11:24—29). But remarkably enough he does not use "ethnic"
vocabulary in this context, but speaks, among other things, of a "new
creation" (καινή κτίσις), in which there is neither circumcision nor
uncircumcision (Gal. 6:15), or of unity in Christ, of the body of Christ
or the Temple of God. 19
Because of the particular composition of the urban Christian com-
munities it was thus not possible to determine the self-understanding
of Christ-believers by reference back to an ethnic identity of their own.
In defining themselves they began above all by resorting to Jewish
identity terms.20 But an increasingly polemical division is discernible
between Judaism and the formation of a "gentile Christian" self-
understanding or arrogance (evidendy already in the church in Rome,
as may be inferred from Romans 911‫)־‬, which then later—in Justin,
for example—even found it difficult to accept so-called "Jewish Chris-
tianity." The only opponents of the Christ-believers were now, in
the main, the nations/pagans.

The Perspective of the Pastoral Epistles: All People

This new situation is also reflected in the Pastoral Epistles, which also
display a clear difference from the older (authentic) letters of Paul.21
For even if Paul already had a universal perspective, humanity still
consisted of Jews and Gentiles, and so also did the community of
those who believed in Christ (the churches in Judaea, the churches
among the nations).22 He saw himself as the "Aposde to the nations"
and the non-Jews as the addressees of his proclamation, while Peter
was entrusted with taking the gospel to the Jews (Gal. 2:7f.). In the
Pastoral Episdes, which claim his authority, only the heathen/na-
tions are in view, which represent all humanity equally (Tit. 3:2).
Their Christian addressees differ from them in their religious self-
understanding and also in ethical respects (implied in Tit. 3:3-6), but

19
Cf., e.g., 1 Cor. 3:16f.; 10:17; 12:27; 2 Cor. 6:16; Rom. 12:5.
20
Among other things perhaps by the use of the term λαός, in principle used
exclusively in reference to Israel, for the Christ-believers. At the beginning already
in Paul (2 Cor. 6:16; R o m . 9:25), (at least once) also in Acts: 18:10. In
1 Pet. 2:9f. several titles of honour for Israel—including λαός—are applied to the
Christ-believers.
21
That the Pastoral Episdes see themselves in the Pauline tradition will not be
contested here; cf. esp. M. Wolter, Die Pastoralbriefe als Paulustradition (Götüngen, 1988).
But I do assume that the historical Paul is not their author.
22
Rom. 16:4; Gal. 1:22; 1 Thess. 2:14.
by the same token this shows their proximity to, and their origin in,
the nations.23 So the perspective of the Pastoral Epistles is that of
the whole of humanity—no longer, it is true, distinguishing between
Israel and the nations. This perspective is reflected also in theologi-
cal or christological formulae: God desires that "all people should be
saved and come to the knowledge of the truth' 5 (1 Tim. 2:4; cf. 4:11;
Tit. 2:1 If.); Christ came into the world to save sinners (1 Tim. 1:15);
he is the βασιλεύς των αιώνων (1 Tim. 1:17); he mediates between
God and human beings and gave himself as a ransom for all (1 Tim.
2:5; Tit. 2:14). Israel and its prerogatives—i.e. an awareness of the
special religious situation of the Jewish people—are no longer in the
picture,24 and quotations or allusions to the Jewish Bible have to be
sought with an exegetical microscope. Furthermore, in the Pastoral
Epistles Paul is also teacher of the nations/heathen (1 Tim. 2:7;
2 Tim. 4:17; cf. 1 Tim. 3:16), but an awareness of the difference as
is found in the authentic letters of Paul is no longer associated with
this. If we knew no better, we would not even be able to conclude
from the Pastoral Episdes that Paul was himself a Jew. Nothing of a
"double self-understanding" of Christianity (as in Paul), i.e., of a spe-
cial proximity and connection to the Jewish tradition, remains dis-
cernible in the Pastoral Episdes. Judaism—if it plays any role at all!—
plays a critical or negative role (1 Tim. 1:7-10; Tit. 1:10, 14f.; 3:9).
We may now summarize: Ethnicity and/or ethnocentrism are not
discussed in the Pastoral Epistles either. This is connected with the
specific self-understanding of the Christianity represented in these
pseudo-Pauline letters. This Christianity does know about the origin
of believers from the "nations" and understands itself as a commu-
nity of the elect,25 which differs from other people (cf. 1 Tim. 6:If.).
Indeed, it is prepared for the contempt of other people because of its
convictions (1 Tim. 4:10). But its difference is not reflected in ethnic
concepts but in the self-confident expectation of eschatological
salvation and ethical superiority (2 Tim. 2:11-14; Tit. 3:2ff). The
claim to an ethical superiority of their own does indeed have its
counterpart in a negative estimation of all other people. The lack of
ethnic identification resulting from the religious self-definition of the

23
T h e opposing party are non-believers or apostates (cf., e.g., 1 Tim. 5:8; 6:2, 21).
24
This lies at the root of the comment, for example, that Christ is from the seed
of David (2 Tim. 2:8).
25
Cf., e.g., 1 Tim. 3:5f., 15; 2 Tim. 1:9; 2:1 Of.; Tit. 1:1.
Christianity of the time does not, however, mean that xenophobic
prejudices are entirely lacking. On the contrary: in Titus we find
crass prejudices towards Jews and Cretans. The text in question, Tit.
1:10-16, requires more detailed treatment.

2. Preliminary Observations on Titus 1:10-16

Tit. 1:10-16 is a single polemic against a group and its protagonists,

whom the author of the letter understands as a sort of "party" (cf.
Tit. 3:10) within the Christian communities of Crete. He does not
use a group label, but on the other hand we find in the text a con-
glomeration of terms of abuse and slogans. The writer to Titus says
of the group he is criticizing:

- They are numerous (πολλοί),

- they are insubordinate (ανυπότακτοι)
- they are gossips (ματαιολόγια), i.e. they teach superfluities (διδάσ-
κοντές ä μή δει),
- for the sake of shameful gain (αισχρού κέρδους χάριν),
- they are spiritual deceivers (φρεναπάται) who destroy whole fami-
lies with their teachings (ολους οίκους άνατρέπουσιν),
- they are described as unbelieving (άπιστοι)
- and as impure (βδελυκτοί),
- cannot be persuaded (άπειθεΐς);
- and ethically they are totally unreliable (προς πάν έργον άγαθόν
άδόκιμοι).
These relatively general labels are interwoven with two fundamental
identifications. On one hand it is maintained that these negative
characteristics are particularly, or primarily (μάλιστα) applicable to
"those of the circumcision" (oi έκ της περιτομής). Shordy afterwards a
warning is given not to subscribe to Jewish fables ('Ιουδαϊκοί μύθοι).
On the other hand the "opponents" are also identified with negative
prejudices concerning the Cretans. For one of them, their own prophet,
is supposed to have said of the Cretans: "They are always liars, evil
beasts and lazy gluttons." Precisely this testimony is true, says the
author, which evidendy means: the predictions of the "prophet" have
turned out to be true. Of the content of the false teaching we read
almost nothing. Apart from the "Jewish fables" already mentioned,
human commandments (έντολαί ανθρώπων) are mendoned, and these
are linked with the purity regulations. By this means they turn people
away from the truth. Tit. 3:9 further describes silly discussions or
investigations (μωραί ζητήσεις), genealogies, squabbles or legal dis-
putes with them as poindess. The apostates evidendy include in their
creed (όμολογούσιν) the conviction that they know God, but they
deny him with their works (1:16). The addressee of the letter is stricdy
to set the false teachers straight so that they become healthy in the
faith (cf. also 3:9f.). So the letter to Titus does not deal with the false
teaching of the "opponents" in detail; indeed, Titus is told not to
look into it (3:9).
There has been some controversy in exegetical research concerning
the profile of the "opponents" and the "errant doctrine' 5 they pro-
pound—with reference also to the other Pastoral Episdes. Are these
'Jewish Christians" or "Gnostics" or a mixture of the two?26 All attempts
to illuminate the convictions of this group from the letter to Titus
(or the two other Pastoral Episdes) run the danger of succumbing to
the strategy of "stigmatization" or "negative labelling," which the
letter itself uses.27 We shall not be able to extract the beliefs and
teachings, or praxis, of the Christians who are so sharply rejected
here, from the Pastoral Episdes. They have disappeared in the sea of
polemic. For our purposes this discussion does not have to be re-
solved. For now the important thing is this: we are dealing with
intra-Christian "opponents" who should be persuaded and healed in

26
O n this cf., e.g., N. Brox, Die Pastoralbriefe (5th edn, Regensburg, 1989), pp.
3Iff.; M. Dibelius (ed. H. Conzelmann), Die Pastoralbriefe (3rd edn, Tübingen, 1955),
pp. 14f., 5 2 - 5 4 ; G. Haufe, "Gnostische Irrlehre und ihre Abwehr in den Pastoral-
briefen," in K..-W. Tröger (ed.), Gnosis und Neues Testament· Studien aus Religionswissenschaft
und Theologie (Gütersloh, 1973), pp. 3 2 5 - 3 9 . Dibelius-Conzelmann (3rd edn, 1955):
Gnosis "with clear Jewish components" (p. 53); Haufe (1973): "early form of Gnosis
with strong Jewish influence" (pp. 332f.); Brox: "Jewish (or Jewish-Christian) and
gnostic features" (p. 33). O n the question of the relationship to Judaism see below.
27
Quinn is one who uses historicizing imagination. H e thinks it likely that "those
of the circumcision" are Palestinian Jewish-Christians who fled to Crete before the
destruction of the Temple (70 CE). T h e theological and pastoral "batde" for the
Christian community there had long since been lost at the time the letter to Titus
was written. For the Christians there "had deadened into Judaism." Titus, in this
view, presents the Cretans as an example of what happens if one rejects Paul: J . D .
Quinn, The Letter to Titus: A New Translation with Notes and Commentary and an Introduc-
tion to Titus, I and II Timothy, the Pastoral Epistles (New York, 1990), 105-107.
the faith (1:13) or admonished or rejected (3:10). Since there is no
clear division between protagonists and their supporters, but it is clear
that the group portrayed so negatively here is to be found within the
Chrisdan community, I use the term "deviant Christian group."

3. Interpretation of Tit. 1:10-16 and the Sociology of Deviance

Two polemical strategies of argumentation are intertwined: on the

one hand the author labels the deviant group with various deroga-
tory terms. On the other hand he is concerned to identify them with
Judaism or the Cretans, whereby certain prejudices are clearly intended
to be transferred to the deviant group. In sociological terms this
strategy of exclusion can be termed deviance accusations and be de-
scribed with the aid of deviance theory.28 Deviance theories deal with
the relationships and function of non-conformists, outsiders or other
deviants from the point of view of society as a whole or for superior
groups. A detailed presentation of the various sociological theories
can be found, among other writers, in the work of J . T . Sanders. 29
Here we may sketch only a few aspects.
Social groups possess norms and structures of behaviour which
are more or less met, or transgressed, with a wide range of variation.
The borders of social groups define the normative and divergent
behaviour. A fundamental insight of Becker's is that deviance is created
by the social groups themselves: "Social groups create deviance by
making the rules whose infraction constitutes deviance, and by applying
those rules to particular people and labeling them as outsiders." This
makes possible the fundamental statement that "Deviant behavior is

28
Deviance theories have been made particularly fruitful in the understanding of
N e w Testament conflicts by Saldarini, Malina-Neyrey and Sanders: A.J. Saldarini,
"The Gospel of Matthew and the Jewish-Christian Conflict," in D.L. Balch (ed.),
Social History of the Matthean Community: Cross-disdplinary Approaches (Minneapolis, 1991),
pp. 38ff.; BJ. Malina & J.H. Neyrey, "Conflict in Luke-Acts. Labelling and Deviance
Theory," in Β J. Malina & J . H . Neyrey (eds.), The Social World of Luke-Acts: Models for
Interpretation (Peabody, 1991), pp. 9 7 - 1 2 2 ; J.T. Sanders, Schismatics, Sectarians, Dissidents,
Deviants: The First One Hundred Years of Jewish-Christian Relations (London, 1993), pp.
129ff. They rely on such authors as H. Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of
Deviance (New York, 1966); N. Ben-Yehuda, Deviance and Moral Boundaries: Witchcraft,
the Occult, Deviant Sciences and Scientists (Chicago, 1985). For further literature see e.g.,
Saldarini 1989, pp. 44f.
29
Sanders 1993, pp. 130ff.
behavior that people so label.' ,30 The labelling of certain persons as
outsiders or deviants cannot be explained by a static definition of the
content and aspects of the divergent behaviour. Rather, deviant
behaviour is defined by the majority society or group. The reasons
for the fact that some persons or institutions are able to brand others
officially as deviants is, in Becker's view, not so much a matter of
recourse to particular values. Rather, deviance occurs in a process of
interaction between people, in which some, in the service of their
own interests, set up particular rules, which declare others to be
deviants. Conversely, others (the deviants) transgress these rules in
the pursuit of their interests. Such rules, which give shape to particu-
lar values, are fixed in "problem situations" in which particular ar-
eas are regarded as "critical" and require action.31 In his theory,
Erikson emphasizes the significance of crisis situations for deviance.
In his view deviance is a constant element of groups which is not in
every case regulated by specific measures. The interest in a control
of deviance arises from factors which demand the change of a group
or society (due either to internal or external factors). Especially
favourable conditions for the establishment of the norms of the major-
ity group or society against deviants are thus provided by crises. De-
viance control is a form of boundary maintenance or boundary con-
struction in crisis situations. By means of the exclusion of others, or
the reinforcement of their boundaries, a society reconfirms its iden-
tity. Ben-Yehuda has developed this idea, showing that deviance is
inseparably connected with the identity of a society or group. She
shows that where a society/group draws its boundaries indicates fun-
damental structures and values in its social and symbolic system.32 It
should be borne in mind that deviant positions appear as such out-
side a society, but sociologically and historically they form part of a
whole.33

An Application of Deviance Theory to Tit. 1:10-16

Let us now apply these insights to our text. It can be seen that the
letter presupposes a "crisis situation" which concerns differing value-

30
Becker 1963, pp. 8f.
31
Becker 1963, p. 131.
32
Ben-Yehuda 1985, pp. 19f.
33
Saldarini 1989, p. 47.
conceptions among the Christian groups. The author reacts to the
value-conceptions of the deviant group on the one hand with a re-
inforcement of the structures of institutional order. On the other hand
he labels the deviance of the group with wholesale "deviance accu-
sations" and applies heterophobic 34 prejudices (Jews/Cretans) to the
deviants.

On the crisis situation: The text does indeed give some indications of a
"crisis situation" of the Christian communities in Crete. It reckons
(Tit. 1:10) with a large number of group members who refuse to
submit (ανυπότακτοι) to the order structure favoured by the author.
Indeed, according to Tit. 1:11 the deviants have evidendy already
brought about the collapse or ruin (άνατρέπουσιν) of whole families
or households (ο'ΐκοι). This may mean that—in line with 2 Tim. 2:18—
they have departed from what the author considers to be "sound"
faith. But it is also possible that the deviants' activities have caused
social conflicts within Christian families. In any case, the author of
the letter to Titus takes the "crisis situation" very seriously. He re-
gards himself as on the side of the conventional group. This is evi-
dent not least from the fact that with the aid of the authority of the
aposde Paul the author gives the addressee of the letter (Titus) in-
structions for the extension or establishment of institutional struc-
tures for the Christian communities in Crete (Tit. 1:59‫)־‬, as well as
instructions for relations between the Christian communities (Tit. 2: Iff.)
and regarding relationships with the institutions of pagan society (Tit.
3:Iff). So it must be borne in mind that the instructions for the
extension or establishment of institutional structures refers precisely
to the task of setting the deviants straight. This is clear on the one
hand from the contextual connection between our text (1:10-16) with
the institutional instructions in 1:5-9,35 but also from the fact that
the deviants in various respects embody the opposite of the ideal
picture of the church official, or of Christians per se.36

On the values: The text also reveals that particular values in the Chris-
tian group were subject to debate. It is possible that for the "virtues"
of the functionaries the author refers back to values that had already
become conventional in the Christian communities (cf. Tit. 1:69‫־‬
34
This term is defined below.
35
Cf. the closing sentence of v. 9: καί τους αντιλέγοντας έλέγχειν and the link to
v. 10 by the conjunction γάρ.
36
Cf. Brox (5th edn, 1989), p. 286.
with 1 Tim. 3: Iff.). But they are in principle so non-specific and
correspond to such an extent with general cultural values,37 that
extensive extrapolations are problematic. One may, however, take it
that the deviant group to some extent drew tighter boundaries than
the conventional group as far as its values were concerned. The
expression in v. 15, "To the pure all things are pure," sounds apolo-
getic. The fact that the deviants are immediately described as "blem-
ished" (μεμιαμμένοι) supports this impression. The author does not,
however, tie this judgment to the transgression of particular régula-
tions, but accuses his opponents of impurity of attitude (νους; συνεί-
θησις). He further discredits the values of the deviant group as
"human laws" and links them with Judaism (1:14). We have good
reason to believe, then, that certain values of the deviant group were
not shared by the author of the letter. 38 The deviant group did,
however, possess concrete and tight regulations, to which the corre-
sponding position of the author was quite indifferent. The author
connects the corresponding values of the deviant group either inten-
tionally or with justification, rightly or wrongly, with Jewish tradition
(see below). Whatever the case, this connection with Judaism is rea-
son enough for him to reproach the opposing group with falling away
from the truth (1:4). There is an early indication here, then, that a
heterophobic attitude on the part of the author towards Judaism has
either given rise to, or reinforced, the ostracism of the deviant Chris-
tian group.

On the general labelling (deviance accusations): F r o m the above survey of

the negative labels which the author produces against the deviant
group, the following accusations can be summarized: The deviant
group will not submit to the conventional authority of the Christian
communities. Its attitude is headstrong, since it refuses to be won
over. By means of its teachings the deviant group leads other Christians
astray, causing them to fall away from the the truth and bringing
about the collapse of (or instigating discontent in) whole Christian
households. The motive of its teachings is dishonourable, since the
apostates are concerned with personal enrichment. 39 The teachings

37
O n 1 Tim. 3 cf. Dibelius & Conzelmann (3rd edn, 1955), pp. 42ff.; Brox (5th
edn, 1989), pp. 283f.
38
Conclusions can certainly not be drawn concerning the "actual immorality of
the false teachers:" so, rightly, Haufe, "Gnostische Irrlehre,'' p. 336.
39
Should the current prejudice concerning the "sophists" be reactivated here?
of the apostates are specious gossip and are closely connected with
Judaism. Their more demanding values are discredited since they
are impure in their thinking and their consciences.40 In fact they are
abhorrent (βδελυκτοί), i.e. abnormal, and thus fall out of the basic
categories of order in human society.41 To this belongs also the
identification with the Cretans, to the extent that according to the
letter-writer the group is one which fulfils the prophecies concerning
the negative national characteristics of the Cretans. Their "theologi-
cal" convictions (θεόν εΐδίναι) too are unbelievable in view of the
contradictory character of their ethical praxis (προς παν έργον αγαθόν
αδόκιμοι).

Results of the Sociology-ofDeviance Analysis

Tit. 1:10-16 represents a strategy of negative labelling which is in-

tended to highlight the deviance of the opposing group. This polemic,
characterized as "deviance accusations," makes use of stereotypes and
generalizing suspicions. The strategy of identifying the deviants with
Judaism is part of it. The author does not flinch even from evaluating
the apostates as abnormal, or "animals" (κατά θηρία in the context
of the "Cretan" quotation), and thus to place them outside the hu-
man species. The author's concern is doubdess by these accusations
to undermine the position and role of the opposing group within
the Christian community. The derogatory labelling of the deviants
corresponds to severe treatment: their mouths must be stopped
(έπιστομίζειν: 1:11),42 they must be stricdy admonished (άποτόμος; 1:13)
or be rejected (παραιτοΰ; 3:10) after having twice been admonished
(νουθεσία). Disputes with them on matters of substance should be
avoided (3:9). The aggressive rejection of an intra-Christian deviance
group is not only a feature of Tit. 1:10-16. It is typical of the Pas-
toral Episdes as a whole. However, it is particularly striking in our
text that the rejected group is connected with implicit prejudices about
Judaism and explicit prejudices about the Cretans. The heterophobic

40
Cf. the opposite position in 1 Tim. 1:5; 3:9; 2 Tim. 1:3; 2:22; Dibelius &
Conzelmann (3rd edn, 1955), pp. 16f.
41
Basic for the significance of the distinction between "pure" and "impure:" BJ.
Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology (rev. edn, Westminster,
1993), pp. 149-183.
42
T h e verb can also be used figuratively, in the sense of ending a rebellion (Jos.
Ant. 17:252). This interpretation suggests itself here too.
attitude to the deviant Christian group is here reinforced, then, by
specific identifications. These have, in my view, anti-semitic and rac-
ist contours.

4. The Stigmatization of the Deviant Group with Heterophobic Prejudices

Tit. 1:10-16 shows the whole syndrome of discrimination by preju-

dices. The author is experiencing disputes within his own Christian
community. An intra-Christian group has departed from the domi-
nant opinion, which the author immunizes as "sound doctrine." In-
stead of responding in detail to the arguments of the dissidents—
something the author expressly rejects (cf. e.g., Tit. 3:9f.)—the
opponents are discriminated against. The procedure of discrimina-
tion is typical: first they are subjected to general contempt. Not con-
tent with this, the writer moves them into the close proximity of a
negatively conceived Judaism and brands them with heterophobic
prejudices about the Cretans. Before proceeding further, I should
like to explain the term "heterophobic."
A. Memmi introduced the term "heterophobia" in his book about
racism.43 By this he wants to render the concept of "those phobic
and aggressive constellations which are directed against others and
are justified with various—psychological, cultural, social or metaphysi-
cal—arguments.44 This comprehensive term seems to me to be useful.
It is more comprehensive than the imported term xenophobia (fear
of, or animosity towards, strangers), which grounds the otherness of
others and the resulting fear in the fact that such people belong to
a foreign people. A phobic and aggressive rejection of the other can,
however, also concern those who belong to one's own ethnic group,
as for example in the case of those with other sexual orientations
(homosexuality)—or, as in our text, in connection with other reli-
gious convictions and ethical practices. Xenophobia would then be a
subcategory within heterophobia. Memmi then distinguishes racism
from the basic constellation of heterophobia. According to his definition
this is also a form of heterophobia, but in this case one in which

43
A. Memmi, Rassismus (Frankfurt, 1987), esp. pp. 9 7 - 1 2 4 ; these pages are re-
printed in D. Claussen Was heißt Rassismus? (Darmstadt, 1994), pp. 2 0 3 - 2 2 2 . I quote
from the more easily accessible edition of Claussen.
44
M e m m i (in Claussen), pp. 2 2 0 2 2 1 ‫ ־‬.
biological features of the other prompt fear and aggressive rejection.
Essentially I agree with this conceptual distinction, but would add to
"biological features" (e.g., skin colour) the feature of ethnic "origin, ‫יי‬
to the extent that this is understood as a kind of "biological" char-
acteristic. Racism would then be the discrimination of other people,
in word or deed, on account of their biological features or their ethnic
origins, to the extent that these origins are at the same time seen in
terms of biological features. This extension of the definition seems
more appropriate precisely for historical research into racism, since
in the Mediterranean culture of antiquity, for example, the esdma-
tion of the personality of a person was not oriented towards the
modern ideal of individuality. Rather, membership of a group played
a decisive role, in principle also membership of a particular people
(Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Jew etc.). Knowledge of biological fea-
tures could also be linked with this, as with regard to the dark skin
of Ethiopians, which did not necessarily, however, lead to negative
prejudices.45

Stigmatization of the Deviant Group with Prejudices about Judaism

At the beginning of his polemic against the deviant group the author
places them in the close proximity to Judaism. "Those of the cir-
cumcision" (oi έκ της περιτομής), especially, are "gossips" and "se-
ducers." In the context of the other three names they are called in
verse 10, it seems that the syntagm οί έκ της περιτομής is also used
pejoratively. It is true that it is theoretically possible that the author
is alluding to the fact that the deviant group also includes Christ-
believers of Jewish origin (so-called "Jewish-Christians").46 But this is
not at all certain.
If a dispute between Christians of Jewish and pagan origin is re-
fleeted in Tit. 1:1016, 47 ‫־‬ it would be untypical. First of all, it is stri

45
A. Dihle, Die Griechen und die Fremden (München, 1994), pp. 7 1 0 ‫ ; ־‬F.M.
Snowden, Blacks in Antiquity: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience (Cambridge, Mass.,
1970).
46
In the N e w Testament Christ-believers of Jewish origin can be called by this
syntagm (Gal. 2:12; Col. 4:11; Acts 10:45; persumably also Acts 11:2; cf. Rom.
4:12).
47
See e.g., P.W. van der Horst, "The Jews of Ancient Crete," JJS 39 (1988), pp.
1 8 3 - 2 0 0 (188).
 ing that of all the Pastoral Epistles, only Titus uses two expressions
which explicitly make a connection between the deviant group and
Judaism: "those of the circumcision" and "Jewish fables" (1:10, 14).
In 1 Tim. 1:4, 4:7 and 2 Tim. 4:4, there is a less precise mendon of
"fables," which are linked in 1 Tim. 1:4 with "genealogies" (cf. Tit.
3:9). The connection between fables and genealogies is traditional, and
could therefore be polemic in a familiar form. 48 It can be directed
against gnostic reception of Old Testament texts.49 This does not neces-
sarily have anything to do with Judaism itself or with "Jewish-Chris-
tian" backgrounds. 50 The syntagm έντολαν ανθρώπων, too, is funda-
mentally non-specific.51 The outworking of this is clearly found in the
following v. 15, which itself, however, reveals nothing more precise.
The key term καθαρός in the near context (l:15f.) indicates differences
in ethical behaviour. At least a special Jewish background can be
assumed. This is so even if in 1 Tim. 4:3-5 we have more precise
indications of what is meant by "purity" (ban on marriage, absti-
nence from food). The ban on marriage is itself hardly traceable to
Jewish tradition. And as far as the abstinence from food is concerned,
one need not necessarily think of Jewish food regulations (kashrut) but
in connection with the marriage ban (or is it a general ban on sexual
relations?), ascetic tendencies may be meant which could allude also
to the key term μάχαι νομικαί (Tit. 3:9).52 In general terms, then,
Jewish backgrounds may be assumed for the behaviour of the devi-
ant group. But this certainly does not have to indicate that they were
Jews 53 or so-called "Jewish-Christians. ‫ יי‬Nor does the writer of the
letter to Titus become a Jew or "Jewish-Christian" when in Tit. 2:14

48
Cf. Plato, Tim. 22a; Polybius I X 2:1; V. Hasler, art. γενεαλογία, in H. Balz &
G. Schneider (eds.), Exegetisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament (EWNT), I (2nd edn,
Stuttgart, 1992), pp. 58If.
49
Irenaeus and Tertullian already apply 1 Tim. 1:4 to the gnostics. Brox sup-
poses gnostic exegesis of the "primeval and patriarchal narratives" of the Old Tes-
tament (Brox, 5th edn, 1989, 102f.). Similarly Dibelius & Conzelmann (3rd edn,
1955), pp. 14f.
50
Sanders (1993), p. 222: "Such people need be Jews or even influenced by Jews
no more than Christian clergy today w h o admonish or advise their congregations
on the basis of the Old Testament. , ‫י‬
51
Even for Col. 2:22 there is no necessary connection with Judaism.
52
Cf. Dibelius & Conzelmann (3rd edn, 1955), pp. 113: "here too a dispute
about ascetic (not particularly Jewish) laws could be implied. , ‫י‬
53
F. Büchsei (art. γενεά κτλ., TWNT I, 6 6 0 - 6 6 3 ) posits J e w s b e h i n d the
νομοδιδάσκαλοι of 1 Tim. 1:7.
he applies one of Israel's tides of honour (λαός περιούσιος)54 to the
Christ-believers.
So I regard it as probable that the author deliberately moves the
protagonists of the deviant group into the proximity of Judaism, which
he clearly sees in a negative light. Whether the deviants themselves
fell back on Jewish traditions can no longer be discerned with certainty.
Even if such were the case, it would not make the apostates Christ-
believers of Jewish origin (so-called "Jewish-Christians"). The author
of the letter to Titus evidendy knew this, to the extent that he indulges
in pejorative allusions ("Jewish fables") or suspicions ("especially those
of the circumcision"). The only certain thing, to begin with, is that
we are dealing here with Christians and Cretans (1:12). Should pre-
cisely a Cretan of Jewish origin be made responsible for the "saying"
about the Cretans? Anyone who—like the letter to Titus—speaks so
pejoratively about Judaism, has written it off long ago. His concern
is clearly to charge the Christian deviants with prejudices about Ju-
daism and to discredit them because of their proximity to Jewish
traditions. The author is evidendy sure that this argument will have
its due effect. I do consider it still possible that with his critical in-
vective against the deviants he is alluding to the letter to the Galatians,
in order to place the deviant Christian group in the proximity of the
"opponents' 5 against whom the Aposde polemicizes there. The phrases
oi έκ της περιτομής (cf. Gal. 2:12), άποστρεφομένων την άλήθειαν (cf.
Gal. 2:14; 5:7f.) and φρεναπάται (cf. Gal. 6:3; cf. also Gal. 3:Iff.),
may support this suggestion.

The Stigmatization of the Deviant Group with Prejudices concerning

the Cretans

Negative labels are also found elsewhere in the New Testament, of

which only a few examples can be mentioned here. Jesus' low social
background is alluded to in Mk 6:3: "Is this not the τέκτων (labourer/
carpenter?), the son of Mary and brother. ..?" Or: Jesus drives out
the evil spirits by the aid of "Beelzebub" (Mt. 12:24); he is called
"possessed" (Jn 8:48, 52) or a "Nazarene" (Mt. 2:23; 26:71; J n 18:5,
7; 19:19). Some labels allude to ethnic or geographic origins: Jesus is
called "Galilean" (Mt. 26:69) or "Samaritan" (Jn 8:48); one may also

54
Cf. Exod. 19:5; Deut. 7:6; 14:2; 1 Pet. 2:9f.
compare J n 1:46: "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" These
few examples show in their various ways that it is thoroughly typical
of Mediterranean culture to characterize people by stereotypes or
general social categories.55 Tit. 1:12 further differs from the above
examples, however, in that mention of the Cretan ethnic origins is
combined with disparaging categories ("liars," "gluttons") even to the
extent that a comparison is made with animals. The letter-writer
himself also takes the proverbial character out of the word of the
poet by identifying it as fulfilled. The letter presupposes that Paul
has left his co-worker in Crete (1:5). Titus himself—about whom, it
is true, we hear hardly anything further—is (according to Gal. 2:2f.)
a Greek, while the members of the Christian communities (Tit. 1:5
implies several Cretan communities) are Cretans. Even the cutting
insult about the Cretans in Tit. 1:12 presupposes that the deviants
belong ethnically to the Cretans (τις έξ αύτών ϊδιος προφήτης). The
hexameter evidendy goes back to Epimenides (6th cent, BCE),56 but
the context applies it to the deviant Christians mentioned just before
(1:1 Of.): "Cretans are always liars, wicked animals, lazy gluttons."
The semantics of this sentence cannot be analysed at this point.
Its proverbial57 or discriminatory character suggests that a correspond-
ing analysis would only get entangled in the thicket of other preju-
dices.58 The Carthaginians, originally from Phoenicia, were also re-
ferred to in a discriminatory way, being regarded as devious merchants
and tradespeople who were not above cheating. Cicero calls them
"deceitful and mendacious" (fraudulent et mendaces).59 And he attributes
this supposed national trait to the fact that too many "tradespeople
and foreigners" were to be found in the harbours of the Carthaginians.
In his view the Campanians are arrogant because of the fertility and
beauty of their country, the Liganans hard and wild, like all people

55
"It is characteristic of the Mediterranean world to think in terms of stereo-
types. Persons were not known by their psychological personality and uniqueness,
but by general social categories such as place of origin, residence, family, gender,
age, and the range of other groups to which they might belong" (B.J. Malina &
R.L. Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels [Minneapolis, 1992],
pp. 97f.; cf. Malina 1993, pp. 63ff.).
56
For a full discussion of this problem cf. Dibelius & Conzelmann (3rd edn,
1955), pp. 101-103.
57
O n the dissemination of prejudices about the Cretans, see Dibelius & Conzel-
mann (3rd edn, 1955), pp. 101-103.
58
Cf., e.g., Plutarch, Moralia 490B.
59
T h e older Pliny says of them: As the Egyptians invented the monarchy and the
Greeks democracy, the Punies invented trade (NatHist VII 198).
who have to make rocky soil arable.60 Anyone who comes from Tiberias
has a warlike passion, Scythians enjoy killing and are little better than
wild animals, according to Josephus. 61 The characterization of the
Cretans as κακά θηρία evidendy intends to discredit them as "wicked
beasts", i.e. because they are dangerous. 62
The Egyptians, too, were despised in a more or less proverbial way.63
For an example I shall here cite only Juvenal, who in his argumen-
tation strategy engages prejudices about the Egyptians in a compa-
rable way to the writer of Titus, in order to hurt a nouveau-riche
man named Crispinus, who had evidendy climbed to high office. It
is psychologically interesting here that social envy towards a social
climber arouses Juvenal's hatred. The hatred is nourished by ethnic
prejudice (Sat I 27):
. . . if Crispin, who comes from the rabble of the Nile, born as a slave
in Canopus, puts his Tyrian robe over his shoulder and "wafts" his gold
ring onto his sweaty fingers for the summer (for he cannot bear to wear
a greater weight of jewelry)—then it is difficult not to write satire.
This Crispin thus is subject to contempt for various reasons: He is a
born slave (vema), formerly belonged to the plebs of his home town
Canopus, which happens to be considered especially immoral (Sat VI
84; X V 46), and he is an Egyptian, and thus according to Juvenal's
prejudice a member of an uncivilized people (cf., e.g., X V 46), and
in addition he makes an ostentatious display of his wealth. Juvenal
devotes a whole satire to his hatred for the Egyptians (Sat XV). Their
strange—to him—manner of worship arouses mockery and horror:
in their madness they venerate monsters (like the crocodile, for in-
stance), but also in their stupidity they do not eat onions of any
kind: " O god-fearing people (says Juvenal, with irony), whose divini-
ties grow in the garden." O n the other hand he accuses them of

60
C i c e r o , De lege agraria 2:95.
61
Jos. Vita 352; Contra Apionem 2:269. Other examples are cited by B.J. Malina,
"Is There a Circum-Mediterranean Person? Looking for Stereotypes," in BTB 22
(1992), pp. 6 6 - 8 7 (71-74).
62
Malina (1992, 74) collects a number of texts in which the physiognomy of
people is characterized by analogy with particular animals. T h e "characteristics" of
particular animals (e.g. fox, wolf, snake) are transferred onto humans. O n this cf.,
e.g., Lk. 10:3; 13:31f.; Mt. 10:16; 23:33.
63
O n this see the comprehensive treatment by K.A.D. Smelik & E.A. Hemelrijk,
'"Who Knows What Monsters Demented Egypt Worships?' Opinions on Egyptian
Animal Worship in Antiquity as Part of the Ancient Conception of Egypt," in
W. Haase (ed.), Aufstieg und Medergang der Römischen Welt. Principal. 17.4 (Berlin—
N e w York, 1984), pp. 1852-2000, 2 3 3 7 - 2 3 5 7 .
eating human flesh (ef. Sat XV Iff.). In all respects the ways of the
Egyptians fill Juvenal with abhorrence. At their orgiastic festivals even
men would dance (Sat XV 40ffi). Finally the whole people can only
be called worthy of death.
Juvenal's hatred of the Egyptians provides an opportunity to study
how xenophobia or heterophobia works. Anything strange, the otherness
of the other, is subject to suspicion and interpreted negatively. There
are in principle two areas in which strangers stand out: their differ-
ent religion and their different social behaviour. People who symbol-
ize their religion in the form of animals—like the Egyptians—are
"crazy." For normal behaviour is represented by one's own religion:
Romans and Greeks worship their divinities in human form. In the
social sphere the negative interpretation of the otherness of strangers
frequently goes so far as to deny their humanity. The Cretans are
dangerous animals. And the Jews, who kept to their ways and eus-
toms even in the Diaspora, were considered—because of their close
social intercourse among themselves—anti-human (cf., e.g., Tacitus,
Hist V, 5).

5. Critical Reception and Evaluation

How should we deal with such a text? A shocking example is found

in an exegetical commentary by G. Holtz:64

The commentator assumes that the "inner life of the community . . .

is to a horriying extent corrupt." The guilty party is clearly "gnostics,"
among whom "former Jews" are noticeable as "especially unchari-
table." "They will have maintained part of their Judaism and a part
of paganism and have added a bit of Christianity to it." This group
is not only "present in frightening numbers," but is also violent. They
"storm the houses," appear to be "magicians" and "make empty and
fantastic propaganda speeches." Among them, "Jews by birth" are
"leaders" and "especially dangerous." For "because they come εκ της
περιτομής, they think they have special rights and make great de-
mands." And what about the Cretans! They are "a rough, work-shy,
gluttonous lot." This must be true, because—as Holtz puts it—a

64
G. Holtz, Die Pastoralbriefe (Theologischer Handkommentar zum Neuen Testa-
ment; Berlin, 1965), pp. 2 1 1 - 1 6 .
"native" is cited as "chief witness." And to reinforce what he has
said, the commentator maintains: "the heathen really did speak pro-
phetically." The violent language of the text does not worry Holtz.
For the false teachers are "sick in sins" and threaten "the whole
community with their infectious germs . . ., if it has not already been
infected." "Pastoral care" of course has its "work cut out" here. For
"the Jewish gnostics in Crete" have set up "new, but human com-
mandments." The matters concerned—as is to be expected an and-
Jewish prejudice—are "the casuistry of clean and unclean. ‫ יי‬But "any-
one who lives in eucharistie piety is released from the casuistry of
the food commandments. ‫ יי‬The false teachers, on the other hand:
even their "thinking is repulsively soiled.'5 All this finally leads to
Holtz's "exposing" them as "stewards of hell."

The commentator has become the victim of the communicative strat-

egy of the author. He takes this black-and-white characterization at
face value. Even the anti-semitic or racist prejudices fall on fertile
soil as far as he is concerned. Indeed, the recipient even increases
the negative aspects of the text by supplementing them with preju-
dices of his own. And finally he prepares a "spiritual" end ("stewards
of hell") for the deviants.
A critical exegesis of the Titus text under discussion, in contrast to
this reception, will analyse and thus also evaluate the New Testament
author's prejudice structure and its significance in the historical con-
text of its time. In so doing it will take account of the contingent
factors of its situation. What appears to us to be intolerant may
certainly have been the understandable reaction to negative experi-
ences in a specific historical situation.65 In the case of the letter to
Titus one should consider the possibility that the author saw the
stability of the Christian communities in Crete as threatened by the
deviants; at least it is conceivable that he had this subjective view.
But his criticism is excessive and his strategy is interested only in
enforcing the conventional position. Also to be borne in mind are
the standards of ancient culture, to which the text itself belongs. There,
ethnocentrism, linked in part with the stereotypical denigration of
other peoples, seems to have been common. The scale of discrimina-
tion thus ranges from an ambivalent attitude to the members of

65
Cf. B.V. Malchow, "Causes of Tolerance and Intolerance Toward Gentiles in
the First Testament," in BTB 20 (1990), pp. 3 - 9 .
another people (e.g., Herodotus' attitude to the Egyptians)66 through
to racist prejudices. In the case of the letter to Titus, the dual ques-
tion arises: Are its statements about the Jews anti-semitic, or those
about the Cretans racist? The answer depends on the definition of
what may be called and-semitic or racist.

Anti-semitic Prejudice in Tit. 1:10-16

If anti-semitism is "a fundamental and systematic hostility toward

Jews" 67 it may be stated that the letter to Titus does not provide
evidence of a systematic hostility towards the Jews. It gives rather
the impression of a clear distance from Judaism. The letter does,
however, appear to imply a fundamental contrast with Judaism. If
anti-semitism is taken to mean the "denigration" of and "contempt"
for Jews and one sees precisely in this a Christian continuum (as
does J . Isaac, see above), then the Titus text under discussion can be
called anti-semitic. It must be borne in mind that the author is not
direcdy concerned with "anti-Jewish polemic." 68 Rather, it makes use
of anti-Jewish prejudices, with which it aims to attack its intra-Chris-
tian "opponents." This form of Christian anti-semitism is unfortu-
nately still current.

Racist Prejudice against the Cretans in Tit. 1:10-16

The nasty words about the Cretans, cited by Tit. 1:12, doubtless
show not only an ambivalent attitude to a foreign people. But it can
hardly be called ethnocentric, since the concern here is not to put
one's own people on a pedestal in contrast to other ethnic groups. 69
In my view, our text reflects an ancient form of racism. For in the
dreadful proverb about the Cretans their ethnic origins are linked
with negative quasi-biological features. It assumes that all members
of the ethnic group of the Cretans have negative characteristics, which
disqualify them morally and in the end place them outside the human

66
Herodotus II 35f.
67
J.G. Gager, "The Origins of Anü-Semiüsm," in Attitudes toward Judaism in Pagan
and Christian Antiquity (New York & Oxford, 1983), p. 17.
68
So, correcdy, Hasler (2nd edn, 1992), p. 582.
69
Ethnocentrism is expressed, for example, in the c o m m o n opposidon between
Greeks and Barbarians. It is also evident in statements which take the Romans, for
example, to be the most virtuous of all people (cf. Pliny, NatHist VII 40).
race. And neither the historical situation of the letter to Titus, nor
the general mentality of Mediterranean culture, which presumably
took litde offence at the text's anti-semitic and racist prejudices, can
"justify" its prejudice structure. In any case the ancient situation and
mentality can be no criterion for its reception today. It is not, how-
ever, simply a question of a critique of the New Testament text and
of its Christian exegesis. Rather, historical criticism is always also a
criticism of the present, in which, as always, in church and theologi-
cal discourses anti-semitism and racism are encountered and are not
infrequendy justified on the basis of biblical texts.
 P A R T II
C U L T U R E AND I N T E R P R E T A T I O N
 BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION F R O M T H E PERSPECTIVE
O F INDIGENOUS CULTURES O F LATIN AMERICA
(MAYAS, KUNAS, AND QUECHUAS)

Pablo Richard

Introduction

Over the past ten years I have tried to do an interpretation of the

Bible from the perspective of indigenous cultures, especially among
the Mayas of Guatemala, the Kunas of Panama, and the Quechuas
of Ecuador. This has not been an easy task, for the indigenous have
suffered a historical trauma associated with the Bible, through its use
in the spiritual conquest of these peoples. The Bible was used to
legitimize the conquest and destruction of the culture and religion of
the indigenous peoples. Furthermore, almost all interpretation of the
Bible in the present day is carried out from within the dominant
liberal and modern European culture, which completely ignores the
non-occidental cultural world of the Third World. Even to the present
time, the churches also continue to interpret the Bible from the per-
spective of a European culture that is both ethnocentric and occidental.
In the dialogue between Bible and Culture, the Bible must partici-
pate with great humility, for the indigenous peoples have lived for
thousands of years without the Bible. Since the occidental conquest,
those peoples have survived by the strength of their own religion
and culture, in confrontation with Christendom. There is in those
cultures a deep and significant revelation of God, which profoundly
challenges our interpretation of the Bible. Evangelization, if it intends
to be liberating and not follow the model of conquest, must begin its
work by listening, discerning, and interpreting the presence and rev-
elation of God in indigenous religion and culture.
This article has two parts. The first presents historical and theo-
logical foundations for a liberating hermeneutic that permits us to
carry out a project of biblical interpretation from the perspective of
indigenous cultures. The second part presents our work of biblical
interpretation among the indigenous peoples of Latin America, and
the theoretical reflection that we have been able to develop up to
this point.
 A. Historical and Theological Foundations of a Hermeneutic of Liberation

1. The Spirit of Occidental Colonial Domination

Christianity arrived in Latin America, Africa, and Asia with the

colonial expansion of the occident. This is an objective historical and
global reality that does not negate specific positive actions, or the
generosity and good intentions of many missionaries. The original
inhabitants of these three continents endured the arrival of Chris-
tianity as the imposition of an occidental colonial system of domina-
tion. From the sixteenth century to the present, this process has
continued, be it in its Catholic or Protestant versions. This fact,
moreover, has meant a profound spiritual and hermencutical perver-
sion in the very heart of Christianity.
We propose to illustrate this phenomenon by a concrete and signi-
ficant example. We will take up the work of the sixteenth century
author who best represents the spirit of conquest of occidental Chris-
tianity, namely Juan Ginés de Sepú1veda. We will use as our reference
his principal work, "Tratado sobre las justas causas de la guerra contra los
indios" ("Treatise on the Just Causes of the War Against the Indians").1

a. The Texts
In this essay I will not go into all the complexity of this work and of
the discussion of this theme in the sixteenth century. 2 We will look
only at a few texts where the author presents the fundamental argu-
ment of his work in order to justify the war against the indigenous
peoples. Thus, he says,
. . . it is just and natural that prudent, wise, and humane people have
dominion over those who do not have those qualities . . . (therefore)
the Spaniards have a perfect right to rule over these barbarians of the
New World and adjacent islands, who in prudence, intelligence, virtue,
and humanity are as inferior to the Spaniards as children are to adults
and women to men, having between them as great a difference as that
between savage and cruel peoples and the most merciful p e o p l e s . . ., and,
I would even say, between monkeys and human beings, (p. 101)

1
Passages cited in this article are translations of the bilingual (Latin and Spanish)
edition of that treatise published in 1979 by the Fondo de Cultura Economica in
Mexico City. Page numbers in parentheses following the citations refer to that edi-
tion, and the emphasis in each case is that of the author of this article.
2
For that discussion, see Fernando Mires, En nombre de la cruz• Discusiones teolôgicas
Here we have established the correlation: the inhabitants of the new
world are barbarians. They are like children, women, savage and
cruel people—practically like monkeys. In contrast, the Spanish
Conquistador is adult, male, a most merciful person—in a word, a
Human Being (as opposed to a monkey).
The war of the Spaniards against the Indians is just, because
. . . being by nature slaves, barbarian, uncultured, and inhumane, they
refuse to accept the domination of those w h o are more prudent, pow-
erful, and perfect than they—domination that would bring them the
greatest benefits, being, moreover, a just thing, through natural law,
that substance o b e y form, the body o b e y the soul, appetite o b e y reason, beasts
o b e y human bangs, a wife o b e y h e r husband, sons and daughters o b e y their
father, the imperfect o b e y the perfect, the worse o b e y the better, for the
universal good of all things, (p. 153)

In another place he adds:

What more appropriate and salutary thing could happen to these bar-
barians than to remain subject to the dominion of these whose pru-
dence, virtue, and religion have transformed them from barbarians, such
as hardly merit the name of h u m a n beings, into civilized people insofar
as they can b e c o m e that; from people w h o are stupid and libidinous, into
p e o p l e w h o are wise and honorable; f r o m impious people a n d slaves of de-
mons, into Christians a n d worshipers of the true God ? (p. 133)

In this way total domination is justified:

. . . [ W ] h a t is natural and just is that the soul rules over the body, that
reason presides over the appetite,... therefore that wild beasts b e subdued
and subjected to the d o m i n i o n of humanity. Therefore the man rules over
the woman, the adult o v e r t h e child, the father o v e r his sons and daughters,
that is to say, the most powerful and perfect over those w h o are weakest
and most imperfect. . . . (p. 85)

The thought of Juan Ginés de Sepú1veda represents the feeling and

thinking of the entire undertaking of conquest and colonization of
what is called Latin America, and what today we prefer to call "Abya
Yala." 3 This author says what the majority of the Conquistadors and
evangelizers feel, think, and do. He is not a marginal author, but

y politicas frente al holocauste de los indios (periodo de conquista) (San José, Costa Rica:
Editorial DEI, 1986).
3
Abya Yala is the name that the Kuna Indians of Panama give to our continent.
For us the name "Latin America" is a colonial name and lacks meaning. In the
Kuna language Abya Yala means ripe land, big mother land, land of blood. See
Aiban Wagua, "Present Consequences of the European Invasion of America, 1 ' 1492-
1992: The Voice of the Victims (ed. Leonardo Boff and Virgil Elizondo; Concilium 1990/
6; Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990), p. 56 n. 6.
rather the typical representative of an entire colonial transformation
of the society and of Christianity. 4

b. The Global Reality of Domination

The fundamental and founding relationship in colonial thought is
the binomial Spaniard-Indian. Of the Spaniards it is said that they are
a most gende people; superior in prudence, intelligence, and virtue;
more powerful; and perfect. The Indians, on the contrary, are con-
sidered barbaric, uncultured, intemperate, a savage and cruel people.
The Spaniards are humane and represent humanity. The Indians
are inhumane, hardly merit being called human, and instead are like
monkeys. Ginés always calls them, in Latin, homunculi—"litde men." 5
The salvation of the Indians is given through the subjection that
transforms them from barbarians into civilized people, from stupid
and libidinous people into wise and honorable ones, from impious
people and slaves of demons into Christians and worshipers of the
true God.
The binomial "Spaniard-Indian" is equivalent to the other bino-
mials of man-woman, adult-child, father-son or daughter. Finally, it
is compared to the relationship of human being to animal. Thus we
have the following coordinates:
Spaniard Man Adult Father H u m a n Being
Indian Woman Child Son, Daughter Animal

The Spaniard is like the man, the adult, the father, the human being.
The Indian is like the woman, the child, the son or daughter, or the
animal. The relationship between the members of each pair is that
of domination.
The intrinsic relationship among colonial domination (Spaniard-
Indian), domination of gender (man-woman), domination of one gen-
eration over another (adult-child), and domination of nature (human
being-animal) is evident. Colonial domination is thus global and in-
eludes every dimension of the human being and of nature.

4
Pablo Richard, "1492: T h e Violence of G o d and the Future of Christianity,"
1492-1992: The Voice of the Victims, pp. 5 9 - 6 7 .
5
Ginés writes: "Compare now these qualities of prudence, wisdom, magnanimity,
temperance, humanity, and religion (of the Spaniards) to the qualities possessed by
those litde men in w h o m you will scarcely encounter vestiges of humanity (homunculos
illos in quibus vix reperies humanitatis vestigia)" (p. 105).
c. Metaphysical, Necessary, and Natural Character of Dominadon
The relationship of colonial domination is identified with the rela-
tionship of domination of form over substance, of the soul over the body, and
of reason over appetite.6 T h e Spaniard is to the Indian as the soul to the
body. The same thing happens with the relationship of domination
over the woman, the child, and nature. Moreover, the relationship
of domination is presented as the relationship of the powerful over
the weak, of the perfect over the imperfect, of what is better over
what is worse. Ginés adds, "This is the natural order, which the
divine and eternal law commands always to observe." 7 All of this is
proven conclusively on the authority of Aristotle, Augustine, and
Aquinas, who are cited frequently. 8
According to this form of argumentation, the Conquistador (and
also the man, the adult, and the human being) is the one who ere-
ates order, who brings a spiritual dimension, and who imposes ratio-
nality. The Indian (and also the woman, the child, and nature) is
matter, body, irrational, appetite, and therefore is not human, does
not have a soul, and is like a savage wild beast—like a monkey.
Thus, as the soul must exercise violence against the body, especially
when it rebels against the soul, so also the Conquistador can and
should exercise violence against the Indian, the man against the
woman, the adult against the child, the human being against nature.
It goes against natural and divine law for an Indian to rule over a
Spaniard, a woman over a man, or an animal over a human being.
That would represent the triumph of appetite over reason, of the
material over the spiritual.

2. 500 Tears of Spiritual Resistance Against the Colonial Occident

Colonial thought, which we have exemplified by the work of J u a n

Ginés de Sepú1veda, was the theoretical expression of the conquest
and of all of its human, ecological, economic, political, social, cultural,
and religious destruction. In the sixteenth century we experienced a

6
See the citation, above, from p. 153. I include the Latin text here to gauge the
precision of the terms: justum est eojure naturae, quo materia formae, corpus animae, appetitus
rationi, hominibus animalia bruta, viris mulieres, patribus filii, imperfecta, scilecet, perfectis, détériora
potionbus, debent, ut utrisque bene dt, obtemperare.
7
Hie est enim ordo naturalis, quam divina et aetema lex ubique servan jubet. (p. 153)
8
T h e influence of Aristotle on Juan Ginés de Sepú1veda is determinative and
genocide of sixty million indigenous people, and subsequendy of some
twenty million Blacks brought from Africa. It is the most massive
genocide known in the history of humanity, accomplished integrally
within the context of occidental Christendom. 9
Resistance to the conquest and to colonial domination followed
different paradigms. In the first place, we have the prophetic resis-
tance among the Spaniards themselves, whose best known represen-
tative is Fray Bartolomé de las Casas.10 In addition to him, there is
a generation of prophetic bishops, religious, and theologians in the
sixteenth century who defended the Indian and made possible a lib-
erating Evangelization. Although the dominant position in the Church
was that of collaboration and legitimization of the colonial power,
despite that domination and in contrast to it, an authentic Evange-
lization took place ("Evangelization itself constitutes a type of grand
jury for the indictment of those responsible for such abuses")."
In addition to the prophetic resistance of some missionaries, we
have the indigenous resistance. This had two principal expressions:
the Indian resistance that maintained its identity in silence, in se-
crecy, in the mountains and forests; and the Indian resistance that
maintained its identity in dialogue with the Christian religion itself.
In this way there arose what today is called "Indian-Indian Theol-
ogy" and "Indian-Christian Theology". 12 Years later a similar pro-
cess took place among the Blacks brought as slaves from Africa, which
also gave rise to an Afro-American theology that today has seen
significant development.
In this Indian and Afro-American resistance of five hundred years,
we have the most profound and significant historical root of resis-

omnipresent, with citations in particular from the philosopher's treatise on Politics

(cf. Book 1, Chap. 3). O n the other hand, his Ethics are cited very little, and then
in a purely literal and proof-texting fashion.
9
For a discussion of the concept of Christendom, see Pablo Richard, Death of
Christendom, Birth of the Church (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1987).
10
Gustavo Gutierrez, Las Casas: In Search of the Poor of Jesus Christ (transi. Robert
R. Barr; Maryknoll: Orbis, 1993).
" See the documents of the Conference of Santo D o m i n g o (October 1992),
no. 18.
12
Today an abundant literature exists on Indian Theology. Most of it is in the
form of mimeographed publications or occasional leaflets (what we could still con-
sider oral tradition). T w o important publications are Teologia India. Primer Encuentro
Taller Latinoamericano (Mexico [Cenami] and Ecuador [Abya Yala], 1991), 329 pages;
and the September 1991, issue of the Mexican journal Christus (no. 7), which is
entirely dedicated to the theme of Indian Theology.
tance to occidental colonial domination, and of the construction of
possible alternatives to that domination. O u r continent will be able
to reconstruct its life, its identity, and its autonomy only on the basis
of this indigenous and Afro-American resistance. The struggle of the
Indian and Black peoples for their life, for their culture, and for
their religion is the only radical (in the sense of root) perspective that
allows us to become aware of occidental colonial domination and to
develop a theological, hermeneutical, and spiritual reflection that is a
liberating alternative to occidental domination.
The struggle of the indigenous for their life, for their culture, and
for their religion, against the occidental colonial domination, was a
struggle in which the reality of women and of nature was always
integrated. In all of the indigenous cultural currents of Latin America
or Abya Yala, from the North to the South of the continent, there
has existed from the beginning the unity of woman and man, and
the identity of both with nature. God is always woman and man;
nature also is always woman and man. The earth is Mother Earth,
and in it is the fullness of God. If the colonial domination was founded
on the domination of man over woman and of the human being
over nature, the indigenous resistance encountered its root and its
power in the equality of woman and man and of nature and hu-
mankind. The indigenous dimension of gender and nature, and the
identification of God with this dimension, was the millenarian root
that made possible the confrontation with occidental domination.
Today the resistance to colonial domination—domination in its
present form of the "New International Order"—exhibits the same
original form that we encountered in the deep roots of our identity.
In the present time resistance is developed through a consciousness
in which the unity of culture (indigenous, Black, and Mestizo), of gen-
der (women), and of nature (the earth, the body, the cosmos, the en-
vironment) is a given. The unity of culture-gender-nature founded on
the alliance of Indians, Blacks, women, young people, workers, na-
ture, and earth is a consciousness and a movement that are differen-
dated and multiple, but also deeply united in their resistance to the
present colonial domination. This consciousness or historical move-
ment we call symbolically SOUTH, given that after the Cold War
and the confrontation of East and West, the contradiction of North
and South must be recognized as dominant. The centers of power
are found principally in the North, while the assaulted and plun-
dered masses are found mosdy in the South, where the poorest 80%
of humanity live.13 This new consciousness that is being born from
the South, in which the dimension of culture-gender-nature is united,
requires also a Hermeneutic of the South, which orients a new biblical
interpretation over against the dominant occidental colonial conscious-
ness (constituted by the imposition of the European over the Indian,
of man over woman, of the adult over the child, and of humankind
over nature, and founded metaphysically on the dominion by "natu-
ral law" of the soul over the body, of reason over the appetite, of
form over substance).

3. The Reconstruction of the Spirit Over Against Occidental Christendom

The fundamental axis of the thought of J u a n Ginés de Sepú1veda,

and perhaps of all Greco-Latin-occidental thought, is the dualism of
body and soul. What was new in the colonial conquest was the identifi-
cation of the relationship of body and soul with the relationship of
Indian and Spaniard. The Spaniard is identified with Christianity and
with the worship of the true God. The Indian is a savage (barbar-
ian-pagan) and worshiper of demons. In the colonial vision the Span-
iard is to the Indian as the soul is to the body, as God is to the
demons, and as Grace is to Sin. The Spaniard, like the soul, is the
expression of what is spiritual and divine. The Indian, like the body,
is the expression of the material and the demonic. Salvation takes
place in the soul, in the dominion of the soul over the body, in the
repression of the body, and, in a definitive form, when the soul is
freed from the body. Furthermore, the salvation of the Indians takes
place when they cease to be Indian, abandon their identity, their
culture, and their religion, and become Christian. If they resist, it is
legitimate to exercise violence against their bodies in order to save
them, just as the individual exercises violence against the body to
save himself or herself. This whole design is reinforced when Ginés,
following the Aristotelian tradition, identifies the relation of soul and
body with that of form and substance, and of reason and appetite.
The same schema is used for the domination of women, of chil-
dren, and of nature. The man is identified with the soul, and there-
fore he is spiritual and rational; the woman is body, carnal appetite,
irrational. The man is close to God; the woman is identified with

13
Pablo Richard, "El Sur existe y dene su teologia," Εηυίο 137 (May 1993),
published in Nicaragua.
sin, and at least with the demonic (the witches). Similarly, the child
in contrast to the adult is presented as unformed substance and an
irradonal being. The same opposition of soul and body, reason and
appetite, form and substance is applied to the dominion of humankind
over nature. The spiritual Human Being dominates and exercises
violence against material nature and against the body. The destruc-
tion of nature and of the body, like the destruction of the Indian or
the woman, is not important for the occidental spiritual identity.
The colonial expansion of occidental Christendom, by identifying
the spiritual and the rational with the domination of the Spaniard
over the Indian, of the man over the woman, of the adult over the
child, and of the human being over nature, destroyed profoundly the
spiritual dimension present in the Indian, in the woman, in the child,
in nature, and in the body. The occidental Conquest imposed a
rationality and spirituality that are ethnocentric, patriarchal, authori-
tarian, against nature, and against the body.
In the Indian religion there is an deep identification among In-
dian-woman-nature-God. God and the divine Spirit, in all indigenous
traditions, is always present in the community (culture), in the per-
son (woman and man), in nature, and in the earth. The occident
denies the Spirit in the very place where the Indians experience it.
These five hundred years of indigenous resistance have been five
hundred years of spiritual resistance against occidental colonialism.
We can say the same thing about that consciousness that arises
today in the civil society and in the social movements in Latin America
and in what is called the South. For us, today, culture-gender-nature
is the privileged space of the spiritual, of the rational, of the près-
ence and revelation of God. The movement of liberation of oppressed
people—which is the sum of the indigenous, Afro-American, work-
ers' and campesinos' (peasants') movements, movements for women's
liberation, ecological movements, movements for children and youth,
national liberation movements, and so forth—is a movement for life,
but at the same time it is also a spiritual movement. The movement for
liberation, in contrast to occidental colonial thought, identifies the
spiritual and the rational with the liberation of Indians, Blacks, women,
youth, the body, a n d nature. The liberation of oppressed people is redeeming
the meaning of the spiritual today in history. T h e m o v e m e n t of liberation
radically subverts occidental colonial thought, and redeems the Spirit
precisely where domination denies it. The movement of liberation is
fundamentally a spiritual movement. The South is poor in money,
technology, and armaments, but it is rich in Spirit, in Humanity,
and in Culture. The power of God in the South is not manifested in
the power of arms and of money, but in the spiritual power of In-
dians, Blacks, campesinos, youth, women, the earth, and nature. The
hermeneutic of liberation is also an authentically universal hermeneutic,
for the liberation of oppressed people is what makes possible the
liberation of everyone—oppressed and oppressors, both equally de-
humanized by the structures of domination.

4. Bible: Conquest and Resistance

The occidental pattern of domination profoundly perverted the meaning of

the biblical tradition. The Bible was read and interpreted according to
colonial and occidental interests. Even to the present time, the indig-
enous peoples of Latin America or Abya Yala have experienced a
trauma related to the Bible. All of the Bible was interpreted against
the spiritual experience of the Indian peoples. The biblical schema
of the conquest by Joshua of the Canaanite people was applied to
the conquest of the indigenous peoples. Indigenous religions were
fought by using the prophetic tradition of opposition to idolatry. The
New Testament was read from the perspective of an imperial
Christology and a patriarchal and authoritarian ecclesiology. The
spiritual was identified with occidental culture, with the dominion of
man over woman and of the human being over nature. This spiri-
tual perversion, accomplished by the Greco-Latin-occidental tradi-
tion, placed the Bible at the service of colonial domination, and equally
at the service of a domination that is patriarchal, against the body,
and against nature. The Judeo-Christian tradition was inverted and
transformed into its opposite. For that reason, Juan Ginés de Sepú1veda
was so easily able to utilize the Bible and occidental Christian thought
in order to justify the most horrible genocide in the history of
Christendom.
As long as we do not recover the Bible from the perspective of the
spirit with which it was written, no exegesis will succeed in discover-
ing the Word of God as a Word different from the dominant
occidental culture. It is not a matter of recovering the Bible exegeti-
cally, verse by verse, but rather of recovering the Spirit with which
the Bible was written in its totality and its profundity (cf. Dei Verbum
No. 12). The recovery of this Spirit takes place today in the experi-
ence of the Word of God in the movements of liberation; it is here
 that our faith discerns the Word of God, illuminated by the same
Spirit that inspired the Bible.
Biblical anthropology is defined basically by the opposition of life
and death. The spirit (pneuma) is the tendency of the human being (in
his or her body and soul) toward life. The opposite of the spirit is the
flesh (sarx), which is the tendency of the entire human being (in body
and soul) toward death. Thus it is written in Rom. 8:6, "To set the
mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life
and peace." The man or woman who is "carnal,' ‫ י‬or "defined by the
flesh," is the man or woman who is oriented, in body and soul alike,
toward death. The "spiritual" man or woman is the man or woman
oriented, in body and soul alike, toward life. It is the triumph of life
over death that defines that which is spiritual. Salvation is the over-
coming of death in body and soul. The Holy Spirit brings to its full-
ness the tendency toward life, even beyond death, in the resurrection of
the human being in body and soul. The opposite of this is sin, which
reinforces in our body and soul the tendency toward death. Thus St.
Paul can say, "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set
you free from the law of sin and of death" (Rom. 8:2).14
The Indian peoples, in spite of the Conquest and of occidental
Christendom, began to read the Bible in a different way. Today an
Indian Hermeneutic or an Indian reading of the Bible already ex-
ists.15 Highly valued in this Indian hermeneutic are the "seeds of the
Word" present in Indian religion before the arrival of Christianity.
Today there also exists in Latin America a movement that is called
"Pastoral Reading of the Bible" or "Communal Reading of the Bible.‫יי‬
Others call it "Popular Reading of the Bible."16 What is important is
that the Bible is read and interpreted by the poor in what are called
Ecclesial Base Communities, in a climate of prayer and commitment.
The Bible is read and interpreted in the heart of the indigenous,

14
Pablo Richard, "Espiritualidad para tiempos de revolucicm. Teologia espiritual
a la luz de San Pablo," in Eduardo Bonin (ed.), Espmtualidad y Liberaciôn en America
Latina (San José, Costa Rica: Editorial DEI, 1982).
15
Pablo Richard, "Hermenéutica India," Revista de Interpretaciôn Bíblica Lationamericana
(RIBLA) 11 (1992), pp. 9 - 2 4 .
16
Carlos Mesters, Defenseless Flower: A New Reading of the Bible (transi. Francis
McDonagh; Maryknoll: Orbis, 1989). See also RIBLA 1 (1988). This entire issue,
with the title Lectura Popular de la Biblia en America Latina: Una Hermeneutica de la Liberaciôn,
is dedicated to the theme of "popular" reading of the Bible. See especially the ar-
tide with that same title written by Pablo Richard (pp. 30-48), and "La Lectura
Biblica en las CEB's," by Neftali Vêlez (pp. 829‫)־‬.
Afro-American, and workers' and camperinos' movements; of movements
for women's liberation; of ecological movements; and of movements
of youth. The experience of the Spirit does not take place in the
soul as opposed to the body, but in the affirmation of life as opposed
to death. Life is clearly affirmed as the full life of the body, the life
of the poor, the life of indigenous people, the life of Blacks, the life
of women, the life of youth, the life of nature. The space of the
Spirit is the world defined by the relationship body-culture-gender-
work-nature.

B. Biblical Interpretation From the Perspective of Indigenous Cultures

In the previous section we have analyzed the radical restoration of

the Spirit, from the perspective of the Third World and over against
colonial domination. No hermeneutic is effective if we do not be-
come conscious of the place of the Spirit in history. Having com-
pleted this earlier indispensable task, we will go on to elaborate some
hermeneutical and theoretical principles that I have been developing
on the basis of my practice of doing biblical interpretation from the
perspective of indigenous cultures, especially the Maya, Kuna, and
Quechua cultures of Latin America.

1. Some Fundamental Hermeneutical Priorities

The interpretation of the Bible in an indigenous context imposes a

series of priorities:

a. Priority of Life over the Bible

The principle of all liberation evangelization is to save the life of those
we want to evangelize. Today the indigenous are threatened with
death by a system of free market economy and by occidental moder-
nity. The Bible comes after; first comes the commitment of the Church
to defend the earth and indigenous culture and communities. It is
that commitment of the Church to the concrete life of the indig-
enous people that makes possible the rapprochement with indigenous
peoples and the dialogue between Bible and culture. This is the
fundamental commitment of all evangelization.
b. Priority of the Present Over the Past
What comes first is the experience of God in the present spirituality
of the indigenous peoples. This spirituality is expressed in fiestas, in
traditional singing, in the symbols and myths, in dance, in painting,
in prayers and rituals. The Bible cannot be presented as something
archeological, like a history of the past that one attempts to actual-
ize. The Bible must be interpreted beginning with the present spiri-
tuality of the indigenous peoples.

c. Priority of the Revelation of God Over the Biblical Text

The starting point is the Revelation of God in nature and in indig-
enous culture and religion. We can explain this priority by reference
to the affirmation of St. Augustine that the Bible is the "second book
of God," and it was written to help us decipher the world, to give
us back the gaze of faith and of contemplation, and to transform the
whole of reality into a great revelation of God. 17 We express the
same thing in our work in the following fashion: God wrote two
books, the book of life and the book of the Bible. The book of life
is the "book" of the cosmos or of creation, the "book" of indigenous
cultural tradition and religion. That is the first and fundamental book
of God. The Bible is the second book of God, to help us read the
first, to transform the book of life into a great revelation of God, to
return to us the gaze of faith that allows us to discern God's Word
and Revelation present in the book of life—the book of indigenous
culture and religion. This priority is fundamental in order for the
indigenous peoples to be able to accept approaching the Bible. They
do that only insofar as their natural, cultural, and religious world is
valued and prioritized as the first book of God. The Bible is ac-
cepted, but as an instrument of discernment of their own indigenous
tradition. The Bible is not considered as an absolute text, but as a
"canon"—a measure or criterion—to discern the Word of God in
the present natural, cultural, and religious reality of the indigenous
peoples. The text is relative. What is absolute is the Word of God,
present both in the book of life and in the Bible.

17
This affirmation of St. Augustine is discussed in Mesters, Defenseless Flower,
pp. 3 0 - 3 2 .
d. Priority of the Indigenous Interpreter as Subject, Over the
Professional Evangelist or Biblical Scholar
The indigenous accept the Bible as the second book of God and as
a canon or criterion of interpretation of their own religious tradition,
on the condition that they themselves are the principal subject of
biblical interpretation. The biblical scholar or evangelist can carry
out the function of delivering the Bible to the indigenous community
or of building an access road to its comprehension, leaving to the
indigenous subject the responsibility of its interpretation. The Bible
is an instrument or criterion of interpretation of the Word of God
present in the indigenous tradition, on the condition that that instru-
ment be utilized by the indigenous person himself or herself. This
presupposes a process of appropriation of the Bible on the part of
the indigenous. Insofar as this process goes forward, the indigenous
person as subject and interpreter of the Bible begins to interpret the
Word of God each time with more authority, legitimacy, security,
autonomy, and power. The process of interpretation of the Bible
from the perspective of these cultures strengthens the indigenous people
as a historical subject capable of a discernment of the Word of God,
both in their own tradition and in the biblical tradition.

2. The Process of an Indigenous Hermeneutic

The interpretation of the Bible in an indigenous context generates a

hermeneutical process that is extremely challenging and creative. The
indigenous community that reads the Bible begins to transform the
biblical text, but at the same time the biblical text begins to trans-
form the indigenous community. The community reads the text, and
the text reads the community.
The Bible that arrives in the community is not a neutral book,
but a book already profoundly interpreted over hundreds of years of
tradition of biblical interpretation in the context of the dominant
European and occidental culture. It has become necessary, therefore,
to redeem the Bible starting from the spirit with which the Bible was
written, which requires reconstructing the Bible in the historical context
in which the literal meaning of the text was written and redeemed.
The Bible that comes to the community as the sacred scripture of
European Christendom is transformed into the sacred scripture of
the indigenous community that reads and interprets the Bible. This
requires a process of cultural deconstruction and reconstruction of
the text. At that point, a fascinating process of cultural struggle within
the biblical text itself begins.
The consequence of all the foregoing is the general affirmation on
the part of the indigenous communities, which they themselves ex-
press in summary fashion as follows: "The more we know our indig-
enous tradition, the more we understand the Bible. And vice-versa:
The more we know the Bible, the more we understand our indig-
enous tradition." The recovery and defense of the indigenous culture
and tradition does not come into contradiction with the process of
appropriation and interpretation of the Bible. The indigenous cul-
ture values the Bible insofar as the Bible values indigenous culture.
A re-encounter between Culture and Bible in a hermeneutical pro-
cess that may go on for many years, and that presupposes all of the
previously noted priorities, begins to take place.
This hermeneutical process can have important variations accord-
ing to the concrete historical circumstances of the indigenous peoples.
Simplifying this complex picture, we could identify three models that
more or less correspond to my experience with different indigenous
communities in the last ten years of my work.
a. In the first model, the indigenous people preserves in an integral
way its own cultural and religious tradition. This is the case for the
Kuna Indians of Panama. It is a people that has lived very isolated
geographically, and that has a structure for the preservation of its
own tradition. The culture and religion are lived out daily and in a
significant way in every village. They possess an oral tradition orga-
nized in specific codes (historical, legal, and ecological), and it is
preserved and interpreted by persons who have authority in the
community. In this case the approach to the Bible acquires a character
that is secondary and subordinate to the study and interpretation of
the indigenous tradition. The Bible must come in these cases with
much humility, assuming its role as a second book. There is interest
in the Bible, but always beginning with their own indigenous tradi-
tion, and in function of the Word of God present in both traditions.
When the indigenous tradition is preserved in an integral manner
and has a greater significance and power, it is the Bible, confronted
with the indigenous tradition, that has to be reconstructed after hav-
ing suffered centuries of destruction by a biblical interpretation that
is too European, ethnocentric, colonial, and patriarchal. In this situ-
ation it is the indigenous tradition that helps to reconstruct the Bible.
 b. In the second model, the indigenous culture and tradition have
been almost completely destroyed by the occidental conquest and
colonization. That is the case with the Quechua Indians of Ecuador.
Using an image that I heard from them themselves, we might say
that their culture is like a pitcher broken into a thousand pieces.
They possess loose fragments of the tradition, but the global content
and meaning of the culture and religion themselves have been lost.
In these cases the interest in the Bible is greater, because the knowl-
edge of the biblical tradition permits the reconstruction of their own
indigenous tradition. The Bible serves as a model by which to recon-
struct the pitcher broken into a thousand pieces. This reconstruction
of their own indigenous tradition in light of the Bible permits, in
turn, the Bible itself to be understood with greater depth.
c. In the third model, the indigenous religion survives integrated
with Christianity in a situation of perfect syncretism. This is the case
with the Maya religion in Guatemala. In this situation the Mayan
culture and religion are interpreted in part in the symbols and cat-
egories of the biblical tradition, and vice-versa: the Bible is inter-
pre ted in part in the symbols and categories of the Mayan tradition.
In this situation, which we consider to have positive value, the dia-
logue between Bible and Culture has already gone on for centuries,
and the subject of the dialogue has been fundamentally the same
indigenous community. In this case the hermeneutical process must
begin with a long and arduous task of discernment of this Maya-
Christian religiosity, seeking simultaneously to recover Mayan cul-
ture in itself, and the biblical tradition already interpreted through
the aforementioned Mayan culture. The recovery does not seek to
separate Bible and culture, but rather a better knowledge of indig-
enous culture beginning with the Bible, and a better knowledge of
the Bible beginning with indigenous culture.

3. The Hermeneutical Space Necessaiy for a Biblical Interpretation From the

Perspective of Indigenous Cultures

We call hermeneutical space the institutional place where a specific

subject realizes a specific reading or interpretation of the Bible. There
are two traditional hermeneutical spaces: the academic space and
the ecclesial space (liturgical and instructional). The academic space is
constituted by the faculties of theology, the seminaries, or the spe-
cialized theological institutes. In this space the subject is normally
the exegete or biblical specialist, who carries out a historical critical
or socio-critical reading and interpretation of the Bible. The ecclesial
space is constituted both by the liturgical space (the celebration of the
Word of God with its corresponding interpretation) and by the insti-
tutional space (every manifestation of the Tradition and of the
Magisterium in the official actions and documents of the Church). In
this space the subject is normally the ordained minister or the duly
constituted hierarchic al subject, who carries out a kerygmatic, mag-
isterial, and normative reading and interpretation of the Bible.
Both the academic space and the ecclesial space are fully neces-
sary, legitimate, and effective hermeneutical spaces. Both scientific
interpretation and liturgico-magisterial interpretation of the Word
of God will always be necessary and pressing. But a liberating
hermeneutic necessary for a biblical interpretation from the perspec-
tive of indigenous cultures must create a new hermeneutical space, differ-
ent from the previous ones, although intimately joined to them. This
new hermeneutical space must be created beginning from the indig-
enous communities and without provoking a rupture with those com-
munities. To create a space means first of all to create a small com-
munity interested in biblical study, respecting the hermeneutical
priorities and the hermeneutical process we have described above.
Second, what is indispensable is a minimal biblical introduction that
places at the disposal of the community the basic elements to enter
both the biblical text itself (literal meaning), and the history behind
the text (historical meaning). Armed with these biblical instruments,
the community begins to read and appropriate the text. Third, the
community seeks to interpret the text and to transform it into Sa-
cred Scripture. In that moment the biblical text is already theirs, it
is in their hands, in their mind, in their heart. Finally, the text al-
ready appropriated and transformed begins to transform the com-
munity itself. In this entire process it is most important that the in-
digenous community not lose its identity and its tradition. In times
of colonizing evangelization, when the gospel was being opposed to
culture, the indigenous would experience a tragic spiritual schizo-
phrenia, when Christianity was introduced in opposition to their own
indigenous cultural and religious identity. In a liberating evangeliza-
tion, with a liberating hermeneutic, the Bible is made present in the
indigenous community with all of its liberating Spirit and power,
without losing its biblical identity proper.
 Conclusion

The interpretation of the Bible from the perspective of indigenous

cultures has great importance for the indigenous peoples themselves.
It seeks to save the life of these peoples who today are tragically
threatened, to save their land and the environment in which they
live, to save their community and organizadon, and above all to
save their culture and religion, their spirituality, and their liberating
presence in the construction of the reign of God in history. But this
evangelization from the perspective of these cultures can also have a
great importance for the churches, which today are also tragically
captive to a European, ethnocentric, and colonial culture. In the
indigenous communities is given the harmonious integration of cul-
ture, nature, and spirit, which could be the root of a new global
alternative to the crisis of modernity and of the present free market
economic system. The peoples of the Third World are poor in money
and technology, but they are rich in humanity, culture, and spirit. A
reconstruction of Christianity from the perspective of the Third World
should take the indigenous tradition as the root for a global recon-
struction of humanity.

Translated by Sharon H. Ringe

 DOES G O D SPEAK MISKITU? T H E BIBLE AND ETHNIC
IDENTITY A M O N G T H E MISKITU O F NICARAGUA

Susan Hawley

"At first we had the land and you had the Bible.
Now we have the Bible and you have the land."
(Untenan; 1963: 5 /

This paper will look at the way that the Bible is used by the indig-
enous Miskitu people on the Adantie Coast of Nicaragua as a means
of defining and redefining their ethnic identity. I will argue that the
Bible, though a global script, is well suited to local usage, and that
in the case of the Miskitu it was the referent at two key moments of
their history by which they redefined their collective social identity
in relation to concrete social and political change. At both these
moments, the Bible was used by the Miskitu in two distinct yet re-
lated ways: as a text, a book, a very material thing with specific and
concrete cultural significance, and as a narrative within which the
Miskitu chose to situate themselves in order to make sense of and to
attempt to control the circumstances in which they found themselves.
As I will show, the Bible was for them at one and the same time, a
structural limitation, as the dominant colonial discourse of the Euro-
peans, and a vehicle for asserting their agency, as they appropriated
the biblical symbols as their own.
The two key junctures at which the Bible came to be used by the
Miskitu to assert different identities correspond to two distinct social
and political contexts. The first context was that of colonialism, in
which the Miskitu converted to Christianity, acquiring a new social
identity in the process, which helped them to adapt to the changed
circumstances that colonialism had brought. The Bible was one of
the key "gifts" which missionaries brought to indigenous peoples
around the world in exchange for their obedience to the church (be
it Protestant or Catholic) and, in many situations, to the colonial
powers from whose centres the missionaries emanated. At this stage
the Bible was used as a tool of homogenisation by the missionaries

1
Lantenari quotes this as a summarisation of "the cry of native agitators to the
whites" in Africa.
who supposed it to be the text of "civilisation." The Bible was seen
by the Miskitu meanwhile, as by many other indigenous peoples
around the world (Lantenari, 1965; Saunders, 1988; Worsley, 1968)
as the key to the white man's power and wealth.
The second context was that of the rise of the pan-Indian movement
as a powerful new social force in the 1960s. This context was one in
which increasing value was given to the currency of identity politics
or cultural identity as a mode of political "being." In this context,
the Miskitu mobilised their ethnic identity politically, using the Bible
as a means of differentiation between themselves and other groups.
The biblical narrative, and particularly that of the Hebrew Bible,
became a cultural-political weapon with which the Miskitu Indians
identified in order to struggle against the nation-state. In this struggle,
the Miskitu used motifs of the Promised Land and Old Testament
Kings as symbols with which to articulate their new political ethnicity.
The Miskitu Indians of the Adantic Coast of Nicaragua constitute
an exogamous and heterogeneous group of roughly 75,000 people,
whose origins lie in the intermarriage between Indians, Europeans
and Africans. The majority of Miskitu Indians were converted to
Christianity about a century ago, mosdy by the Protestant Moravian
Church, though a significant percentage (roughly about 40%) have
since become Catholic, and Catholic missionaries have played an
influential role along the Rio Coco home to some 25-30,000 Miskitu
Indians, particularly in the transmission of indigenous theology after
Vatican II.

Ethnicity and Identity

To analyse the way in which the Bible intersects with ethnic iden-
tity, in the Miskitu case, necessitates some prior discussion of what
ethnicity is. The definition of ethnicity used here will be that it is: a
mode of collective social identity that has as its framework or points
of reference a set of inherited or "invented" cultural symbols, which
are used selectively and strategically in interaction between groups
(Barth, 1969) and in mobilisation of a particular group within the
political sphere (A. Cohen, 1974; Worsley, 1984). Such an identity is
never fixed, but always in the process of creation, though it often
gains its legitimacy and authenticity through its apparent immutabil-
ity and primordial nature.
 The ethnic mode of identity is a form of communication which is
structured by the socio-political, and historico-cultural context in which
it is made. This communication of identity also structures the con-
text itself. The ethnic mode of identity is thus produced as a result
of what Bourdieu calls "the dialectic of the internalisation of exter-
nality and the externalisation of internality" (Bourdieu, 1977: 72).
Such a communication of identity is always strategic because it involves
a set of choices about what cultural symbols are relevant or not to
be communicated in a given context. Yet, these choices are only
made within the limits inherent to that context. The communication
of an ethnic identity can be the source of major ideological conflict.
It is linked up in very direct ways to the competition for resources
between groups, between a group and the nation-state and also within
groups (Olzak, 1983; Urban and Sherzer, 1991; Yinger, 1984).
The formation of ethnic identity involves a process of collective
identification. This process of identification is one by which the
sameness and unity of the social group, at the same time as its essen-
tial difference from every other group, is asserted. Friedman notes
that "identification is the rendering to someone of identity" (Friedman,
1992: 332). Identification is thus a means of representation which
presupposes an audience, the presence of the Other, without whom
the group's "sameness of essential character" (Webster, 1948: 494)
could not be conveyed. This combination of the need for Sameness
and Difference is characteristic of the act of identification, which turns
it into a "structured representation which only achieves its positive
through the narrow eye of the negative" (Hall, 1991: 21).
An understanding of identification predicated solely on difference
(Hall, 1991; Laclau, 1994; Smith, 1994) is, however, insufficient for
an understanding of the Bible and identity. Identification also in-
volves a more extroverted process. It can be the identification ninth,
or the assertion of Sameness with, groups external to ones' own. It
is the inclusion of others into the definition of the group as a positive
and not a negative process. It involves for instance the absorption of
extrinsic symbols, which are neither historically nor culturally specific
to a certain group, into the narrative of the group's cultural mean-
ing. I will call this "extroverted identity."
Extroverted identity among groups that have converted to or come
in contact with Christianity often involves the identification with heroes
or events within the Bible, who are moulded into and merged with
local traditions or symbols. Such an identification is similar to Ricoeur's
understanding of "appropriation." Rieoeur observes that the inser-
don of subjects into the text, results in "appropriadon [which] is the
process by which the revelation of new modes of being . . . gives the
subject new capacities for knowing himself" (Rieoeur, 1981: 192).
While Ricoeur's concern is with the subject, my concern here is with
group or collective identity. The process is similar in that the inser-
don of a group into the biblical narrative via a collective hermeneutic
provides an alternative mode of shared identity. This new mode of
identity, however, is only ever made relevant insofar as it is exer-
cised in relation to the social and historical context in which the
hermeneutical interpretation takes place. Thus, not only will the iden-
tity "appropriated" be different in each context in which the Bible is
read, it will also both be limited by that context, as well as intrinsi-
cally affecting the context.
I will now turn to a brief discussion of two different contexts in
which "appropriation" of a new identity from the Bible occurred,
and make some general observations before going on to look at the
Miskitu case in detail.

Conversion

As Lantenari has shown, the Bible has been typically appropriated

by indigenous peoples in colonial situations in two manners: resist-
ance and assimilation (Lantenari, 1985; 1963). Old Testament pas-
sages, for instance, were used by irredentist movements as a "xeno-
phobic" model of resistance to the colonial powers, while the New
Testament was used in integrative (assimilationist) movements as a
"xenophilic" model of acceptance of these powers (Lantenari, 1985:
152-4). In the former movements, Jesus and the New Testament
were rejected as symbols belonging exclusively to the white man. By
identifying with the Jews in the Hebrew Bible, these groups appro-
priated a new mode of identity that both appeared as a continuation
of the symbolic forms of their previous identity, yet provided a more
potent means of resisting their colonisers. For instance, these groups
found reflections of their own polygamy and shamanism in Old
Testament passages about the Hebrews. At the same time, they found
a narrative of resistance whose symbols were instandy familiar to
those against whom they were directed.
In the cases where groups were open to Christianity and the colonial
power, for example the Miskitu Indians, conversion was seen as a
means to secure a new identity which was part of "a powerful and
efficacious system for warding off moral disarray, physical calamities
and disease" (Lantenari, 1985: 154). Conversion was also, in many
cases of this type a "statement of affiliation with wealthier and more
powerful outsiders" (Saunders, 1988: 187). Those who converted in this
way saw the Bible as the symbol of their new status and the guarantor
of the benefits of their new mode of identity. The Bible was always
interpreted, however, both as a material object and a narrative in rela-
tion to the previous religious framework and traditions of each group.
The Bible in the colonial setting was thus the cultural code of the
dominant powers, which indigenous groups learned to master either
in order to resist or merely to survive the new social, political and
economic situation into which they were thrust. Some have seen this
as evidence that the Europeans were successful in forcing their terms
on the peoples they colonised since the latter were "compelled to
fight on the linguistic and conceptual terrain of the whites" (Comarroff
& Comarroff, 1991: 307). Yet in the process of appropriating a new
mode of ethnic identity from the Bible, colonised peoples both made
the narrative their own, and spoke to the colonisers in terms that
they would understand. Conversion, as the acquisition of a new mode
of social identity, was therefore strategic. It took place in the context
of domination and vulnerability, and it was an attempt by these
colonised peoples to control that situation.

The Rise of Indigenous Consciousness: Political Mobilisation

Indigenous movements, as a continent-wide phenomenon in the Ame-

ricas, began in the 1960s. They developed into a international move-
ment which incorporates several major organisations (such as the
World Council of Indigenous Peoples, WCIP), and advocacy groups
(such as the International Work Group on Indigenous Affairs, IWGIA;
Cultural Survival) during the 1970s. This political mobilisation of
culture came to be known as the Pan-Indian movement which one
observer described as "the expression of a new identity... the attempt
to create a new ethnic group" (Thomas, 1965: 77). This movement
provided an indigenous identity grounded in "strategic essentialism"
(Warren, 1992: 210); that is, in a claim to and identification with an
inner "essence" which all indigenous people are said to have in
common. This "essence" is characterised by an intense relationship
with the earth, democratic-communal form of self-governance and
an innate spirituality. The steps between claims to this "essence" and
to political demands for self-determination and political autonomy
are fairly short (Hale, 1994: 20).
Many indigenous communities in Latin America were introduced
to this strategic ethnic identity by progressive Catholic priests and
theologians. Radicalised by the Second Vatican Council, these priests
and theologians developed an indigenous theology, in response to
the marginalised position of indigenous peoples with whom they
worked and influenced by the growth of the Pan-Indian movement
(Marzal, 1991; Pollock, 1993; Shapiro, 1981; Smutko, 1975; Taylor,
1981). The Bible which had previously been used by missionaries as
a text of "civilisation'5 became a text for mobilisation. Whereas in
the past the Bible had been the ultimate colonial weapon of the
suppression of indigenous culture, it now became the tool with which
to demand recognition of indigenous cultural and political rights.
Indigenous history was read into the biblical narrative, and a politi-
cal resistance was read out of it.
Rigoberta Menchu, a Guatemalan indigenous woman, now a Nobel
Peace Prize holder, describes how when the Guatemalan Indians
started to organise politically they:
began to study the Bible as our main text. Many relationships in the
Bible are like those we have with our ancestors, our ancestors whose
lives were very much like our own. . . . W e began looking for texts
which represented each one of us. We tried to relate them to our
Indian culture. W e took the example of Moses for the men, and we
have the example of Judith, who was a very famous woman in her
time and appears in the Bible. . . . This gave us a vision, a stronger
idea of how we Christians must defend ourselves. It made us think
that a people could not be victorious without a just war. (Menchu,
1983: 131)

Indigenous people had been reading the Bible through their own
traditions, and appropriating its heroic figures as their own, ever since
the Bible first arrived amidst them. But the conscious reading of the
Bible that was introduced by indigenous theology was different; it
had as its goal, the redefinition of a community's political identity
and from there its political behaviour.
This new relationship to the Bible, some suggest, involved as much
a process of conversion as the original conversion to Christianity it-
self (Pollock, 1993: 188). And not all groups were converted. Some
groups saw the missionaries' new approach as a duplicitous attempt
to conceal true knowledge from them and to force them back into
their old culture, which earlier missionaries had proved to them was
futile and interior (French Smith, 1988: 38-9). Among the Miskitu
Indians, however, consciousness raising courses by a Catholic mis-
sionary had a very profound effect on their incorporation of Pan-Indian
symbols into a new collective indigenous identity that they began to
develop in the 1960s and 70s.

The Miskitu and the Bible: Conversion

The Miskitu Indians converted to Christianity relatively late in the

colonial process. They had a long history of contact with Europeans
(in particular the English and Dutch) from the sixteenth century
onwards, first with buccaneers and later, during the eighteenth and
nineteenth century, more formally with the British government. Mor-
avian missionaries, who made the first sustained effort to convert the
Miskitu, arrived in 1849. Despite strong support by the Miskitu king
and the British government, the missionaries were unsuccessful for
the first 30-40 years of their efforts. The Miskitu Indians showed little
interest in Christianity, until the 1880s when the missionaries reported
a "Great Awakening." 2 After this the Moravian Church spread into
almost every village between 1880 and 1940, erecting churches and
training local pastors. By 1950, most Miskitu Indians were nominal
Christians. Thus, Christianity is a recent arrival among the Miskitu
dating back only three or four generations at most.

Missionary Methods

Being Protestant, the Moravian missionaries put a strong emphasis

on the Bible and saw one of their key tasks as bringing the gospel to
the Indians in their own tongue. In their first year in the region, one
of the missionaries, Lundberg reported that:
these poor people sit in gross darkness. One of them, when lately speak-
ing with me, said: 'The English have a book which speaks of God, and
therefore they know more of God than we do. God loves the English
alone; he does not take notice of the Indians.' (Periodical Accounts,
1849: 5 2 5 )

2
T h e number of converts to the church increased by 100% during the decade of
the 1880s, when the "Great Awakening" was taking place (from 1,030 to 3,294, out
of a total population of 45,000).
The missionaries' consciously stated aim in translating the Bible into
Miskitu, parts of which had been completed by the 1890s (Freeland,
1994: 67‫ )־‬was to rectify this perception. Such a re-evaluation of the
Miskitu culture and language in positive terms (Freeland, 1994;
Rossbach, 1986) and the act of conferring full humanity upon the
Indians within the Christian cosmology by giving them the Bible in
their own language was crucial to the way that Miskitu Indians came
to review their perceptions of themselves as a group. It was also
fundamental to their adoption of a Christian identity.
The Bible was however the site of contradictory messages offered
by the missionaries. On the one hand they conveyed the worthiness
of Miskitu culture by making the Bible a Miskitu text. On the other,
the missionaries represented the Bible as the means by which the
Miskitu could change their culture, and be raised "to a higher state
of civilisation by the power of the Gospel" (P.A., 1949, December
22, p. 316). Indeed, a sign of behaving in this "civilised" and Chris-
dan manner was the quoting of the Bible regularly in daily life, in
what the missionaries called a "truly Christian conversation" (P.A.,
1849: 316). The missionaries themselves used biblical passages as a
running commentary on daily events.3
Nominal Christianity was not enough for the Moravians. They em-
phasised the need for a full understanding of the Christian message
and an ability to understand the Bible as requisites before they would
baptise people. This made the process of "becoming Christian" one
necessitating education and the ability to read, or at least memorise,
"the book." However, the missionary methods were once again contra-
dictory. While emphasising that conversion was a process and not
achieved instantiy, the missionaries also tended to stress the urgency of
their message and use situations of mortality as key moments in which
to divulge the mysteries of Christianity. Soon after their arrival, one
missionary, Pfeiffer, noticed that an outbreak of measles which caused
many deaths was a "judgement [which] has been the means of revealing
to some the deeply rooted disease of their souls" (P.A., 1851: 102).
Not surprisingly these contradictions led to "misunderstandings" by
the Miskitu Indians of what the Bible was intended for. In one instance:

3
For instance, in the 1930s, the north american Superintendent of the Church
in Nicaragua, observing lots of bush fires in the region, noted that "what springs to
one's mind spontaneously is the passage about the burning bush that Moses saw."
(Grossman, 1938: 12).
 A half Indian . . . living with a Woolvah4 woman, was lately very ill,
and those around him thought he would die. Upon this the woman
came to my wife, begging her to ask me to look into the Bible, and
see what might be good for the man! This gave me a good opportu-
nity to tell her, that the Bible points out remedies for the soul, not for
the body. (P.A., 1859: 112)
This episode reveals how the missionaries were far from being in
control of how their message was received. The Bible was a signifier
of the passage which the Indians could take to civilisation, which
connoted European-ness in the missionaries' view. In attempting to
convert the Miskitu they often portrayed Christianity as a means to
healing the "sickness" that was Indian culture. The Miskitu, however,
understood the Bible within the rubric of their previous experience
of foreigners, of their comprehension of institutions (particularly that
of the Miskitu King) through which they had previous experience of
education, and of their own concepts about health and sickness.

Indigenous Response: (1) The Bible as Foreign Object

Before the arrival of the missionaries, the contact that Miskitu Indi-
ans had had with foreigners was based primarily on trade. This began
with the buccaneers of the sixteenth century who exchanged guns
and rum in return for the help of the Miskitu in fighting the Span-
ish, and providing them with food and women. The Miskitu King
and those few Miskitu who lived in the main town had contact with
the British government whose actual physical presence in the eight-
eenth and nineteenth century was sporadic but at times included a
permanent representative, based in the region.5 The majority of Miskitu
Indians, however, who lived in the rural areas, saw foreigners as
traders.
More than once the contact that missionaries had with Miskitus
was conditioned by this previous experience. In their first year, the
missionaries noted:

4
T h e Woolvah were another indigenous group living in the region, w h o were
dominated and enslaved by the Miskitu Indians. T h e Miskitus, led by their King,
were well known for their slaving raids amongst the other Indians of the region.
T h e y all but decimated most of these groups, of w h o m only 7,000 have survived,
and are known under the generic name 'Sumu,' which means 'stupid' in Miskitu.
5
In 1844 the British government sent its first formal representative, the British
Resident, Patrick Walker, and this presence was maintained until 1860, when the
region became a Reserve.
 the first thing an Indian asks you for is tapla (rum) and tobacco. If we
tell them that we do not keep these articles, they are displeased, or
express their regret with a smile. (P.A., 1949: 316)
During the 1870s the missionary Smith noted that in several villages
where he visited, people were surprised that he had not sent ahead
a message of his arrival so that they could have caught venison for
him, and were disappointed that he had not brought rum (P.A., 1876:
281:284). He offered them news of the "Saviour of sinners" and the
word from the Bible instead. It is not surprising that in these times
when conversion rates were low, and where contact with foreigners
was characterised by economic exchange, the Miskitu would have
understood the Bible as a new form of exchange between them and
the latest foreigners: the missionaries. The Bible in this setting would
most probably have been seen by the Miskitu as a new type of com-
modity, and as having, a material property.
During the 1880s several US companies became active in the region,
and by 1890 north americans controlled 90% of all commercial ac-
tivity (Jenkins, 1986: 107). The influx of goods and the availability
of labour meant that the Miskitu Indians were drawn into the cash
economy more than ever before. It was precisely during this period
when the mass conversion of Miskitu Indians to the Moravian Church
began. In this situation of the penetration of capitalism, conversion
to Christianity, as has often been the case in other parts of the world
(Saunders, 1988; Taylor, 1981; Worsley, 1968), was seen as a means
to attaining some of the "god-wealth" that white people wielded
(Taylor, 1981: 647). As white north american presence increased,
the symbols of "white" power, such as the Bible, were seen as a
more efficacious than their own, and a Christian identity was seen as
more strategic in order to deal with the new situation.

Indigenous Response: (2) Bible as Continuation of Local Form—

The Miskitu King

The institution of the Miskitu kingship was introduced in 1661 by

the British. With the crowning of Old Man I, the British extended
their indirect rule over the Atlantic Coast of the Central American
isthmus, as part of their struggle with the Spanish for regional control
(Helms, 1986; Dennis and Olien, 1984). By the time that the mis-
sionaries arrived, the Miskitu kingship had developed as an institution
to the extent that it had, in each community, a king's house, and a
local representative (Roberts, 1827: 125). The Miskitu king also had
a Quartermaster who would travel to different communities to give
"upla smalkaya" or instructions/teachings. These instructions took the
form of announcing certain laws in the name of the king, punishing
offenders and ironing out local conflicts (Rossbach, 1986: 65).
The missionaries had a good deal of communication with the
Miskitu king when they first arrived. Indeed they took the king's
sisters into their house and were responsible for the education of the
king. When they travelled into the rural areas, they depended upon
the king's contacts, for which reason they came to be seen as new
commissioners of the king who had come to give the local people
instruction (Rossbach, 1986: 65). Some missionaries did in fact act as
local magistrates and officials of the king. Feurig, for instance, acted
as Adviser to the king in the 1850s, and was asked to setde disputes
in the villages he visited (P.A., 1858: 512). This meant that when the
missionaries came to preach, they were assured a hearing from vil-
lagers. Grunewald, a missionary during the 1850s, noted that when
they preached to the Indians they always got an attentive audience
who would reply "It is so" to what the missionaries said (P.A., 1858:
512). This suggests that the Indians had some previous experience of
being an audience, and of how they were expected to respond.
The king's instructions were sometimes sent out in the form of a
letter. In a predominandy oral society, written text would have com-
manded an authoritative status. That this was so is shown in an
incident in the 1820s, when an English trader was asked to carry a
letter from the king to one of the regional chiefs with whom the king
had had a dispute. As the trader recorded, another regional chief
was to go with him in order to explain that "the paper which spoke,
was the king's own self order, and must be obeyed" (Roberts, 1827:
139). The missionaries introduction into rural communities of a
whole book of written text, in the form of the Bible, was therefore
likewise considered with a great deal of awe and respect by the Miskitu.
Just ten years after their arrival, one missionary, Kandier noted how
people were arriving from "far off places . . . with the goal of inform-
ing themselves about the path of salvation and on the work of the
big book (the Bible)" (Missionblatt, 1860: 127, quoted in Rossbach,
1986: 65).
Yet, despite the proximity to the Miskitu king, and despite the
delivery of text, the missionaries did not make much headway. It
was not until the Miskitu kingship was under threat, that the church
began to make inroads into the communities. From 1880 onwards,
the kingship was menaced with extinction owing to internadonal
politics. In 1860, the British, in deference to the increasing power of
the United States in the hemisphere, had pulled out of the region.
They made provisions, in their retreat, that the region should be an
autonomous Reserve. The United States, however, with an eye to
building a canal through Nicaragua, backed the newly formed Nica-
raguan State's claim to the region. In 1894, the Nicaraguan State,
under Zelaya, invaded the region and took it over by force, referring
to the event as the "Reincorporation." The Miskitu king fled to Ja-
maica where he later died.
The importance of their king to the Miskitu, despite the fact that
the monarchy was in practice no more than a puppet of the British
for most of the two centuries of its existence as an institution, should
not be underestimated. In healing rituals carried out by traditional
healers—sukias—observed by missionaries during the 1870s, three
wooden figures were used: those of the King, the Counsellor and the
Gaoler. These were either waved over the patient or put in the
patient's bed (P.A., 1873-4: 224). While this was a reflection on
the one hand of the local iconography, since it was believed that sick
people were the prisoners of the mountain spirit king Asampaca, its
striking similarity to the actual institution of kingship suggests there
was some overlap between spiritual iconography and political mode
of governance, each of which reinforced the other.6
It is not surprising then, considering that one of the Miskitus' main
cultural institutions was under serious threat during the 1880s and
90s leading to its eventual dissolution, that the Miskitus should start
to look for a new identity to cope with the stress inherent within
such a situation. The mass conversions of the Great Awakening thus
appear as a revitalisation movement, i.e., as "a deliberate, organised,
conscious effort by members of a society to construct a more satis-
fying culture" (Wallace, 1956: 265). In the face of cultural and po-
litical crisis, the Miskitu Indians chose a Christian identity as a means
of adapting to a new set of circumstances which demanded a quick

6
As Taussig has noted (1980: 182213‫)־־‬, spiritual iconography of indigenous com-
munities changed with the transformation of political circumstances. Icons came to
reflect the new property relations of the colonial situation (1980: 183-4) so that
spirits that had previously only lived on mountains, became the owners of the
mountains, and changed from being benevolent to malevolent. A m o n g the Miskitu,
as among the examples Taussig cites, spirits are seen as white and rich.
and strategic response if cultural survival were to be achieved.
The Moravian Church as an insdtution, which spread into the
Miskitu communities after the 1880s, was remarkably similar to the
institution of the Miskitu king. The Moravians erected a church in
each village, constructed by the members of the community, and
this constituted the only communal building in each village, as the
king's house had been. The church also introduced its own régula-
tions as to behaviour, similar to the king's laws, and a means of
punishment for those who transgressed which consisted of sanctions,
and in particular, exclusion from holy communion or even from the
congregation itself.

Indigenous Response: (3) The Bible as Local Form—A More

Powerful Medicine

While the king was the regional centre of power, the most powerful
leaders at the local level were the traditional healers or sukias. In
some villages, the sukia was also the chieftain.7 Most of Miskitu cos-
mology both before and after the arrival of the missionaries was
intricately related to the maintenance of health. Ill health was attrib-
uted to the capriciousness of evil spirits, or the malevolence of one's
neighbours, who had poisoned one. The sukia was the person (they
were often female) who could, for the right price, offer protection
against the spirits and who could determine who had planted the
poison either in the victim's food or buried along a path the victim
was accustomed to use.
The missionaries came into contact with the sukias soon after their
arrival. They viewed them as proof of "the whole sad hopelessness
of heathenism" (P.A., 1910: 496) and directed much of their energy
to providing western medicine as an alternative to traditional medicine.
Because of this, the missionaries came to be perceived as new and
more effective "poison masters," as the missionary Heath exclaimed,

7
T h e relationship between the King and the sukias was not always an easy one.
As Ranger has shown in Africa (Hefner, 1993: 735‫ )־‬traditional religious leaders led
movements against the political chieftains or kings at times, and by no means just
maintained the political status quo, as they are usually portrayed as doing. T h e fact
that the Miskitu king similarly felt the sukias to be a potential threat to his power
was revealed when in the 1870s he banned the making of a living by means of
witchcraft (P.A., 1874: 352). This may also have been a sop to the missionaries, but
was the result of an incident when a sukia refused to heal the king, saying that he
was unable to do so.
"thanks to Livingstone College" (P.A., 1915: 3778‫)־‬. And the source
of their efficacy was seen not just in the medicaments that they handed
out, but also in the book that they brought with them.
By presenting the Bible as the handbook of the different cosmol-
ogy that went with western medicine, the missionaries offered a whole
different meaning system for understanding illness, and hence the
world. The new regulations as to "Chrisdan" behaviour that they
offered as a counterpart to this cosmology came to be seen by the
Miskitu as similar to the proscriptions that the sukias gave out after
healing someone (Rossbach, 1986: 165-6). 8 The emphasis that sukias
gave to these proscriptions was that if they were broken, then the
state of health of the patient would be jeopardised. In one incident,
the missionaries living in a village were admonished by the local
leader for not keeping the new rules that the missionaries themselves
had imposed:
a baby was recently born to a missionary, and of course, its clothes
were washed and changed even on Sundays . . . The wita [literally: judge]
appeared before the missionary, reproached him, forbade him to do it
again and threatened him with sanctions if he were to do so.
(Missionblatt 1891: 370; quoted in Rossbach, 1986: 166)

This failure by the missionaries, to keep the very laws that they had
introduced through the Bible, was seen as imperilling the benefits
that the local population had been promised if they kept the rules.
It was from the sukias that the missionaries, not surprisingly, en-
countered the most resistance. The missionary accounts report that
some local healers saw the Bible as the site of great power and there-
fore as a threat to their own position. Many su/cias seem to have
converted to Christianity in an obvious attempt to try to retain their
authority by mastering the new "medicine." This didn't mean, how-
ever, that they accepted the Bible, which was after all the carefully
guarded property of the white missionaries. At the turn of the cen-
tury, one missionary, Grossman, came across a sukia who announced
that he rejected the Bible since God made His revelations direct to
him, and that he therefore had a greater claim to the truth
(Missionblatt, 1906: 189; quoted in Rossbach, 1986: 141). A decade
later, Heath reported that a local "sorcerer" called Teodoro Ribera,

8
These involved not eating certain types of food and not having people walk on
one's windward side. If the sick person did not get better it was alleged by the sukia
that one of the prescriptions had been broken.
told him that the demons would keep him awake at night and make
him say such things as:
Christians know nothing; the Bible is nothing at all: I am the man
who knows something. (P.A., 1915: 378)

While some resistance was directed against the Bible as an object,

and as the source of power, antagonism was also expressed at times
towards the biblical symbols. In one community on the Coco River, a
man called George (we are not told if he was a sukia or not) claimed
that he had killed Jesus with bullets and that he wanted to be called the
Holy Spirit (Missionblatt, 1906: 187; quoted in Rossbach, 1986: 140).
To this day, the Bible is used as a form of talismanic protection,
in healing and divination rituals among the surviving sukias, who are
often members of the church. 9 Meanwhile, indigenous pastors and
staunch Miskitu Christians reject all such shamanistic practices and
assert that such practices are against the Bible. Yet, at the same time
the Bible is seen by them as a means of protection against such
practices, as is shown by the proscription laid down by the indig-
enous pastors, in a very obvious carry over of the sukia's regulations,
that menstruating women must not touch the Bible (personal com-
munication, 1994).

Summary: The Bible as New Wine in Old Wineskins or Old Wine

in New Wineskins

The establishment of the Moravian Church among the Miskitu In-

dians was in part the result of the decline of the main cultural insti-
tution of the Miskitu, the kingship, which led to the loss of Miskitu
political autonomy. At the same time the Miskitus were being in-
corporated more fully into the capitalist economy. In this situation,
the message that the Church brought in the shape of the Bible was
filtered by the Miskitu through their own experience and cultural
traditions. Yet at the same time, Christianity appeared to the Miskitu

9
O n e sukia in the village of Sisin places a metal pin through the spine of the
Bible, and puts a finger at one end while the patient puts their finger at the other.
T h e Bible is then asked questions, and if it spins, the answer is affirmative; other-
wise, it is negative. Motifs from the Bible are also incorporated into the healing
rituals such as the "angel doctor." O n e sukia in another village, Klar, sings: "Insal
duktar tahabi sakan aiwinara brìba" which means "angel doctor baptise what he [the
patient] has in his body."
as a fundamentally more efficacious system, "ideologically and organ-
isationally preadapted to the macrocosm" (Hefner, 1993: 28) into
which the Miskitu were thrust.
There is a dialectical tension inherent to the process of conver-
sion. Extrinsic symbols, such as the Bible, are given legitimacy through
their re-interpretation as local symbols. Yet at the same time, the
foreignness and alien nature of these symbols are seen as the source
of their power. This tension between local legitimacy and foreign
power is played out differendy in different contexts, with varying
degrees of conflation, divergence and contradiction. Thus, while the
adoption of a new mode of collective identity can be experienced as
a radical break from one's previous mode of identity, it can also be
experienced as a means of continuing that previous identity in a
different and renewed form.
Christianity took hold in Miskitu communities in a dialectical pro-
cess in which Christianity became miskitu-ised and the Miskitu became
christianised. Thus, as the Miskitus used the symbols of the Bible as
pointers to their new identity, they also appropriated them as old
Miskitu symbols. For instance, many Miskitus consider that Miskitu
history really began with the arrival of the church among them, and
take "as their historical baseline the beginning of missionary work.
Everything prior to this period is considered heathen by definition
and therefore best forgotten" (Helms, 1971: 217). Yet, a converse
understanding of their history is also common, especially among
Miskitu elders, which is that the Moravian Church dates back to the
birth of the Miskitus (Lucas, personal communication, 1994). To
conclude, the Miskitu Indians relationship to the Bible was one of
"appropriation" or insertion of themselves as a group into the bibli-
cal text: situating themselves within the biblical text was a means of
identifying with the "civilised" modern European world, and also of
finding their own history and hence their agency within its narrative.

The Miskitu and the Bible: political mobilisation

The 1960s was a decade of sharp decline in the economic conditions

of the Atiantic Coast, where the Miskitu live. In 1960, the Miskitus
of Nicaragua lost a large chunk of fertile land on which they had
had their crops, when it was handed over to Honduras as a result of
a ruling in the International Court at the Hague. This coincided
with the exit of most of the transnational logging, banana, and gum
companies, which left the Miskitu, who were now dependent on the
cash economy, without labour, and without the means to buy the
commodities they were accustomed to (Helms, 1971). Somoza, whose
family dynasty (backed by the US) ruled Nicaragua for forty years,
began to pay some attention to the region at this time, and ordered
an education project to be undertaken there, to teach the Miskitus
Spanish.10 Thus, as the north american presence disappeared from
the region, there was an increase in the number of "Spaniards" (as
Miskitus still call the mestizos of the pacific Coast), and of the insti-
tutions of the nation-state.
It was during the 1960s that the Catholic Church began to grow
among the Miskitu. Previously the Catholic Church could hardly
compete with the Moravians while it was still giving mass in Latin,
and while it effectively excluded Miskitus from church leadership
because of the strict and lengthy training that ordinands had to
undertake." During the 1960s however, the Catholic church, under
the aegis of the north american Father Gregory Smutko, began to
train delegates of the word and catechists. The influence of Father
Gregory's work, however, spread much further than the Catholic
Church, owing to his ecumenical, political and pastoral work.

Biblical Symbol as the Basis for Political Mobilisation

Father Gregory had studied anthropology in the US and was deeply

committed to the changes that the Second Vatican Council had
brought about. His conscious aim when he arrived on the Rio Coco
in 1967 was to implement the "option for the poor" and "liberating
education" (as recommended by Paulo Freire and by the Council of
Medellin) among the indigenous people of the region (personal com-
munication, 1994). Father Gregory, in the process of training del-
egates of the word, undertook consciousness-raising courses in which
he encouraged an indigenous exegesis of the Bible.

10
Previously Somoza had left the region almost entirely in the hands of the for-
eign companies, but their departure coincided with an increase in political unrest
on the Pacific side of the country, and Somoza wanted to ensure that the inhabit-
ants of the Adandc Coast inhabitants would not also turn on him.
11
O n e of the greatest impediments to the Catholic Church handing over leader-
ship of the church to Miskitu Indians, which still stands today, is the celibacy ordi-
nance, since respect and authority within Miskitu communities is usually contingent
upon age and the number of children one has.
 In these courses, Father Gregory also revitalised Miskitu history,
on which he conducted a considerable amount of research, by fusing
it with biblical narrative. An example of this was the Miskitu salva-
tion history which was produced in a workshop in 1970 and later
written up in Father Gregory's book Pastoral Indigenista in 1975.12 This
Miskitu salvation history included a detailed comparison between
Miskitu history and that of the Hebrews. For instance, the mythical
leader Miskut who:
came from Honduras with his tribe to Sita-Awala . . . and lived there
because the land was good to work on and he had peace, deer and
abundant food, as well as trees of every species
is compared to "the great leader Moses who brought his people from
Egypt to the Promised Land" (Smutko, 1975: 56). And while:
under the kings, David and Solomon, the Israelites conquered many of
the neighbouring tribes . . . and defeated their enemies with the help of
Almighty God
so it was that "the Miskitu conquered more than twenty neighbouring
tribes . . . [and] the dominion of the Miskitu kings was much greater
than the dominion of the kings of Israel" (ibid.). One of the conclu-
sions of this course was that:
As God, with his powerful arms, liberated the people of Israel from
the slavery of the Egyptians, in the same manner, he gave strength
and courage to our fathers in order to defend themselves from the
Spanish who were never able to conquer them. (Smutko, 1994: 12)
Father Gregory's courses about Miskitu history and the Bible, were
in some ways only a catalyst for a process of ethnic revitalisation
which had been gathering momentum during the 1960s before his
arrival. In her fieldwork in the mid-60s, the anthropologist, Mary
Helms noted that:
in discussing their discontent and their helplessness to change condi-
tions, a few informants claimed that the king would some day be re-
stored to his position and that the Miskito again be an independent
'nation.' (Helms, 1969: 83)

The symbol of the Miskitu king, had in fact been kept alive as an
oral memory, pardy by the biblical narrative and with the encour-
agement of some Moravian missionaries. In the early part of this

12
Father Gregory provided the material, historical and biblical for this history
though it was actually written up by Miskitu catechists.
century, for instance, one missionary, Dannenburger introduced what
was to become an annual festival in celebration of the Miskitu king
(Dennis, 1982: 395). This involved a re-enactment of the king's re-
turn to the Adantic Coast for a day.13 Furthermore, Old Testament
passages about the Israelite kings were read avidly by the Miskitu
(Dennis, ibid.). This tendency on the part of the Miskitu to use bib-
lical symbols as a commentary on their history is also evident in the
reminiscence of a middle-aged Miskitu professional:

Since our infancy we have had this hope that the king and queen
would return. . . . The daughter of the lung was living in Belize and
she sent a letter to us saying that she wanted to come back and live
with the Miskitus . . . This letter was circulating here in the 1960s . . .
and people were quoting passages from the Psalms to justify her re-
turn. (Personal communication, 1994)

What Father Gregory introduced, however, was the idea that the
revitalisation of Miskitu culture could form the basis for political
organising, and most importandy, that being indigenous meant that
one should and could fight for certain political rights. As the conclusion
to the Miskitu salvation history notes: "the nations that don't fight in
order to overcome are the slaves of others" (Smutko, 1975: 59). In
1967, he set up co-operatives on the Rio Coco which in 1970 became
the Association of Agricultural Clubs of the Rio Coco (ACARIC). This
organisation lobbied Somoza's government for Miskitu political re-
presentatives, the removal of brutal National Guardsmen, and demanded
fair prices from the merchants for the rice and beans that were grown
on the River. As Smutko proudly noted himself, "ACARIC was the
first organisation of all the Miskito on the Rio Coco since the death
of the last Miskito King in 1914" (Smutko, 1994: 19).

Indigenous Pastors: Guardians of Text, Guardians of Identity

While Father Gregory provided the model of indigenous exegesis with

his courses, and the model for political indigenous organising with
his co-operatives, it was the Miskitu Moravian pastors which began
to take up his message and consciously to articulate an indigenous-
Miskitu nationalism. Miskito Moravian pastors asked Father Gregory

13
T h e king was chosen from among the young men of a village, had foreign
money pinned to him, and would speak in a non-Miskitu language, either Spanish
or more usually English.
for copies of his courses on the salvation history of the Miskitu, and
these were used in the communities of the Rio Coco for some ten
years afterwards (Smutko, 1994: 12-13). Many of these indigenous
Moravian pastors also worked with Father Gregory in ACARIC, which
was, for the most part, run by Moravian Miskitus.
By the 1960s, the Moravian church had been training indigenous
pastors for some thirty years in their Bible Institute on the Rio Coco 14
and had pulled out almost all its foreign missionaries.15 The indig-
enous pastors were sent out as itinerant preachers, into communities
other than their own,16 for three year periods. The pastors were totally
dependent upon the community they stayed in for food—and labor
in building both the pastoral house and the church. Yet they main-
tained a great deal of respect and authority within the communities,
and were often the arbiters of social conflict there. This position of
authority was accorded to them because they were the only mem-
bers of the community who had any education.
Proof of this privilege was their imparting of the knowledge of the
Bible through their sermons. The pastors had almost exclusive access
to the Bible and were therefore the owners of the "cultural capital"
of Miskitu society, having access, as they did, to "the monopolisation
of the instruments for appropriation of these [symbolic] resources
(writing, reading and other decoding techniques)5' (Bourdieu, 1990:
125). The pastors also controlled such cultural capital because of their
command over "text" in general. As I have noted earlier, text had
very material properties for the Miskitu and was seen as the site of
power and in a predominantly oral society, the ability to master text
was the source of personal authority. The significance of text can be
seen in the fact that the binary opposite of the Bible in the commu-
nities is a book of sorcery called simply the "blak buk.'"7

14
There were about 66 Miskitu pastors by 1970. T h e pastors were taught by
north american pastors who demanded rote learning of the Bible rather than any
exegetical practice. There were a couple of Moravian missionaries, however, and in
particular one, Richard Steiner, who is remembered by the Miskitu pastors to this
day for teaching them that indigenous peoples had political rights which they should
demand from the government.
15
Indeed the church became fully nationalised in 1974, though there were only
one or two missionaries in the region during the 1960s.
16
This model was justified by the biblical passage now oft quoted by Miskitu
pastors, that "a prophet is not without honour, except in his own country, and
among his own kin, and in his own house" (Mark 6:4).
17
Any text that is not a Moravian text, or otherwise recognisable (such as a
school book) has on occasions been suspected by zealous community leaders of being
 The Bible was viewed as a communal symbolic resource which
provided the basis for the Christian identity of the Miskitus. The
pastors, as guardians of the Bible were thus also viewed as the guard-
ians of this idendty. There was a strong tendency on the part of the
laity to delegate responsibility for the maintenance of the collective
Christian identity to the "specialists" (in this case the pastors). On
the one hand, this was a structural effect of not having access to
education. On the other hand, however, it was also a means of es-
caping the uncomfortable contradiction (or "cognitive dissonance,"
as Saunders puts it, 1988: 190) arising from the fact that the Miskitu
had maintained certain practices pertaining to their traditional reli-
gion which were expressly forbidden by the church. By delegating
responsibility to the pastors for the upholding of the Miskitu Chris-
tian identity, the laity were free to visit sukias, poison their neighbours,
commit adultery and drink. Pastors who did so, however, were seen
as threatening to undermine the smooth functioning of the collective
social identity.18
The pastors became the main purveyors of the new indigenous
identity, filtering it through Miskitu history, and through the biblical
narrative. The land (as a conflation of the Promised Land and the
territory of the Miskitus) and the king (as a conflation of Old Testa-
ment kings and the Miskitu kings) became symbols which were ref-
erence points for the new politicised ethnicity of the Miskitu. Thus
when Father Gregory left the region in 1971 and ACARIC was
dismantled, it was a Miskitu Moravian pastor, Wycliffe Diego, who
agitated for the creation of an indigenous political organisation. This
organisation, which was called ALPROMISU (the Alliance for the
Progress of the Miskitus and Sumus) was founded in 1974 and the
majority of its activists were Miskitu Moravian pastors. One of these
Moravian pastors, Reverend Mullins Tilleth, who was influential in
the movement, began to incorporate indigenous motifs in sermons

the black book. In a recent case, a Jehovah's Witness book, in the possession of a
young man accused of black magic, was used as evidence against him by com-
munity leaders, who were unable to read, in the village of Sandy Bay. A trial
took place which was jeopardised, however, by the arrival of the pastor who could
read the book and knowing what it was, tactfully suggested that the document in
question was most likely not the book they were after (Personal communication,
1994).
18
This partially explains the seemingly paradoxical relationship between an ex-
tremely punitive disciplinary system enforced by the indigenous Moravian church,
and the hypocrisy with which these standards are (or are not) kept.
which focused Miskitu political aspirations on the return of the Miskitu
king. According to Wycliffe Diego, who worked with him, Tilleth:
was preaching about the kings and the land. He said that the Miskitus
had to rule the land because it says in the dictionary that the word
'indigenous' means 'the owners.' (Personal communication, 1994)

Political Conflict: The Bible and Holy War

In 1979, Somoza's dictatorship was toppled in a revolution spear-

headed by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). The
revolutionary war left the Adantic Coast virtually untouched, and
very few Miskitus took part in it. On the one hand, this revolution
created expectations among the Miskitu for an improvement in their
political situation, and even for a political space within which their
aspirations for the return of the king, and the reestablishment of the
Miskitu nation would be fulfilled. On the other, however, the Sandi-
nistas, who had a left-wing orientation and were influenced by Lib-
eration theology, were viewed with suspicion, particularly by the older
Miskitus and Moravian pastors, who had been inculcated with a strong
anti-communism by the north american Moravian missionaries.19
Soon after the revolution, a new indigenous political organisation
was formed out of the older one, ALPROMISU. It was renamed,
MISURASATA (Miskitus, Sumus, Ramas, Sandinistas United To-
gether). Although this organisation still had Miskitu pastors as its main
activists, its leaders were a group of students who had been at uni-
versity in Managua during the 1970s. These leaders, because of their
university education, came to hold an even greater monopoly over
the cultural capital of the Miskitu than the pastors had. But it was
only through their alliance with the pastors that they were able to
mobilise the Miskitu behind the banner of indigenous identity, be-
cause the pastors were still the keepers of the Bible and of the Miskitu
Christian identity.
Tension arose between MISURASATA and the Sandinista gov-
ernment within just a year of the revolution. The Sandinistas sup-
ported MISURASATA, and backed their proposal for a literacy
campaign in the indigenous languages, and for communal land rights.

19
Dennis notes that during his fieldwork in 1 9 7 8 - 9 among the Miskitu, he heard
sermons in the rural villages given by lay pastors "warning that if Somoza left, the
Communists would gain control and religion would be oudawed" (Dennis, 1981:
282).
However, in early 1981, when they found out that MISURASATA
were planning to lay claim to one contiguous land tide that covered
nearly 40% of the national territory, they threw the leaders in jail,
accusing them of separatism. The charges were not totally unfounded.
While the leadership of MISURASATA presented their demands to
the Sandinistas as indigenous rights, they were telling the Miskitu
people something else. As a Miskitu doctor recounted:
The leaders.. . promised a lot,. .. that we were going to have our
own independence and have our own everything. We were saying that
we wanted independence from the beginning. (Personal communica-
tion, 1994)
According to a Miskitu teacher, the leaders were also saying that
"the Sandinistas were communists who wanted to finish with God
and the Bible, so the pastors got angry" (Pers. comm. 1994). This
was corroborated by the wife of Mullins Tilleth who noted that the
trouble started because:
On top of it all, the Sandinists wanted to bring in communism and
that's why the Church stood up—we believe in God and we grew up
with that and you can't get that out of us . . . on the Adantic Coast,
we are not communist, we are Christians, Protestants. (Pers. comm.
1991)

By 1981, the Miskitu leaders, released from jail by the Sandinistas,

fled to Honduras where they were supported by the US and became
the indigenous front for the Contras. The war was permeated and
even structured by biblical symbols and narrative. Some of the first
indigenous fighters were divided into bands known as "Los Astros"
(The Stars) and "Las Tropas Cruces" (The Troops of the Cross),
who all wore white crosses sown to their clothes, and who carried
Bibles. In the words of a pastor who fought with the Contra:
each military group had to have a pastor with them .. . they had to
have a weapon in one hand and a Bible in the other in order to give
prayer services to the troops. (Pers. comm. 1994)

Once again, the Bible for the Miskitu had very material properties,
as a form of amulet against bullets. It was also a narrative within
which the Miskitu situated themselves. The Bible became a commentary
on the war, in which the Sandinistas were identified variously as
Antiochus Epiphanes, the Egyptians, Babylon and Rome, oppressing
the Miskitus. The Sandinistas were also portrayed as Canaanites and
Philistines, whom the Miskitus must drive out of the land. The Miskitus
referred to various of their commanders as Moses, Joshua, Gideon
and David (Wilde, 1989: 974). Meanwhile, the Rio Coco was seen
as the Red Sea. Biblical imagery pervaded the daily events of war in
an affirmation of the righteousness of the Miskitu warriors who, like
the Israelites under Joshua, were waging their holy war.

Summary

As the Miskitu were incorporated more fully into the nation-state

during the 1960s, they came into increasing contact with "the Span-
ish" from the Pacific Coast of Nicaragua who connoted for the Miskitu
everything that was negative and opposed to their positive relations
with the Anglo world (Hale, 1994; Helms, 1989). In this situation, the
Miskitus deployed biblical symbols as a means of differentiation be-
tween themselves and "the Spanish." At the same time, Father Smutko
introduced them to a means of utilising the Bible as a cultural-political
tool with which to demand rights from the nation-state, which was
perceived unerringly by the Miskitu as a "Spanish" institution.20
However, as the Bible became part of the communication of Miskitu
ethnic identity, it was not just a means of differentiating themselves
from the Spanish. It was also an affirmation of allegiance towards
the powerful Anglo domain, in which the Miskitu had embedded
themselves when they converted to Christianity. It was this allegiance
which led the Miskitus to side with the US in their covert war to
topple the Sandinista government. In a vignette which reveals the
relationship between Miskitu "Anglo-affinity" (Hale, 1994) and war,
Helms observed in the 1960s the Miskitus' fascination with Vietnam:
People talked ineessandy about keeping an eye out for aeroplanes and
awaiting an attack. Yet beneath the tension was a feeling that it was
a mark of importance and recognition to have a war on the river, or,
in other words, if warfare were part of the modern world, the Miskito
should be involved also. (Helms, 1971: 221)

This fascination for war as a motif of modernity in which the Miskito

wanted to participate as long as it was part of the Anglo world, was
coupled with an avid reading of Old Testament passages about the

20
Although there was some denominational conversion to the Catholicism at this
time, this was because the Catholic church among the Miskitu was run entirely by
north americans, and had no contact whatsoever with the Catholic church of the
Pacific Coast.
kings and about Joshua's conquering of the Promised land, in which
warfare was a common theme.
Thus when the Sandinistas came to power, the Miskitus appropri-
ated the Bible as a means of articulating strong differences with the
new government. They saw themselves as caught up in a conflict
between good and evil, in which they were the Christians against
the communists. They also inserted themselves into the biblical nar-
rative as the Israelites fighting for their king and their land. As a
Sandinista leader, Luis Carrion, noted, "the indigenous people found
their past in the Bible" (Ohland and Schneider, 1983: 241). They
also found their present there.

Conclusion

I have argued throughout this paper that the Bible has been an
important means by which the Miskitus of Nicaragua have defined
and redefined their ethnic identity. This identity has been strategi-
cally articulated within the social and political context in which the
Miskitus have found themselves. The first context was that of colo-
nialism when they converted to Protestant Christianity. In the pro-
cess of conversion, they both interpreted the Bible through their own
local traditions, and appropriated it as a symbol of their new "mod-
ern" Christian identity.
The second context was that of political mobilisation in the 1960s
in which the Miskitus situated themselves within the biblical text in
order to articulate their political aspirations for the return of the
Miskitu king and for control over their own territory. In this context,
the Bible was both a means of differentiation from "the Spanish" of
the Pacific Coast of Nicaragua, and a continuing affirmation of Miskitu
affiliation with the Anglo world.
The dialectical manner in which the Miskitu have appropriated
the Bible as a symbol which is intrinsic to their own culture and at
the same time as an extrinsic symbol of their affiliation with the
Anglo world from which it came, is perhaps best summed up in the
anecdote told by a Miskitu, Rodolfo, to an English traveller who was
in the region during the late 1980s:

an ingles de color [an Englishman of color] who lived with my aunt, he

used to s a y . . . that Moses was a Miskito. (Ford, 1992: 184)
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 ETHNICITY, IDENTITY A N D HERMENEUTICS:
AN INDIAN TRIBAL PERSPECTIVE

Thanzauva and R.L. Hnuni

1. Introduction

In all aspects of life today, it is possible to see a dialectical movement

towards unity and diversity. This is especially clear in the struggle to
combine autonomy in politics and co-operation in economics. Simi-
larly, the movements for contextualisation and ecumenism have be-
come integral parts of contemporary Christianity. In this situation,
biblical hermeneutics no longer remains the monopoly of Western
scholars; it has local dimension as well. The publication of Voices
From the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World, edited by R.S.
Sugirtharajah, is one of the concrete examples illustrating that there
are multiple ways of reading the Bible. It provides clear supporting
evidence for J. Moltmann's claim, "reading the Bible with the eyes
of the poor is a different thing from reading it with a full belly."1
This article is concerned with how the tribal people, the most Chris-
tianized ethnic group in India, do read and should read the Bible.
In the Indian context, the tribal groups can be seen as distinct from
the two dominant communities, the Hindus and Muslims, who first
drove them out from their land and subsequently tried to assimilate
them ignoring their distinct identity and values.

2. Ethnicity

Human societies throughout history have lived with some sense of

ethnic classification, but the term "ethnic" has been often used to
connote a stigmatized and marginalized group. It is usually a dominant
group which refers to another as an "ethnic" community. We will
begin this article with a brief investigation of the ways this concept
has been used in the Bible and in sociology.

1
J. Moltmann, The Church in the Power of Spirit (London: S C M , 1978), p. 17.
2.1 Ethnicity in the Bible

The term ethnos and its cognate words, ethnikos and ethne, were used
for nation, people in general, and for the Gentiles as distinct from
the Jew or Christians.2 The use of ethne in the New Testament, as a
technical term for the Gentiles as distinct from the Jews or Chris-
tians, corresponds in some measure to gerim in the Hebrew Bible.
This is particularly evident in the LXX: ethnos is almost always used
to translate ger and laos is used for W . 3 An investigation of the use
of ger in the Hebrew Bible, and a social description of the genm and
their condition, will help us to understand biblical ideas of ethnicity.
T.M. Mauch suggested that "sojourner" should be the basic transla-
tion of ger* but D. Kellerman and Christiana von Houten prefer
"alien." F.A. Spina argues for "immigrant."5 The Israelites were once
the aliens (genm) before their setdement in Canaan, and that experi-
ence became the basis for their responsibility to care for people from
other ethnic groups. "You shall not oppress a stranger (ger), for you
were strangers (genm) in the land of Egypt" (Exod. 23:9). The term
ethnos, therefore, with its corresponding Hebrew term ger, primarily
refers to people who are vulnerable, weak, dependent and marginalized
as distinct from the dominant group of a society.

2.2 Ethnicity in Sociology

In much of the older social scientific literature, the biblical notion of

the ethnic as alien is more or less maintained. 6 In North America,
until the Asian immigrants began to form significant communities,
the term was often used to describe the Polish, Italian, Lituanian,
Bohemian, Slovakian groups who had common problems, interests
and concerns. Today it is used more to describe Cambodians, Viet-
namese, Indians, and to a certain extent, the Afrikaners and the

2
G. Bertram and K.L. Schmidt, "εθνοσ, έθνικός," in TDNT, vol. 2, pp. 3 6 4 - 3 7 2 .
3
Bertram, p. 365
4
T . M . Mauch, "Sojourner," in IDB, pp. 3 9 7 - 9 9 .
5
D. Kellerman, "ger" in TDOT, pp. 4 4 0 - 4 4 2 ; Christina van Houten, The Alien in
Israelite Law (Sheffield: J S O T Press, 1991), p. 19; F.A. Spina, "Israelites as gerim:
Sojourners in Social and Historical Context, ‫ י י‬in C.L. Meyer and M. 0 , C o n n o r
(eds.), The Word of the Lord Shall Go Forth: Essays in Honour of David Noel Freedman in
Celebration of his Sixtieth Birthday (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1983), pp. 3 2 1 - 3 5 .
6
B. Dattaray, Tribal Identity and Tension in North East India (Guwahati: Western
Book Depot, 1989), p. 1.
Amerindians; the European immigrants have been integrated into
the mainstream.
Fredrik Barth, on the other hand (who is very influential in mod-
era ethnology), discusses another definition of an ethnic group as a
population which (a) is largely biologically self perpetuating; (b) shares
fundamental cultural values, realised in overt unity in cultural forms;
(c) constitutes a category distinguishable from other categories of the
same order.7 This allows any racial or tribal group that has a com-
mon cultural tradition to be "ethnic," without particular reference to
a minority or weaker status in society.
In India, ethnicity is not a common term. The term "tribe" and
"caste" are commonly used for stratification of the society. Many
ethnic groups in India (originally tribals) have been absorbed into
the Hindu caste structure in which they became either the low or
the out-caste, but now they identify themselves as dalits, which pri-
marily means the oppressed people. The remaining tribes, unlike dalits,
belong neither to Hindu social structure nor to Muslim communi-
ties. In their tribal relationships, an ethnic co-existence is conditioned
by a mutual repulsion and disdain which nevertheless allows each
ethnic community to preserve its dignity. By contrast, the caste struc-
ture brings about a social subordination and an acknowledgement of
"more honour" in favour of the privileged caste and higher status
groups.8 There is, then, a fundamental difference between the dalits
and tribals. Most of the tribes in India are not immigrants; they are
indigenous communities alienated from their land and culture.

3. The Bible and Tribal Identity

Tribal religion, known today as primal religion, does not depend on

a written Scripture but on the experience of the peoples' encounter
with their environment in their day to day life. Rather than reading
written Scriptures, they read nature and their own life in order to
understand God's intention for them. Their conversion to the scriptural
religions, particularly to Christianity, brought about radical changes

7
Fredrik Barth (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Cultural
Difference (Boston: Litde Brown, 1969), pp. 13ff.
8
H . H . Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New
York: Free Press, 1958), p. 189.
in their lives and became an important factor for the emergence
of a new tribal identity. At the same time, however, the Bible might
be said to be responsible for the present identity crisis in the tribal
societies.
The translation of the Bible into the tribal languages is not merely
making a written book available in the tribal language; it means much
more than that. Since belief in mana (impersonal supernatural power)
is the core of primal religion, the Bible also came to be regarded as
mana, having impersonal supernatural power. In fact, the Mizo9 called
it Pathian Lehkhabu (the Holy Book of God) and venerated it so highly
that 35% of the funds raised in India for the Bible Society of India
came from the tiny state of Mizoram. Having this notion of the Bible,
it is not surprising that the tribal churches readily accepted a doc-
trine of verbal inspiration of Scripture. The Bible for the tribal
Christians is a propositional truth about God and human life super-
naturally communicated to human beings by the Holy Spirit.
The translation of the Bible into the tribal languages has had a
significant impact on the tribal societies. A new common history for
the tribals was created as they shared the same faith and the same
story through the Bible. This broke the barrier of narrow village
mentality and "tribalism,55 and paved the way for the emergence of
a new and larger tribal identity. The translation of the Bible intro-
duced a common dialect for some tribes, and this has to some extent
helped to overcome linguistic differences.10 Reading one Bible in one
language was an important factor in the development of tribal
ecumenism, and if a common dialect had not been developed in this
way, the tribals in North East India would have been compelled to
speak and use Bengali." Indeed, it was through the efforts of the
missionaries, and tribal Christians themselves, to enable the Chris-
tian community to read the Bible that the literacy rate is signifi-

9
Mizo is a tribal community living in the north eastern corner of India who
embraced Christianity in the beginning of this century. They respect and dearly
love the Bible, and they express this in the composition of many scriptural songs.
10
T h e Awe dialect was used for the Garo tribe in Meghalaya, the Cherrapunji
dialect for the Khasi tribe in Meghalaya, the Ukhrul dialect for the Tangkhul Nagas
in Manipur, the Changki dialect for the Ao Nagas in Nagaland, the Duhlian dialect
for the Mizos in Mizoram, the Serkawr dialect for the Mara tribe in Mizoram and
so on.
11
Since the British administrators had learned Bengali (also spellt "Bangali") and
trained the Bangali people, they had a policy to introduce Bangali as a court lan-
guage. It was the Christian missionaries who developed and reduced the tribal dia-
lects to written form.
cantly higher among the tribal Christians than their neighbouring
peoples. It was this concern which led church leaders in the Khasi
Hills to take the decision that no convert would be granted full
membership in the church undl he/she could read.12 The translation
of the Bible, therefore, made a significant contribution towards social
transformation.
Having acknowledged the significant contribution of biblical trans-
lation, it is also important to acknowledge that the tribal concept of
the Bible also creates enormous problems in the area of hermeneutics.
The tribal Christians are mosdy biblicists who try to use the Bible as
a magical book to solve their problems. The Bible was an important
instrument in the search for their own identity, but it also alienated
them from their own culture. It is our thesis that since the influence
of the Bible has already been felt by the tribals, a fresh hermeneutic
could once again produce a socially dynamic and liberating influ-
ence in our new historical context. Social identity is, especially in the
modern world, dynamic.

4. Tubal Hermeneutics

What kind of hermeneutics will best serve in the tribals in the Indian
context?13 The question of a biblical hermeneutic is not merely how
do I know the text but how I know myself in the process of knowing
God through the text, and how will I be transformed by that knowl-
edge? Paul Ricoeur, with his idea of the autonomy of the text and
its surplus of meaning, provides an appropriate philosophical basis
for hermeneutics. As opposed to oral discourse, texts achieve a "se-
mantic autonomy;" they can mean more than what the author in-
tended. "[The author's] intention is often unknown to us, sometimes
redundant, sometimes useless, and sometimes even harmful as re-
gards to the interpretation of the verbal meaning of his work.'"4 There

12
F.S. Downs, History of Christianity in India, Vol. 5, Part 5: North East India in the
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Bangalore: Church History Association in India, 1992),
p. 200.
13
According to Clodovis Boff, biblical hermeneutics means (a) a set of canons of
exegesis; (b) actual interpretation of the Bible; and (c) theology. Theology and Praxis:
Epistemological Foundations (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1987).
14
Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (Fort Worth:
Texas Christian University, 1976), p. 76.
is a distancing of the text from the original audience, and this au-
tonomy from the original readers opens up a range of potential readers
and potential interpretations.15 This approach makes possible a new
tribal hermeneutic.
The older (and even many of the present) habits of biblical inter-
pretation amongst the tribals do not, in fact, take the tribal, social
and cultural conditions into consideration. As a result, the Bible
continues to contribute towards alienation of tribals from their cul-
ture. This problem, of adequately addressing the present social and
economic problems, has been only dimly perceived in the past.

4.1 Evidence from Missionary Experience

In retrospection of their first ten years' experience in Mizoram, the

two Baptist missionaries, Rev. J.H. Lorrain and F.W. Savidge, ex-
pressed in their report,
Our first message, as soon as we could speak the language, was to
proclaim a Saviour from sin. But the people had no sense of sin and
felt no need for such a Saviour. Then, we found a point of contact.
We proclaimed Jesus as the vanquisher of the Devil as the One who
had bound the "strong man" and taken away from him "all his armour
wherein he trusted" and so had made it possible for his slaves to be
free. This to the Lushais (now known as Mizos) was "Good News"
indeed and exacdy met their great need.16

It is evident from the statement above that what was considered a

meaningful message, for missionaries trained in England, was no longer
meaningful when it was preached to a different culture. The task for
the two missionaries was to re-interpret the gospel in the context of
Mizoram.

4.2 Inadequacy of Historical-Critical Interpretation

With the exception of fundamentalist circles, historical criticism re-

mains a dominant method for interpreting the Bible in all theologi-
cal seminaries. In this approach rationalism reigns supreme, demanding

15
Rieoeur, pp. 2 9 . 3 2 ‫־‬
16
J. Herbert Lorrain and F.W. Savidge, "After T e n Years: Report for 1913 of
the B M S Mission in the South Lushai Hills, Assam," in The Annual Report of BMS on
Mizoram 1901-1938 (Serkawrn: Mizoram Gospel Centenary Committee, 1994), pp.
93-94.
the subjugation of the biblical texts to a critical examination apart
from the dogma of ecclesiastical authority. The result has generally
been a low estimate of the reliability of the biblical texts, since the
world view implied by the texts seem so inferior to the contempo-
rary perspective.17 H.S. Reimarus and H.E.G. Paul, for example,
sought to reconstruct a purely historical life of Jesus, free from the
"simple-minded supernaturalism" of the first century.18 While some
scholars emphasized historical factuality of the biblical texts, some
entertained the notion that the biblical narratives could be factually
erroneous and yet religiously meaningful. 19 This resulted in the
hermeneudcal method of demythologization by the liberals and the
historical reconstruction of events by the conservatives. Neither of
these approaches helped the tribal Christians in their self understand-
ing, mission and ministry. Rather, they seemed it to make Christian-
ity more and more irrelevant, precisely because they reflected West-
ern cultural dynamics in response to the Enlightenment.

4.3 Inadequacy of Dialogical Interpretation in India

P.D. Devanandan, Raymond Panikkar, Bishop A.J. Appasamy and

others have responded to the religious and ideological pluralism in
India. In recent years, Paul Gregorios and Stanley Samartha have
argued that we should not take authority of the Christian Scripture
as self-evidently valid, rejecting other Scriptures; this would simply
invite counter claims from other religious groups. In such a situation,
so it is argued, the task of hermeneutics is to work out a larger frame-
work of neighbourly relationships within which the insights of differ-
ent sacred texts can be related to each other for mutual enrichment,
yet without denying their particularities.20 Similarly, R.S. Sugirtharajah
advocates that biblical scholars must be sensitive to the scriptural

17
For further study see W.G. Kümmel, The New Testament: The History of the Irwes-
ligation of Its Problems (tr. S. Maclean Gilmour and Howard Clark Kee; Nashville:
Abingdon, 1972); Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth
and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974).
18
Larry Chouinard, "Gospel Christology: A Study of Methodology," Journal for
the Study of New Testament 30 (1987), pp. 2 1 - 3 7 . Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the
Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of its ProgressfromReimarus to Wrede (New York: Macmillan,
9th printing, 1968), pp. 13-67.
19
Ibid., p. 22.
20
S.J. Samartha, The Search for New Hermeneutics in Asian Christian Theology (Banga-
lore: Board of Theological Education of Serampore College, 1987); Paul Gregorios,
"Hermeneutics in India T o d a y in the Light of the World Debate," in R.S.
texts of others faith and the spiritual sustenance they provide for
many adherents. They should re-read some of the biblical materials
in the light of the multi-faith context.21 All of these writers are con-
cerned with discovering truth from other Scriptures and synthesizing
it with Christian truth found in the Scripture, a process which might
be called dialogical hermeneutics. This represents a radical shift from
the approach of "decoding" the biblical texts for people of other
cultures.
While dialogical hermeneutics may be appropriate in pluralistic
contexts, it is not directly relevant in the tribal context. The idea of
Scripture, first of all, is itself alien to the tribals. Moreover, reading
the Hindu, Muslim and Buddhist Scriptures, will be further alienat-
ing since these derive from the dominant cultures which impinge on
the tribals. The Bible, on the other hand, has already been internal-
ized and is part of their identity. It would be much more rewarding
for the tribals to read the new "Scriptures" being written by God in
their day-to-day struggle for authentic existence, rather than reading
the ancient texts of other Scriptures.

4.4 Dalit Hermeneutics as Liberation Hermeneutics in India

Dalit hermeneutics is one form of liberation herementics in India which

attempts to address the dalits‫ י‬aspiration for liberation. It was the
liberation theologians who developed a new way of interpreting bib-
lical data, and rescued the Bible from abstract, individualized and
"neutralized" reading.22 Expanding on the insights of Latin Ameri-
can liberation hermeneutics, the dalit theologians develop their inter-
pretative style and strategies. While liberation theologians in Latin
America interpret biblical texts to criticise the class structure, the
dalit theologians attack the caste system and support struggle of the
dalits for liberation from the oppressive system.23 The concern of dalit
hermeneutics is similar to that of the tribal hermeneutics: in both
cases liberation is the goal and task of hermeneutics. However, in

Sugirtharajah and Cecil Hargreaves (eds.), Readings in Indian Christian Theology, Vol. 1
(Delhi: SPCK, 1993), pp. 176-185.
21
R.S. Sugitharajah, "Inter-faith Hermeneutics: An Example and Some Implica-
tions," in Voices from the Margins: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World, pp. 3 5 2 - 3 6 3 .
22
R.S. Sugitharajah, "Introduction," p. 1.
23
D. Carr, "Development of Interpretative Perspective and Academic Study,"
The SATHR1 Journal 1 (Jan. 1991), pp. 16-51; M. Azariah, "Doing Theology in
India Today," in Readings in Indian Christian Theology, pp. 3 7 - 4 5 .
the detailed interpretation of the Bible, tribal hermeneutics has to be
distinctive for they have a different agenda and different hermeneutical
tasks, as indicated above.

4.5 Tubal Hermeneutics and. its tasks

Tribal hermeneutics is certainly a sister hermeneutics of the dalit

hermeneutics and a part of liberation hermeneutics. But the tribal
people read the Bible in the context of an identity crisis—alienation
from their land and culture, exploitation and economic dependency.
All this requires a re-interpretation of the Bible to address these
problems. Unless the tribals are allowed to be different in their inter-
pretation of the Bible, the Bible will not only lose its significance,
Christianity will remain superficial without really taking root into the
tribal culture. In fact, Christianity is quite visible and popular in the
tribal society of North East India, and to a great extent it appears
indigenized. In depth study reveals, however, that Christianity has
not taken root, deep within the tribal culture. The indigenous forms
arise from translation of Western Christianity into the tribal lan-
guage and context. What is needed, we argue, is a form of Chris-
tianity arising from the tribal culture, and this in turn requires tribal
hermeneutics.
We may, however, find points of contact with some of the discus-
sions of narrative theology and the reader-oriented criticism influenced,
in particular, by Ricoeur and Gadamer. The tribal hermeneutics will
treat the biblical texts as narrative statements and the "evangelists"
as narrators whose intent is to narrate "the story with certain loaded
words, in a certain order, and with various rhetorical techniques, in
order to encourage a certain response from the readers.'524 An au-
thentic interpretation involves intensive and sincere listening to the
story narrated by the authors, combined with sensitivity to the read-
ers' own context, through which the horizon of the text and the
readers' context fuse together, generating a new meaning of the text.
This approach abandons any historical-critical concerns for historic-
ity or demythologization and engages with the evangelists' forms of

24
Larry Chouinard, "Gospel Christology: A Study of Methodology," JSNT 30
(1987), p. 27. This is obviously different from the form critic who assumes that the
evangelists merely framed and combined materials which were already in circula-
tion in the communities before the composition of the Gospels.
the text. The narrative approach maintains the unity of the text and
tries to understand how the narrators used various materials for their
own purpose. Our own narrative approach is combined with a
particular orientation towards the tribal reader: we expect the readers
to discover their own mission from, and be inspired by, the story.
The hermeneutical task here is not merely understanding—though
understanding is a part of the process—but transformation of society.
We are therefore proposing a multi-task hermeneutics, encourag-
ing people to understand themselves in the process of understanding
the text, that they may be inspired to respond to the issues that
confront them. As F.S. Downs points out, the struggle of tribes in
India is mainly for the preservation of their unique identity.25 In the
light of this struggle, the tribal theologians resist traditional interpre-
tarions of the Bible which tend to take an "integrationist" approach
to minority cultures: we are no more interested in being integrated
into an homogeneous hermeneutics than we are into that form of
nationalism which tries to integrate diverse cultures into one nation.
The attempt to create a tribal hermeneutics is an ongoing struggle
for autonomy both in politics and in the interpretation of the Bible.
Having sketched some preliminary suggestions regarding the meth-
odology of tribal hermeneutics, we turn now to the substantial mat-
ters of content which concern us—existential problems such as alien-
ation from land, exploitation, economic dependency, and so on.

5. Tribal Hermeneutical Clues

Some hermeneutical clues are indicated here to show the possibility

of tribal hermeneutics. Our purpose in introducing these examples is
not to provide a detailed treatment of the interpretation of the se-
lected texts, but simply to indicate the possibility of tribal hermeneutics.

5.1 Promised Land

Alienation from tribal land is a common problem throughout India.

Transfer of tribal land to non-tribals is now prohibited, yet this legal
strategy fails to protect tribals; the laws are easily circumvented. Many

25
F.S. Downs, "Identity: T h e Integrating Principle, , ‫ י‬Journal of Social Sciences and
Humanities of North Eastern Hill University 9 / 3 (1991), pp. 7ff.
 of the tribes have been reduced to landless wanderers. This situation
has to be understood in the context of two competing views of land:
while the tribals treat land as an essential part of their communal
identity (land can only be "owned" by becoming a member of the
community who live in the land), the non-tribals regard it as prop-
erty which can be owned by legal fiction—bought, sold and claimed.
In this context, the tribals may re-read the following biblical pas-
sages concerning the promised land: they may put themselves into
the role of the Israelites who have been afflicted and humiliated (cf.
Deut. 26:5ff); they also might receive the promise of God which
carne through Joseph: "God will visit you one day, bring you back
to the land which he swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob" (cf. Gen. 50:24); they might see an analogy with their own
experience when God called the tribal leader Moses and asked, "Go
and gather the elders of your own tribe, and say to them, "The Lord,
the God of your fathers has appeared to me, saying, '1 have ob-
served you and what has been done to you in this land, and I prom-
ise that I will bring you out of this affliction5 " (cf. Exod. 3 : 1 6 1 7 ‫ ) ־‬.
Abraham, Jacob, Joseph and Moses are all landless, but they are
caught up in a journey towards the promised land. Their story can
shape the tribals' struggle for homeland. Most of the tribal move-
ments in India today—such as the Jarkhan movement in Bihar; the
Gurkha movement in Bengal, the Bodo and Karbi movement in Assam,
the Kuki movement in Manipur, the tribal movement in Tripura—
are fundamentally struggles for a homeland in their own land. Unlike
the patriarchal story, this Indian experience represents the hope of
returning to a land that was, at an earlier time, already theirs. But
the idea of promised land can become an impetus, or a motivating
analogy, for the tribals' struggle.

5.2 Pentecost that Revives and Empowers (Acts 2:1-17)

The coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost revived and
transformed the disciples of Jesus Christ. In spite of the fact that the
Pentecost movement was the origin of the Christian church, today
the revival or charismatic movement has gained very little room in
the mainline churches. While the mainline churches have had a very
low opinion of revivalism, it is one of the distinctive characteristics of
the tribal churches. In spite of constant critiques and objections from
missionaries and theologically trained leaders, this element remains.
Renthy Keitzer, and a few other scholars in this region, have righdy
observed that the revival movement among the tribal churches is in
fact an expression of suppressed traditional animistic religion.26 Keitzer
observes that missionaries in Nagaland were able to suppress tribal
emotionalism and traditional religious practice. But in Mizoram, this
was not the case; the tribal emotionalism has always been a feature
of religious practice from the beginning of Christian influence until
today. Instead of suppressing this movement, we should guide and
transform it. In this context, it is necessary to re-discover and re-
read texts concerning the gift of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pen-
tecost and in the subsequent history of the Church.
The re-reading of texts concerning the gift of the Holy Spirit needs
to be undertaken without the rationalist prejudices which so often
underlie Western biblical interpretation. The same Holy Spirit is
received by different people, and manifested differendy, depending
on the culture, environment and nature of the society. As far as the
scriptural texts are concerned, the Holy Spirit inspires and guides
kings, prophets, Jesus Christ, the disciples, the church and individual
believers. Here we would like to discuss briefly the work of the Holy
Spirit in the tribal context of revivalism.
(a) Revival as inculturation: Today inculturation or indigenization
is a central concern of churches in Third World countries. Efforts
towards inculturation have been made in India since the inception
of Christianity by missionaries like De Nobili, William Carey and
many others. While De Nobili tried to identify himself with Hindu
Brahmins and used Brahmanical language to present the Christian
gospel, Carey translated the Bible into the vernacular languages. Some
of the Christian intellectuals, such as Chenchiah, Chakkaraiah and
others, used Hindu categories to interpret the Christian gospel. Simi-
larly, Robin Boyd used advaita philosophy. The success of these efforts
has been limited; the churches remain alienated and Christianity
remains a foreign religion in India. Comparatively, the tribal churches
in the hills appear much more indigenized. Christianity has become
their new identity, and this is reflected in some of the tribal churches
who mosdy sing their own indigenous Christian songs. It is beyond
doubt that the revival movement is the primary factor which inter-
nalized Christianity in tribal society. In the tribal context, Christian-

26
Renthey Keitzer, "Common Features of Theological Trends in North East India,'1
ETC Journal 4 (1991), p. 28.
ity does not remain a foreign religion. However, this does not mean
that Christianity is perfectly indigenized in the tribal areas; it is
comparatively indigenized. We have to move beyond this situation to
contextualize Christianity more fully, for which task a tribal herme-
neutics is necessary.
(b) Revival as Praxis: Just as the disciples were empowered by the
Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost to witness, so the first Christians
of the tribal community—who felt inferior to others and longed for
their old ways of life—were empowered by the revival movement. It
was the revival movement that enabled the new converts, a mar-
ginalized group of the society, to accept themselves and to take up
their mission. In much of the debate about mission in India, the
priority of praxis has been emphasized, but most of the churches
stand still. It is time to realise that real praxis begins with revival or
renewal of the churches.

5.3 Protection of the Aliens in the Deuteronomic Laws

Since the laws in Deuteronomy are more comprehensive than those

in the Book of Covenant, especially in relation to aliens, we can get
a more comprehensive picture of the legal treatment of aliens by
focussing on Deuteronomic laws. The references to aliens in Deut-
eronomy are: 1:16; 5:14; 10:18, 19; 14:21, 29: 16:11, 14; 24:14, 17,
19, 20, 21; 26:11, 12, 13; 27:19; 29:11; 31:12. In Deuteronomy, we
find that since the Israelites themselves were once aliens, therefore
they must care for the aliens in their own land (24:18, 22; cf. Exod.
22:20; 23:9). The aliens must be helped (Deut. 14:28, 29; 24:19, 20,
21, 22), they must not be oppressed (Deut. 5 : 1 2 1 5 ‫ ) ־‬, they must be
allowed to participate in Covenant ceremonies and worship (29:9,
10; 31:12). Justice must be done to the aliens (Deut. 24:14, 17, 19,
21, 22).
The Israelites are instructed to be kind and generous to the aliens,
but it is clear that they do not have the same social standing; the
law is made by Israelites and addressed to them. It is only the Isra-
elite who is responsible under the law. The alien cannot enforce the
law, but is dependent upon the Israelite to uphold it.27 Since they
are vulnerable they must be protected and helped. All the members

27
Christiana van Houten, The Alien in Israelite Law, p. 97.
of the Israel community must be taken care of, including the aliens
so that there should be shalom in the society. Social justice for all is
of paramount importance for the Deuteronomic legal collection. This
concern is made necessary because of the existence of a well-to-do
upper class and an impoverished lower class. In particular, it was the
rise of the monarchy which brought with it a hierarchical social struc-
ture. It created a royal family, a national cult, a patrician class centred
in the cities, and a semi-free artisan and peasant class.28
As indicated before, the tribals in India may be understood as
"aliens" for the following reasons: (a) they do not belong to the
dominant racial groups of the Aryans and Dravidians; (b) they do
not belong to the major religious communities of the Hindus and
the Muslims; (c) they are a vulnerable minority; (d) landless; (e) de-
pendent upon the assistance of the Central Government, and (f) vie-
tims of alienation, oppression and exploitation.
The texts identified above may be understood and applied to the
tribal context in India: the Government policy towards tribal com-
munities should combine both legal protection and promotion. The
British administration adopted a policy of protection, isolating the
tribal communities and protecting them from the interference of others
in tribal affairs. This policy has been continued until recendy. The
Central Government's intention today to lift The Inner line Regulation—
introduced in Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Mizoram for the
purpose of protecting the tribal people from others—could well lead
to even greater hardships for the tribals. This will be a radical change
in the tribal policy. Any weaker section of any society will need a
certain degree of protection, without which no emancipation will take
place. Protection must be seen as an integral part of the develop-
ment process.
Protection, however, important as it may be, is not sufficient in
itself. True protection means empowering the people—caring, teach-
ing, training and organising the people to enable the tribal commu-
nity to protect themselves. Empowering the tribals would also in-
volve letting them participate in the formulation and execution of
the laws. It would also involve economic development, because eco-
nomic vulnerability is one of the primary factors which has allowed
oppression of the tribal people. Moving beyond protection to em-

28
Van Houten, p. 93, cf. F.S. Frick, The City in Ancient Israel (SBLDS, 36; Missoula:
Scholars Press, 1977), p. 205.
powerment might take us beyond the legal vision of Deuteronomy to
encompass Ezekiel's radical exhortation to allot resident aliens an
inheritance within the boundaries of the land (47:22-23), thereby
allowing aliens to participate in the theology of promised land.
These are just some hints to show the possibility of re-reading and
re-interpreting the Bible in the tribal context in India. Rather than
contributing towards the alienation of tribal people, the Bible's social
and spiritual visions could empower them in their struggle for social
transformation.
 T H E RAINBOW SERPENT, T H E CROSS,
A N D T H E FAX MACHINE: AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL
RESPONSES T O T H E BIBLE

Lynne Hume

Some years ago anthropologist Laura Bohannan wrote an article

entitled "Shakespeare in the Bush" in which she discussed her own
recounting of Shakespeare's Hamlet to some Tiv people of West Af-
rica during a stint of fieldwork.1 She recounted the story because she
had been reproved by the Tiv; they had told her many things, they
said, and so they would like to hear a story from her. During her
story-telling Bohannan was constandy interrupted by questions about
the central characters and their kin relationships, as well comments
about the appropriateness or inappropriateness of their actions and
behaviour according to the Tiv people's own social and moral codes.
Story telling among the Tiv is considered to be an art; their stan-
dards are high and the audiences are critical. Thinking that the story
of Hamlet was one that was universally intelligible, Bohannan was
therefore taken aback at their responses. Before getting too far into
the main plot of the story, and while explaining who the characters
were, she was interrupted by one of the listeners who made the fol-
lowing statement to the rest of Bohannan's audience:
I told you that if we knew m o r e a b o u t E u r o p e a n s , we would find they
really were very like us. In our country also, the younger brother marries
the elder brother's widow a n d becomes the father of his children. Now,
if y o u r uncle, w h o m a r r i e d y o u r widowed m o t h e r , is y o u r father's full
brother, then he will be a real father to you. Did H a m l e t ' s father a n d
uncle have one mother?

Bohannan's reaction to this question, which, to the Tiv, was an

absolutely vital component of relationships between people and there-
fore crucial to the story, was to respond, rather uncertainly, that she
thought they had the same mother but wasn't sure—the story didn't
say, at which point an old man reprimanded her and pointed out
that these genealogical intricacies made all the difference to the story

1
Laura Bohannan, "Shakespeare in the Bush," Natural History 75 (1966), pp. 2 8 - 3 3 .
and that when she returned to her home she must ask the elders of
her group about these details. Other omissions of cultural signifi-
cance were pointed out by the Tiv in the process of her relaying the
rest of Hamlet.
This conversation about Shakespeare's play, written in a time, place
and culture far removed from the worldview and epistemology of
the West African Tiv, would no doubt have subsequendy altered
Bohannan's own understanding of Hamlet, and the Tiv reaction
exemplifies the multiplicities of meaning according to perspective. The
Tiv's re-telling of Hamlet is indicative of the cognitive processes of
interpretation of a Western literary work in light of another culture's
epistemology. Their reaction highlights the importance of locating a
text within a cultural context. It is useful to keep this notion in mind
when making sense of modern Australian Aboriginal biblical exegeses.
Interpreting the Bible through the lenses of white Westerners, has
imparted only one point of view, yet one which, as West 2 points out,
has exerted considerable influence, especially when subsequendy con-
veyed through the missionization process to indigenous audiences. If
we are to employ indigenous perspectives on the Bible, in a manner
similar to the Tiv's interpretation of Shakespeare, we may arrive at
a somewhat changed point of view with regard to both the biblical
meaning and the worldview of Aboriginal Australians. We might even
reconsider our own theologies in the wake of such hermeneutics and
rediscover a richness to the texts that were hitherto not contemplated.
But for the moment, an Aboriginal Australian hermeneutic is still in
its infancy, and in light of some of the conflicts between the funda-
mental premises of traditional Aboriginal religion and Western inter-
pretations of Christianity, it would seem that there exists a huge
impasse.
However, Christianity has not only flexed its muscles in other
cultures, but has been flexible enough to adapt to many different
milieus and has managed to survive, albeit somewhat changed in
format, in various cultures throughout the world. It is the purpose of
this paper to present some of the complexities of translating scripture
in indigenous Australia and ways in which Aborigines are dealing
with the issues. Suffice, for now, to pose some introductory questions:

2
Gerald West, "Difference and Dialogue: Reading the Joseph Story with poor
and marginalized communides in South Africa," Biblical Interpretation 2 / 2 (1994),
p. 160.
What is the basis of "traditional" Aboriginal spirituality? How can
we, as Westerners, look through an Aboriginal lens: what parts of
the Bible convey themes and concerns which most adequately ad-
dress those of Aboriginal people, and how are Aboriginal Christians
overcoming and communicating these difficulties?
Central features of traditional Aboriginal religion reiterated through-
out Australia, in spite of the vastness of the continent and regional
variations are: The Dreaming, and the integral link between human-
land-Dreaming ancestors-totems. The Dreaming is atemporal; it
encompasses the past, the present and the future, and has been re-
ferred to as "everywhen" to articulate its ahistoricity. Dreaming events
and narratives are abiding and enduring. Dreaming ancestors rose
up from beneath the earth to shape and mould into form that which
already existed, and their journeys imbued the landscape with spe-
cial significance. As they paused at certain locations, they left traces
of the essence of themselves, transforming the country and endowing
it with immanent significance.
Traditionally, individuals gained knowledge of their own spiritual
identity—as beings who were manifestations of the sacred essence of
a specific geographical location or place—through cognitive acquisi-
tion from initiated elders. Aborigines thus gained an understanding
of their own existential being in terms of place and space? not in
terms of time and linear evolution.
The Dreaming is more precisely referred to as The Law which is
the sacred knowledge, wisdom and moral truth permeating the en-
tire beingness of Aboriginal life, derived collectively from Dreaming
events. This focus on place, what Swain 4 has termed "geosophy," is
knowledge and wisdom derived through the Dreaming, and is an
alien concept for the rational Western mind with its emphasis on
temporality, history and a linear progression of factual events.
Relationships were (and are) of prime importance in Aboriginal
culture: relationships between people, people and land, people and
totems. Places were linked by networks of sacred paths made by
Dreaming ancestors on their journeys across the land and subsequentiy
travelled by living Aborigines as they moved across that same terri-
tory pursuing a nomadic lifestyle. "Country" needed to be cared for;

3
T o n y Swain, A Place for Strangers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993),
p. 2.
4
Swain, A Place for Strangers, p. 25.
paths needed to be "sung" and ancestral journeys dramatically re-
enacted in ritual in order to maintain the cosmic balance. The land-
spirit-human interconnectedness was the essence of Aboriginal identity.
Soon after European setdement more than two hundred years ago,
Christian missionaries arrived in Australia intent on spreading their
interpretations of the Word of God to the "barbarous savages." Con-
vinced of the absolute lightness of their own beliefs and values they
set about imparting a foreign and incomprehensible religion to a people
whose own belief system was far removed from their own. Aborigi-
nal ritual and belief was not recognized as religion but as misguided
or evil practices to be opposed and replaced. The recruitment of
Aboriginal people to mission stations (sometimes by kidnapping
children of mixed descent from Aboriginal mothers) effectively sup-
pressed, in many cases, the use of Aboriginal languages, and con-
tributed to the disintegration of traditional knowledge, especially the
secret-sacred knowledge which necessitated interactions over a long
period of time with knowledgeable elders and the deep spiritual link
to "country" which is an absolute and incontrovertable aspect of
Aboriginal spirituality.
Missionaries of various denominations employed different tactics:
some permitted the retention of cultural elements, recognizing, per-
haps, the basic tenets of both belief systems to be of value, while
others aggressively attempted to suppress all traditional customs and
beliefs, adamandy refusing to tolerate any vestiges of traditional lore.
The responses to the missionary presence varied from outright rejec-
tion (if choice were possible), to acceptance, or a synthesis of the
Christian message with their own beliefs.
It is therefore not surprising that Aborigines today are attempting
a theology that is based principally upon scriptural references to land,
relationships, links between people and the land, and issues of libera-
don and freedom from oppression. In the light of a deeper under-
standing of Western responses to the Bible, Aboriginal theologians
are now beginning to question the validity of European biblical in-
terpretations and are attempting to construct a hermeneutical struc-
ture of their own, thus creating an emerging indigenous theology,
one that is culturally relevant and contextually appropriate to the
Aboriginal situation.5 As yet, however, Aborigines search for equiva-

5
See Lynne Hume, "Delivering T h e Word the Aboriginal Way: the Genesis of
an Australian Aboriginal Theology," Colloquium 25 (1993), pp. 8 6 - 9 5 .
lences, excluding dissimilarities or avoiding contentious points in order
to circumvent disjunctions between the two belief systems.
Through an Aboriginal Lutheran pastor, George Rosendale, and
a Uniting Church Aboriginal minister, Djiniyini Gondarra, we see
the hermeneutical process evolving. Rosendale uses Aboriginal sym-
bols and metaphors to translate Aboriginal Dreaming stories in
Christian terms, using references from both the Old and New Tes-
taments to convey the essential moral messages contained in both.
He discusses several Aboriginal myths containing messages pertain-
ing to moral living, and how easily these relate to specific biblical
passages, therefore communicating Christian messages through tradi-
tional Aboriginal channels.
Rosendale writes:
I have been able to understand and communicate Western Christian-
ity [to other Aborigines] because I have been trained in European
culture. But it was still very painful for me when I noticed that my
people were straining desperately as they attempted to understand and
grasp the deep meaning of the gospel. Only when I began to learn
their stories and customs and used them as pictures to see and under-
stand the gospel did I notice their faces light up. To hear comments
such as: "Aah! It's like our story!" made me very happy to share the
gospel with my people.6

This type of hermeneutical pedagogy, using mythological analogies

to assist in the education of Aboriginal ministers, is also advocated
by Don Carrington, Coordinator of Theological Studies at Nungalinya
College, Darwin, who reports its success in contributing to Aborigi-
nal understanding of the scriptures. Carrington writes that "vital
hermeneutical insights are gained when there is a lightning flash of
insight by people who are thinking about and living out these sto-
ries."7 This is perhaps best illustrated by the aforementioned quota-
tion of George Rosendale.
Moralising, pointing to exemplary figures, or drawing out certain
principles, are not enough in themselves, as Carrington righdy indi-
cates. To convey the original impact and authenticity of the biblical
message one needs to work creatively with another story or symbol
that "produces a comparable dynamic in a contemporary cultural

6
George Rosendale, "Reflections on the Gospel and Aboriginal Spirituality,"
Occasional Bulletin [Darwin: Nungalinya College] 42 (1989), pp. 1-7.
7
D o n Carrington, 'Jesus' Dreaming: D o i n g Theology through Aboriginal Sto-
ries" in J. Houson (ed.), The Cultured Pearl: Australian Readings in Cross-Cultural Theology
and Mission. (Melbourne: Victorian Council of Churches, 1986), pp. 2 6 1 - 2 7 2 .
milieu."8 To this end, the College's distance education scheme, which
educates Aboriginal ministers while they remain at their community
base enables them to combine Christian ideology with Christian praxis
in the appropriate cultural setting thereby transposing the message
into a meaningful Aboriginal context.
The Reverend Djiniyini Gondarra, an Elcho Islander and the first
Aborigine to be ordained in the Uniting Church in Australia with full
theological training, has also lectured at Nungalinya College. Gondarra
is probably the best-known writer and champion of Aboriginal Chris-
tianity. He is aware that the Western approach to theology has both
its plums and its pits, and points out that Western theology is "moul-
ded by Western philosophies" (thus echoing Gerald West), and "pre-
occupied with intellectual concerns, especially those having to do with
faith and reason."9 Gondarra believes that Westerners reduce the
Christian faith to abstract concepts which might have answered the
questions of the past, but which fail to deal with today's issues—such
as land rights, racism and oppression, and social problems such as
alcohol abuse—and have done little to change these situations.
Gondarra sees the need for reconciling the tension between tradi-
tional Aboriginal values and Western values. He advocates breaking
away from the individualism and rationalism of Western theology in
order to allow "the Word of God to work with full power" and to
fulfill its task in the Aboriginal Church. He also lays much emphasis
on the notions of power and freedom, quoting biblical texts to ar-
ticulate the powerlessness of the Aboriginal people in the face of
colonial imperialism and the need for freedom from oppression. He
sums up evangelical theology in quite an orthodox manner: the love
and justice of God; the uniqueness and finality of Jesus Christ; the
regenerating and empowering of the Holy Spirit; the need for repen-
tance and faith; the life and witness of the church; and a belief in
the personal return of Jesus Christ. At the same time, however, he
sees in the Western church context "captivities" which have to be
overcome.
On the question of an Aboriginal theology his answer is that Christ
must be promoted as "the living and acceptable part of their own
[Aboriginal] ceremony and culture" and that Aboriginal Christian

8
Carrington, "Jesus' Dreaming," p. 270.
9
Djiniyini Gondarra, "Overcoming the Capdvities of the Western Church Con-
text," in The Cultured Pearl, pp. 176-182.
leaders need to "plant Christ in Aboriginal soil rather than transplant
Western forms of Christianity."10 He quotes the Hebrew Bible with
analogies to the Aboriginal situation in what may be called a discus-
sion of Aboriginal hermeneutics. He cites 2 Samuel 12, the story of
the poor man's lamb being taken by the rich man, as one with which
Aborigines can readily identify. In this story, the poor are equated
with the Aborigines and the rich are seen as white Australians.
Even more pertinent to the Aboriginal situation is the biblical
example in 1 Kings 21 of the abuse of power by both civil and
religious authorities. The story of Naboth's vineyard relates to the
possession of Naboth's land by King Ahab of Samaria. One can see
how Aborigines easily identify this biblical passage with their own
situation. When Ahab demands that Naboth give him his vineyard
and vegetable garden, Naboth replies:
The Lord forbid that I should give you my ancestral heritage.
After Naboth is stoned to death, Gondarra point out:
Elijah is told, "Go to King Ahab of Samaria. You will find him in
Naboth's vineyard, about to take possession of it. Tell him that I the
Lord, say to him, 'After murdering the man, are you taking over his
property as well?' Tell him that this is what I say: 'In the very place
that the dogs licked up Naboth's blood they will lick up your blood!'"
When Ahab saw Elijah, he said, "Have you caught up with me, my
enemy?" "Yes" Elijah answered. "You have devoted yourself completely
to doing what is wrong in the Lord's sight."

The obvious connection made here is to the past mistreatment of

Aborigines at the hands of whites, and the dispossession of Aboriginal
land. Gondarra believes that there is conflict between human law
and the law of God, and it is the duty of Christians to "confront the
injustice of the oppressive and unjust laws and to obey God."11 He
then elucidates on the theme of freedom as being the keynote of
Christ's mission to the world. Here we can see parallels with liberation
theology. He sees that Christ's message is really focussed on the unfree,
the poor, the captive, the oppressed and those who are deeply hurt.
He equates the poor with the Aborigines and cites Luke 16:19-24,
the parable of the poor man Lazarus who desired to be fed the
crumbs from the rich man's table, as pertinent to the Aboriginal
situation:

10
Gondarra, "Captivities," p. 177
11
Gondarra, "Captivities," p. 179.
 I see the poor man Lazarus is like the black Australians who are strug-
gling to maintain their identity in the midst of the foreign white man's
world.
The appeal is for release from oppression. He quotes Galatians 5:1:
For freedom Christ has set us free, so stand firm and do not submit
again to the yoke of slavery.

The theme of freedom from white domination is quite clear in

Gondarra's article. The terms "power, oppressed, deprived" recur
frequendy in this discourse. The notion of powerlessness is one which
has particular relevance to Aboriginal people as they have felt com-
pletely powerless in the past. The "good news" is that freedom can
be brought about by the freedom that Jesus Christ advocated.
Gondarra then proceeds to discuss how denominational fragmenta-
tion of the Christian message created disunity among Aborigines and
contributed to their powerlessness. He advocates an Aboriginal the-
ology in order to effect an Aboriginal Christian solidarity.
In a recent publication, 12 George Rosendale compares Aborigines,
who were forced off their homeland area into one which suited white
Australians, with the Israelites in Egypt. Rosendale refers to Exod.
3:1-10 as being of relevance:

God saw how the Egyptians were oppressing them. He heard their
cry. With his eyes he saw what was going on in that place. He saw
and heard. He said to Moses, "I am coming to rescue my people. I
am sending you to do that for me."
When he hears this story, he says, he often thinks of the history of
Hopevale. 13 The Israelite story, he says, is very much like Aboriginal
history:
We were taken from our land and brought down to Woorabinda. We
had to live in exile and people threw stones at us. I see not only our
life and Hopevale, but my life as an individual very much like this.

12
George Rosendale, Spirituality for Aboriginal Christians (Darwin: Nungalinya Col-
lege, 1993), p. 19.
13
A Lutheran mission station first established near C a p e Bedford, North
Queensland, in the 1880s. Later the mission was moved to Hope Valley, then in
1943 the mission people were shipped south, without warning, some to Palm Island
and some to Woorabinda (near Rockhampton, south-central Queensland), a govern-
ment seulement for Aboriginal people established in 1926. Around 1951 some of
the Woorabinda people who were descendents of Cape Bedford Aborigines, chose
to move back to Hopevale.
 The white people came and took these kids from their mothers' arms,
sent them away never to be seen again. Just imagine the pain and
suffering the parents had to go through. Where it affected them most
was in the area of their spirituality.

Nowadays, in the 1990s, many urban-dwellers and those whose par-

ents and grandparents grew up on a mission station, have very tenu-
ous links to a "traditional" Aboriginal spiritual heritage and possess
only a vague knowledge of the beliefs and ritual activities of their
ancestors, having been denied access to this knowledge through the
processes of missionization, modernization and urbanization. For some
Aborigines, Christianity is their first religion, having been indoctri-
nated into the missionary message and enculturated into Western
ways for two or more generations. Some negate the plausibility or
even desirability of looking to traditional beliefs as an essential ingre-
dient of their own lives.
The Reverend Eddie Law, a Uniting Church minister and an
Aborigine, takes an approach which attempts to reconcile the two
belief systems. Born and raised on the outskirts of Eidsvold, a small
town inland from the coastal town of Bundaberg and Maryborough
in south-east Queensland, he learned about traditional Aboriginal
spirituality from his grandfather and later trained in Christian min-
istry at the Uniting Church's Nungalinya College.
His own way of synthesizing tradition and Christianity is to reflect
on stories his grandfather told him and to relate these incidents to
passages in the Bible. He works with his own people in the Brisbane
area, usually by first recounting an Aboriginal story and then look-
ing to the Bible for equivalences, instead of the reverse. Often he
meets with people in a Brisbane park frequented by Aboriginal people
and tells them Dreaming stories and their scriptural equivalences.
The story-telling modus operandi, in an outdoor setting, promotes a
typically Aboriginal style of discourse.
Eddie Law's own conversion experience is interesting to relate since
it included components of both Christianity and Aboriginal culture
and influenced his ministerial approach. Before doing so, however, it
is necessary to give a brief description of one relevant aspect of
Aboriginal culture: the wandjina, a figure from antiquity which ap-
pears in cave and rock art in certain regions of Australia; this figure
is pertinent to Law's conversion.
There is no English equivalent which appropriately conveys the notion
of wandjina, described variously by anthropologists as: a generalized
power, a vital, (yet often destructive) personified force, both regen-
erative and reproductive, a force which is in both nature and in
human beings. 14 A comparable notion is ungud, usually portrayed
graphically as a rainbow, or a rainbow serpent. The region in which
the word ungud is used is remarkable for paintings of wandjina—
images of heads surrounded by an aura of rays emanating from the
head, bounded by a horse-shoe shaped curved line; the faces have
eyes and a nose but no mouth and sometimes lack bodies. The word
ungud is put to many uses: sometimes it means a person, sometimes
a far-off time, so it corresponds to The Dreaming, and is used as an
ultimate explanation of things as they are.15 Ungud makes spirit babies
and brings them down in the rain, and wandjina pictures are ungud.
In order to explain the synthesis between Aboriginal culture, Ab-
original spirituality and Christianity, Eddie Law interprets these
wandjina as visions that "clever men" or medicine men experienced
(and then conveyed through their art) of humankind being made in
God's image, thus skilfully bending and shaping an intrinsically tra-
ditional Aboriginal concept into a well-formulated Christian belief.
Like many other Aborigines who have turned to Christianity as a
means of release from alcohol,16 Eddie had a sudden conversion one
night while extremely intoxicated. His own accounts of this night
parallel those of many others. During the conversion experience (the
incident which led him to become a born again Christian) a Church
of Christ minister, whose name was David Birrell, spoke to him about
Christ accepting him just the way he was:
The night I gave my heart to the Lord, I was blind, blind drunk and
this minister guy came up to me and said, "give your heart to the
Lord Eddie." I said, "Ah no, wait till I sober up, then I will. He said,
"Ah no, God wants you the way that you are, he will take you." All
the while I knew there was God and I had nowhere else to turn. I
said, "O.K. I will give my life to Christ." Straight away I stood up, no

14
K e n n e t h M a d d o c k , "The World-Creative Powers," in M. Charlesworth,
H. Morphy, D. Bell and K. Maddock (eds.), Religion in Aboriginal Australia (St. Lucia:
University of Queensland Press, 1992), p. 97.
15
Maddock, "World-Creative Powers," p. 97.
16
See for example, Lynne Hume, "Christianity Full Circle: Aboriginal Christian-
ity on Yarrabah Reserve," in T. Swain, and D.B. Rose (eds.), Aboriginal Australians
and Christian Missions (Adelaide: Australian Association for the Study of Religions,
1988), pp. 2 5 0 - 2 6 2 ; Maggie Brady and Kingsley Palmer, " D e p e n d e n c y and
Assertiveness: Three Waves of Christianity a m o n g Pitjanjatjara People at Ooldea
and Yalata," in Aboriginal Australians and Christian Missions, pp. 2 3 6 - 2 4 9 .
 more drink after that, never touched a drink. I felt a clean feeling all
through me. That man who came to me [the minister guy] his name
was Birrell.

What is different about Eddie Law's conversion is his later interpre-

tation of the experience when he was sober. He realised that "Birrell"
had the same sound as the Goreng word birril which has the same
meaning as wandjina. Law explained, and sketched, birril's visual ap-
pearance as exacdy like that of the wandjina: a face with two eyes
and nose but without a mouth, with rays emanating from the oudine
of the face. While other Aboriginal Christian conversion narratives
tell of seeing or sensing images of Christ, or a Christ-like figure,
Law's was intriguingly different as it synthesised the two belief sys-
tems in a most remarkable way. He interpreted his encounter with
David Birrell (whom he subsequently felt to be symbolic of birril) as
a calling from God, after which he turned to Christ and espoused a
Christian lifestyle, and some time later attended Nungalinya College
to train for the ministry.
The sketch he drew to illustrate Birril/ wandjina he described as:
around the edges, red ochre, the divisions represent the future blood
of what was to come, each painted different colours: red, black, yel-
low—representing different races. We know in our mind, the future to
come was Jesus Christ.
The wandjina of traditional Aboriginal culture is thus depicted as encoding
prophetic images of the coming of Christ to Aborigines. Eddie feels that
the wandjina was a type of Aboriginal revelation akin to that experi-
enced by John the Baptist. What Eddie Law calls Birril is the same,
he says, as this image of the wandjina, which is the same thing as
ungud and is a rainbow, which he further interprets as symbolic of
the covenant God established with his people after the flood, men-
tioned in Genesis 9:12-16:
God added: "This is the sign that I am giving for all ages to come, of
the covenant between me and you and every living creature with you.
I set my bow in the clouds to serve as a sign of the covenant between
me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth, and the bow
appears in the clouds, I will recall the covenant I have made between
me and you and all living beings, so that the waters shall never again
become a flood to destroy all mortal beings. As the bow appears in the
clouds, I will see it and recall the everlasting covenant that I have
established between God and all living beings—all mortal creatures
that are on earth."
Thus, says Law, God's covenant with Aboriginal people was revealed
to them through the Dreaming concept of the rainbow:
God put covenant in the rainbow, so rainbow and Birril, represent:
God didn't live here [in Australia] and leave. He made a covenant. If
you look in Acts 17:26, you will see that it says: From one man god
created all races of mankind and made them live throughout the Earth.
He himself fixed the set time and the limit of places they would live.
He placed Aborigines in Australia. God made covenant with Aborigi-
nal people in this land, giving us culture and spirituality so we can
look for him through our culture. Our culture and your culture all
point towards the same god.17
The link between the rainbow of Aboriginal lore and the biblical
covenant is also espoused by Rosendale: 18
What happened afer the flood, when Noah came out? God made
covenant. What was the sign of the covenant? THE RAINBOW. In my
language [Guugu Yimithirr] we call this rainbow "Yirmbal"19 and in
the Kimberleys they call him "Wandjina." In other places they call
him different names.
When we Aborigines talk about rainbow, we have a rainbow-God
and all the stories about it. Now what God says in the covenant sign
is that he's not going to send flood any more, that he's not going to
destroy mankind any more like he did. He repented, he was sorry he
destroyed his own creation. So he sent us his Son.
Both Eddie Law and George Rosendale are synthesising The Dream-
ing and biblical tradition. Further, Eddie Law feels that the absence
of a mouth in the wandjina figures symbolizes the voice God gave to
Aboriginal elders to live in accordance with divine law and teach it
to Aboriginal people, enabling them to evangelize in an Aboriginal
way, just as Christian evangelists spread the word of God to their
people. He suggests that those who accept Jesus as Lord and Saviour
also become the mouth. The theme of communication is further taken
up by Eddie Law to express his understanding of totems. He sees
totems as the connecting link between God, people and land.
Totems, he says, were given to the people by God to remind them
of their own cultural values and, like angels, are messengers of God:

17
Interviews with Reverend Eddie Law conducted by several students at Univer-
sity of Queensland in September 1994, and by the author in April 1995.
18
Rosendale, Spirituality for Aboriginal Christians, pp. 5 and 9. O n pages 9 and 49
of this monograph are illustrations of the wandjina.
19
"Yirmbal" means both "rainbow" and "rainbow serpent" and refers also to an
amethyst python which lives underground in water channels. [Personal communica-
tion, Professor Bruce Rigsby, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Univer-
sity of Queensland].
e.g., two angels were sent by God to save Lot in response to Abra-
ham's plea for help; stars (stars are also Aboriginal totems) guided
the Wise Men to Jesus' birthplace. Other instances of symbolic di-
vine communication are also reflected in the cry of a totemic bird
which warns of immanent danger or conveys a message to Aborigi-
nal people that a relative is ill or about to die. Thus, totems provide
communication between God and people through the medium of
nature, and are God's fax machines:
If we look at the birth of Jesus, no telephone or fax machine to tell
people. God spoke to the people in what they were doing, in the same
way he spoke to the Aboriginal people, through their cultural values . . .
so our totems become like a fax machine.
This is an innovative way of linking modern technology, Aboriginal
concepts and Christianity around the central and essential message
of communication between the transcendent and the human, via the
animal kingdom—though perhaps sliding over the intricacies and com-
plexities of each one in a kind of postmodern pastiche. Both the fax
machine and the totem become metaphors for human links to God.
Law, and other Aboriginal ministers, believe that there are ways
in which the gospel can and should be preached to Aborigines with-
out destroying their own ancestral culture, ways which most mission-
aries failed to recognize. When Law became a Christian in the early
1980s and began studying the Bible, he became aware of similarities
between Aboriginal culture and materials in both the Old and New
Testaments. He made correspondences between The Dreaming sto-
ries and the parables of Jesus; just as Jesus used events from people's
daily lives to convey meaningful messages, the parables could be lik-
ened, he thought, to the everyday life experiences of Aboriginal people.
Law feels that Aborigines can continue to follow their own spiritu-
ality while being Christians, and in fact, when they retain their cul-
ture they are more complete people because they know who and
what they are. He recited Acts 17:26 as indicative of the quality of
all humans:

God made from one the whole human race to dwell on the entire
surface of the earth, and he fixed the ordered seasons and the bound-
aries of their regions.

The idea of boundaries is one that is also adopted by George

Rosendale, who sees boundaries as marking off those sacred Aborigi-
nal areas whose access is permitted only to knowledgeable, initiated
men. He reads into Exod. 19:12, 21, 24 specific understandings of
ancient sacred boundaries:
Mark a boundary around the mountain that the people must not cross.

1e boundary . . . if they

ut the priests and the

The sacredness of land to Aboriginal people is of paramount impor-

tance to traditional spirituality and is of increasing political impor-
tance in a country like Australia which bases many of its economic
assets on mining and other land-exploitative industries. Land has
become a sensitive and explosive political issue. To the Western mind,
land is to be controlled and used for its economic riches; to Aborigi-
nes it is there, not to be owned, but to be "looked after." Aborigines
speak of "taking care of country;" there is the notion of guardianship
of land rather than ownership. It is therefore not surprising that biblical
materials which deal with land are investigated by Aboriginal theo-
logians.
George Rosendale 20 highlights the role of Aborigines as caretakers
of the land:
When we talk about land, we say, this is our land. Actually it is not
our land, we are caretakers of this land. Each family within that tribe
has certain responsibilities in caring for the land.
He makes an admirable attempt21 at extracting from scripture this
notion of guardianship when he writes that God gave mankind re-
sponsibility for the land, reading Gen. 2:15:
Then the Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to culti-
vate it and guard it. . .

and commenting:
See what God said to him, "cultivate it and guard it." They [Aborigines]
guarded it when Captain Cook came here but the guns had the best
of it.
Why are the Aborigines angry about land? Right back through the
generations God gave it to their ancestors to look after. Naboth would
not sell that land because he had no right to sell that land, it wasn't
his. Powerful King Ahab wanted it for himself. It was the same with

20
Rosendale, Spirituality for Aboriginal Christians, p. 2.
21
Rosendale, Spirituality for Aboriginal Christians, pp. 5, 13.
 Aborigines. That land has been handed down to him through his
ancestors. You see why there is so much pain today with us? Because
the same thing has happened here, some powerful fellow comes along
and he takes the land.
. . . They killed our grandfathers for this land. So there's going to be
pain and suffering for a long long dme . . . There's no compensation,
nothing for it, and there's no reconciliation with us. We'll be arguing
about land for the next hundred years if we don't go back to God the
Saviour.

The importance of place and its precedence in Aboriginal thought is

again brought to the fore by Djiniyini Gondarra:22
The people of the Bible understood the significance of a sacred place.
Sacred places in Israel were places where worship of Yahweh was
deepened and personal renewal was experienced. Their understanding
of places where the law was retained and remembered is very close
indeed to the understanding the Aboriginal peoples have of sacred sites.
In Aboriginal culture, when persons approach a sacred site, a sacred
object, or a totem, it is as if they are approaching the tablets of stone
Moses brought down from the mountain.

The central importance of place and landforms to Aboriginal spin-

tuality creates, however, a stumbling block when the attempt is made
to include this aspect in any search for cultural equivalences. Guboo
Ted Thomas tries but somehow fails to convince. In his article,23
Thomas takes us for a walk in a part of south-eastern Australia to
point out the importance of the land, even in the modern context,
for Aboriginal people and the special reverence for certain sites and
natural land formations. As he says, "one can sense spiritual signifi-
cance and the presence of spirits." Sacredness, power and energy
seem to emanate from nature, and rocks take on meaning the more
you dwell on them:
Seeing these faces in the rocks is what I call the spirit. When you are
there you get a feeling of our ancestors roaming all through the area
thirty or forty thousand years ago.

In fact, some places are so powerful, says Thomas, that if you touch
them "your hand will be pushed to the ground." That, he says, is
"Koorie [Aboriginal] power." The rocks were not made by human

22
Djiniyini Gondarra and D o n Carrington, "Commentary on 'Sacred Sites'," in
R.A. Evans and A.F. Evans (eds.), Human Rights (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1983), pp. 1 1 3 ‫־‬
118.
23
T e d G u b o o Thomas, "The Land is Sacred: Renewing the Dreaming in Mod-
ern Australia," in G.W. Trompf (ed.), The Gospel is not Western: Black Theologies from
the Southwest Pacific (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1987), pp. 9 0 - 9 4 .
hands but by the Almighty. The sharp distinction between Aboriginal
and European reverence towards the land is poignandy articulated
in his last paragraph. When he showed the sacred areas of his valley
to people from the Department of Forestry they failed to understand
what is to Aborigines the sacred meaning of place, instead:

I could see in their eyes they had no clue as to what I was talking
about. They wanted to see stained-glass windows or statues of angels—
something like that would make a place sacred.

Thomas's description of his feelings towards the land are apdy con-
veyed to the sensitive reader, but when he compares the close connec-
tion between Aboriginal spirituality and the land and the sacredness
of the land in biblical accounts, the latter somehow do not quite
connect. For example, he sees the mountains as important in the
Bible because Moses was given the commandments when he went
up on a mountain; water gushed out when Moses struck a rock;
Jesus went up in to the mountains to pray; most churches have been
built on top of hills. However, in making this link between biblical
references and land formations, he is making a rather large herme-
neutical leap.
What Aboriginal theologians fail to address, except for Rosendale's
attempt, is the question of Aboriginal guardianship or stewardship of
land, which is the heart and soul of Aboriginal spirituality; theologi-
cal arguments which attempt to address this issue become superficial
and tenuous. The Dreaming contains concepts and events that are
not comparable with Christianity and only marginally more analo-
gous with material in the Hebrew Bible. The land and The Dream-
ing are one and are linked by a spiritual kinship such that it is
impossible to separate one from the other; animals, birds, country,
humans, and ancestors are inextricably linked for all time. This,
together with the secret-sacred nature of The Dreaming, is the insur-
mountable obstacle to a thorough synthesis of Christianity and tra-
ditional Aboriginal spirituality. Non-initiated men may not have ac-
cess to, or knowledge of, the secrets, and they are unlikely to be held
by a trained Aboriginal Christian minister.
While a fully Aboriginal theology is yet in its infancy, and we
have yet to see a more comprehensive Aboriginal exegesis as far as
the written word is concerned, there are, doubdessly, oral interpre-
tarions which can be gained through more research in Aboriginal
Christian communities, especially research undertaken by Aboriginals.
Oral and visual media of communication fit more comfortably with
Aborigines, and these would be profitable avenues for research. We
already have some outstanding examples of visual imagery which
conveys Christian themes in Aboriginal artwork. Rosemary Crumlin's
Aboriginal Art and. Spirituality24 contains several paintings by Aboriginal
artists: "Crucifixion" (artist Mawalan Marika), "The Crucifixion of
Jesus'5 (Naidjiwarra Amagula), "The Ascension of Jesus" (Naidjiwarra
Amagula), "The Dead Christ in the Tree 55 (Hector Sundaloo
Djandulu), "Christ and the Batde" (Paddy Williams), "Moses and
God and the Ten Commandments55 (Jarinjanu David Downs), "Last
Journey of Jesus55 (Greg Mosquito and other Balgo men) and "Sta-
tions of the Cross" (Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann). Each one
of these paintings uses traditional techniques and forms and incorpo-
rates Aboriginal motifs—Australian country in abstract form, totemic
animals and birds, death as a tree burial, and Ungunmerr-Baumann's
depictions of Jesus show a Christ in abstract form with a head not
unlike the wandjina. These works of art demonstrate that the spiritu-
ality of Aborigines is often a synthesis of traditional rituals and cer-
emony with more recent Christian stories.25
Some of these paintings could best be described as icons. Anglican
Bishop John Lewis's reaction to pictorial representations of visions
seen by Yarrabah Christians was that they were similar to church
iconography.26 The icon belongs to the domain of revelation and is
a pictorial realisation of the Word. Thus, the work of an iconographer
has not only an artistic dimension, but an intellectual and theological
one. Like scripture, an icon has an ontological dimension, providing
spiritual communion for those who contemplate it; it is a window
through which the viewer can contemplate deity and the mysteries
which the iconic image suggests. Icons usually portray an admixture
of the human and the divine and can evoke strong emotions of a
spiritual nature through contemplation. They combine sense impres-
sions with spiritual intuitions in a way which scriptural words may
not, especially for peoples whose cultural knowledge is not derived
from written sources.

24
Rosemary Crumlin (ed.), Aboriginal Art and Spirituality (Melbourne: Collins Dove,
1991).
25
Crumlin, Aboriginal Art and Spirituality, p. 42.
26
See Lynne Hume, Yarrabah: Christian Phoenix. (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation;
Brisbane: University of Queensland, 1990), pp. 2 0 3 - 2 0 4 .
 T h i s is particularly pertinent to p e o p l e s s u c h as Aboriginal Austra-
lians w h o s e tradition o f i m p a r t i n g secret-sacred k n o w l e d g e is princi-
pally t h r o u g h material i m a g e s s u c h as bark paintings, c a v e paintings,
sacred objects a n d the natural e n v i r o n m e n t . T h e Aboriginal w o r l d is
alive w i t h e v i d e n c e o f the creative ancestors; beings w h o r o a m e d the
land a n d m e t a m o r p h o s e d into the l a n d s c a p e itself, resting at certain
places a n d i m b u i n g the l a n d w i t h the essence o f their sacredness.
T h e r e is a n intimate association o f p a i n t e d i m a g e s a n d the p o w e r s
they represent. D r e a m i n g stories o f the travels o f these ancestors are
c o n v e y e d t h r o u g h i m a g e s w h i c h m e a n very little to n o n - A b o r i g i n e s
but h a v e multiple levels o f m e a n i n g to Aboriginal p e o p l e themselves,
the k n o w l e d g e p a i n t e d into the i m a g e b e i n g "read" at several levels:
o n e level m a y b e the appreciation o f a D r e a m i n g story as a type o f
g e o g r a p h i c a l map; a n o t h e r level m a y c o n v e y a certain a m o u n t of
k n o w l e d g e required to a d e q u a t e l y "read" the story (the particular
m y t h s u r r o u n d i n g this ancestor a n d his travels); yet a third level o f
m e a n i n g w o u l d b e realised by o n e w h o is initiated, a n d certain items
within the p a i n t i n g itself w o u l d relay the mystery a n d knowledge
p e r m i t t e d only to those few.
I c o n o g r a p h y is therefore a particularly relevant w a y o f c o n v e y i n g
a n Aboriginal theology. U s i n g Aboriginal styles o f graphic i m a g e r y
(albeit with m o d e r n t e c h n o l o g y a n d materials), the essence o f the
m e s s a g e is c o n v e y e d in a peculiarly Aboriginal w a y . Paintings such
as those b y Patricia Marrfurra ("Easter"), a n d D o m i n i c a Katyirr
("Christ is Born") are d e m o n s t r a t i v e o f this style o f art. T h e s e t w o
w o m e n , a m o n g several others, f o r m part o f M e r r e p e n Arts, an e n -
terprise o f the Aboriginal w o m e n o f N a u i y u , D a l y River, N o r t h e r n
Territory w h o are well k n o w n for their artwork a n d h a v e b e c o m e
self supporting by marketing g r e e t i n g cards f r o m the designs o f their
o w n paintings.
Marrfurra's "Easter" (figure 1) is abstract. At top centre is a n ovoid,
with rays e m a n a t i n g f r o m it in m u c h the s a m e w a y as tracks are
depicted in a painting o f a traditional mythological story. T h e colours
are black, w h i t e a n d o c h r e o u s reds a n d yellows. T h e impression o n e
gets from l o o k i n g at this p a i n t i n g is o n e o f a n essential central e m i -
n e n c e f r o m w h i c h all things e m e r g e . Marrfurra's e x p l a n a t i o n o f her
painting is that the focus is o n J e s u s as the Light o f the W o r l d ,
t h r o u g h the Resurrection. Black a n d w h i t e represent the sorrows a n d
j o y s o f Christ's j o u r n e y t h r o u g h life. P a l m s are strewn in his h o n o u r
a n d the blaze o f light is the risen Christ.
 1. Easter. © P a t r i c i a M a r r f u r r a (artist), 1993.

2. Christ is born. © D o m i n i c a Katyirr (artist), 1991

 Katyirr's "Christ is Born' 5 (figure 2) is of a dark b r o w n b a b y lying
in a paperbark crib within the centre o f a circle from w h i c h four
straight lines e m e r g e a n d e x t e n d to the sides o f the picture. F o u r
d i a g o n a l w a v y lines, again like tracks, emanate from the baby's b e d
to reach to e a c h o f the corners o f the paindng. T h e y represent the
w a y in w h i c h rain brings n e w life to the earth as J e s u s represents
N e w Life. T h e w a v e from top right to left is a n e w rainbow, again
a r e m i n d e r o f Jesus. T h e central circle is painted in white, b r o w n ,
black a n d o c h r e o u s reds a n d yellows to show that Christ was b o r n
for all p e o p l e o f the earth.
T h e typicality o f Aboriginal traditional designs are present in b o t h
these paintings, as well as in those painted by m a n y other w o m e n o f
M e r r e p e n Arts. T h e paintings vary from totally abstract to m o r e
graphic figures w h i c h resemble the m o t h e r and child i c o n o g r a p h y o f
Byzantine influence. In all these paintings, landscape, flora a n d f a u n a
are graphically or figuratively Australian. T h e essence of Aboriginal
Australia is b l e n d e d with the essence o f Christianity, as p e r c e i v e d b y
these artists.
Jerry J a n g a l a ' s " T h e Christmas Story" (described as a Warlpiri
Iconograph) 2 7 contains the essence o f the story o f the birth o f Christ,
m i x e d with the Aboriginal i m p o r t a n c e o f landscapes. G o d (as three
persons) sends a n angel to M a r y a n d J o s e p h in Nazareth; d o n k e y
a n d h u m a n tracks mark the p a t h they take to B e t h l e h e m ; a s h i n i n g
star s h o w s the three wise m e n travelling on camels to B e t h l e h e m
a n d returning to their country by another route; angels a p p e a r to
shepherds around their campfire; M a r y and J o s e p h flee with the b a b y
from Bethlehem to Egypt and return eventually to Nazareth. T h r o u g h -
out the total picture all characters are represented as abstract U-
shapes (traditional artistic symbols for persons) and the voyage through-
o u t is m a r k e d by h u m a n a n d animal tracks. Both story-telling a n d
painting are traditional m e a n s o f passing on knowledge a n d they are
b e i n g synthesized to c o n v e y Christian messages in a n appropriately
Aboriginal way.
T h e postmodernists have w a r n e d us of the p o w e r a n d peril o f
discourse, o f its temporality a n d uncertainties. But it is perhaps through
the m e d i u m o f images, rather than discourse, that s o m e m e a n i n g f u l
coalitions c a n b e f o r m e d b e t w e e n two disparate worldviews. As w e

27
Reproduced in John Harris, One Blood: 200 Tears of Aboriginal Encounter with Chris-
tianity, a Story of Hope (Sutherland: Albatross Books, 1990), p. 799.
absorb the b e a u t y o f ancient works o f art a n d listen to the m u s i c o f
past centuries, the tension b e t w e e n discourse a n d c o g n i d o n dissipates
a n d is replaced b y a n intuitive cognitive c o n c o r d a n c e . T h e perils o f
interpreting the n u a n c e s o f m e a n i n g t h r o u g h the distortions o f trans-
lations f r o m o n e l a n g u a g e to a n o t h e r , a n d through t i m e a n d space,
are s o m e w h a t displaced by the image w h i c h c o n v e y s polyvalent m e s -
sages t h r o u g h the m e d i u m o f u n s p o k e n symbols.

Conclusion

A l t h o u g h s o m e A b o r i g i n e s regard Christianity as a "Whitefella" re-

ligion, for m a n y it is the religion o f their parents a n d their c h o s e n
religion. Aboriginal Christians are therefore searching for their o w n
understandings o f Christian scriptures w i t h o u t the cultural b a g g a g e
o f the Whites. T h e future directions for Aboriginal Christian leaders,
as e n v i s a g e d b y G o n d a r r a , L a w , R o s e n d a l e a n d others, is p o w e r f u l
biblical p r e a c h i n g , replacing w h a t they regard as intellectual g a m e s
o f the Whitefellas with a simplicity o f s p e e c h a n d d e e p personal
experience; the intellectual a p p r o a c h they regard as particularly White.
Aboriginal p e o p l e w a n t the f r e e d o m to m a k e their o w n decisions
a n d to organize themselves in a n Aboriginal w a y , w h i c h m e a n s bring-
ing i n d i g e n o u s cultural c o m p o n e n t s into meetings, services a n d in all
areas o f organization.
It is a curious irony that while Aboriginal Christians are trying to
e q u a t e a n i m p o s e d belief system with their o w n very ancient past,
m a n y n o n - A b o r i g i n e s have b e c o m e disillusioned with Christianity a n d
are looking to i n d i g e n o u s belief systems (such as A m e r i n d i a n and
Aboriginal), a n d to a n a n c i e n t Celtic p a g a n past, to create a n e w
spiritual identity for themselves. Aboriginal G u b o o T e d T h o m a s , w h o
takes white folk into the bush to partake in a R e n e w i n g o f the D r e a m -
ing c e r e m o n y at W a l l a g a Lakes 2 8 realized this a n o m a l y w h e n he said
"I try to s h o w t h e m that w e are part o f the trees, part o f the bush,
part of everything, and it is wonderful, because this is what so many
whites are searching for in Australia.'29‫י‬
T o return, finally, to the b e g i n n i n g , let us allow the T i v o f W e s t

28
He reports that in spring and summer over a hundred non-Aboriginal people
participate in this revival at the lakes and in the mountains.
29
Thomas, "The Land is Sacred," p. 94 (my emphasis).
Africa to h a v e the last w o r d . A t the c o m p l e t i o n o f L a u r a B o h a n n a n , s
a c c o u n t o f Shakespeare's Hamlet, the o l d m a n m a d e s o o t h i n g noises
a n d p o u r e d her s o m e m o r e beer, saying:

You tell the story well, and we are listening. But it is clear that the
elders of your country have never told you what the story really means.
No, don't interrupt! We believe you when you say your marriage eus-
toms are different, or your clothes and weapons. But people are the
same everywhere.
Listen and I will tell you how it was and how your story will go,
then you may tell me if I am right. Sometime you must tell us some
more stories of your country. We, who are elders, will instruct you in
their true meaning, so that when you return to your own land your
elders will see that you have not been sitting in the bush, but among
those w h o know things and who have taught you wisdom.
 R E A D I N G AS A PHILISTINE: T H E A N C I E N T AND
MODERN HISTORY OF A CULTURAL SLUR

David Jobling and Catherine Rose

E d w a r d S a i d s u b d d e s a review article o n M i c h a e l W a l z e r , s Exodus

and Revolution "A C a n a a n i t e R e a d i n g " (Said, 1988; W a l z e r , 1985).
W r i t i n g as a Palestinian, S a i d critiques the logic w h e r e b y Walzer
applies the biblical " e x o d u s " p a r a d i g m first to liberation in general,
a n d then to the politics o f m o d e r n Israel. T h e p r o b l e m lies, o f course,
n o t in the "exodus" p a r a d i g m as such, the release o f slaves f r o m
their oppressors (Egyptians), but in the sequel to the E x o d u s story,
the c o n q u e s t o f C a n a a n . F r o m a C a n a a n i t e perspective, the con-
quest story tells h o w o n e ' s o w n p e o p l e h a v e to b e dispossessed to
fulfil a p r o m i s e o f liberation to a n o t h e r p e o p l e ; a n d this is the posi-
tion in w h i c h m o d e r n Palestinians are p l a c e d b y the a p p l i c a t i o n o f
the e x o d u s / c o n q u e s t p a r a d i g m to the creation o f the state o f Israel.
A n a n a l o g o u s e x a m p l e is f o u n d in R o b e r t Warrior's "Canaanites,
C o w b o y s , a n d Indians." W r i t i n g as a N a t i v e A m e r i c a n in response
to the w h i t e c o n q u e s t o f N o r t h A m e r i c a , Warrior likewise identifies
with the Canaanites. Both Said a n d Warrior see the biblical Canaanites
as a g r o u p w h o s e narrative subjectivity the text has s u b m e r g e d , a n d
b y restoring that subjectivity t h e y assert b y a n a l o g y the s u b m e r g e d
subjectivity o f their o w n g r o u p s in current discourse.
W h a t w e offer here is a Philistine r e a d i n g o f the Philistines in the
Bible. S u c h a r e a d i n g s e e m s at first sight to b e different in principle
from the C a n a a n i t e readings. T h e r e are, so far as w e k n o w , n o current
political groups w h i c h seek to assert their interests t h r o u g h a n a l o g y
w i t h those o f the biblical Philistines. 1 But this lack is offset, w e think,
by the fact that, at least since the e n d o f the s e v e n t e e n t h century,
p e o p l e in the W e s t h a v e called e a c h o t h e r "Philistines," m o s t lately
to i m p l y artistic illiteracy. A s w e shall see, s u c h u s a g e also f u n c t i o n s
to s u b m e r g e the subjectivity o f specific groups.

' It may, however, be more than a historical irony that Said's Palestinian com-
munity, typologically "Canaanites," are etymologically "Philistines." A rumour that
we have been unable to confirm has it that some Palestinians in the intifada refer to
themselves as "Philistines."
 In fact, in a t t e m p t i n g a Philistine reading, w e are, like S a i d a n d
Warrior, writing o n o u r o w n behalf, o n b e h a l f o f g r o u p s o f w h i c h
w e are a part. But this will e m e r g e o n l y at the e n d o f o u r discussion,
a n d for n o w w e c a n justify o u r enterprise o n m o r e g e n e r a l grounds.
W e see it as always m e t h o d o l o g i c a l l y appropriate a n d necessary to
restore s u b m e r g e d subjectivities in texts, since s u c h textual strategies
o f s u b m e r s i o n will inevitably p r o v e to b e part o f cultural systems o f
exclusion. T h e m o r e culturally i m p o r t a n t the text, a n d the more
p r o m i n e n t the g r o u p w h o s e subjectivity the text s u b m e r g e s , the m o r e
vital is this work o f analysis. T h e centrality o f the Bible in o u r cul-
ture, a n d the p r o m i n e n c e o f the Philistines in the J e w i s h Bible, d o
n o t n e e d to b e argued. W e c a n b e c o n f i d e n t a pnon, therefore, that
w h a t the Bible d o e s w i t h the Philistines will b e i m p l i c a t e d in systems
o f e x c l u s i o n in o u r o w n biblically s h a p e d culture. T h i s w o u l d b e so
e v e n if it w e r e n o t strikingly a n d o d d l y c o n f i r m e d b y the m o d e r n
history o f the term "Philistine."
Still, it w a s that history that p r o v i d e d us w i t h o u r impulse, a n d it
will structure o u r paper. O u r r e a d i n g is intertextual·, w e p u t the text o f
the Bible, as it treats o f the Philistines, alongside the "text' 5 o f the
m o d e r n w e s t e r n discourse a b o u t Philistines (including cases w h e r e
this s e e m s to h a v e d i v e r g e d far f r o m a n y biblical roots), to see h o w
these texts m a y interpret e a c h other. W e b e g i n n o t w i t h the Bible
but w i t h the cultural logic o f the m o d e r n usage, a n d o n l y t h e n ask
h o w this u s a g e informs a n d is i n f o r m e d b y the r e a d i n g o f the bibli-
cal text. O u r analytic categories b e g i n w i t h T e r r y E a g l e t o n , s "trip-
tych o f . . . class, race a n d gender 5 ' (5), but various o t h e r critical cat-
egories will e m e r g e a l o n g the w a y . B a s e d o n this analysis, w e will
finally exploit in a direct w a y the special n u a n c e o f "Philistine read-
ing" as anti-aesthetic reading. W e will take o n ourselves the subjectiv-
ity o f m o d e r n "Philistines," to press the q u e s t i o n o f h o w a certain
recent fashion o f a p p r o a c h i n g the Bible as high literary art is complicit,
b y its failure to e n g a g e feminist a n d o t h e r interested discourses, in
the system o f exclusions w h i c h o u r work will identify.

1. Philistines in Modern Discourse

W e d o n o t p r e t e n d to c o v e r all o f the g r o u n d i m p l i e d in this h e a d -

ing. S o far as w e are a w a r e , there h a v e b e e n n o significant turns in
the c o m m o n usage o f "Philistine" in the twentieth century, a n d n o
major writing on the subject. It has become one of those terms whose
meaning everyone "just knows." T h e vagueness of the term, the feel-
ing that it needs no justification, is very much a part of the way it
does its cultural work.
We choose to go back to earlier, formative stages. We begin in
Germany, first with the term Philister in student language, and then
with the extremely important developments among the Romantics.
These developments are associated above all with the name of Goethe,
but we shall confine ourselves largely to a satire by Clemens Brentano
entided "The Philistine Before, In and After History,1"2 which is of
particular value for our study because it includes a section on the
Philistines in the Jewish Bible, so that it is possible to observe
Brentano's own understanding of the relations between Philistines
ancient and modern.
Leaving Germany for England, we shall then consider the work of
the person most responsible for making "Philistine" a popular Eng-
lish word, the nineteenth-century writer and educator Matthew Arnold.

A. Germany: From Jena to Brentano

A very sporadic use of "Philistine" is attested in English from about

the end of the seventeenth century: "Persons regarded as 'the en-
emy', into whose hands one may fall, e.g. bailiffs, literary critics, etc.;
formerly, also . . . the debauched or drunken" (Oxford University Press:
2:2153). This suggests two distinct lines of meaning: on the one hand,
a meaning related to the people themselves, that their habits are
despicable; on the other, a meaning based on one's relationship to
them, that they may have power over the person who designates them
"Philistine." These double lines of meaning will prove important.
But the first consistent modern meaning of "Philistine" appears at
about the same time, among German students, beginning in Jena, to
designate the non-student townsfolk. In the constitution of the Ger-
man states, students enjoyed enormous advantages over townsfolk.
T h e town was dependent economically on the students, and the laws
were heavily biased towards their interests. Students became heavily
indebted to the townsfolk who sold and rented things to them. In
student songs about the Philistines, two themes stand out. O n e is
utter contempt, which sees townsfolk, in their setded, conservative, small-

2
See works cited. There is, so far as we know, no English translation.
town way of life, as inferior and existing merely to be exploited in
any way possible. T h e other is indebtedness; the students need the
Philistines, and their extravagance may eventually give the Philistines
power over them (for this summary, see Westerkamp: 4—11).
T h e story goes that this use of "Philistine" originated when a cler-
gyman chose as the text for his burial sermon for a student who had
died in a town-gown skirmish, "The Philistines are upon you, Samson!"
Qudg. 16:9, etc.; see Westerkamp: 13; Grimm and Grimm: vol. 12,
1826). While this story may be apocryphal, there is certainly a link
between the use of "Philistine" and the Samson story. "A student in
his first term was . . . a Fuchs (Fox). When the second term came
round he became a Brandfiichs—and . . . he was, metaphorically speak-
ing, let loose with implicit sanction to lay waste the vineyards and
gardens of the Philistines" (Dawson: 98; the reference is to Samson's
exploit in Judg. 15:4—5).
We shall return to some specific aspects of the student usage. Before
moving on, it is worth underlining that this first consistent modern
usage of "Philistine" portrays those using the term in a worse light
than their opponents! There is little development of the usage in
Germany in the eighteenth century until the rise of the Romantic
movement, and especially the appearance of Goethe. Then, "Philis-
tine" rapidly takes on a rather broad meaning, one which still owes
much to the student usage, in that it mocks small-town conservatism
and self-satisfaction, 3 but which also extends into the artistic and
intellectual spheres, as the rebellion of the Romantics against the
stagnation which they see to be the result of the Enlightenment. T h e
apparent triumph of reason had led, for the Romantics, to a smug
self-satisfaction, an assumption that all human problems were on their
way to being solved, a sense of domination over nature through
technology. All this is "Philistine" (Westerkamp: 2052‫)־‬.
In 1811, Clemens Brentano 4 was a member of a dining club in
Berlin, made up of intellectual leaders "mostiy from the high Prus-
sian aristocracy" (Westerkamp: 97), and his "The Philistine Before,
In and After History" was produced ad hoc to provide an evening's

3
Westerkamp (5) disagrees, seeing the student and Romantic usages as indepen-
dent. Brentano's work in particular seems to us to bring the two together.
4
1778-1842. Best known for his collaboration with Achim von Arnim on Des
Knaben Wunderhom (18058‫)־‬, one of the most important early collections of German
folk literature.
entertainment for the club. It was not intended for publication. Bren-
tano sets out to parody a pedantic scholarly work, to produce, in
fact, a Philistine treatise on the Philistines; it is, it seems, merely to
give the work an appearance of scientific completeness that he
even includes the biblical section. It is not a part of his agenda to
answer our question, why the ancient term "Philistine" should have
been chosen as a modern category. Nonetheless, within the loose
structure and the humorous treatment, striking links do get made
between past and present, and our question does get answered at a
certain level.
T h e three sections enumerated in Brentano's tide—"Before His-
tory, , ‫" י‬In History, ‫ יי‬and "After History"—in fact make up less than
half of his parody. They are preceded and followed by various com-
ments on the Philistines of his own time, with emphasis on provin-
cial dullness (190-98, 213-29; unattributed page references in this
section are to Brentano). T h e material on the biblical Philistines is in
the section "In History. , ‫ י‬But before considering this, it is useful to
look at "Before History" (198-201). Here, Brentano draws on the
mystic Jakob Böhme to present a thoroughly dualistic view of ere-
ation. In the beginning, the principles of Yes and No were united in
the divine being. Then Lucifer, the No principle, tried to raise itself
above the Yes, and was thrown to earth. Lucifer is, for Brentano,
"the first Philistine or the idea of the Philistine" (199). This was the
first Fall, and it was from the Ideal into the Material, the Material
being identified with the Philistine. In a second Fall, the Idea (Adam)
was again overcome by the material (Eve), whence sprang the sin—
likewise identified with the Philistine—on account of which God
brought the flood. But the Philistine idea survived the flood in the
person of Noah's son H a m (Brentano uses Gen. 10:14, which in-
eludes the Philistines among Ham's descendants). A good example of
Brentano's way of linking past and present is his comment that modern
Philistines hold the "scientific view" that the rainbow, the sign of the
covenant, is an optical illusion (201). In the "Before History" section,
then, all in the greatest fun, "Philistine" is raised into a universal
dualistic category, connoting above all the materialism of the En-
lightenment in its opposition to Romantic idealism.
Before reading in detail the most important section, "In History"
(202-208), we make a general comment on Brentano's attitude to
Jews. Despite the fact that to call people Philistines would seem to
put oneself in the position of a Jew, Brentano shares the anti-semitism
of his time. T h e club for which the parody was written explicidy
excluded from its membership both Jews and Philistines (Westerkamp:
97)! Brentano sees the Philistines as the enemies of the Jews only up
to the time when the Jews, in crucifying the Son of God, gave up
not only their election but also "the conflict with the Philistines," so
that Jews and Philistines have now come to "represent the two poles
of perversity" (204).
Brentano's reading of the biblical Philistines begins with the Gen-
esis 10 genealogies, playing on the Philistines' Cretan origin, and the
classical view that "all Cretans are liars" (202). He next turns to
Genesis 26: "Even in their best period they stopped the Israelites'
wells," he notes, drawing conclusions about Philistine quarrelsome-
ness (204). But his attention is drawn mainly to Samson, whom he
sees as "a rare hero" (ibid.), whose constant motive was to make war
on the Philistines. O n the riddle incident (Judges 14) he comments
that "No Philistine ever guessed anything, but rather betrayed" (205,
playing on German erraten/verraten). In his anti-Semitic vein he calls
the Judahites' handing over of Samson to the Philistines (Judg. 15:13)
"a truly Jewish reward" for his services (ibid.; it is interesting how
easily he can separate Samson from the Jews!). He complains of the
modern Philistines' rationalistic disbelief in miracles, reporting how a
Philistine told him that "jawbone" was actually the name of a gen-
era! (ibid.).
Samson, however, became a bit of a Philistine himself, for he
got involved in "whoredom," which Brentano sees as a Philistine
institution:
. . . I call that kind of thing Philistinism, since to satisfy the most glo-
rious human instinct disgustingly and conveniendy, without passion,
without sancdfication by a priest or sanctification by valour, adventure
and danger, is a Philistine thing, . . . it is only because of Philistine
attitudes that the protection of such sinful women can become estab-
lished in a state. (206)

Philistine women belong to this culture of whoredom. Delilah, who

"tormented . . . the hero as much as a Philistine woman can," was
"another courtesan" (ibid.).
Concluding his reading of Samson, Brentano asserts that no Phi-
listine can even comprehend such a hero's death, and he toasts all
the heroes who have died fighting Philistines (207). He has relatively
litde to say about 1 Samuel. He has some fun with the plague of
haemorrhoids (1 Sam. 5:6, etc.). Goliath he refers to as the "chief
Philistine." O n David's sojourn among the Philistines, he ironically
comments that the Philistines built their policy on the expectation
that David would betray his own people. Such baseness in politick-
ing 5 is a major characteristic of Philistines (207).
Before moving to "After History" (210-13), which deals mosdy
with the student use of "Philistine," Brentano makes a key comment.
T h e Philistines, in their rationalistic approach to religion, which re-
gards the old biblical stories as superstition, could never make the
connections that he has been making. "Philistines can never grasp"
that history repeats itself in various "modifications," and that every-
thing, including what they call superstition, must always come back
in new forms (209). This suggests that Brentano perceives some ground,
outside of opportunistic wit, for drawing connections between an-
cient and modern Philistines.
Several threads run through the German data. O n e is the rebel-
lion of youth against age—Brentano seems to have drafted his parody
already in 1799, when still a student (Westerkamp: 7273‫—)־‬writ large
in the rebellion of the Romantics against the Enlightenment. Another
is the individual against the mass. Modern Philistines are almost al-
ways referred to as a group, displaying predictable characteristics;
they are rarely considered as individuals, and one of the many things
they cannot grasp is individual talent and "genius." A third thread is
the spiritual against the material. T h e students see their transactions
with the Philistines over material matters as a necessary evil, particu-
larly annoying since their taken-for-granted intellectual superiority is
not respected in these transactions. Brentano raises the distinction
between those who value "ideas" (his own group) and those con-
cerned only for material prosperity and comfort (the Philistines) into
a cosmic principle.
Though class is rarely an explicit theme, it is everywhere implicit.
T h e difference between students and townsfolk is class-based. But
the class situation is not so simple in Brentano. He keeps aristocratic
company, and often projects a privileged intellectual contempt for
the middle class. But the Romantics' real fight is against an earlier
privileged intellectual generation; t h r o u g h the E n l i g h t e n m e n t ,
Philistinism has taken over the universities and the arts, as well as
the political and social spheres, so that the inner-class is as impor-
tant as the inter-class struggle. Perhaps our best approach to the

5
"Staatsklugheit, mit Niederträchtigkeit verbunden."
issue of class is through the idealist-materialist division. T h e Enlight-
enment attitude to the material world was, as the Romantics no doubt
intuited, redrawing the class m a p of Europe. As will appear in
Matthew Arnold, a new capitalist aristocracy of industrialists and
financiers, and a quite new kind of working class, were being born.
The work of ideology, according to Fredric Jameson (87 and passim),
is the production of class fantasy, and we shall trace this work in all
the data we are looking at. T h e students' sense of themselves as
Samsons or foxes despoiling the Philistines is such fantasy-work, and
so is Brentano's satire. Into the fantasy the themes of gender and
race are woven. We begin with gender. T h e students were all male,
and their sexual abuse of the town women is one of the things com-
plained of by the townsfolk and celebrated in the students' own songs
(Westerkamp: 6, 9). Brentano's coterie is also virtually all-male. A fa-
miliar kind of sexism is to be found in his contrast of Adam as the
spiritual with Eve as the material principle, or in his treatment of
Delilah as a nagging woman (Philistine women are apparendy worse
nags than others). But gender enters his analysis perhaps most sig-
nificandy in his upholding the sanctity of marriage over against the
Philistines who, he claims, do not; the culture of prostitution is part
of the Philistine social system. In contrast to the students, who can
identify with the sexual side of Samson's prowess, Brentano wants to
idealize women and sexuality. Even if heroism can "sanctify" sex as
well as a priest can, 6 it does need to be sanctified. In fact, Brentano
is able to have it both ways, to despise Philistine women while ide-
alizing those of his own class.
There is, of course, no racial difference between the German Phi-
listines and their detractors, but this does not prevent the theme of
race from entering deeply into Brentano's fantasy. T h e very choice
of "Philistines" as a category implies the Bible's quasi-racial sense of
difference, which Brentano draws out in his reference to the curse
on Canaan, Ham's son, in Gen. 9:2527‫־‬. Brentano extends the curse
to all Ham's descendants, including, of course, the Philistines (202).7
Even more revealing is his peculiar interplay of Philistines and Jews,
which brings the category of Philistines within the orbit of German
anti-Semitism. A club that excludes both groups expresses, perhaps,

6
See our earlier quote from Brentano (206): "sanctification by a priest or sanctifi-
cation by valour, adventure and danger."
7
T h e use of Genesis 9 with a racist purpose is well known from recent South
Africa.
a wish that the Philistines were racially different, so that they might
be readily identified.
Such a wish is, in fact, overdy expressed by the Romantic philoso-
pher J o h a n n Gotdieb Fichte just a year after Brentano's satire, and
in exacdy the same context, a speech to a dining club. Fichte wor-
ries about how one may differentiate oneself from a Philistine. Differ-
entiating oneself from a J e w is easy; it is just a matter of not being
circumcised. But in combatting the Philistines, one can scarcely avoid
becoming one oneself; Philistinism may even consist in thinking that
you aren't one!8
This anxiety over one's own identity vis-à-vis the Philistines is easy
to trace also in Brentano, for example in the following telling passage:
It needs particularly to be noted, that the outward m a r k s . . . by no
means suffice to make someone a Philistine; rather, it always depends
on how, given these marks, he faces life. T h e very person who exhibits
all the contrary marks can be a Philistine. . . . Ah, who can be sure
that he is not himself already threaded on a string, and that, if ever
the devil tightens the cord, he will not be hung with other Philistines
like a row of onions around the neck of Satan's grandmother? (212)

Brentano attempts to distance himself from the Philistines rhetorically

by his repeated assertion that they don't know what's going on, that an
essential part of being a Philistine is an inability to grasp things. T h e
Philistines don't know that they are Philistines. 9 In fact, the whole
German discourse about Philistines imposes a character on them and
suppresses their own subjectivity. T h e correctness of one's own ver-
sion of social and other relationships is established rhetorically by
the claim that the "others," precisely because of who they are, are
incapable of any rational version of their own. There is absolutely
no rhetoric of debate between equals. It is as if allowing the Philis-
tines their own voice would make the differences start to disappear.

8
"Ja ihm sitzt die Philisterei/Gerade im Denken, dass er's nicht sei!" Quoted by
Westerkamp (99).
9
O n e could have some deconstructive fun identifying the contradictions Brentano
gets into. He himself humorously notes that his thoroughgoing idealism denies the
reality of the very earth on which he is standing (199). His Lucifer (ibid., shades of
Milton's Paradise Last) is just such an individuell hero as he elsewhere admires. There
is some reason to believe that he was unsure of his standing among his aristocratic
friends.
B. Matthew Arnold
The whole scope of the essay is to recommend culture as the great
help out of our present difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total
perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most
concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world,
and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh thought upon
our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but
mechanically, vainly imagining that there is a virtue in following them
staunchly which makes up for the mischief of following them mechani-
cally. (Arnold: vol. 5, 233-34; unattributed references in this section
are to Arnold by volume and page).

This is how Matthew Arnold introduces his essay Culture and Anarchy.
Writing during a time of social upheaval brought about by industri-
alization and the introduction of universal male suffrage (this is what
he means by "our present difficulties"), Arnold seeks to quell the
conflict brought about by the growing political power of the middle
and lower classes. "Philistine" is a key term in his campaign for a
central authority that rises above and can mediate the conflict. H e
seeks to establish the claims of the disinterested intellectual against
the claims of a self-interested middle class.
"Philistine" is thus in Arnold preeminendy a class term. H e divides
England into three classes, the aristocracy, w h o m he calls Barbarians,
the middle class and organized labour, who are the Philistines, and
the working class, or Populace. Arnold uses the term "Philistine" to
create a class fantasy in the service of a real class struggle, a struggle
for the "hearts and minds 5 ' of the Populace—he wants to maintain
control of the education of the Populace, to keep it out of the hands
of the middle class, who would philistinize the Populace.
But Arnold is not able to see his project in terms of class struggle.
H e sees himself as representative not of a threatened intellectual class,
but of those w h o have risen above class struggle altogether. H e dis-
tinguishes between the "ordinary self" and the "best self" (5, 134).
O u r ordinary self, the self determined by our class, is "separate,
personal, at war." O u r best self is "united, impersonal, at h a r m o n y . "
T o cultivate the best self is the task of education; intellectuals, freed
by the p o w e r of letters, t r a n s c e n d class conflict to claim their
humanity: "So far as a m a n has genius he tends to take himself out
of the category of class altogether, and to become simply a m a n "
(5, 130).
Arnold offers education to the Populace as a m e a n s of self-
improvement. Looking to the state as a centre of authority that could
rise above class politics and mediate social conflict, he was a strong
advocate of public education. 10 But the unstated price the Populace
must pay for this improvement through education is domination by
a new intellectual elite. Claiming to eliminate class conflict, he in
fact reinscribes aristocracy, in the sense of rule by the best. Arnold
stakes the claim of a white male literary elite to be arbiters of cul-
tural change during a time of social upheaval. His use of "Philistine"
is part of this strategy.
In an essay on Heinrich Heine, Arnold summarizes the meaning
of the term "Philistine" as it has developed in Germany:
Philistine must have originally meant, in the mind of those who in-
vented the nickname, a strong, dogged, unenlightened opponent of the
chosen people, of the children of the light. . . . They regarded their
adversaries as humdrum people, slaves to routine, enemies to light;
stupid and oppressive, but at the same time very strong. (3, 112)

Arnold fantasizes the Philistines as provincial, narrow, and self-

regarding, as worshipping mere externals, what he calls "machin-
ery"—size, power, numbers, wealth—while neglecting the idea, rea-
son, and the good. T h e biblical image of the Philistine provides Arnold
with the portrait of people who have technological superiority while
being culturally inferior. H e describes the England of the industrial
middle classes as "the very headquarters of Goliath" (3, 111) where
"the sky is of brass and iron" (3, 113).
Though he regards a certain kind of individualism as a Philistine
trait, Arnold does not individualize the Philistines. In contradistinc-
tion to the disinterested intellectual (the servant of the idea) who has
extricated himself from narrow sectarian interests, the Philistine is
preeminendy a member of a class and acts in that class's interest.
Arnold wants to set up a link between individual and state that is
not mediated by class and that transcends class interest.
Along with self-interest, the Philistine's key characteristic is a worship
of the freedom to do as one likes.11 This is the meaning for Arnold of
anarchy, which is the opposite of culture. With the passage of the
Second Reform Bill, Philistines formed the majority in Parliament,
and their desire to do as they liked was combined with the power to
do just exacdy that. Arnold is particularly concerned that the Populace,

10
For many years he served as Her Majesty's Inspector of Schools.
11
"Doing as O n e Likes" is the tide of a chapter of Culture and Anarchy (5, 1 1 5 ‫־‬
36).
as their political power rapidly increases, may become philistinized
in this sense. In the following passage he draws on the image of
Goliath to describe the damage wrought by their clumsy assertion of
power:
while the aristocratic and middle classes have long been doing as they
like and with great vigour, he has been too undeveloped and submis-
sive hitherto to join in the game; and now, when he does come, he
comes in immense numbers, and is rather raw and rough . . . our laws
give our playful giant, in doing as he likes, considerable advantage.
(5, 122-23)

Despite all of this, Arnold acknowledges that the Philistines are

instrumental in the development of the nation. T h e industrial revo-
lution that has brought the middle and working classes to power has
had the good effect of destroying feudalism in England. But Arnold
hopes to deal with the social power of the Philistines by seeing them
as a necessary but passing phase:
Now, culture admits the necessity of the movement towards fortune-
making and exaggerated industrialism, readily allows that the future
may derive benefit from it; but insists, at the same time, that the pass-
ing generations of industrialists,—forming, for the most part, the stout
main body of Philistinism,—are sacrificed to it. (5, 105)

This is another level of class fantasy. T h e Philistines are necessary at

the moment, but will be "sacrificed" to a better future. They are
merely an instrument of an historical purpose that transcends them.
Arnold's class fantasy leads him deep into the politics of gender
and race. We begin with gender. A particular way of thinking about
relationships between men and women is implied in Arnold's use of
the term Philistine. He characterizes the Philistine attitude towards
women as crude and unrefined. T h e industrial revolution not only
brought about changes between the classes but affected the relation-
ship between the sexes as well. Throughout his work Arnold trivializes
this change and downplays its depth. In Culture and Anarchy, his ex-
amination of sexual politics is reduced to a discussion of a proposed
bill that would allow a man to marry his deceased wife's sister. T h e
advocates of this bill argue for it on the basis that it does not con-
tradict Levitical laws. Arnold depicts them as exhibiting "that double
craving so characteristic of our Philistine . . . the craving for forbid-
den fruit and the craving for legality" (5, 206). He goes on to deploy
the rhetoric of ethnology as a persuasive strategy, characterizing
advocates of the bill as having a Semitic attitude towards women:
 W h o . . . will believe, when he really considers the matter, that where
the feminine nature, the feminine ideal, and our relationship to them,
are brought into question, the delicate and apprehensive genius of the
Indo-European race, the race which invented the Muses, and chivalry,
and the Madonna, is to find its last word on this question in the in-
stitutions of a Semitic people, whose wisest king had seven hundred
wives and three hundred concubines? (5, 208)

Arnold's "enlightened" attitude towards women idealizes them as

possessing spiritual influence, even as it denies them material power.
In Culture and Anarchy, Arnold's discussion of marriage to in-laws is
made in terms of male desire rather than female desire. In his dis-
cussion of divorce in God and the Bible (7, 225-29), Arnold similarly
expresses male rather than female motivation and interest. He char-
acterizes J o h n Stuart Mill, who argued for legalizing divorce as well
as for extending economic and political rights to women, simply as
an advocate of adultery. He never takes up Mill's argument for the
enfranchisement of women, or places the discussion of marriage in
the larger context of Mill's concern for women's equality. Mill's
advocacy of free love becomes a crude and regressive desire for
unlimited sexual expression. Arnold here employs a nature/culture,
a n i m a l / h u m a n framework in his discussion of sexual relationships.
He sets up a contrast between nature, polygamy and polytheism and
culture, monogamy and monotheism. He links the first set of terms
to the biblical image of the "strange woman." Mill's proposal to change
marriage laws is portrayed as a threat to monotheism and civiliza-
tion that leads us back into the dark age of unbridled ecstasy sym-
bolized by the Witch of Endor (see 7, 221). These allusions to the
biblical "other" belong to the same set of ideas as the Philistine
"craving for forbidden fruit," 12 and serve his strategy of keeping women
as the medium of male desire with no independent subjectivity.
There is reason to think that Arnold's "dark age" is as recent as
the Regency period, the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of
the nineteenth century! During that dme, the opportunides for women
in the public and economic sphere were much greater, and their
sexual behaviour was much less rigidly controlled than in Arnold's
time. Mill's suggested change in marriage laws would in fact have
brought England back to norms that governed society in the Re-
gency period. During the mid-nineteenth century, there was a rapid

12
Arnold refers, in this discussion, to the Philisrine Abimelech in Genesis (7, 218).
For Delilah as the "strange woman," see below, pp. 3 9 9 - 4 0 0 .
trend to confine women to the private sphere. Anna Clark argues
that it was industrialization and the rise of the middle class that
brought this change (232-34). She shows how women's sexual repu-
tation was used as a tool to further this confinement; for example,
"whore" is used not only in its literal sense, but also of women who
engaged in commerce (240-42). It is ironic that Arnold's attitude
towards women reflects this middle class morality; if Clark is correct,
the stick Arnold uses to beat the Philistines over sexual morality is a
stick that he got from them!
As to race or ethnology, we have already seen how Arnold deploys
it along with gender in his idealizing of women. This leads us into
an examination of the ethnic implications of the term Philistine. His
equation of Philistine attitudes with Semitic values points up a latent
anti-semitism which runs throughout his work. He adopts the ethno-
logical theory that there are two major cultural and linguistic groups,
the Indo-European (Aryan) and the Semitic, and argues that Indo-
European values are more natural to the English Saxons than Se-
mitic ones.
This set of attitudes also gets displaced, in an ethnographically
curious but revealing way, onto his work on Celtic culture. In a series
of lectures on this subject, Arnold depicts the Saxons as Philistines
and the Celts as children of the light. He emphasizes the impact of
Celtic culture on English literature. T h e sentimental Celts with their
fancifulness and quickness of perception, he suggests, have added a
much needed leaven to the culture of the steady-going but dull Sax-
ons. However, just as he idealizes women as Muses while refusing to
take their demands for political and economic power seriously, so
too he ascribes a spiritual force to Celtic culture while refusing to
grant material power to it:
It is not in the outward and visible world of material life that the
Celtic genius of Wales or Ireland can at this day hope to count for
much; it is in the inward world of thought and science. What it has
been, what is has done, let it ask us to attend to that, as a matter of
science and history; not to what it will be or will do, as a matter of
modern politics. It cannot count appreciably now as a material power;
but, perhaps, if it can get itself thoroughly known as an object of sei-
ence, it may count for a good deal,—far more than we Saxons, most
of us, imagine,—as a spiritual power. (3, 298)

In objectifying Celtic culture as an object of scholarly interest, Arnold

dismisses the desire of the Irish and Welsh for political sovereignty
and for the re-introduction of the Celtic languages as living media of
communication. H e ends his addresses with a proposal to undermine
Philistinism "through . . . the slow approaches of culture, and the
introduction of chairs of Celtic" (3, 386). T h e study of Celtic culture
would provide the Philistine Saxons with the opportunity to acquire
culture through the disinterested study of things outside of themselves.
This ethnic farrago of Celts, Saxons, Indo-Europeans and Semites,
further mixed up as it is with gender issues, is hard for us now to
take seriously. But it forms an integral part of Arnold's pressing of
the cultural claims of the literary establishment in its struggle with
the Philistines.
Like Brentano, Arnold uses satire and mockery to critique the
middle classes while suppressing real class analysis. Unlike Brentano,
however, he does not use the Philistine tag merely to objectify and
distance his opponents. H e is a controversialist, delivering lectures
and publishing his work in newspapers and popular magazines. He
often quotes his critics' assessments of his arguments and in this way
gives a voice to the Philistines. In fact, he often seems to delight in
the way his opponents produced satires of his satires, mocking his
use of biblical rhetoric. A satire of Arnold by Frederick Harrison, a
prominent liberal thinker at Oxford University, so amused Arnold
that it led him to develop the fiction, in Friendship's Garland, that his
Prussian protagonist had broken off correspondence with Arnold and
taken it up with Harrison instead (5, 424).
But Arnold is not free of anxiety about his own identity vis-à-vis
the Philistines. In Culture and Anarchy he describes himself as someone
who, while being "properly a Philistine," has been converted to culture:
I myself am properly a Philistine,—Mr. Swinburne would add, the son
of a Philistine. And although, through circumstances which will per-
haps one day be known if ever the affecting story of my conversion
comes to be written, I have, for the most part, broken with the tea-
meetings of my own class, yet I have not, on that account, been brought
much the nearer to the ideas and works of the Barbarians or of the
Populace. (5, 144)

Arnold's lack of clarity about the degree to which he has separated

himself from his Philistine background conveys a sense of unease.
Has he been converted or has he only broken with his class "for the
most part"? T o what extent would he admit that his class back-
ground influences his ideas and work?
 2. Intertextual Reading of Modem and Biblical Philistines

In this section, we read the biblical traditions about the Philistines,

especially in Judges and 1 Samuel, but also in Genesis, in a way that
is organized by our findings from the modern data, drawing connec-
dons where appropriate.

A. The Philistines and class fantasy

T h e modern use of "Philistine" we have found to belong essentially

to a class discourse, that of an intellectual elite confronting an emer-
gent middle class. T h e usage is a focus of class anxiety for two rea-
sons; because the Philistines are very powerful, and because it is hard
to separate oneself from the Philistines. This class anxiety generates
class fantasy, the development of which draws freely on other dis-
courses, notably those of gender and race.
In the biblical presentation, ethnicity rather than class seems to
define the relations between Israelites and Philistines (we shall return
to the ethnic issues). But there are significant traces of class discourse
in the Philistine traditions, and recent developments in biblical stud-
ies have made us more sensitive to these. 13 T h e theme of Israelite
servitude to the Philistines is prominent (e.g., 1 Sam. 4:9; cf. Samson's
involuntary, and David's voluntary, service to Philistines). T h e Philis-
tine monopoly on iron (13:19-22) makes better sense as a class differ-
ence a m o n g people sharing the same space than as an ethnic
difference. It is interesting that, while the Israelites' special name for
the Philistines, the "uncircumcised," may suggest ethnicity, the Phil-
istines' special name for the Israelites, "Hebrews," is likely a class
indicator. 14 T h e iron monopoly, and other indications, suggest that
the Philistines were materially more advanced than the Israelites. It
has been suggested (beginning with Gunkel), that Samson is opposed
to the Philistines as nature to culture, and that the Samson cycle

13
We refer to the recent trend associated above all with Norman Gottwald. See
for example Gottwald, 1993.
14
W e refer to the discussion of a link between "Hebrew'' and "apiru," the latter
very likely being a designation for a disenfranchised and disadvantaged group (e.g.,
Gottwald, 1979: 419-25). It has been suggested that David's band, which hires itself
to a Philistine king, has a resemblance to apiru bands. In 1 Samuel, "Hebrew" is
used five times by the Philistines (4:6, 9, 13:19, 14:11, 29:3), once by Saul (13:3),
and once by the narrator (14:21). It is also the term by which the Egyptians tend
to refer to the Israelites in Exodus.
should be read as resistance literature of the oppressed against a
culturally superior oppressor (Exum: 90-91, with reference to Niditch).
Such a class picture has points of contact with the modern data
(though varying definitions of "culture" complicate the matter). T h e
Romantics set a cult of nature over against a stultifying middle class
culture. Arnold, using culture in a different sense, has to admit the
Philistines' technological superiority as he mocks their want of culture.
T h e Philistines are as much a fantasy creation in the Bible as in
the modern scene, and thematic connections to the latter are many.
T h e biblical Philistines almost always appear as a group, and even
when they speak or act as individuals, there is a good deal of stereo-
typing. In the Samson cycle, the only individualized Philistines are
his bride-to-be (14:15-17), her father (15:1-2), and Delilah. 15 T h e
two women speak and act in virtually identical ways, for the same
purpose, and only at the instance of a (male) Philistine collectivity.
T h e father-in-law has only one brief speech. T h e first individualized
Philistine voice in 1 Samuel is Goliath's ( 1 7 : 8 4 3 - 4 4,10‫)־‬,and his
words (like the collective Philistine voice elsewhere—Judg. 16:23-25,
1 Sam. 14:11-12) consist entirely of taunts proved unjustified in the
event. Much the most interesting individual Philistine voice is that of
Achish, King of Gath, in his dealings with David (21:10-15 [11-16],
27:5-28:2, 29), to which we shall return.
Against this collectivity is set the Israelite individual. T h e theme of
the hero who successfully battles a multitude of Philistines recurs
frequendy. It defines the entire Samson cycle, and is also found in
Shamgar (Judg. 3:31), Jonathan and his attendant (1 Sam. 14:6 16 ,(15‫־‬
and David (1 Sam. 18:25-27). David's other great exploit, the fight
with Goliath (1 Samuel 17), is a simple transformation, replacing
multitude with magnitude. 17 There is particular stress on these as
youthful exploits (Samson, Jonathan, David). This theme of the struggle
of the individual (often youthful, often a solitary "genius") against
the mass, is one which, as we have seen, is very prominent in the
German evidence.
The theme of Philistine materialism, particularly the iron monopoly,
has already been raised in connection with class issues; Philistine power

15
If she is a Philistine—it is never so stated. But all popular mythologies make
her one.
16
T h e number of Philistines here is more modest, twenty, but their death leads
to a general panic.
17
Cf. 2 Sam. 21:15-22, 23:9-17.
over Israel has a material basis. At the fantasy level, the description
of Goliath prepared for batde (1 Sam. 17:5-7) is grotesquely metallic,
in contrast to David, who refuses armour (w. 38-39). 18 This fits well
with Arnold's association of Philistinism with the industrial révolu-
tion, and his frequent pejorative use of the term "mechanical." Other
suggestions of Philistine materialism in the Bible are thin. Delilah's
relation to the Philistines (as Brentano stresses) is mercenary (Judg.
16:5). Both in the ancestral stories (Genesis 21, 26) and in the ark
story (1 Samuel 5-6) the Philistines see monetary tribute as the right
way to expiate an offense.
In most of their appearances, the Philistines are at war with Israel.
They are cruel foes, as witness their treatment of Samson and of
Saul's corpse (1 Sam. 31:8-10). They are arrogant and boastful (usu-
ally as a foil for the Israelite hero), but can also be reduced to cow-
ardly panic (1 Samuel 4, 7, 14). Several of these themes appear in
the modern data, but perhaps more important than the particular
themes is the sense that conflict with the Philistines is important enough
to be thought of in terms of warfare.
But the Philistines are also portrayed in the Bible as figures of fun,
simple-minded and easily deceived. In the Samson cycle, though, they
are made to look foolish by their inability to deal with Samson in
combat. Sometimes they can get the better of him by shrewdness
and deceit; but even there they are finally out-smarted. In 1 Samuel
4—6, the disasters which fall on the Philistines while they have the
ark are likely meant humorously, especially if the "tumours" were
haemorrhoids. David is able to deceive Achish, king of Gath, first by
feigning madness (chap. 21), then in ingratiating himself with the
Judahites while seeming to Achish to be doing the opposite (chap.
27). Achish's trust in David never wavers.
T h e biblical picture as we have presented it so far matches the
modern data well, for example our quote earlier from Arnold (but
referring direcdy to German usage), to the effect that Philistines are
"unenlightened" and "stupid," but also "very strong." T h e German
students regard the townsfolk as figures of fun, and are confident of
their ability to outwit them, but they are also aware of the Philis-
tines' power over them. They are engaged in a battle of wills; as one

18
Cf. the "Destroyer with three heads" in 13:17, immediately before the refer-
ence to the iron monopoly; the word is the same as the destroying angel of the
Passover (Exod. 12:13).
student song puts it, "I cheat only those who cheat me" (Westerkamp:
9). T h e emphasis in Brentano is heavily on ridicule, but Philistine
power also emerges clearly in his discourse (e.g., 218-23, referring to
Philistine control of the German theatre). With Arnold, the strength
of the Philistines, the threat they pose to national life, has become
central, and the element of satire and making fun has relatively re-
ceded.
T h e biblical fantasizing of the Philistines makes its own use of
race and gender. T h e sense of ethnic or even racial difference from
the Philistines is centred in two issues: their descent from H a m (Gen.
10:14, emphasized by Brentano), whereby they belong to a quite
different section of humanity from Israel, and the common désigna-
tion "uncircumcised," which suggests that the Philistines are even
more different than Israel's other neighbours. T h e Septuagint trans-
lation of "Philistines" in Judges and Samuel, allophuloi ("strangers" or
"others"), also suggests fundamental difference. In Hebrew, the term
"Philistine" does not function to suppress the subjectivity of the other,
for the biblical Philistines (unlike modern ones) call themselves Philis-
tines (1 Sam. 4:9, 17:8, 29:7, 9, and several other times if Delilah is
a Philistine), with the odd effect that in the Septuagint they call
themselves allophuloi. But "the uncircumcised" does function in this
way; the Philistines do not use it of themselves, nor do we hear
anything about their views on circumcision.
Turning to gender, we start with the Samson cycle. In a treat-
ment of "Samson's Women," J . Cheryl Exum suggests that the saga
tends to conflate women and the Philistines, both being the "other" in
relation to Israel's patriarchal and xenophobic mindset (Exum: 6 1 -
93). Part of her argument is based on the familiar "foreign woman"
syndrome in the Bible. Another part is based on the structure of the
stories—the Philistines succeed in defeating Samson only when a
woman helps them. Their means of fighting is womanish, in the con-
ventional sense of using deceit rather than force. Yet another part of
Exum's argument, of particular interest because of its specificity to
the Philistines, is the term "uncircumcised." T h e sign of Israelite
identity which most serves to exclude Philistines is a male sign, which
therefore also excludes women. Exum sees Samson as attracted by
the Philistine/female "other," and as escaping from it only in death
(whereby he is reincorporated into male Israel). Both Brentano and
Arnold, as we have seen, glorify monogamous marriage, and link
whatever threatens it, including (in Brentano) whoredom, with
Philistinism. In Brentano's case, this limits his otherwise great admi-
ration for Samson; the German students, on the other hand, seem as
keen on Philistine women as Samson was.
Further on the gender issue, we may mention the Medium of
Endor. 19 Her geographic location in Endor raises the possibility that
she may be a Philistine, or perhaps a "liminal" woman from the
borderland between Israel and the Philistines.20 It is no coincidence,
in the light of our earlier discussion of women's increasing confine-
ment in the nineteenth century, that Arnold chooses her to symbol-
ize the "dark age" of unbridled ecstasy (i.e., of loose sexual behaviour)
before the "cultural conquest" which introduced marriage. For she is
one of the few women in 1 Samuel who wields public power.
Gender is brought together with race and class in the episode of
the brideprice (1 Sam. 18:17-29). After Saul fails to carry through
on his offer of Merab, his older daughter, to David as wife, Michal,
his younger daughter, falls in love with David. Saul agrees to this
match, but specifies as a brideprice "a hundred foreskins of the
Philistines" (thinking to bring about David's death). David, however,
secures two hundred, and marries Michal.
T h e treatment of gender here is interesting. David appears relue-
tant to take up Saul's offer. T h e initiative is Saul's, and Michal co-
operates by declaring her love for David. But David expresses no
reciprocal desire. As later with Abigail, Michal is depicted as choos-
ing him, rather than vice versa. It seems that the David of 1 Samuel,
unlike Samson (and unlike the David of 2 Samuel!) does not fall
victim to a desire for women/the other. As a result, perhaps, they
act on his behalf. In the patriarchal dichotomy of mother/whore,
which Exum (32, 65) suggests is the grid underlying biblical repre-
sentations of women, Michal and Abigail fall on the good mother
side.21 In contrast to Samson, who desires women and who is be-
trayed by bad women who act like whores, David, who does not
desire women, is nurtured by good women who act like mothers. T o
carry the contrast further, where Samson refuses male bonding, by

19
For the connection of the Philistines with the occult, see Isa. 2:6.
20
Delilah's home region, "the valley of Sorek" (Judg. 16:4), may be liminal in
the same sense.
21
They tend to act as maternal figures to David. Exum (47) has suggested read-
ing the scene where Michal lowers David out of her window as a symbolic reenact-
ment of birth. Abigail's action of bringing food to David and his men in the wilder-
ness may also be seen as motherly.
separating himself from male-identified Israel and by rejecting his
bridal companions, David valorizes male bonding. Exum (52-53) notes
that the emotional depth which is lacking from David's interest in
Michal (and in Abigail, as we have seen) is reserved for his relation-
ship with Jonathan, which is marked with tears and expressions of
lasting loyalty.
T h e biblical tendency to see women as either whores or mothers
is shared by Brentano and Arnold. We have seen how Arnold por-
trays advocates of "free love" as having fallen victim to the wiles of
the "strange woman," and lifts up the Madonna, the Lady (of medi-
eval chivalry) and the Muse, images of women whose spirituality is
related to their confinement and sexual unavailability, as figures that
represent a proper appreciation of women. Likewise, we have seen
how in Brentano the contrast between the mores of the Philistine
system and of enlightened society is expressed in terms of female
sexuality. The Philistine is a man (!) who does not control, but is
subject to a desire for, women. Like Samson, but unlike David, the
Philistine gives in to a desire for "forbidden fruit." T h e valorization
of male bonding is also evident in the modern data. T h e educational
institutions of Europe are part of an all-male system, and the rela-
tionship of women to the intellectual culture which this system estab-
lishes is tenuous at best.
The brideprice episode foregrounds the issue of race in its unsavoury
use of circumcision. It would be hard to imagine a more extreme
denial of subjectivity than presenting people only as bits of body (cf.
Goliath's head), trophies to David's potency and his claim to the
throne. Focalizing the Philistines as uncircumcised is not only a racist
but also a sexist strategy, if we follow Eilberg-Schwartz's suggestion
that circumcision signified to the Israelites fertility and genealogy (144
and the whole chapter [141-76]). According to him, circumcision is
a way of establishing kinship ties between men, and descent through
the father over against the mother, so that from the Israelite point of
view a community that does not practise circumcision is female-
defined. By circumcising the Philistines, David removes "the other"
as a threat to the male Israelite community. 22

22
Gender and race fantasy about the Philistines reaches an extreme in the rab-
binic story that Goliath was descended from Orpah, Ruth , s sister-in-law, as a result
of rape. As Orpah returned home after she chose not to accompany Naomi, she
was raped by a hundred Philistines and a dog (the dog comes from 1 Sam. 17:43,
the hundred Philistines from the foreskins in chap. 18). David and Goliath descend
 T o complete these comments on the brideprice episode, we note
how it functions as a class fantasy. What is stressed is the contrast
between the poverty of David and the wealth of Saul. As in his
struggle against Goliath, David is fairy tale hero, a poor man from
an insignificant family who makes his fortune by service to the king.
T h e foreskins are one more trial for the hero hoping to win the
king's daughter. In defeating the Philistines, David symbolically
achieves wealth at their expense, exchanging his poverty with them.
T h e text may be read as a piece of class fantasy on behalf of the
poor, by means of which they imagine an improvement in their own
status. But in fact, they succeed only in raising up a new oppressor
for themselves. In the same way, Arnold offers education to the lower
class as a means of self-improvement, but the price of the deal is in
fact domination by a new intellectual elite. Arnold, like David, may
be seen as a figure who escapes class disadvantage to establish him-
self as the leader in a new system of domination.

B. An alternative biblical view of the Philistines?

In the Bible, then, the Philistines are a focus of anxiety which needs
to be resolved through fantasy. Some texts direct to the Philistines a
fear and hate hardly paralleled in biblical attitudes towards any other
group. They are those who have power over us, and they are those
who are wholly other than we, and this combination gives them an
archetypical awfulness.
O n the other hand, there is considerable nuancing of the stereo-
type features of the Philistines, even in 1 Samuel where these fea-
tures are prominent. Their war-hungriness is called in question by
the fact that the Masoretic text of 1 Sam. 4:1 makes Israel the ag-
gressors (the Septuagint sees it the opposite way). T h e Philistine
mutilation of Saul's corpse, brutal as it is, is not more so than David's
mutilation of the corpses of Goliath, and of the two hundred Philis-
tines in 1 Sam. 18:27. Philistine deceptiveness is matched by David's
deception of Achish. We could extend the list. Robert Polzin (55-79)
suggests that there is a programmatic attempt in 1 Samuel 4—7 to
draw parallels between Israelites and Philistines.

in parallel lines from Ruth and Orpah—the difference between an Israelite and a
Philistine is turned into a difference between two kinds of female behaviour. See
Midrash Rabbah on Ruth 1:14 (Freedman and Simon: vol. 8, 38-39).
 T h e extent to which the Philistines are figures of fun is also not to
be exaggerated. Polzin's suggestion (58) that an Israelite audience
would be amused by the Philistines' ignorance of Israel's history—
their supposing that Israel is polytheistic and that the plagues of Egypt
happened in the wilderness (4:8)—is dubious, for 5:7 and 6:6 show
that the Philistines know the truth about these things. W h e n in 6:9
the Philistine theologians propose a test to decide whether Israel's god
is behind their disasters or whether they happened "by chance," are
they being thick-headed, or subde? Perhaps they are calling the bluff
of the god of Israel. If he exists, and is powerful, then he must prove
it by taking the ark back, saving the Philistines further trouble. If not,
then the Philistines win the theological debate, and perhaps get to
keep their booty. 23 T h e last section suggestive of Philistine gullibility,
the relations between David and Achish, King of Gath, is also am-
biguous. David is indeed able to deceive Achish. But the rest of the
Philistines have David's measure. In chap. 21, Achish's own servants
raise the alarm about David, and in chap. 29, the commanders of
the Philistines by no means share Achish's misplaced confidence.
Israel's victories over the Philistines are heavily fantasized. Only in
1 Samuel 7 does Israel win on account of being as a nation in right
relation to God. Otherwise, the victories are by individual heroes
against absurd odds, and they seem to have no lasting effect. T h e
broader picture is of Israelite and Philistine armies confronting each
other on a relatively equal basis, with victory going sometimes to
one side, sometimes the other, but with the Philistines having the
edge overall.
Such a picture of national rivalry and general equality is gready
strengthened when we move from Judges and 1 Samuel to the other
book where Philistines are prominent, Genesis. There, the upshot of
the relationship between Israel's ancestors and the Philistines is the
establishment of a treaty (made in 21:22-34, tested and perhaps even
broken, but reestablished in chap. 26). This treaty follows consider-
able conflict, in which, arguably, the Israelites are more the aggres-
sors (at any rate, they are the newcomers). There is nothing here of
the Philistines as uncircumcised, nor of their false gods—indeed
Abimelech appears as a God-fearer who readily acknowledges Yahweh.
Given the later relations between Israel and the Philistines, it is in-
teresting that the treaty excludes "false dealing" (21:23).

23
Further on 6:9, see below, pp. 4 1 2 1 3 ‫ ־‬.
 In the Bible's ideological geography, the Philistines are a different
kind of enemy from the Canaanites. T h e latter inhabit space which
is to be Israel's; this is a problem to be solved by their extermination
or expulsion to some other place. T h e Philistines, on the other hand,
are invaders from the outside; they have their own space, which is
not (at least Judges and 1 Samuel) claimed by Israel. They wish to
establish themselves in Israel's space, and must be expelled from it
and confined in their place. O n e might suggest a paradigm of Israel
and the Philistines as rival claimants, by conquest, for the territory of
the Canaanites. This even fits the standard historical view that the
Exodus Israelites and the Philistines arrived in C a n a a n at much
the same time (ca. 1200 BCE).24 But this is not the view of the Deuter-
onomistic History, which sees Israel as conquering the land, and
becoming established there under its judges, before the conflict with
the Philistines. Genesis stands in an interesting relationship to these
views. It allows to the Philistines a greater antiquity in the land than
Israel, but it establishes a division of the land by treaty.
In 1 Samuel, the Philistines certainly act like rival claimants to the
land, and this paradigm accounts well for the form of relationship
which we have found to be most specific to 1 Samuel: national conflict
which swings back and forth, with successes for both sides, and with
no sense, at least in the short run, of a predestined winner. Philistine
identity switches (perhaps already in Judges, and certainly by 1 Samuel
7), from being one in a series of nations sent by Yahweh to chastise
Israel to being the assailant par excellence. But they do not (as we shall
show) cease to be the instrument of Yahweh; rather, they become
the instrument of a different purpose, to establish the kingship of
David (who will successfully claim Philistine territory for Israel).
What would happen if one were to look at Judges-Samuel through
the eyes of Genesis? There is early evidence that Jewish commentators
saw and feared this possibility! Rabbinic sources insist that the Phi-
listines of Judges and Samuel were different people altogether from
the Philistines of Genesis. 25 This parallels a shift in the Septuagint's
translation of Hebrew pèlistîm. Before Judges, it uses the neutral trans-
literation phulistiim, but beginning with Judges it switches to the pe-
jorative allophuloi.26

24
Such a paradigm gets encouragement from Amos 9:7: "Did I not bring up
Israel from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from C a p h t o r . . . ? "
25
Midrash Tehillim on Psalm 60 (Braude: vol. 1, 513); the issue here is precisely
whether Israel should have been obliged, later, to keep the Genesis treaty.
26
See above, p. 399. T o be precise, Codex Alexandrinus starts using the new
 T o what extent, then, do the accounts of the Philistines in Judges
and Samuel, marked as they are by the uncertainties, anxieties and
fantasies of resistance literature, function as a way of excluding an
alternative view of the Philistines, one which would allow them more
real subject status? Reading through the eyes of Genesis, might we
not see a people whose first concern is coexistence (to their own
maximum economic advantage, given their greater resources), but
who reacted naturally to Israelite unification and aggression? Do the
extreme expressions of Philistine otherness cloak an uncomfortable
sense of closeness, a sense of a shared past?
Even Brentano (204) comments that Genesis shows the Philistines
in their "best period." We can go further and say that if the alter-
native biblical view that we have identified were dominant, "Philis-
tine" would never have become a cultural slur.
T h e students in a class at St. Andrew's College, Saskatoon, were
asked to put themselves in the position of Israelites and give their
views of the Philistines, deliberately using a rhetoric analogous to
that of racism or sexism—"Philistines are . . ." (cf. "blacks are . . .,"
"women are . . ."). T h e answers ranged widely. T h e r e was some
emphasis on sheer otherness, defined particularly in religious terms:
Philistines are sacrilegious, polytheistic, and hence excluded from the
people of Yahweh. Their lack of circumcision was a focus of this
otherness; one student equated this with "having no morals." Some
extreme adjectives were offered: bestial, subhuman. More common
were the attributes of warriors and conquerors. T h e Philistines were
perceived as powerful, arrogant, oppressive, brutal, barbarous towards
defeated enemies and (in the incident of the wells in Genesis 26)
capriciously destructive. Several students found them "war hungry,"
assuming them to be the initiators of conflict. In adversity, they were
seen mosdy as fearful and confused, but sometimes as brave (1 Samuel
4). Perhaps most interesting were the students' suggestions about the
Philistines' intellectual capacities. Some found them "stupid, simple-
minded," but others found them shrewd, in getting rid of the ark of
the covenant (1 Samuel 6) and in keeping Israel disarmed. Despite
all of these negatives, some students noted that the Philistines were
after all culturally superior, and usually victorious.

translation at the beginning of Judges and uses it invariably thereafter; VaUcanus

likewise switches at the beginning of Judges, but reverts to phulistiim on six occasions
later in Judges, the last of which is 14:2.
 These answers can all be supported from the biblical text, but
they stress the negative side heavily, with little sense of the alternative
picture of the Philistines which we have just sketched. T h e interest-
ing question is, to what extent were the students reading the biblical
Philistines through eyes conditioned by the negative uses of "Philis-
tine" from much later times, and to this day?

C. Deep-structural links: instrumentality and anarchy

T o consider a series of critical categories (gender, etc.), and to enu-

merate characteristics, as we have done in the foregoing, is not yet
to get to the heart of what is going on in the biblical treatment of
the Philistines. Two of the issues raised particularly by Matthew Arnold
will take our intertextual reading to deeper levels.
In Arnold's view of history, the Philistines are a group who are
necessary at the moment, but who will disappear in the movement
to a better future, will be "sacrificed" to that future (vol. 5, 105; see
above, p. 392). This view, which we have called instrumental, is un-
derlined by the way Arnold, through his deployment of ethnological
theories, makes one race serve the interests of another. Such instru-
mentality can be traced also in the German material; in a crass form
among the students—the townsfolk are an absolutely necessary nui-
sance—and in a cosmic form in Brentano, where the Philistine "idea"
is part of the eternal batde of good and evil.
T h e instrumental view corresponds to one of the most conspicu-
ous aspects of the Philistines in Judges and 1 Samuel, that they are
instruments of Yahweh's purpose. They are Yahweh's instrument to
punish sin, as part of the regular judge pattern (Judg. 10:7, 1 Samuel
7), and in the particular case of the sin of the house of Eli (1 Samuel
4). T h e events of the Samson cycle, the reader is told, unfold as they
do because Yahweh "was seeking a pretext to act against the Philis-
tines" (Judg. 14:4). T h e issue of whether the Philistines are direcdy
instrumental in bringing about the appearance of kingship in Israel
is complex, and we shall return to it; but it is evident, once kingship
is in place, that the Philistines are instrumental in the transition from
Saul to David; there is hardly any reference to them after 1 Samuel
13 which does not directly serve this end. And as soon as this tran-
sition is accomplished, at the end of 1 Samuel, the Philistines very
suddenly lose importance. They do not need, like the Canaanites, to
be literally exterminated; they are exterminated textually, as they move
from a position of dominance, at the end of 1 Samuel, to being little
more than a footnote in the account of David's triumphs in 2 Samuel.
This instrumentality if put in even sharper focus if we pursue fur-
ther Exum's idea of a conflation of women and Philistines. At first
glance, both of David's women in 1 Samuel, Michal and Abigail,
attain a subjectivity unusual for women in the Bible. Both take pow-
erful initiatives (Michal in 19:11-19, where she warns David of Saul's
intention to kill him and helps him escape). But these women's ap-
parently independent subjectivity is entirely in the service of David
in his rise to the throne. Significandy, these women who assist his
rise are marginal in the kingdom that he eventually establishes. It is
not a son of Michal or Abigail that inherits the throne, but the son
of Bathsheba, the first woman that David sees and desires. Just like
the Philistines (and, as we have seen, in a complex relation to them)
women are merely instrumental in the rise of David.
T h e second issue in Arnold is anarchy. Perhaps the most important
aspect, for him, of being a Philistine is the desire to do as one likes;
as a result, his Philistine class lacks the social discipline that makes
for state coherence. T h e importance of this for Arnold is indicated
by his including "anarchy" in the title of his major work on the
Philistines.
There is a curious ambiguity as to what is problematic for Israel
in the period immediately before the people's request for a king in
1 Samuel 8. O n the one hand, the problem is the Philistine occupa-
tion. This begins in Judges 10, within the logic of the judge-cycles,
but it does not (as that logic demands) end in Judges; rather, it con-
tinues into 1 Samuel, up to the time of Israel's demand for a king
(Jobling, 1986:49-53). O n the other hand, the problem is that every
Israelite is "doing what is right in his own eyes," a formula so close
to Arnold's "doing as one likes" that it is hard to believe he did not
have it in mind. This formula, with which Judges concludes (21:25,
cf. 17:6) and which sets the agenda for 1 Samuel, is direcdy con-
nected to the lack of a king. These two problems, Philistines and
anarchy, are not narratively connected—they are simply juxtaposed
as two aspects of one problem. In the biblical narrative the Philis-
tines do not precipitate the rise of kingship (despite the opposite con-
elusion reached by most historians of Israel), since they are compre-
hensively defeated (1 Samuel 7) immediately before the people's
demand. (Anarchy is not clearly said to be the cause either, but the
logic of the narrative suggests that it is.)
 It is tempting to read the Philisdne occupation and Israelite anar-
chy as representing external and internal aspects of the same situa-
tion of national demoralization and religious apostasy. But such a
move brings us squarely into the logic of Arnold's view of the Phi-
listines of his time. He simply equates what the Bible juxtaposes,
Philistines and anarchy, and he sees powerful state control (cf. king-
ship in Israel) as the only remedy.
In his presentation of his class opponents as an anarchic force
within the state, and as an instrument which, though necessary, will
be "sacrificed" to the state's historical development, Arnold is not
only deploying powerful rhetorical tools. H e is working with a logic
that is extremely close to that of the biblical treatment of the Philis-
tines in Judges and 1 Samuel. How does this relate to his explicit
use of the Bible? We will suggest an answer in our final section.

4. Philistine Readers of the Bible

In Arnold's project of educating the Populace in such a way as to

reduce the conflict and upheaval brought on by the extension of the
franchise, the Bible has an important role to play. He aims to use
the Bible to present a view of human history as a connected whole,
with a coherence beyond sectarian interests and class conflict. T h e
Bible is particularly fitted to this task of "civilizing" the newly en-
franchised masses because it is part of popular culture in a way that
Greek and Latin texts are not. He writes:
If poetry, philosophy, and eloquence, if what we call in one word let-
ters, are a power, and a beneficent wonder-working power, in educa-
tion, through the Bible only have the people much chance of getting
at poetry, philosophy and eloquence. (Arnold: vol. 7, 503)
Seeking to present the Bible in a way that reduces the impression of
contradictions and fragmentariness, Arnold mines it for "some whole,
of admirable literary beauty in style and treatment" (7, 506). He
creates a reader based on the last 27 chapters of Isaiah, and his
understanding of biblical education as a way to reduce class conflict
is clear from the hopes he expresses for this reader:
Whoever began with laying hold of this series of chapters as a whole
would have a starting point and lights of unsurpassed value for getting
a conception of the course of man's history and development as a
whole. . . . There are numbers whose crosses are so many and com-
 forts so few that to the misery of n a r r o w thoughts they seem almost
driven a n d b o u n d ; what a blessing is whatever extricates t h e m a n d
makes them live with the life of the race. (7, 72)

J o h n Henry Newman applauds the intention, though he has prob-

lems with the choice of Isaiah (because the messianic passages might
lead to disputes over dogma). In 1872, he writes to Arnold suggest-
ing that he develop a popular edition of 1 Samuel for school chil-
dren: "If I was obliged to throw out some alternative for popular
education, I should recommend the 1st book of Samuel; which is a
perfect poem . . ." (Newman: vol. 26, 95-96).
It is at least odd, and we would claim significant, that Newman
should recommend to Arnold, the great scourge of the Victorian
Philistines, the part of the Bible which most treats of the ancient
Philistines! In fact, Newman's words, in their context, summarize all
the points we shall deal with in this final section: the desire of a
threatened intellectual class to take control of a highly centralized
public education; the assumption that the Bible is an apt vehicle for
educadon designed to erase class difference; the choice of 1 Samuel
as especially apt for this project; and the reference to its artistic
perfection.
Arnold's project, in a word, is to save the masses from the Philis-
tines. He wants to take responsibility, over the head of the Philistine
middle class, for the religious education of the lower class, the Popu-
lace. And he believes that this can happen only in a strong statist
political framework. There is an invitation here to pursue further the
deep-structural link between Arnold and the Bible which we pro-
posed in the last section. For the adoption of kingship in Israel, the
move to a strong statist system, is presented at least by some parts of
Judges and 1 Samuel as a way of saving the ordinary Israelite from
the "Philistines," whether these are thought of as a literal foreign
oppressor or as an externalization of decentralizing tendencies in
Israelite society (cf. "everyone doing what is right in his own eyes").27
It is integral to the ideology of kingship to claim that it exists by
popular acclaim, since this justifies its suppression of other structures
of power CJobling, 1992:20-21).
T h e same logic of appeal to the masses over the heads of other
interests can be found in Brentano. T h e form of his appeal to the

27
It is not our intention here to examine what the decentralizing tendencies
might be. O n these issues, see Gottwald, 1986.
masses is his life's work of bringing folk-literature to a place of promi-
nence in national life; this is a way of overcoming the modernizing
influence of the (Philistine) Enlightenment.
T h e establishment of this pattern brings us to the topic of this
final section—the recent use of "Philistine" to mean artistically illit-
erate, and the current movement to read the Bible as high literary
art. For the same logic as we have traced in Judges, 1 Samuel, Bren-
tano and Arnold, emerges again in the practitioners of this move-
ment. It is this logic which governs, for example, Meir Sternberg's
"foolproof composition," which he puts forward as a (even the) fore-
most characteristic of biblical poetics. His key passage on this issue
is worth quoting in extenso:
By foolproof c o m p o s i t i o n I m e a n t h a t the Bible is difficult to r e a d ,
easy to u n d e r r e a d a n d o v e r r e a d a n d even m i s r e a d , b u t virtually im-
possible to, so to speak, c o u n t e r r e a d . H e r e as elsewhere, of course,
ignorance, willfulness, preconception, tendentiousness—all amply manifested
t h r o u g h o u t history, in the religious a n d o t h e r a p p r o a c h e s — m a y p e r -
f o r m w o n d e r s of distortion. N o text c a n w i t h s t a n d the kind of m e t h o d -
ological license i n d u l g e d in by the r a b b i s in contexts o t h e r t h a n legal, o r
by critics w h o m i x u p their quest for t h e source with the n e e d to
fabricate a new discourse. Still less c a n it p r o t e c t itself against b e i n g yoked
b y violence, in the m a n n e r of the christological tradition, with a later
text w h o s e very premises of discourse (notably "insider" versus " o u t -
sider") it w o u l d find i n c o m p r e h e n s i b l e . N o r c a n it d o m u c h to keep
o u t invidious assumptions a b o u t Israelite ethics a n d c u l t u r e . . . . I n a
h e r m e n e u t i c a n d moral as well as a theological sense, interpretation m a y
always b e p e r f o r m e d in bad faith.
S h o r t of such extremes, biblical n a r r a t i v e is virtually impossible to
c o u n t e r r e a d . (Sternberg: 50, o u r emphasis.)

Sternberg here makes a gesture to the common reader. Although the

audience of his book will be readers capable of a more "plenary"
understanding (56) the common reader need not worry that the sim-
pier message which he or she is able to derive will be different in
principle from the more sophisticated one. Sternberg makes this
gesture, though, over the heads of a great multitude of readers whose
existence he first declares "virtually impossible"—the "counterreaders."
Given that counterreading is so very hard, it is astonishing how many
readers Sternberg is able to include in this category—aggadic read-
ers in general, a great many Christian readers, and various readers
"in bad faith." H e does not specify the bad faith readers, but one is
tempted to believe that some of them would be the kinds of reader
whom Robert Alter and Frank Kermode exclude from the purview
of their Literary Guide to the Bible: Marxist and psychoanalytic critics,
Deconstructionists [sic] and some feminist critics, and, more vaguely,
"critics who use the text as a springboard for cultural or metaphysi-
cal ruminations." 2 8 Certainly such critics (including us) want (in
Sternberg's words) to "fabricate a new discourse" that brings biblical
discourse into critical new relationships.
Reviewing recent work on 1 Samuel, David Jobling (1993:20-21)
argues that this sort of methodological exclusion expresses a sense of
anarchy in current biblical studies, a sense that "every one is doing
what is right in his/her own eyes," and implies a demand for some
sort of consensus, a "king in Israel" (Judg. 21:25). T h e consensus
proposed is based on the Bible as literature, and its advocates often
make far-reaching claims for the Bible's literary quality (for example,
"Scripture emerges as the most interesting as well as the greatest
work in the narrative tradition" [Sternberg: 518]). Jobling further
notes that the consensus-seekers distance themselves from political
discussion of the Bible, and are not in dialogue with those who read
it out of overt political commitment. Arnold's notion that the Bible
transcends class difference is near at hand.
But are the readers over whose heads Sternberg addresses the
common reader of the Bible Philistines? T w o considerations suggest
so. First, we omitted from the long quote from Sternberg (see the
lacuna) his only specific example of bad faith reading. He disap-
proves of the following words by Bruce Vawter:
[ T h e Bible develops] the sort of t h e m e s that w o u l d a p p e a l to r o u g h
h u m o r a n d rouse t h e chuckles of the fairly low a u d i e n c e for w h o m
they w e r e designed, w h o d o u b l e d with m e r r i m e n t at the t h o u g h t of
the " u n c i r c u m c i s e d . " ( V a w t e r : 359)

Sternberg does not explicidy call Vawter a Philistine; but that his
sole example of reading in bad faith directly evokes the Philistines
strikes us as a (non-)coincidence on a par with Newman's recom-
mending 1 Samuel to Arnold. T o put words in Sternberg's mouth,
his complaint about Vawter is that to accuse the ancient Israelites,
the biblical audience, of taking a Philistine attitude to the Philistines
is, well, Philistine. 29

28
Alter and Kermode: 6. T h e gesture of this General Introduction is the same
as Sternberg's, for Alter and Kermode's exclusion of these kinds of literary criticism
is part of a broad appeal to educated readers. For such readers, they present Mat-
thew Arnold as a model, though now scarcely attainable (p. 3).
29
Despite the coincidence in the vertical code, Vawter's low reader is a very
different character from Sternberg's fWm‫־‬eader!
 Second, Sternberg refers elsewhere in his book (162) to "all quali-
fied observers, pointedly excluding unbelievers like the afflicted Phi-
listines or waverers like Gideon." It is true that he is talking here of
inner-biblical observers, those who are "qualified" to take divine hints
(like Abraham's servant in Genesis 24, drawing conclusions about
the divine will from the indications in his encounter with Rebekah).
But there is hardly a distinction in Sternberg's hermeneutical circle
between the qualification of biblical characters to interpret right, based
on their belief, and the qualification of modern readers to do so,
based on their good or bad faith.
Sternberg's "unbelievers like the afflicted Philistines" return us to
the text of 1 Samuel. H e is referring to 1 Sam. 6:9, where the Phi-
listines, afflicted with plagues, consider the possibility that their suffer-
ings may be "by chance" rather than from Yahweh; their unbelief,
then, consists in their keeping open an explanation of their experi-
ence which differs from the narrator's (Sternberg: 105). Sternberg's
argument is illuminated by Robert Polzin's treatment of 1 Sam. 6:9.
But before turning to this, some more general comments on Polzin
are necessary.
H e prefaces his treatment of the Philistines with part of a quote
from Arnold which we also have used: "Philistine must have originally
meant, in the mind of those who invented the nickname, a strong,
dogged, unenlightened opponent of the chosen people, of the children
of the light" (Polzin: 55, Arnold: vol. 3, 112; it is not clear what
Polzin intends by this epigraph, since he never refers to it afterwards).
He also uses the word "mechanical" in a way direcdy reminiscent of
Arnold. 30 We have seen how this is one of Arnold's favourite epithets
for the Philistines; but he also refers to the "mechanical" criticism of
some German biblical scholars of his time (7, 203). Polzin's usage is
slighdy more complicated; he is referring not to different critics, but
to the different views that critics take of the biblical author/editor.
Polzin contrasts critics like himself who affirm the aesthetic achieve-
ment of the ancient storyteller with other critics who see 1 Samuel
as the "mechanical" work of a "crude" editor. But, by transference, 31

30
In the section, "The Mechanical Author" (911‫)־‬, where he is arguing the case
for the Bible as high literary art, and often elsewhere.
31
W e use the psychoanalytic term "transference" (and its cognates) in literary
criticism in much the way that Jane Gallop (1985) does—to trace the ways in which
the dynamics in the text get reproduced in the interpretation of the text. See also
Jobling, 1994.
there is little difference here; critics see ancient writers as mechani-
cal when their own critical procedures are mechanical, while critics
need aesthetic competence to appreciate the storyteller's aesthetic
achievement. 32
Polzin's treatment of the biblical Philistines in 1 Samuel 4—7 is
ambiguous in a way reminiscent particularly of Brentano and Fichte—
making fun of the Philistines while worrying about whether one is
really different from them. 33 O n the one hand, he sees the presen-
tation of them as prejudicial; "the fairly comical struggles of the
Philistines" (4), the "almost playful picture" of them as "misguidedly
ignorant" (58). O n the other hand, he finds, as we have seen, a
powerful pressure to parallel Israel and the Philistines. 34
T o return to 1 Sam. 6:9, the transferential relationships between
text and reading come to the fore in Polzin's comment on this verse:
What the Philistine sorcerers say about God's "heavy hand" is relevant
as the reader ponders the nature of the intricate compositional connec-
tions between chapters 4—6 and their literary context. The text offers
two alternatives; the intricacy happened "by chance" or "it is his hand
that strikes us" (6:9). Is the narrative hand "crude"—what critics usu-
ally mean when they write redactional—or "careful"—what I mean when
I write authorial? (Polzin: 5657‫־‬.)

T h e transference which we made above in discussing Sternberg is

precisely accomplished in this quote from Polzin! Commentators who
reject Polzin's (or Sternberg's) view of the narrator's view are putting
themselves in the place of the Philistines! T h e question whether ev-
ery textual phenomenon represents the conscious will of the narrator
becomes the same as the theological question of whether all phenom-
ena are due to the will of God (note how, in the quote, God's hand
expressly becomes the narrator's hand!).
"Others abide our question. T h o u art free." These opening words
of Arnold's sonnet on Shakespeare (see Stephens, et al.: 511), with
their assertion that Shakespeare, by some mysterious quality, exempts
himself from the critique we bring to bear on other poets, may apply
a fortion to the Bible, the biblical narrator, and eventually the biblical

32
W h e n Polzin critiques the "patronizing and disdainful attitude" of the "ge-
neric" critics towards the biblical storyteller, he does not, any more than Sternberg,
avoid displaying just such an attitude towards the critics (e.g., Polzin: 90).
33
See above, p. 389.
34
E.g. Polzin: 55. A particularly clear case of this contradiction is to be seen on
p. 65: contrast "as humorously ridiculous a light as the narrator can devise" with
"God's heavy hand against Israelite and Philistine alike."
 God. 3 5 T h e approaches of Sternberg, Polzin, Alter a n d K e r m o d e ,
for all their dazzling technical achievements, finally constitute an
elaborate way of excusing the Bible from "abiding our question."
Sternberg's exclusion of counterreaders, Alter and Kermode's exclu-
sion of a variety of methodological options, rule out a priori questions
which m a n y people are now urgendy putting to the Bible—just such
questions of class, race and gender as we have pressed here. 1 Sam.
6:9 evokes a whole history of empirical approaches to reality, with
which the history of the term "Philistine" is tighdy bound up; both
Brentano and Arnold are locked in bitter struggle with a commonsense
empirical approach to the world which is increasingly disinclined to
accept the claims of "high" culture.
T h e current methodological ferment in biblical studies has less to
do with anarchy than with making the Bible, and the institutional
governors of its interpretation, "abide our question." "When is a plague
just a plague?" ask the biblical Philistines. "Isn't the rainbow just a
meteorological p h e n o m e n o n ? " ask Brentano's Philistines. " W h e n is
the biblical narrator's skilful use of repetition just the same word
being used twice?" ask critics unimpressed by extreme claims about
the narrator's skill and control of "his" material. "And when is 'his'
'art of persuasion' in the service of gender or class privilege?" 36
W h a t is a Philistine reading? W h o is the Philistine who reads? A
Philistine reading is one which unpacks how "Philistines" ancient and
modern have been used, by people who defined their own identity
over against the Philistine "other," to found ideologies from which
any subjectivity of the other is absent—ideologies which exist precisely
to deny the subjectivity of the other. It probes the limits of such
ideologies—their dependence on a residue of the very subjectivity
they d e n y — a n d will build counterreadings. It presses the question of
whether the difference can really be established between the Philis-
tine and the non-Philistine. A Philistine reader is one w h o is ready,
in the pursuit of such goals, to become a Philistine from the point of
view of some "chosen people." O p t i n g out of the new biblical-literary
orthodoxy imposed by a Sternberg, she will go on considering the

35
Indeed, the language of Arnold's sonnet seems to deify Shakespeare:
Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,
Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling place, etc.
36
See Sternberg: 4 4 1 - 8 1 , and on this The Bible and Culture Collective: 182 (this
work, The Postmodern Bible, deals throughout with the methodological issues we are
raising in this section).
other possible explanations. A Philistine reading is one which tries to
be "uncircumscribed" 37 by the systems of exclusion which define right
and wrong readings according to authorized and unauthorized read-
ers—and is sensidve to the need to avoid creating new exclusions.

List of References

Alter, Robert and Frank Kermode, eds.

1987 The Literary Guide to the Bible. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Arnold, Matthew
1960-77 The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold. Ed. R.H. Super.
11 vols. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Bible and Culture Collective, The
1995 The Postmodern Bible. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Brentano, Clemens
1935 "Der Philister vor, in und nach der Geschichte: Aufgestellt,
begleitet und bespiegelt aus göttlichen und weltlichen
Schriften und eigenen Beobachtungen." Pp. 190-229 in
Andreas Müller (ed.), Satiren und Parodien. Leipzig: Reclam.
(Orig. 1811.)
Clark, Anna
1989 "Whores and Gossips: Sexual Reputation in London 1770‫־‬
1825." Pp. 231-48 in A. Angerman et al. (eds.), Cunent
Issues in Women's History. London and New York: Roudedge.
Dawson, William Harbutt
1904 Matthew Arnold and His Relation to the Thought of Our Time:
An Appreciation and a Criticism. New York and London:
Putnam's.
Eagleton, Terry
1990 The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Oxford: Blackwell.
Eilberg-Schwartz, Howard
1990 The Savage in Judaism: An Anthropology of Israelite Religions and
Ancient Judaism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Exum, J. Cheryl
1993 Fragmented Women: Feminist (Subversions of Biblical Narratives.
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement
Series 163. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.
Gallop, Jane.
1985 Reading Lacan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Gottwald, Norman K.
1979 The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sodology of the Religion of Liberated
Israel 1250-1050 B.C.E. MaryknoU, NY: Orbis.
1986 "The Participation of Free Agrarians in the Introduction

37
W e have spared the reader this joke up to now. But it was part of our original
concept, and we have tried to offer just such an uncircumscribed reading of the
term "Philistine."
 of Monarchy to Ancient Israel: An Application of H.A.
Landsberger's Framework for the Analysis of Peasant Move-
ments." Sanaa 37:77-106.
1993 "A Hypothesis about Social Class in Monarchic Israel in
the Light of Contemporary Studies of Social Class and
Social Stratification." Pp. 139-64 in The Hebrew Bible in Its
Social World and Ours. Adanta: Scholars Press.
Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm
1889 Deutsches Wörterbuch. Ed. Matthias von Lexer. 16 vols.
Leipzig: Hirzel.
Jameson, Fredde
1981 The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Jobling, David
1986 The Sense of Biblical Narrative. Vol. 2. Sheffield: J S O T .
1992 "Deconstruction and the Political Analysis of Biblical Texts:
AJamesonian Reading of Psalm 72." Semeia 59:95—127.
1993 "What, if Anything, is 1 Samuel?" Scandinavian Journal of
the Old Testament 7:17-31.
1994 "Transference and Tact in Biblical Studies: A Psychologi-
cal Approach to Gerd Theissen's Psychological Aspects of Pauline
Theology." Studies in Religion 22:451-62.
Midrash Rabbah
1939 Midrash Rabbah. Trans, under the editorship of H. Freed-
man and Maurice Simon. 10 vols. London: Soncino.
Midrash Tehillim
1959 The Midrash on Psalms. Ed. William G. Braude. 2 vols. New
Haven: Yale University Press.
Newman, John Henry
1973-84 The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman. Ed. Ian Ker,
Thomas Gornall, S.J., et al. 31 vols. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Niditch, Susan
1990 "Samson as Culture Hero, Trickster, and Bandit: The Em-
powerment of the Weak." Catholic Biblical Quarterly 52:608-
24.
Oxford University Press
1971 The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. 2 vol-
umes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Polzin, Robert
1989 Samuel and the Deuteronomist. A Literary Study of the Deuteronomic
History Part Two: 1 Samuel. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
Said, Edward W.
1988 "Michael Walzer's Exodus and Revolution•. A Canaanite Read-
ing." Pp. 161-78 in Edward W. Said and Christopher
Hitchens (eds.), Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and
the Palestinian Question. New York: Verso.
Stephens, James, Edwin L. Beck and Royall H. Snow, eds.
1934 Victorian and Later English Poets. New York: American Book
Company.
Sternberg, Meir
1985 The Poetics of Biblical Narrative: Ideological Literature and the Drama
of Reading. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Vawter, Bruce
1977 On Genesis: A New Reading. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Walzer, Michael
1985 Exodus and Revolution. New York: Basic Books.
Warrior, Robert
1989 "Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians: Deliverance, Conquest,
and Liberation Theology Today." Christianity and Crisis
29:261-65.
Westerkamp, Ulrich
1912 Beitrag zur Geschichte des literarischen Philistertypus mit besonderer
Berücksichtigung von Brentanos Philisterabhandlung. Doctoral dis-
sertation, University of Munich.
 ORIENTALISM, ETHNONATIONALISM AND
TRANSNATIONALISM: SHIFTING IDENTITIES
A N D BIBLICAL I N T E R P R E T A T I O N

R.S. Sugirtharajah

We need no longer offer explanations... It matters not whether we are good or

bad, civilized or barbarian, so long as we are but ourselves.
Gora-Rabindranath Tagore

"Actually, we're all possessed by cultural otherness in one way or another,

aren't we?" he asked.
"Except, at this moment in time it can be sort of hard to say what makes for
a cultural self and what's an other". . . "People like us are this impossible
collage, aren't we?".
"Tell me about it!" Firoze shouted back.
. . . "You know, " Gita reflected, "When I first came here I used to see
everything in terms of dichotomies: America was this big lonely place, and so
when I thought of India it was mostly in term of happy things. I also used to
think there was a space I could arrive where I'd understand everything and be
contented ever after."
"But when you got older, and you saw that everything is mixed up, every
horizon opens onto another even more complicated one, and no solution is ever
final," said Firoze.
"Exactly," Said Gita.
Love, Stars And All 77!ai‫־‬Kirin N a r a y a n

It is becoming increasingly clear that nationalities, self-identities and

cultures are constructed in response to the Other. Edward Said has
been instrumental in initiating a lively academic interest in what have
now come to be known as colonial discourse studies. His Orientalism
(1985 [1978]) focuses on how, in a variety of ways, the West has
been able to produce texts and codify knowledge about the Other,
especially in the form of those who were under its colonial control.
H e defines Orientalism as dealing with the Orient "by making
statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching
it, settiing it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style
for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient"
(1985: 3). In his view, it is a systematic discipline "by which European
culture was able to manage—even produce—the Orient politically,
sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively
during the post-Enlightenment period" (1985: 3). In other words,
Orientalism results in not just a textualizing of the Orient, but a
textualizing on behalf of it and a representing of it, thus making it
amenable to certain kinds of control and manipulation. In effect,
what Orientalism achieved was that "European culture gained in
strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort
of surrogate and even underground self" (1985: 3). In characterizing
and defining the Other, the West characterized and defined itself—
as a superior culture "in comparison with all the non-European peoples
and cultures" (1985: 7). Inevitably Said's thesis elicited a great amount
of controversy and interest among both Western and post-colonial
intellectuals. As a consequence of the debate, Said himself has gone
on to address some of the criticism and widen his focus to explore
the lasting legacy of colonialism—its cultural and intellectual control
(Culture and Imperialism, 1993).
Said's thesis has mainly to do with European attitudes to the Middle
East and Islam and has no direct relevance to biblical materials, though
he points out that during the early nineteenth century, the Orient
meant only India and the Bible lands (1985: 4). This present essay
engages Said's thesis, highlighting the traces of Orientalist ideas, habits
and categories in biblical scholarship, and exploring how both West-
e m and Third World 1 scholars have made use of orientalistic formu-
lae to define their identities. It tries to move the debate a step fur-
ther by discussing the role of the biblical interpreter at a time when
national identities, geographical borders and cultural boundaries are
being redrawn, re-mapped and re-designed

Oriental Mannerisms and Biblical Interpreters

O n e can often identify signs of Orientalism in the writings of biblical

scholars. As a way of illustrating this I would like to use the works
of Joachim Jeremias, and especially his The Parables of Jesus (1963), a
near-classic in which countless Third World biblical scholars were
schooled. Several of the exegetical conclusions Jeremias arrives at
betray his euro-centric perception of the Other. T h e negative carica-

1
T h e term, "Third World," is used not in a numerical or geographical sense but
as a socio-political designation of a people who have been excluded from power and
authority to mould and shape their own lives and destiny. For discussion of the
term see my Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World (Maryknoll,
NY: Orbis Books, 1991), p. 3.
turing of the characters, condescending remarks he makes about the
narrative style of indigenous story-tellers, the stereotyping of the land-
scape, are all akin to the travel writing, novels and other literary
productions of the colonial era rather than to the marks of a biblical
scholarship which professes to be rooted in objective science. For
him the East is hot (1963: 140); the Orient is full of beggars (1963:
159); the people in the Orient go to bed early (1963: 157); Oriental
women are fertile, inferior and submissive (1969: 375); the rich in
the East are brutal (1963: 195); and Oriental story-tellers exaggerate
and hype their materials. For instance, in the Parable of the
Talents, when Matthew boosted up the amount of money and Luke
increased the number of servants, Jeremias attributes this hype to
the Oriental story-teller's penchant for large numbers, which "led to
embellishment in both versions of the story" (1963: 28). Similarly,
the fruitful harvest in the Parable of the Sower is dismissed as "ab-
normal tripling, after the oriental fashion" (1963: 150). Even Jesus
does not escape Jeremias' euro-centric jibe. T h e inflated contract
figures in Luke 16:1-9 are dismissed as "the oriental story-teller's
love for large numbers" (1963: 181).
The Parables also perpetuates the notion that the Other is lazy and
unreliable. When commenting on the Parable of the Labourers in
the Vineyard (Matt. 20:1-19), he states that the excuse the labourers
who were standing around came out with, that no one had hired
them, was their "cover for their typical oriental indifference" (1963:
37, 137). Such exegetical comments are based not so much on the
economic realities of the time, or the employment opportunities avail-
able to the labourers, as on the euro-centric view of the Oriental as
a lazy native.
Look again at the comments he makes on the Parable of the Wicked
Servant (Luke 16:1-9). When the steward adjusts the accounts of the
debtors, Jeremias' reaction is very interesting. He attributes the ex-
traordinary behaviour of the steward to the people in the East not
knowing anything of book-keeping or audits (1963: 181). At a stroke,
he not only elevates European achievements in accounting but also
rules out the possibility of the contributions Chinese, Indians and
Egyptians have made towards the development of present-day math-
ematics—a point very cogentiy argued by George Gheverghese J o -
seph in his recent book, The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of
Mathematics (1991). Such a claim also demonstrates the euro-centric
parochialism of Jeremias which denies the possibility of other people
having different ways of accounting. T h e exegetical comment on the
same parable by Margaret Gibson, during the height of the colonial
period, is worth recalling. Her considered view was that the behaviour
of the steward was a custom that prevailed "whenever Orientals are
left to their own methods, uncontrolled by any protectorate of Euro-
peans" (1902/3: 334).
Jeremias also reinscribes the 19th century binary typology which
posited that there were ontological differences between Eastern and
Western mentalities (Said 1985: 259). He writes: "It is not the purpose
of either parable (The Mustard Seed and the Leaven) merely to
describe a process; that would be the way of the western mind. T h e
oriental mind includes both beginning and end in its purview, seizing
the paradoxical element in both cases" (1963: 148). Such compari-
sons reinforce essentialism and become the template for racial deter-
minism and the inferiorising of the Other, in contrast to Western
rationality and superiority. Those who have been part of the colonial
experience are well aware that stereotyping is one of the mechanisms
by which the colonializer distorts and dominates the Other. Jeremias'
comments resemble those of the colonial administrators and mission-
aries who sought to define the Other by contrasting the superiority
of Western civilization with noble savages and inferior races. As Said
has pointed out, "the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West)
as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience" (1985: 1-2).
O n e of the ideas embedded in Orientalism is the view that Ori-
entais are prone to emotionalism and incapable of rational analysis.
Translated into biblical scholarship, this means that Western exegeti-
cal efforts are a cerebral and intellectual activity, whereas ours are
vague and practical. They investigate and interrogate texts, and en-
gage in critical analysis; we deal with people and their pressing so-
cial, theological and spiritual concerns. They get to think, meanwhile
we feel for the weak and the vulnerable. I would like to use the
recent volume that I edited, Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible
in the Third World (1991), as an example of this perception. When
reviewing the book, even a scholar like Christopher Rowland, who is
sympathetic to our cause, comments that "the strength of the Third
World exegesis does not lie in its ability to revitalize the historical-
critical method by supplying information hitherto unavailable. Rather,
the insights it has to offer arise from the articulation of a way of
reading in which the perspective of the marginal sheds fresh light on
the texts and how they may contribute to our understanding of dis-
cipleship" (1992: 45, 6). O n e comment in the "Books Received" section
of the Journal of Biblical Literature is equally interesting: "This volume
contains 34 essays, including an introduction and postscript by the
editor, by 28 Latin American, Asian, Native-American, African and
African-American contributors. Only those essays in 'Part II: Re-use
of the Bible: Examples of Hermeneutical Explorations' are of biblical
interest" (1991: 759). T h e implication seems to be that all historical,
exegetical, intellectual activities are assigned to Western scholars and
we are asked to articulate from the realm of emotion and experience.
Such attitudes, however sincere they may be, reinscribe the popular
perceptions of Third World interpretation, namely, that we are good
at drawing theological implications but weak at undertaking original
historical investigation. Western biblical scholars extract deep histori-
cal truths from the texts, but we provide homiletical guidelines for
Christian living. Such a division of labour not only raises questions
about the nature and purpose of historical investigation but also rules
out the possibility of culturally-informed historical research. T w o
examples—from Malawi and India—come to mind. A.C. Musopole
places witchcraft terminology, which is often dismissed by Western
scholars brought up with Enlightenment values as illogical and and-
social, in its socio-medical context, and from this angle investigates
Ps. 18:2 and J o h n 6:50-71. His re-reading of these two texts is an
example of how cultural nuances can provide critical resources to
illuminate the historical context of the texts (Musopole 1993: 3 4 7 -
354). Similarly Daniel L. Smith-Christopher has shown how Mahatma
Gandhi's culturally-conditioned reading of Daniel 6 as Hebrew bhakti
and social resistance literature anticipated the current textual critical
questions (1993: 321-338). T h e interpretative task, then, requires that
we read from our social and cultural locations, and interrogate the
texts with our different historical questions, exploring insights about
what the texts might have meant historically and what they mean
today. T h e introduction of cultural data, both past and present, will
help to expand the historical base of the narratives.
O n e of the notions Orientalism reinforced was the image of the
Eastern Other inhabiting a world seen as eternal and timeless. T h e
Oriental world is represented as static and incapable of any change.
Biblical scholars often unconsciously replicate this notion that the
non-Western nations sometimes lack vitality and creativity, living with
conditions, categories and customs that have barely changed since
biblical times. Here is one example:
 Those like myself who attempt to teach biblical texts from the social
science perspective often find that once the ancient Mediterranean world
view has been established, and the text explicated in the light of it,
Western students find themselves farther from rather than closer to the
text, and are left with the question, "so what?". On the contrary, those
who attempt the same approach in a non-Western context, find that
the text comes alive to students in a way that it was not before. This
is because they are hearing the text unfolded in their own social cat-
egories, according to their own world view, instead of through the fil-
ter of the Western post-enlightenment paradigm with which they do
not identify. (Osiek 1992: 94)
There are two presuppositions behind these sincere words. First, non-
Western societies are the same as they always have been. T h e core
cultural values such as h o n o u r / s h a m e , pollution/purity which Osiek
speaks of are static, regardless of the lapse of time. T h e possibility of
development and change are denied. Such an attitude also neutralizes
the differences between and within our cultures and amalgamates
our particular histories into one, concocting a unitary subject. T h e
other is the assumption that diverse cultural and religious traditions
can be bifurcated into two neat divisions—Western and non-Western.

Natives going Oriental

Orientalism is not something confined to Western critics. Traces of

it are evident in the writings of Third World biblical scholars as
well. For example, some posit the view that there are reasonable
similarities between the conflict-ridden Palestine of Jesus' time and
present-day Latin America or Asia. T h e formal similarities such as
poverty, oppression and religious authoritarianism which were preva-
lent in the Roman-occupied setting of Jesus' ministry are seen as
resembling those of the current South American situation. T h e fol-
lowing two statements, replicate the internal Orientalism of Third
World scholars:
The socio-political situation in Jesus' day presents striking parallels to
the situation that gave rise to Liberation theology in Latin America.
(Boff 1980: 103).
[T]here is a clearly noticeable resemblance between the situation here
in Latin America and that in which Jesus lived. (Sobrino 1978: 13).
Likewise, the Japanese theologian Hisako Kinukawa sees striking
cultural parallels between first-century Palestine and modern-day
Japan:
 [ W ] e notice m a n y parallels a n d similarities b e t w e e n the m o d e r n J a p a n e s e
a n d a n c i e n t M e d i t e r r a n e a n cultures. W e w h o share the social scenarios
that s h a p e d the p e r s p e c t i v e s o f the p e o p l e o f the early C h r i s t i a n a g e
h a v e a n a d v a n t a g e experientially in u n d e r s t a n d i n g t h e m . ( 1 9 9 4 : 22)

Such statements take note of formal similarities between first-century

Palestine and present-day Latin America or J a p a n but fail to note
the critical differences between the exploitation of first century Palestine
and the neo-colonial exploitation of Latin America today, or between
ancient Mediterranean cultures and modern Japanese cultures.

The Natives Deploying Orientalism for Nationalist Ends

While the West has been using Orientalism to define itself, we also
used the constructions of Orientalism to define our identities. T h e
Orientalist projection of a glorious Indian past was seized upon by
Indian intellectuals to revive nationalistic fervour, affirming the supe-
riority of Eastern spirituality over decadent Western material values.
Even the denigrated traits were turned into positive characteristics.
Richard Fox's term for this is "affirmative orientalism" (1992: 152).
T h e backward rural village is now seen as a self-contained, consen-
sus-led and de-bureaucratised community; passivity becomes non-vio-
lence; lack of initiative is seen as mark of non-possessiveness, and
otherworldliness is turned into spirituality. More importandy, Indian
Christian theologians played a critical role in creating a national
consciousness. Viewed by the majority Hindus as anti-nationalist,
Christian interpreters delved into the ancient Hindu texts to earn
their acceptability as true nationals. These Christians followed the
path set by the orientalists, and saw the recovery of the Indian sa-
cred texts (the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Dharmashastras and the
Bhagavadgita), the use of the indigenous literary theories such as dhvani,
and the employment of various philosophical and logical systems, as
a way of entering into the mainstream national life. Comparative
studies such as those on the Gita and the Fourth gospel (Amaladoss
1975), Manusmrti and the Pentateuch (Manickam 1977), and the de-
ployment of the dhvani method (Vandana 1981) are all seen not only
as celebrating India's glorious past but also as recovering an authen-
tically Indian identity for Christians. Such hermeneutical endeavours
have enabled Indian Christians to get rid of their anti-patriotic label,
but also have enabled them to invent a self-image. Such constructions
of nationalism were not only a by-product of the internalization of
Orientalism, but were worked out within the framework of the In-
dian classical Sanskridc tradition at the expense of India's vernacu-
lar, oral and folk categories.
Another aspect of internal Orientalism is the privileging of foreign
languages and foreign texts. For instance, those who write in English
are accorded a privileged status over those who use vernacular lan-
guages. O n e of the achievements of colonial education was to pro-
duce a false consciousness among the colonialized that knowledge in
any field of learning—whether in science, theology or technology—
could be acquired only through the mediation of modern western
texts. The internalization of this belief has led to the neglect of modern
sources outside European tradition and scholarship. Some Asian
scholars hardly cite works from our own regions. Even when writing
about pain and suffering we rush to Moltmann's The Crucified God
(1974), almost forgetting Kitamori (1966). I am not arguing against
foreign influence or borrowing but against our failure to recognize
our own worth.

Acquiring New Identities

Currendy, the idea of nationalism itself is going through a severe

reappraisal. Two categories of uprooted people raise special ques-
tions for national identity. O n e is voluntary exiles and the other is
internal exiles. T h e former are the de-localized transnationale—cf.
Appadurai's term "Postnational" (1993: 417)—who are part of the
diasporic culture which moves across borders and feels at home every-
where and nowhere; the latter are the de-rooted nationals who find
themselves refugees in their own countries, or move to another country
and live in refugee camps and re-setdement reserves. What unites
these two groups is that they both long for a home. T h e reality of
homelessness is increasingly becoming a new framework for herme-
neutics, and it evokes contrary responses. O n the one hand, the glo-
bal theorists propound a borderless transnationalism which scales the
boundaries of nations, territories and states, while on the other hand,
minority communities are engaged in ethnonationalist struggles in-
voking various kinds of age-old tribal and indigenous sentiments.
Makarand Paranjape calls this sub-nationalism (1994: 76).
In the face of the increasing assault on identity, the challenge for
some one like myself is to create a contemporary identity which is
eclectic, flexible, peaceful, and (in my case) Sri Lankan. However,
Sri Lanka itself has become a highly contested site. In overlapping
and multiple axes of identification, two negotiating options are gen-
erally held to be open to us: either to say that there is no such thing
as Sri Lankanness because it is non-existent or unclarifiable, or go to
the other extreme and fashion a very narrow and one-dimensional
notion of ourselves in territorial and linguistic terms, as various eth-
nie groups are trying to do. I think there is a third alternative. T h a t
is, to position ourselves between and betwixt cultures and countries
and engage in a processual hermeneutic. J a n M o h a m e d calls this limbo
state the "interstitial cultural space" (1992: 97). It is a vantage point
from which those who are caught amidst several cultures and groups,
and are unable or unwilling to feel "at home" in any, can come up
with unlimited alternative forms of group identity and social arrange-
ment. This is not only a mediating position between communities,
cultures and nations, but it also enables us to subject them to "ana-
lytic scrutiny."
It is in this uncolonialized space, if there ever is one, that contem-
porary hermeneutical praxis must reserve for itself the freedom to
mix and harmonize, change and retain various ingredients. Locking
oneself into any one position will be to deny oneself available op-
tions. This is precisely what Iqbal Ahmed Chaudhary, the narrator
in Adib Khan's novel, Seasonal Adjustments (1994) did not want to
happen to his daughter, Nadine. Seasonal Adjustments is a novel about
moving between Bangladesh and Australia and also about coming to
terms with mixed marriage—Catholic and Muslim. Keith, the Aus-
tralian father-in-law, a Catholic, is keen that his grand-daughter,
Nadine should be baptized so that she can preserve the family tra-
dition. But the child's father, Chaudhary, is not particularly happy
with Keith's brand of Christianity. He feels that the narrowness of a
single tradition may be a handicap to his daughter who is growing
up in multi-cultural Australia. H e is more concerned that Nadine
should be exposed to different views and ideas before she works out
her own religious stance. In a heated conversation at a family party,
Keith, who represents the old single-culture Australia, says in a des-
perately arrogant voice: "Every child is born into a tradition." Chaud-
hary replies in an equally irritant tone: "Nadine will be among a
slowly growing minority which will learn how to combine traditions.
It will not be easy" (1994: 85). It is in this "interstitial cultural space"
that the post-nationals in their metropolis and the subnadonals in
their refugee setdement, will work out a relevant hermeneutics. This,
as Chaudhary says, will not be easy.

List of References

Amâ1âd0ss ^^
1975 ' "An Indian Reads St. John's Gospel." Pp. 7-24 in C. Durai-
singh and Cecil Hargreaves (eds.), India's Search for Reality and
the Relevance of the Gospel of John. Delhi: ISPCK.
Appadurai, Aijun
1993 "Patriotism and its Futures." Public Culture 5/3:411-29.
Boff, Leonardo
1980 "Christ's Liberation via Oppression: An Attempt at Theo-
logical Construction from the Standpoint of Latin America."
Pp. 100-34 in Rosino Gibellini (ed.), Frontiers of Theology in
Latin America. London: SCM Press.
Fox, Richard G.
1992 "East of Said." Pp. 144-56 in Michael Sprinker (ed.), Edward
Said: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.
Gibson, Margaret D.
1902/3 "On the Parable of the Unjust Steward." The Expositor Times
14:334.
JanMohamed, Abdul R.
1992 "Worldliness-without-World, Homelessness-as-Home: Toward
a Definition of a Specular Border Intellectual." Pp. 96-120
in Michael Sprinker (ed.), Edward Said: A Critical Reader. Ox-
ford: Blackwell.
Jeremias, Joachim
1963 The Parables of Jesus (revised edition). London: SCM Press.
1969 Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus. London: SCM Press.
Joseph, George Gheverghese
1991 The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics. Lon-
don: Penguin Books.
Khan, Adib
1994 Seasonal Adjustments. St. Leonards NSW: Allen and Unwin.
Kinukawa, Hisako
1994 Women and Jesus in Mark• A Japanese Feminist Perspective. Mary-
knoll, NY: Orbis Books. English edition: SPCK: London.
Kitamori, Kazoh
1966 Theology of the Pain of God. London: SCM Press. Japanese edition
1946.
Manickam, T.M.
1977 Dharma According to Manu and Moses. Bangalore: Dharmaram
Publications.
Moltmann, Jürgen
1974 The Crucified God. London: SCM Press.
Musopole, A.C.
1993 "Witchcraft Terminology, The Bible, and African Christian
 Theology: An Exercise in Hermeneutics." Journal of Religion in
Africa 23/4:347-54.
Osiek, Carolyn
1992 "The Social Sciences and the Second Testament: Problems
and Challenges." Biblical Theology Bulletin 22/2:88-95.
Paranjape, Makarand
1994 "Indian (English) Criticism." Indian Literature 160:70-78.
Rowland, Christopher
1992 Review of Voicesfromthe Margin. Theology 95:45-6.
Said, Edward
1985 (1978) Orientalism. Harmondsworth, Penguin Books.
1993 Culture and Imperialism. London: Chatto and Windus.
Smith-Christopher, Daniel L.
1993 "Gandhi on Daniel: Some Thoughts on a 'Cultural Exegesis
of the Bible.'" Biblical Interpretation: A Journal of Contemporary
Approaches 1/3:321-28.
Sobrino, Jon
1978 Christology at the Crossroads: A Latin American Approach. London:
SCM Press.
Sugirtharajah, R.S.
1991 Voicesfromthe Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World.
Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. English edition, London: SPCK.
Vandana, Sister
1981 Waters of Fire. Bangalore: Asia Trading Corporation.
 C U L T U R A L BIAS IN E U R O P E A N A N D N O R T H
A M E R I C A N BIBLICAL S C H O L A R S H I P

J o h n Riches

T h e present reflections are prompted by engagement in an interna-

tional research project whose principal focus is on interpreting the
Bible in African contexts. 1 If African scholars wish to use the meth-
ods of contemporary biblical criticism to interpret the biblical texts,
to what extent are they taking over methods and modes of reading
which are transcultural (like algebra), to what extent are they taking
over a set of questions and procedures which are rooted in a very
different economic, political and cultural context and which may reflect
concerns which are not theirs and indeed attitudes which are posi-
tively inimical to them?
The kind of inculturation hermeneutics which many African scholars
are now developing 2 has a number of identifiable aims. It seeks in
the first place to use the resources of one's own culture to understand
the biblical texts. Thus it is argued that African beliefs and experi-
ence may provide important analogies with ancient texts, which are
not available or readily available to scholars from other cultures (e.g.,
belief in spirits, patterns of social organisation). And it also seeks to
read the texts in such a way that they may illumine the profound
questions which engage a particular cultural group at a particular
time and therefore to show how those texts can be appropriated and
given social embodiment in that culture (renewal of African identity,
questions concerning personal survival beyond death and the place
of the ancestors in a religious world-view).
Put like this, it can be fairly easily seen that very similar aims

1
This project was coordinated by Dr. Justin Ukpong of the Catholic Institute of
West Africa and is supported by the Department of Biblical Studies, Glasgow Uni-
versity, the Department of Religion and Classics, University of Zimbabwe, the In-
stitute for the Study of the Bible, University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg. A full report
of its Glasgow consultation is available on request to me.
2
See e.g., J.S. Ukpong, Proclaiming the Kingdom: Essays in Contextual New Testament
Studies (CIWA Publications, P.O. Box 499, Port Harcourt, 1993); J.S. Ukpong,
T. Okure, et al. (ed.), Evangelization in Africa in the Third Millenium: Challenges and Pros-
pects (CIWA Press, Port Harcourt, 1992); P. Schindler, A Handbook on Inculturation
(New York: Paulist Press, 1990).
have in fact been pursued by many European and North American
biblical scholars. It has been an accepted principle of historiography
that the historian should seek to understand the meaning of the texts
and documents which h e / s h e studies by the use of analogy. 3 And
scholars as diverse in their cultural and social context as Martin Luther
and F.C. Baur have approached the biblical texts with leading ques-
tions which reflect their own different settings and concerns. Luther's
question " H o w do I get a just God?" and Baur's attempt to show
how the biblical texts contribute to the expression of a new stage in
the development of the h u m a n consciousness 4 are both defining
questions in the sense that they set the direction for many years for
the subsequent efforts of scholars and so define a whole epoch of
scholarship.
This is not to deny that the tradition of European and North
American scholarship which still holds the ascendancy in the profes-
sional associations of biblical scholars was also responsible for the
development of "purely historical" methods (Baur) which seek to an-
swer these questions in ways which are publicly accountable. It is
rather to draw attention to the importance of particular cultural
questions, experiences and beliefs in the ways in which different gen-
erations of scholars understand and appropriate their texts and there-
fore to raise the question of cultural bias in such work. How far may
this—quite proper—cultural dimension of biblical interpretation lead
to distortion, to bias? And how can this be defined and identified?
Cultural bias may enter in at different points of this exercise. We
may in the first instance too easily overlook certain aspects of an-
cient culture and overemphasise others by pressing analogies with
our own. Tyrrell's famous taunt that Harnack looked down the well
of history and saw his own, Liberal Protestant, face reflected at the
bottom, 5 if true, is a devastating indictment of one of the major
historians of his generation who believed that he could indeed dis-
criminate between those elements which were central to Jesus' reli-
gious faith (his sense of the presence of God in his heart) and those
which were merely the husk of such beliefs (his belief, shared with

3
Ernst Troeltsch, Gesammelte Schriften, II (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1913), pp. 729-
753; "Historiography," in J. Hastings (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (New
York: Charles Scribners, 1914), VI, pp. 7 1 6 - 7 2 3 . See too, V.A. Harvey, The Histo-
rian and the Believer (London: S C M , 1967).
4
For a somewhat fuller discussion see my "A Future for N e w Testament theol-
ogy?," Literature and Theology 8 / 4 (1994), pp. 3 4 3 - 3 5 3 .
5
G. Tyrrell, Christianity at the Cross-roads (London, 1909) p. 44.
many of his time, in the imminent end of the world). 6 And yet, others
(Albert Schweitzer, E.P. Sanders) 7 have argued persuasively that Jesus
can be understood properly only when we see the central role which
such apocalyptic beliefs in an imminent end play in Jesus' religious
beliefs. O u r attempts to read the historical evidence in the light of
analogies between ourselves and Jesus may, that is to say, equally
lead us to a sense of the strangeness between Jesus and ourselves, as
Schweitzer saw.8 It is not so much the role of the analogical imagi-
nation in historiography which is at fault but the desire to conform
the subject of our study to those aspects of our experience which
provide the closest analogies, which leads to bias and distortion.
Again, the questions which we pose to the texts may serve both to
illumine and to distort them. If Luther wresdes with the meaning of
R o m 1:17 in order to discover the meaning of the "righteousness of
G o d " and to deliver himself from his own pangs of conscience and
fears of judgment, then he may (does, I would want to argue) dis-
cern elements in the text which are genuinely liberative. But as we
shall see there is a danger in this. In pressing answers to our ques-
tions we may too easily overlook questions and concerns in the texts
which are not our own and thus constrict our view of the text. More
disturbingly perhaps, the very fact that we succeed in appropriating
the texts may easily lead to their annexation: to a sense that the
texts are ours and that we are specially privileged in respect of these
texts. This is of course one easy way of fuelling one's sense of one's
own importance, of producing a sense (similar to that engendered by
Harnack's identification of his religious sensibilities with those of Jesus)
of cultural superiority. If the texts speak to our cultural concerns so
direcdy, then is it not true that we are uniquely their heirs?
In what follows I want to pick out a few examples from the his-
tory of biblical scholarship which may serve to illustrate the work-
ings of such cultural bias and distortion, as well as showing how
enormously fruitful such culturally specific readings have been. At
the same time it will be important to consider the role of historical
methods in these examples. In this way one may be able to argue
both for a proper, if self-critical, role for inculturation hermeneutics

6
A.V. Harnack, What is Christianity? (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1957), p. 55.
7
A. Schweitzer, The Quest for the Historical Jesus (London: A&C. Black, 1936); E.P.
Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (London: S C M 1985).
8
See my "Apocalyptic-Strangely Relevant," in W. Horbury (ed.), Templum Amiatiae
(Sheffield: J S O T Press, 1991), pp. 2 3 7 - 2 6 3 .
and to suggest that there are aspects of historical work which are to
be seen as transcultural.
Lutheran interpretations of Paul and, by extension, Judaism have
recendy been the subject of fierce criticism 9 which has on occasion
come close to accusations of racism and religious prejudice. D o such
criticisms do justice to Luther's own search for liberty and self-identity?
Luther was tormented by the question: how do I get a just God? In
a situation where he was encouraged to believe that only by following
the rigours of late Mediaeval penitential discipline could he satisfy a
relendess and almighty God, he turned to Paul and Rom. 1:17: in it
(the gospel) the righteousness of God is revealed. This he had been
taught to read as referring to the formal or active righteousness of
God: that by which God is himself righteous, that which he exercises
in punishing sinners and rewarding the righteous. As if it were not
enough that the Law should reveal to him the wrath of God to sin-
ners, the gospel was to reinforce it too. But by batding away at the
text, by reading it in the context of the Psalms and of the Fathers,
but more importandy in the context of the chapter in Romans: "he
who is righteous through faith shall live," he eventually came to see
that the genitive "of G o d " referred not to the righteousness which
belongs to God but to the righteousness which comes to men and
women as a gift from God and which is received in faith. All at
once, Luther tells us the meaning of Scripture was opened up to
him and a whole new world came to birth as he ran through Scrip-
ture in his mind. 10
T h e significance of this reading of Romans was of course enor-
mous for Europe—and therefore for all who subsequendy had the
fortune or misfortune to be involved in the history of Europe. Let
me make some brief points.
This was essentially a grammatical reading of the text. Luther was
using, passionately, but nonetheless responsibly and indeed in an
exemplary way, the methods of humanist scholarship to break open
the meaning of the Pauline text. An awareness of grammar, syntax,
of the relation of Paul's text to its context and to other biblical texts,
of the possibility of readings other than the standard orthodox, church

9
Notably by E.P. Sanders, in his Paul and Palestinian Judaism, (London: S C M
1977), pp. 3 3 - 5 9 . But see too S. Westerholm, Israel's Law and the Church's Faith (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988).
10
Preface to the Latin Writings, Luther's Works, Vol. 34 (St. Louis: Concordia,
1960), pp. 336f.
readings: all this informs Luther's search for "what Paul intended"
and has inspired coundess works of sharp-eyed and scholarly exege-
sis. Against such there is no law.
Nevertheless his reading is directed by questions about his identity
which were able to move large sections of his society. In his de libertate
Christiana11 Luther makes it clear that his search is for a realm of free-
dom which would lie outside the control of the ecclesiastical authori-
ties, where the believer would be lord of all, prophet, priest and
king, and where he/she also would know herself to be a servant of
all. It is in this sphere of inwardness, of faith, that the believer's
relationship to her God is rooted, not in the outward sphere of
"works-righteousness" which can be controlled by church discipline
and canon law. T h e believer's works ad extra may still be ambiguous
and subject to the discipline of the state, but in faith he knows him-
self to be simul justus et peccator and can discover a new sense of lib-
erty, calling and service. It is here—and only here—that believers
meet their God in Christ and find life and self-worth.
T h e consequences of this are far-reaching: on the one hand there
grows out of this a strong sense of group identity which is closely
linked, though not identical with various German regional identi-
ties.12 O n the other hand, it leads Luther to make a radical distinc-
tion between those who live by faith and all those who do not. Thus
he divides the world into two: all those who imagine that by their
own efforts they can gain life and salvation: monks, philosophers,
Turks, Jews 13 and those who know that salvation rests in accepting
God's gift of righteousness in faith.
It is not difficult to see why Luther's reading of Paul was so pow-
erful and liberative for him and for subsequent generations of schol-
ars and believers. It forged a new family of communities with a strong
sense of group identity and released the emergent German nation

" de libertate chrisdana, WA, 7.50, 5 - 3 0 ; for a somewhat fuller discussion, see
my "Nachfolge," TRE X X I I I (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1994), p. 692.
12
Cf. the introduction to G. Ritter, Luther: His Life and Work (London: Collins,
1963), where he asserts that "[t]o a German, Luther's character has always borne
an unmistakably national stamp and he has appeared as one of the most important
architects and personalities of the national, intellectual tradition and way of life."
(15) H e goes on to say, however, in the light of the catastrophe of the Second
World War that this is now superseded and that Luther's life "now bears upon the
whole question of our spiritual existence, with those basic questions on whose solu-
tion the formation of human culture is completely dependent." (16)
13
Commentary on Galatians ad 2.16, Luther's Works, Vol. 26 (St. Louis: Concordia,
1963), p. 140.
from its Babylonian captivity to the Church of Rome. But questions
remain as to its cultural bias: both in relation to its understanding of
the texts and in relation to the attitudes which it may engender to-
wards other cultures and people.
In the first place, emphasis on justification by faith as the funda-
mental experience of God through which the Christian discovers life
and freedom leads to a neglect of other elements in Paul: his con-
cern with the history of God's dealings with the peoples of the world,
not least with Israel; his striving to give a positive account of the
Law and of the place of ethical imperatives in the Christian life. T h e
danger of pressing too hard on the analogy between "Lutheran" ex-
perience of liberation from a troubled conscience (and the Babylonian
captivity of the Church) and Paul's sense of freedom and life in Christ
is great and easily leads to a one-sided interpretation of Paul. 14 Sec-
ondly, Luther's question, seen as a question about group and na-
tional identity leads him to see all cultures in terms of a simple dualism
of faith and "works-righteousness"; the world is recast in these terms
and therefore all who do not find the way to faith are to be categorised
as those who seek their "own righteousness."
Theoretically this could lead to a quite different attitude to other
cultures: recognising that there may indeed be others who do not
seek their "own righteousness" and therefore leaving judgments on
others open. In practice, it all too easily leads into a Lutheran doc-
trine of the necessity for salvation of the acceptance of the Gospel as
taught by D. Martin Luther and to a traducing of all other cultures,
foremost among them Judaism, as they are forced into the mould of
"works-righteousness."
Nevertheless while it is true that much Lutheran scholarship has
indeed pressed the analogy between Lutheran experience of faith and
Paul's theology too hard, it needs to be seen that Lutherans like
Krister Stendahl 15 and Ernst Käsemann, 1 6 as well as other scholars
like E.P. Sanders, have, diversely and indeed antagonistically, at-
tempted to correct the balance by historical argument and scrutiny
of both Pauline and Jewish texts. Again, careful attention to what is

14
Cf. Κ. Stendahl, "The Aposde Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the
West," in Paul Among Jews and Gentiles (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), pp. 7 8 9 6 ‫ ־‬, with
particular reference to Phil. 3 and Rom. 9 . 1 1 ‫־‬
15
Paul Among Jews and Gentiles.
16
Perspectives on Paul (London: S C M , 1971).
said and to the context in which it is said, may serve to highlight the
differences between Protestant/Lutheran senses of liberation and Paul's.
My second example is that of F.C. Baur, the German Protestant
theologian who dominated New Testament studies in the nineteenth
century. Baur's social and cultural context was very different from
that of Luther's. Coming from an orthodox Lutheran family, he sought
as a university professor in the burgeoning culture of nineteenth
century Germany to give an account of Christianity which would
show its entidement to a central place in the new bourgeois culture.
If Luther was a revolutionary, counter-cultural figure overthrowing
the great mediaeval synthesis of church, state and society, Baur's
concern was to justify theology's place within the academy to its
"cultured despisers," something he did with astonishing success. Ac-
cordingly in his Church History17 he sets out to place Christianity in its
context in world history. T h e Christian religion came into being at
the time when the Roman Empire had established a measure of unity
in the Mediterranean world. T h e period saw the emergence of a
more universal consciousness in world history, which found its reli-
gious expression in Christianity with its rejection of the particulari-
ties of local cults and codes. For it was a religion in which there
would in Christ be neither J e w nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor
female (in theory at least).
Baur's purpose may have been apologetic but his methods and
arguments needed to be those which would carry weight in the acad-
emy. Thus he sought to offer an account of Christianity which was
"purely historical." And again one must say that much of the work
which he did was exemplary. He it was who scrutinised the Pauline
episdes in an attempt to determine which were from Paul and which
were not and who was responsible for setting biblical studies on a
firm historical footing. He it was who first seriously attempted to
give an account of the development of early Christianity, showing
how it moved from the teaching of Jesus with his universalist ethic
but his still particularist understanding of himself as the Jewish Mes-
siah via Paul with his Law-free doctrine of the Spirit, through the
struggles between Pauline and Petrine Christianity with its emphasis
on the Law, to a final synthesis in early Catholicism. Thus Baur
portrays the growth of early Christianity as a new form of culture

17
The Church History of the First Three Centuries (London: Williams and Norgate,
1878-9).
which gave expression to a new universal religious self-consciousness.
Those who were in Christ were new creatures who transcended the
old pardcularist cultures, Judaism and the pagan cultures of the ancient
world. Judaism with its monotheistic developments was in many ways
superior to other Hellenistic religions, but it was still, with its par-
ticular codes, inferior to Christianity.
There can be no denying Baur's contribution to the development
of historical studies of the New Testament. At the same time we
must notice his limitations and the place at which distortion may
creep in. Baur was heavily dependent on Hegel's philosophy of Geist
for the account which he offered of the development and history of
the Christian religion out of Jewish and Hellenistic religion. It was
through the Spirit that there gradually and dialectically emerged a
new, more universal self-consciousness which was, as Christ-conscious-
ness, at the same time a consciousness of the universal spirit which
manifests itself by entering into the limitations of human culture and
gradually transcending the particularities of local cultures and reli-
gions. Baur's key-witnesses in all this were texts like 1 Cor. 2 : 1 0 1 6 ‫ ־‬:
"no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of G o d . . .
we have the mind of Christ." Yet as Schweitzer, Wrede and later
E.P. Sanders pointed out, to lay stress on the possession of the Spirit
in this sense is to miss the profoundly eschatological/apocalyptic
character of Paul's thought. It was too, as W. Heitmüller would argue,
to overlook the strong parallels between Paul's use of "spirit" and
that of popular Greek religion with its enthusiasm and sacramental
rites. Spirit for Paul was more closely related to the notion of spirit
possession than to the heightening of moral and religious conscious-
ness which Hegel described in his philosophy of Geist.18
Furthermore there is no mistaking the sense in which Baur's por-
trayal of Christianity as the expression of the new universal moral,
religious self-consciousness is the means of a massive annexation of
Christianity by Protestant bourgeois culture (in this respect it was
truly European and could be enthusiastically embraced in England,
Scotland and elsewhere in Europe). It shows Kulturprotestantismus as
the highest form of religion with all others subordinate to it. It does
not, like Luther, relegate all others to the status of false religions;
rather it encourages attempts to grade different religions into higher

18
See my A Century of New Testament Study (Cambridge: Lutterworth, 1993), pp.
31-49.
and lower. But it does make it quite clear who is at the top. And
most importandy it shows—a particular cultural form of—Christian-
ity as replacing other forms of religious culture as outmoded and
superfluous. But while it thus showed nineteenth century European
Christianity to be superior to other religions it left open the question
of the debt of Christianity to other forms of religion. T o what extent
did Christianity arise out of other forms of religion; to what extent
in its subsequent development was it indebted to the different cul-
tures in which it took root?
Baur had many sons. Perhaps the most interesting of his follow-
ers were the so-called History of Religions School, scholars like
H. Gunkel and W. Bousset. Their goal was to plot the development
of religious beliefs in the ancient world and in particular to examine
the degree to which Christianity had borrowed from, emerged out of
other contemporary religions: Judaism, the Mystery religions and the
other pagan religions of the Mediterranean. This in turn raised the
question of the relation of Christianity to the other forms of religion
from which it emerged. How indeed does one identify the "essence
of religion" among all its varied forms? Scholars like Bousset reacted
sharply to attempts simply to identify the essence of Christianity with
the essence of religion, or to distinguish between natural and super-
natural or revealed religion. They insisted that the history of the Old
and New Testaments shows them as so closely interwoven with the
general history of religion that "a distinction between revealed and
natural religion becomes an impossibility." What it does show is "a
movement from below, a slow growth from the imperfect to the
perfect. , ‫ י‬Nevertheless while Bousset is concerned to stress the conti-
nuities between Christianity and other forms of religion, there is no
doubt where in this process of gradual development Christianity stands.
"The religion of the Old and New Testament however represents . . .
the line of the purest expression of religion, the Gospel is, to say the
very least, until now highest and most perfect instantiation." 19
It is illuminating to consider the rather different history of this
kind of liberal cultural imperialism in Germany and England. Liberal
theology in Germany was largely discredited after the carnage and
defeat of the First World War. Liberal Protestant culture was fatally
weakened and unable to withstand the attacks of nationalism, socialism

19
W. Bousset, Das Wesen der Religion dargestellt an ihrer Geschichte (Halle: Gebauer-
Schetschke, 1904), p. 8.
and nadonal socialism. In their different ways both Barth 20 and
Bultmann 21 sought to make a sharp break between religion and the
gospel/kerygma and to seek meaning and self-understanding, not in
the heritage of religious culture but in the transcendent viva vox evangelii.
In England, by contrast, Liberal theology emerged alive and well.
O n e of the more remarkable examples of this unrepentant cultural
(and military) triumphalism is to be found in A.C. Headlam's The
Life and Teaching of Jesus the Christ.22 Like most Liberal theologians,
Headlam wished to interpret the Kingdom of God as the power of
God at work in history and to make a more or less close connection
between it and Christianity. "It is," he wrote, "a process which is
now working, not a new revelation to come from heaven, so it might
be described as Christianity or the Christian dispensation, the new
state of things inaugurated by the preaching of Jesus." 23 In this there
is nothing new. What is striking is the way in which he can identify
this process with the course of the War. H e draws parallels between
the British Army's advances from Egypt to Palestine and ancient batties
of the biblical times and the crusades: "English and Australian cav-
airy fought where Coeur de Lion had fought"; and he rejoices in the
hope that Jesus' land "may never again be brought under the blight-
ing influence of Turkish and M o h a m m e d a n rule." 24 He even goes so
far as to express approval of the Allies' treatment of the Germans at
the Treaty of Versailles!: "we can (and have attempted to) treat our
enemies justly." 25 Such self-delusion exposes with all desirable clarity
the dangers of this kind of identification between the fortunes of one's
own group and the divine purposes in history.
And Liberalism lived on, in a rather different vein, in the works of
C.H. Dodd, interestingly in The Meaning of Paul for Today26 to my
mind quite disturbingly in The Founder of Christianity27 In the latter
work Dodd spelled out his belief that Jesus came to found Christian-
ity and that there is a relatively straight line running from Jesus

20
See particularly his attack on the notion of religion in his The Epistle to the
Romans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968).
21
"Die liberale Theologie und die jüngste theologische Bewegung," in Glauben
und Verstehen, I (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1961), pp. 1.25‫־‬
22
London: John Murray, 1923.
23
ibid., p. 255.
24
ibid., vii.
25
ibid., p. 225.
26
London: Swarthmore Press, 1920.
27
London: Collins, 1971.
 through the history of the Mediaeval Church and the Reformation
on, "with some unfortunate accompaniments" 2 8 into the Europe of
the modern era. T h e accompaniments referred to are the religious
wars of the seventeenth century which ravaged the population of
central Europe, leaving a third of it dead and reducing it to a state
of virtual anarchy. This is another clear case of cultural bias, where
someone, because of his conviction that his, in this case European
Christian culture, is God-given is unable to look the facts of history
squarely in the face. In some not always clearly specified sense there
is an identification here between the gospel, the church and Euro-
pean culture, "Christendom."
I have so far not said anything about developments in N T studies
in North America. Here the situation is complex with a great range
of different approaches from the conservative New Right, which is at
least as culturally imperialistic as any former Liberalism, to the plu-
ralism of those who teach in non-denominational schools and col-
leges, often alongside colleagues of other faiths. There is too a major
division between those who continue to espouse historical critical modes
of reading the Bible and those who seek to replace them with some
form of literary reading. I shall here be concerned only with one
example from those who continue to pursue historical critical stud-
ies, and from among them with E.P. Sanders and D. Boyarin.
Sanders' major work has been concerned to re-evaluate the J u d a -
ism of the first century and to attack the portraits which had previ-
ously been offered particularly by German Lutheran scholars. Within
that framework he also seeks to give an account of the religion of
Jesus and Paul. Sanders' enquiry owes much to the religionsgeschichtliche
method but can be sharply distinguished from the work of scholars
like Bousset in a number of ways. In the first place he is fiercely
critical of the way they have portrayed and evaluated Judaism. In a
devastating critique in Paul and Palestinian Judaism29 he shows how biased
their reading is. But more fundamentally he effectively side-steps one
of the central aims of the school, which was to portray the historical
development of religions, to show how one religion emerged out of,
had its roots in another or others. Sanders does not deny the interest
of such questions: they arise naturally from his portrayal of Pauline
Christianity as essentially different from Palestinian Judaism. W h a t

28
ibid., p. 13.
29
Pp. 3 3 - 5 9 .
he wants to offer however is an account of the patterns of religion
which are to be found in these two types of religion, to show how
they function, how people move through them and shape their lives
in their terms. When it comes to evaluating the two, he refuses. "In
short, this is what Paul finds wrong in Judaism: it is not Christianity . . . In
saying that participadonist eschatology is different from covenantal
nomism, I mean only to say that it is different, not that the differ-
ence is instructive for seeing the error of Judaism's way. 5 ' 30 W h e n it
comes to the question of the derivation of Pauline Christianity from
other forms of contemporary religion, Jewish or Hellenistic, Sanders
is prepared to speculate briefly but his conclusions are largely nega-
tive and his inclination is to see Paul's pattern of religion as largely
his own creation, with some debts to Jewish apocalyptic and Helle-
nisdc portrayals of the h u m a n plight. 31
In what sense, then, does such a study aid our understanding?
Again Sanders' method differs significandy from the models of schol-
arship which we have so far considered. H e does not readily appeal
to analogies with present experience and indeed denies outright that
there we have such analogies available for understanding Paul's
participadonist eschatology. "We seem to lack a category of 'real-
ity'—real participation in Christ, real possession of the Spirit—which
lies between naive cosmological speculation and belief in magical
transference on the one hand and a revised self-understanding on
the other." But, although he does not have a new category to pro-
pose, and while interpretations in terms of magical transference and
new self-understandings do not capture what Paul was saying, he
can at least assert that Paul had such a category of reality. And this
is to say that "[t]o an appreciable degree, what Paul concretely thought
cannot be direcdy appropriated by Christians today." 32 Of course
there are elements in Paul's thought which are more easily transfer-
able to our present day: the language of "trust, obedience, renuncia-
tion of one's own striving" but that does not mean that these repre-
sent the "real and exhaustive interpretation of what Paul meant." 3 3
It is interesting to consider what is happening here. Attempts to
inculturate Paul into contemporary American culture are being re-

30
ibid., p. 552.
31
ibid., pp. 553-6.
32
ibid., pp. 522f.
33
ibid., p. 523.
sisted or, perhaps better, reladvised: those who make them may draw
strength and comfort from them but they risk imposing their own
interpretation on that which fundamentally eludes interpretation and
they therefore inevitably distort and misread. Such readings can at
best catch only part of what Paul was saying and we need therefore
to be extremely cautious about evaluative religious judgments. In the
light of the history of Christian anti-Semitism, it is not difficult to
understand such reticence.
This is not of course to deny any explanatory role to Sanders'
own work. W h a t he presents is intended to be "helpful for under-
standing" and it achieves this by careful comparison of different
patterns of religion, comparing that is, whole with whole. W h a t dis-
tinguishes one religion from another is not that they disagree on
important central tenets (that may occur between members of the
same family of religions) but that "there is a significance to a basic
agreement or disagreement with regard to a whole pattern, and that
basic agreement can exist despite agreement on even important ele-
ments." 34 And this in turn sheds light on Sanders' leading question
which is a functionalist one: how do these religions work? How does
someone get in and stay in? Such questions sit neady alongside those
of social anthropologists who do not seek analogies between their
own sense of self-understanding or indeed other forms of religious
experience and those of the religions they study, but who rather
attempt to describe as closely as they may how the beliefs and rituals
of a particular religious group lead to the functioning of the group
as a whole. There is, that is to say, no attempt to appropriate the
religion, simply to understand its operation. And in a secular aca-
demie institution with colleagues of different faiths and none, such
an approach may help to preserve a certain neutrality. Just as, in a
multi-cultural society, the relativisation of all attempts to appropriate
religious traditions and the refusal to evaluate one religious tradition
against another may assist the growth of tolerance and co-operation.
Sanders has undoubtedly rendered great service to Christian and
Jewish studies of the first century by purging (largely at least) the
discipline of its anti-Jewish bias, the portrayal of first century J u d a -
ism as "works-righteousness." But there is also a reluctance to try to
learn from these ancient texts, to seek answers from them, however

34
ibid., p. 552.
 critically, to our present cultural concerns, even though such con-
cerns clearly underlie Sanders' own work.
It is then perhaps not surprising that these should be taken up by
other scholars. Notable among these is the Jewish Rabbinic scholar,
Daniel Boyarin in his A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity Ρ
Boyarin gratefully accepts Sanders' contribution to the understand-
ing of first century Judaism and his corrections of, largely, Lutheran
misreadings. But he is interested in a cultural reading which pre-
cisely may find links between the experience of groups different from
the dominant "European" cultural groups and Paul's texts and which
also may have its own political agenda. 36 Specifically he wants to
read Paul in the light of his own knowledge of Jewish religious and
hermeneutical traditions which he judges to be very close to those
from which Paul sprang. And he wants to read Paul in the light of
Jews' experience of cultural difference, more bluntiy of the violence
done to Jews "in the name of Paul's text." 37 Thus whereas Sanders
is reluctant to address the question to what extent Paul was critical
of Judaism, Boyarin supposes Paul to be concerned with questions of
the difficulties of combining belief in a universal God with the par-
ticularities of Jewish practice. "Why would a universal God desire
and command that one people should circumcise the male members
of the tribe and command food taboos that make it impossible for
one people to join in table fellowship with all the rest of his chil-
dren?" 3 8 H e thus portrays Paul as a cultural critic who seeks to
universalise Judaism by allegorising it and contrasts Paul's reading
with rabbinic/midrashic readings which emphasise the particularity
of the prescriptions of T o r a h and their literal application in the flesh.
T h a t is to say, Boyarin's political experience and agenda will pre-
cisely not allow him simply to portray the differences between Pauline
Christianity and Judaism; it is essential for him to understand their
interrelation and to tease out Paul's own evaluative judgments.

35
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
36
'"Cultural reading' has two senses. O n the one hand, it refers to exegetical
advances that 'European' interpreters of the Bible gain by paying attention to the
insights of Bible-readings from 'other' cultures that may have practices and knowl-
edges important for the understanding of biblical texts. It refers as well to the po-
liticized readings of the Bible generated by people who have been the object of
colonialist or racist practices carried out in the name of the Bible." A Radical Jew,
p. 40.
37
ibid., p. 40.
38
ibid., p. 39.
 Whereas Sanders portrays Paul as someone who has found a new
religious life which is essentially different from his former Judaism,
Boyarin sees Paul as a J e w who is striving to give Judaism a new
direction.
Thus Boyarin sees Paul as reacting to first century readings of
Torah which stress the concrete, physical bond between Yahweh and
his people, the marking of that relationship in the flesh. T h e divine
name ShaDaY is inscribed in the body, the shin in the nose, the dalet
in the hand and the yod in the circumcision (see Tanhuma Tsav 14).
In midrashic interpretation "this mark of natural or naturalized mem-
bership in a particular people is made the center of salvation. These
texts, in their almost crude physicality, register a strong protest. . .
against any flight from the body to the spirit with the attendant
deracination of historicity, physicality, and carnal filiation which
characterizes Christianity.' 39‫ י‬Equally Paul's reaction is seen to be
analogous to present Jewish concerns about their own cultural par-
ticularity and the dangers that it has brought. Paul's reaction to
culturally particular readings of the tradition was to embrace a
wide-spread counter-tendency of his own times: neo-Platonism. This
was not foreign to Judaism. Philo of Alexandria was deeply attracted
to it. But Paul in the allegory of Hagar and Sarah seeks to universalise
Jewish culture, to relegate Jewish observance of T o r a h to the sphere
of the transitory, the "flesh," and to relocate—and recast—Jewish
traditions in the sphere of the spirit (Gal 5:17, where flesh is taken
to mean the circumcised flesh of the penis). T h e old cultural distinc-
tions are thus relegated to the past (3:28); in Christ a fundamental
underlying unity is discovered which supersedes the old dispensation.
T h e tragedy is that this new dispensation with its "universal" self-
consciousness may then turn on those who still hold to a particularising
reading of their traditions and subject them to sustained and terrible
violence. Again what is happening here is that Boyarin refuses a
reading which is content to trace the pattern of a religion without
consideration for its long-term political implications. T h e meaning of
Pauline texts like Gal. 5:17 needs to be spelled out in terms of its
history of effects, and these include not only its spawning of a rich
history of Christian piety and interiority, but the traducing of J u d a -
ism as it is portrayed as standing in fundamental opposition to Chris-
tian life in the Spirit.

39
ibid., p. 37.
 It would of course be intriguing to enter into a fuller debate with
Boyarin. In the end there would be similar debates to those which
have been conducted with the other figures discussed above. Does
an allegorising interpretation of Paul do justice to the other aspects
(notably the more sharply apocalyptic ones) of his thought? How
accurately does Boyarin represent the pervasiveness of a certain kind
of platonising universalism? Does concentration on themes of polid-
cal and cultural identity bring us so close to the heart of Paul's
concerns that we may see in them the principle explanation of his
"conversion"? Are all the "effects" which flow from particular Pauline
texts to be accepted as a proper indication of their SinnpotentiaR All
questions, again, in which a careful historical scrutiny of the evi-
dence will play an important role in resolving the debate.
As Boyarin himself recognises, his questions and approach to Paul
bear interesting resemblance to those of F.C. Baur. What is distinc-
tive about his own work is that he filters these questions about the
emergence of a more universalising consciousness in the West through
the consciousness of those who have rejected such universalising ten-
dencies and have therefore found themselves marginalised and
victimised. And, just as importandy, he wants to claim Paul for his
own tradition. There are, he argues, important cultural critical mes-
sages for Judaism in Paul's writing which can contribute to their
own search for identity, and so, indirectly at least, to the self-
understanding of Christians.
I have been trying to show in this article the extent to which
major European and, more recently, North American readings of
the Bible are cultural readings. Those who now, in Africa and else-
where, consciously seek to develop their own readings from a differ-
ent cultural standpoint should not be portrayed as engaging in a
fundamentally different type of activity. Nor should they suppose that
the tools of historical criticism cannot serve their purpose. T h e ways
in which these have been employed on either side of cultural de-
bates provides evidence of that. But while African and Jewish cul-
tural readings are written from the point of view of the oppressed
and marginalised, the readings of European and North American
modernity have been written by middle class academics who were
members of powerful nations. T h e principal danger that we have
noticed with such readings is the tendency to annexation: towards a
too easy identification of one's own cultural appropriation of particu-
lar texts with their meaning tout court, a tendency to universalise one's
own reading and therefore to impose it on others, together with its
high estimation and privileging of one's own culture. At the root of
this lies the too easy conversion into identities of perceived analogies
between present (culturally determined) experience and belief and that
of the communities which first produced the texts being studied.
If, then, we want to uphold the validity of cultural readings, we
need to stress the importance of cultural interaction in such read-
ings. Different voices may serve to disturb the too ready idendfica-
tion of elements in a particular group's experience with those of,
e.g., Paul and his community. And historical argument and scrudny
may then help to undermine the distordons to which the overpressing
of cultural analogies can lead. But precisely insofar as historical work
is informed by analogies and its questions are framed within a par-
dcular community, it too is subject to a limitation of perspective which
can be corrected only by complementary views from members of
different cultural groups. And since most of the major studies of
Christianity have in fact been written from a position of power and
privilege there is an urgent need to listen to the readings of the mar-
ginalised and oppressed which may press on those in the West different
questions and perspectives.
In a recent article, 40 David Tracy has called for a greater recog-
nition of the diversity of centres in theology. In one sense this is a
call for the overcoming of the "grand narratives" of modernism of
which Baur's construction of Christian history is a rich example. It
is a call to attend to the "voices of subjugated knowledge: the voices
of all those marginalised by the officiai story of modern triumph." 41
But in seeking to overcome the colonising tendencies in modernism,
we should not abandon the appeal to reason (including historical
reason) as a means of addressing the key questions of our own soci-
ety and of enabling communication between people of different cul-
tures and with different interests. Nor should we simply exult in the
rediscovery of local traditions. Rather, and here Tracy appeals to
Levinas, 42 "the face of the genuine other should release us from all
desire for totality and open us to a true sense of infinity. T h e face of
the other should also open us to the Jewish rather than the Greek

40
" O n Naming the Present," in David Tracy, On Naming the Present God, Hermeneutics,
and Church (London: S C M , 1994), pp. 3.24‫־‬
41
ibid., p. 20.
42
Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press,
1980).
realities constituting our culture. For the face of the other can open
us to ethical responsibility and even to the call of the prophets to
political and historical agency and action." 43 T h e challenge to those
who engage in cultural readings of the Bible lies precisely here: so to
read the texts that they may discern the reality of the infinite God
of life in the concrete situations of their own culture; at the same
time as being always ready to hear the voices of others who from
their culture, their situation of difference, of suffering and oppression
may critique and enlarge that understanding of God.

43
Tracy, "Naming the Present" p. 17.
 O N NEW TESTAMENT INTERPRETATION
AND E T H N O C E N T R I S M

Pieter F. Craffert

1. Introduction

New Testament interpretation is inevitably cross-cultural. This should

be reason enough for taking note of the important debate on ethno-
centrism in cultural anthropological studies. In the wake of "the in-
terpretive turn" (the recognition of the centrality of interpretation in
all h u m a n affairs) it is claimed that the idea of neutrality towards
one's own context is nothing but a display of ethnocentric blindness.
Thus, some have questioned whether ethnocentrism can in fact be
avoided. We urgendy need an investigation of the reasons for the
different views and how they may influence biblical studies.
T h e issue of ethnocentrism poses serious moral and ethical ques-
tions for anyone involved in cross-cultural interpretation. Is it pos-
sible to present other cultural practices and beliefs in such a way as
to do justice to them, and if so, how should it be done? Is it possible
for modern people to respect the cultural strangeness from which the
New Testament texts emerged? Are those scholars who claim to avoid
ethnocentrism deceiving themselves and their readers?

2. On Ethnocentrism and the Interpretive Turn

2.1 Varieties of Ethnocentrism

Briefly, ethnocentrism maintains that beliefs and practices in another

culture should, or cannot but, be interpreted according to the stan-
dards of one's own culture. T h e obverse, cultural relativism, main-
tains that such beliefs and practices should be evaluated relative to
the culture of which they are part (see Lett 1987:71; Winthrop
1991:235-237). T h e one attaches special privilege to one's own com-
munity while the other asserts a tolerance for every other group. But
at least three different aspects of ethnocentrism should be consid-
ered: factual, moral and epistemological.
 First, if ethnocentrism implies "judgments based on irrational pref-
erences incapable of rational validation' 5 (Bidney 1968:546), then a
degree of "factual" ethnocentrism is found in all societies and cultures;
both conscious and unconscious preferences for inherited practices
and beliefs are facts of socialisation. Second, the moral side of eth-
nocentrism is constituted not by the fact of a preference for one's
own cultural values, but by the "uncritical prejudice in favour of
one's own culture and the distorted, biased criticism of alien cultures"
(Bidney 1968:546). T h e epistemological side of ethnocentrism is re-
lated to the factual aspect: here we find the notion that one cannot
do otherwise than interpret alien cultures from one's own perspec-
tive, and in this sense "everybody is ethnocentric" (Rorty 1985:13).
As with Rorty, Hoy finds no evil in ethnocentrism as the notion
that "we see the world through our own self-understanding," only in
expecting "every other self-understanding to converge with ours"
(1991:175). T h e benign ethnocentrism suggested by him would do
all it could to keep from imposing its own views on others, but would
not do so with the intention of overcoming ethnocentrism which he
regards as an inevitable p a r t of the interpretive turn (see Hoy
1991:171). According to this view, ethnocentrism is inevitable and
the moral obligation lies in avoiding undue imposition. Rorty main-
tains that we "would rather die than be ethnocentric, but ethnocen-
trism is precisely the conviction that one would rather die than share
certain beliefs" (1986:525). Geertz also reminds us that all ethnogra-
phy is in the last analysis the product of the describer's description.
Any pretension that ethnography is "more than the representation of
one sort of life in the categories of another is impossible to defend,"
due to the "un-get-roundable fact that all ethnographical descrip-
dons are homemade" (Geertz 1988:144—145). So also Bohman: "since
we can interpret things only from 'our' point of view, interpretation
is inevitably ethnocentric. It is impossible to understand others as
they understand themselves: we understand them only according to
'our own lights'" (199lb: 113).
In the name of the interpretive turn, Hoy insists that ethnocen-
trism is not easy to avoid and that the very idea of neutrality towards
one's own context is really a blindness towards context-dependence
(see 1991:156, 170). Part of the trouble with enthnocentrism is that
it impedes us from discovering at what sort of angle we stand to the
world and "what sort of bat we really are" (Geertz 1986:112).
2.2 Ethnocentrism and. New Testament studies

Ethnocentrism, and its avoidance, is closely linked to the ways in

which the interpretive turn is understood. Primarily three responses
to the issues of ethnocentrism and the interpretive turn can be iden-
tified in New Testament studies. They can best be described as re-
sponses of denial, of avoidance and of celebration. Traditional New
Testament studies have often operated in the mode of denial, or
even ignorance, of ethnocentrism. O n the other hand, social-scientific
approaches have made conscious attempts to avoid ethnocentrism by
explicidy making use of social scientific models and by acknowledging
the theory dependence (or model dependence) of all interpretation.
All exegetes use models, and traditional New Testament scholarship's
apparent ignorance of this fact exposes them to justifiable accusations
of ethnocentrism (see Craffert 1992:217, 224-225 for a discussion
and references).
This attempt to avoid ethnocentrism takes at least two directions
(see Craffert 1994b:9-10): some believe that the use of etic (outsiders')
models ensures that ethnocentric imposition is avoided, while others
believe that the use of emic (insiders') concepts will achieve the same
end. But whether emic or etic categories are used, the very same
dilemma has to be faced: how does one do justice to the subjects'
cultural system? In fact, even switching between native and observers'
concepts does not necessarily lead to the avoidance of ethnocentrism.
T h e third response, therefore, is not at all surprising: since read-
ers' socio-political contexts always influence their interpretations (we
are all trapped in our frameworks), ethnocentrism should not be
avoided; instead, readers should celebrate this condition in that their
readings should be explicidy reflecting their socio-political choices (see
Schüssler Fiorenza 1988; West 1991 and Craffert 1994a for many
more examples). In order to evaluate these responses, we need a
closer examination of this "interpretive turn."

2.3 What is the so-called interpretive tum?

T h e interpretive turn, in a variety of disciplinary circles, represents

agreement on the essential role of interpretation in all human in-
quiry (see Bohman, Hiley & Shusterman 1991:10). There are no such
things as isolated, individual facts or atomistic propositions; there is
always a contextual "background" which is implicated and which
requires interpretation. T h e concept of "holism" is used to indicate
this state of affairs (Dreyfus 1980:3-4; Bohman 199lb: 113). But there
are two elements of the interpretive turn, each of which raises a
distinct set of problems for epistemology.
T h e first may be called hermeneutic universalism—"the claim that in-
terpretation is a universal and ubiquitous feature of all human activ-
ity" (Bohman, Hiley & Shusterman 1991:7). Contrary to the idea of
an observer-independent perspective, this maintains that there is "no
privileged position, no absolute perspective, no final recounting"
(Rabinow & Sullivan 1979:6). In Dreyfus's words (see Bohman, Hiley
& Shusterman 1991:7), there are only interpretations all the way down
with no appeal to experience, meaning, or evidence that is independent
of interpretation or more basic than it. T h e only ground for an in-
terpretation can only be other interpretations (see Taylor 1977:103,
111, 126).
T h e second element may be called hermeneutic contextualism which
means that interpretation always takes place within some context or
background (see Bohman, Hiley & Shusterman 1991:7). Both ob-
server and observed are always enmeshed in a culture which implies
that "we see the lives of others through lenses of our own grinding 5 '
(Geertz 1984:275). While hermeneutic universalism holds that every-
thing is interpretation, contextualism implies that truth is relative to
some context or interpretive circle.
Depending on the exact formulation of the above elements, both
a strong and a weak holist position are possible. Put differendy, one's
formulation of the interpretive turn can move in at least two direc-
tions on a continuum: towards a weak or towards a strong formula-
tion of it. Strong and weak holism differ with regard to at least two
aspects: first, their theoretical and philosophical foundations, and
second, with regard to their descriptions of the interpretive process.
Consequendy they produce different aims, and claims, regarding the
issue of ethnocentrism.

3. The Theoretical Foundations of Strong and Weak Holism

It is one thing to agree that all interpretation is homemade, but quite

another to agree on what conclusions should be drawn from such a
position; it is one thing to agree on the essential role of interpreta-
tion in human affairs, but quite another to agree on the form and
direction that role should take. In my view, "strong holism" leads in
the direction of interpretive skepticism. A summary of this position is
cogendy provided by Bohman (199lb: 116):
(1) Interpretation is circular, indeterminate, and perspectival (the thesis
of the "hermeneutical circle").
(2) Interpretation occurs only against a "background," a network of
unspecifiable beliefs and practices (thesis of the "background").
(3) The background is a condition for the possibility of interpretation
which limits its epistemic possibilities of correctness (thesis of transcen-
dental limits).
(4) All cognitive activities are interpretive (thesis of the universality of
interpretation).
(5) Therefore, the conditions of interpretation are such that no "true" or
"correct" interpretations are possible (interpretive skepticism).

Thus ethnocentrism cannot be avoided.

Weak holists, however, argue that the challenge is how to present
another life form in a way which does justice to both the interpreter's
culture and the one to be examined (see Geertz 1988:144; Bohman
199la: 151; 199lb: 130, 132). A nonskeptical holism accepts the the-
ses of the hermeneutical circle and the necessity of a background,
but it tries to show that there is no reason for skepticism in a prop-
erly understood circularity. In accepting the thesis of the hermeneutical
circle, weak holism argues that circularity is non-vicious. A summary,
is again provided by Bohman (199lb: 125):

(1) Interpretation is circular, indeterminate, and perspectival (thesis of

the "hermeneutical circle").
(2) Its circularity may be defined by the necessity of a "background,"
a set of shared and accessible conditions of possibility (the background
as a reflective-transcendental concept).
(3) As a formal condition of possibility, the background acts as an
enabling condition and not a limiting condition (given a distinction
between "enabling" and "limiting" conditions).
(4) The conditions of interpretation are neutral with regard to the warrants
of knowledge claims, including claims about interpretations (the denial
of hermeneutic universality).
(5) Therefore, interpretation can produce revisable, public knowledge based
on evidence.
T h e weak holistic argument maintains not only that "circularity is
nonvicious but also that it is based on enabling conditions analysed
as shared background constraints" (Bohman 199la: 146). Such con-
straints are not strong enough to act as fixed limits or to make it
impossible to decide normatively between interpretations on the ba-
sis of evidence. Ultimately, it is the limit thesis which sustains the
strong holist position. T h e limit thesis holds that "the involvement in
the shared practices and beliefs that make up any particular 'back-
ground' or culture are so strong that we cannot take any distance
from them" (Bohman 1991b.T19). This is the case, for example, in
Gadamer's account of prejudice which holds that "understanding
consists exclusively of judgments, most of which remain tacit Vorurteile,
prejudgments or prejudices" (Hoy 1991:166-167). At least two argu-
ments in the weak holistic account oppose the limit thesis.
T h e first is the argument against the myth of the framework which
exaggerates a difficulty into an impossibility. Although we are always
prisoners caught in the framework of our theories, expectations, ex-
periences and language, Popper maintains that "we are prisoners in
a Pickwickian sense: if we try, we can break out of our framework at
any time, Admittedly, we shall find ourselves again in a framework,
but it will be a better and roomier one; and we can at any moment
break out of it again" (Popper 1970:56).
Along the same lines, Bohman suggests that the limit thesis rests
on the assumption that by being socialised into a world there are
interpretive orientations which serve as background and which cannot
be brought under reflective control. However, not only can such
orientations be brought under reflective control and be submitted to
public scrutiny (see Bernstein 1991:336; Bohman 1991b:l 19-120), but
they may also be changed. In the end there is a world of a difference
between the idea that we are sometimes imprisoned in our cultural
categories, and the radical view that we are always trapped beyond
the point of escaping from them (see Hirsch 1985a: 194). Ultimately,
it is an empirical question whether and to what extent a certain set
of background practices or beliefs indeed distorts an interpretation
(see Bohman 199lb: 120). All this does not mean that overcoming
one's framework is an easy or obvious task. Skinner reminds us that
coming to a historical text, "we may have to engage in extremely
wide-ranging as well as extremely detailed historical research"
(1988:275). T h e same applies to cross-cultural and textual interpreta-
tion.
T h e second argument against the strong holist thesis of universal
contextualism (background) has to do with its transcendental argu-
ment: it confuses enabling conditions with limiting conditions. There
are several differences between these two types of conditions (see
Bohman 1991 b: 121—123 for detail). Speaking a particular language,
for example, is an enabling condition of communication and not a
fixed limit on the capacity to communicate with others, since it may
be expanded to include new contexts and possibilities of understand-
ing (see Bohman 199lb: 123). A certain background should therefore
be seen as a set of flexible constraints rather than as being tied to
fixed limits. In short, Bohman argues (199la: 144):
skeptical s t r o n g holists infer d e t e r m i n a t e a n d e m p i r i c a l limits o n knowl-
e d g e f r o m the holistic b u t e n a b l i n g c o n d i t i o n s of i n t e r p r e t a t i o n . T h e
c o n f u s i o n begins in the universality thesis, since t h e holist loses sight of
the fact t h a t holism is itself a f o r m a l t h e o r y resulting f r o m t r a n s c e n -
d e n t a l reflection o n the g e n e r a l c o n d i t i o n s of i n t e r p r e t a t i o n a n d n o t a n
i n t e r p r e t a t i o n itself. If holistic c o n c e p t s like t h e b a c k g r o u n d a r e f o r m a l ,
reflective, a n d interpretive, the p r e m i s e s of the holistic a r g u m e n t vio-
late its o w n a n t i - t h e o r e t i c a l a c c o u n t of i n t e r p r e t a t i o n as always c o n t i n -
gent a n d context dependent.

In my view, the "celebration" response stands in the tradition of

strong holism while the "avoidance" responses have elements of the
weak holistic view. It remains a question, however, whether the avoid-
ance responses as they stand are adequate in dealing with the issue
of ethnocentrism.

4. The Interpretive Process

Strong and weak holism employ different descriptions of the inter-

pretive process. Although they agree that interpretation presupposes
at least two perspectives (or horizons), due to their different theoreti-
cal positions, they have mutually exclusive views on the interpretive
process which deals with these two horizons. O n the one hand, strong
holists tend to blend the two perspectives into that of the interpreter,
and on the other hand, weak holists attempt to keep the horizons
apart. Consequendy, strong holists recognise a single task in the in-
terpretive process while weak holists allow for a multiple-task pro-
cess in interpretation.

4.1 The fusion of horizons in a single task process: strong holism

In emphasising hermeneutic contextualism, strong holism not only

promotes the inevitable privilege of the interpreter's viewpoint, but
also blends two distinct horizons within a single phase of interpreta-
tion. While some think that it is impossible not to blend these hori-
zons, others agree that even if it were possible, it is not worthwhile
to pay much attention to past or alien horizons. Gadamer, for ex-
ample, argues that understanding the past (and therefore also foreign
cultures) undoubtedly requires a historical horizon (1979:271), but
projecting such a horizon is only a phase in the process of under-
standing: the horizon while being projected, is simultaneously removed
(see 1979:273). This is also confirmed by Hoy's understanding of
Gadamer's "fusion of horizons." T h e past or alien horizon is not
totally constructible because that would mean that there exists "a
historical Gegenstand an sich that the historical sciences could aim to
uncover" (Hoy 1991:165). Hoy maintains that while context condi-
tions understanding, understanding also conditions the context. There
is a circular or feedback relation between background and interpre-
tation (1991:166).
Similarly, Rorty believes that the alien or past horizon has a lim-
ited value, although he admits that interpretation should pay atten-
tion to placing texts within their own benighted times and context,
as well as engage them as contemporary conversational partners:
"There is nothing wrong with self-consciously letting our own philo-
sophical views dictate terms in which to describe the dead. But there
are reasons for also describing them in other terms, their own terms"
(Rorty 1984:50). T h e first he calls rational reconstructions and the latter
historical reconstructions. He objects, however, to the idea that historical
reconstruction can first be done and rational reconstruction later
(1984:53 n. 1):

T h e t w o g e n r e s c a n n e v e r b e that i n d e p e n d e n t , b e c a u s e y o u will n o t
k n o w m u c h a b o u t w h a t t h e d e a d m e a n t p r i o r t o figuring o u t h o w
m u c h t r u t h t h e y k n e w . T h e s e t w o topics s h o u l d b e s e e n as m o m e n t s in
a c o n t i n u i n g m o v e m e n t a r o u n d t h e h e r m e n e u t i c a l circle, a circle o n e
has to have gone r o u n d a good m a n y times before one can begin to
d o either sort of r e c o n s t r u c t i o n .

Thus, one of the criteria for establishing the historical or subject's

point of view remains the interpreter's estimate of how much truth
they know.
T h e main reason for a curiosity with historical reconstructions,
Rorty maintains, is to help us recognise that there have been differ-
ent forms of intellectual life than ours (see 1984:51). T h e minimal
sort of understanding of what the others were up to, is like being
able to exchange courtesies in a foreign language without being able
to translate that into one's own language since translating an utter-
ance means fitting it into our practices (see 1984:52 n. 1).
 It is not surprising that from a strong holist conception of the
interpretive process, ethnocentrism is inevitable and to be celebrated.
However, from a weak holistic perspective a rather different inter-
pretive process can be envisaged.

4.2 Separate horizons in a multiple-task process

I endorse the descriptions of Taylor (see 1985b: 118) and Geertz (see
1973:27) on the interpretive process as a dual task which consists of,
first, uncovering or mastering the subject's conceptual structures and
self-description and, secondly, of a comparison between those struc-
tures and the interpreter's cultural system. From this viewpoint, re-
sponsible interpretation requires existence in two worlds at once, the
world of the past and the world of the present, the culture of the
subject and the culture of the interpreter (see Hirsch 1985b: 16;
Jeanrond 1988:45). In such a weak holistic perspective a different
view of the interpretive process emerges, and consequently the issue
of ethnocentrism is dealt with differently.

4.2.1 Supplementing the model of the hermeneutical circle

Anthropologists and historians have long recognised that the inter-

pretive process escapes perfect description due to the inevitable ten-
sion inherent within it (see Peacock 1986:76). It operates under the
paradoxes of antithetic affirmations: "Identification and distancing,
which are antithetic, are affirmed at the same time" (Todorov 1988:4).
Thus, the the notion of a multiple-task interpretive process places
considerable strain on the metaphor of the hermeneutic circle; this
metaphor should be supplemented by that of "bracketing" (see Hirsch
1976:5).
Bracketing is like "learning a second first language" (Bernstein
1991:336; and see Skinner 1988:252; Hirsch 1985a: 196); it entails
restraint of one's own background and a presumption of otherness.
T h e idea of brackets, which has been taken from Husserl, does "in
fact represent something that most of us believe we experience in
[any] verbal discourse, namely, an alien meaning, something meant
by an implied author or speaker who is not ourselves" (Hirsch 1976:6;
and see Hirsch 1960:467-469; 1984b:204). But for an alien meaning
to be intelligible, it has to be compared, in some sense, with our
own background. Bracketing and comparing suggests a multiple-task
process. Similarly, Bohman has identified the limitations of the
hermeneutical circle and allows for different types of interpretation,
namely, contextual" and rational interpretations. Contextual interpre-
tations take us only so far as to constitute their world in our terms.
Such interpretations should, however, be supplemented by rational
comparative interpretations which bring tests for adequacy within a
hermeneutic circle (see 199lb: 132, 143).
Each interpretive task, within the multiple-task process, resembles
a hermeneutical circle. Although the unity in this process should be
emphasised, taking note of the individual tasks will be an important
feature in any attempt to deal adequately with the issue of ethnocen-
trism. Therefore, I will briefly introduce each of the three tasks.

4.2.2 Paying attention to the subject's cultural system

Bernstein reminds us that the basic condition for all understanding
requires one to test and risk one's convictions and prejudgments in
and through an encounter with what is radically other and alien.
"To do this requires imagination and hermeneutical sensitivity in order
to understand the 'other' in its strongest possible light" (Bernstein
1991:4). T h e very nature of human action, Taylor maintains, requires
that "we understand it, at least initially, in its own terms; that means
that we understand the descriptions that it bears for the agents. It is
only because we have failed to do that that we can fall into the fatal
error of assimilating foreign practices to our own familiar ones"
(1985a: 149). Therefore, unless we begin with a characterisation of a
society in its own terms, we shall be unable to identify the matter
that requires explanation (see Maclntyre 1971:223; Skinner 1988:271).
Insisting on the insider's perspective, as the source for all reflection,
also expresses something about our own rootedness in culture, his-
tory and language. This finitude is, however, not seen as a constraint,
but as an enabling condition which serves as a window onto our-
selves and our world (see Guignon 1991:96-97). Adequate interpre-
tation struggles first and foremost with what the subjects are up to.
Pressing as far as possible towards making sense of the subjects'
point of view is, however, not the same as saying that the interpreter

1
It should be noted that the contextual type of interpretation in Bohman's sense
differs from the contextual or engaged kind of interpretations encountered in the
celebration response. Contextual in this sense refers to historical (or true to the subject's
point of view) as opposed to contextual as interpretation reflecting the interpreter's
point of view.
should adopt their point of view. Turning native rules out the pos-
sibility of showing cultural beliefs or practices as wrong, confused or
deluded (Taylor 1985b: 123). Turning native, if really successful, sim-
ply adds one more subject to be understood by outsiders. Making
sense of the subjects' viewpoint is not the same as saying that their
viewpoints make sense in our terms.

4.2.3 Paying attention to the interpreter's cultural system

An adequate interpretation theory can, however, not stop at the

point of examining (bracketing) the subjects' world since, as Taylor
reminds us, "it will frequently be the case that we cannot understand
another society until we have understood ourselves better as well"
(1985b: 129). And if this is the case, then an adequate interpreta-
don also includes a grasp of ourselves as agents in the world—which
means, at least in our case, an industrialised, scientific world. Unfor-
tunately, as Jarvie remarks, "despite what they say a good deal of the
time, anthropologists do not begin from an understanding of our
own culture" (1986b: 163). Is it any different with New Testament
scholars?
Modern scientific culture, "marks this society of ours and makes it
different in many ways from all the other societies there have ever
been" (Jarvie 1986b: 163). Besides being the culture within which this
interpreter chooses to live, it happens to form the background from
which the otherness of the pre-industrial nature of the first-century
world can be recognised. What then are some of the basic features
of this late-twentieth century modern scientific culture which force
themselves onto the interpretive task?
O n e of the practices that has helped to create the modern culture
is the disengagement of thought from social embedding and embodied
agency. In short, it calls on each of us "to become a responsible,
thinking mind, self-reliant for his or her judgments" (Taylor 1991:307).
It pushes towards greater clarity and deeper criticism of our nature
as knowing agents and linguistic beings which is crucial to our moral
and spiritual beliefs (see Taylor 1987:479). In fact, Lett points out
that the term humanism (of which science is a necessary, but not
sufficient component) includes the conviction that human beings are
solely responsible for discerning and defining the meaning of human
life and the conviction that they should do so through the exercise of
skeptical reason while respecting the freedom and moral equality of
all individuals (see 1991:323).
 A second feature of scientific culture is related: it fosters the separation
of understanding reality from the practice of putting ourselves in tune
with reality (cf. Taylor 1985b: 128). Scientists claim provisional knowl-
edge based on the cumulative results of a never-ending process of
skeptical inquiry. In case something better comes along, understand-
ing cannot be anything but tentative (see Jarvie 1986c:224). Never-
theless, it stands opposed to mysticism (faith, revelation and intui-
tion) as an alternative worldview (see Sono 1994:xv). In non-scientific
cultures, understanding what reality is, and putting oneself in tune
with it, are not separable activities (Taylor 1985b: 128).
In view of the modern "separationist" project, it is not only the
general features of the pre-industrial world of the New Testament
which strike modern people as strange, but especially the beliefs in
magic, revelations, demons and the like, as the primary motors for
social and personal actions. These issues constitute the real challenge
for modern interpreters claiming to avoid ethnocentrism; the cultural
gap between us and the people of the first-century is huge. It is easy
enough to insist that the interpreter's context shapes interpretation,
but it is only when it is realised that what is at stake are incommen-
surable realities, rationalities, beliefs and practices that the significance
becomes apparent. When it is remembered that we also construct
dreams, illusions, fantasies, myths and fictions (see Jarvie 1986c:220),
it is misleading to insist that the real world is simply a construct.
Incommensurability between cultural beliefs and practices can be
identified exacdy because it is assumed that we can give historically
contingent and indeed fallible (not definitive foundational) reasons for
our beliefs, both about ourselves and about other cultures (see Bernstein
1991:277). So is it possible in an encounter with the first-century
world to be faithful to a scientific culture without being ethnocentric?

4.2.4 T h e task of cross-cultural comparison

Once weak holism's route has been taken (that an interpreter should
push as hard as possible to grasp the viewpoints of the subjects in
their strongest possible light while also pushing towards an under-
standing of his/her own position), cross-cultural comparison follows
as subsequent task. T h e more successfully the first task can be con-
ducted, the more progress can be made in comparing the two sys-
tems. We should note, however, that the idea of comparison be-
tween incommensurable beliefs and practices in weak holism not only
excludes the fusion of horizons idea in strong holism; it also excludes
the view (a false ally) that the subjects' self-descriptions are incorrigible.
"The incorrigibility thesis" rules out an account which may show
cultural beliefs or practices to be wrong, confused or deluded (see
Taylor 1985b: 123-125). T h e indifference inherent in such a version
of comparison results, paradoxically, in another kind of ethnocentrism.
Taylor rightiy emphasizes that an interpretive, comparative social
science should allow for the possibility of critique.
Following Habermas, Bohman also argues that because humans
are inevitably participants in a background of practices, they must
always evaluate in order to understand and relate others' beliefs and
norms to their own. In fact, adequate interpretation "requires evalu-
ation to the extent that what is at stake in the interpretation is a
'validity claim,' a claim that the action is justifiable relative to some
form of shared knowledge" (Bohman 199lb: 137-138). Especially when
cultural beliefs and practices (which are incommensurable with those
of the interpreter) occupy the same space, assessment cannot be
avoided. As Taylor points out, someone seriously practising magic in
a modern scientific society will be considered to have lost his/her
grip on reality (see 1985a: 146). Incommensurable ways of life insis-
tendy raise the question of who is right. Yet if interpreters begin by
asserting, on scientific ground, that magical practices are not true,
then their scientific language—which allegedly neutral—ends up being
ethnocentric (see Taylor 1986b: 126). Similarly, Rorty affirms the
necessity of ethnocentrism by saying that successful reconstructions
"can only be performed by people who have some idea of what they
themselves think about the issues under discussion, even if only that
they are pseudo-issues" (Rorty 1984:53 n. 1).

5. Can Weak Holism overcome Ethnocentrism?

Once it is accepted that it is not totally impossible to transcend one's

background (see, for example, Hoy 1991:159), the principle has been
granted that it can occasionally be done by means of critical and
public scrutiny. T h e celebration of being ethnocentric can then no
longer be seen as epistemologically inevitable but becomes a matter
of choice. If, on the other hand, an escape into the subject's point of
view neither avoids ethnocentrism nor counts as adequate interpre-
tation (going native just adds one more subject to be interpreted) the
question remains whether ethnocentrism can actually be overcome
in the process of comparison.

5.1 Cross-cultural comparison: a matter of perspicuous contrast

In order to avoid either privileging one's own understanding (ethno-

centrism) or accepdng the incorrigibility of the others' self-under-
standing, adequate interpretation aims at critical comparison of in-
commensurable cultural beliefs and practices. Really overcoming
ethnocentricity, Taylor says, "is being able to understand two incom-
mensurable classifications" (1985a: 145). H e rejects the idea that "the
language of a cross-cultural theory has to be either theirs or ours"
(1985b: 125). Interpretive social science, he maintains, "requires that
we master the agent's self-description in order to identify our explananda;
but it by no means requires that we couch our explanantia in the
same language. O n the contrary it generally demands that we go
beyond it" (Taylor 1985b: 118). It will almost always be the case that
the adequate language in which we understand another society is
not our language of understanding, or theirs, but rather what one
could call a language of perspicuous contrast. This would be a lan-
guage in which we could formulate both their way of life and ours
as alternative possibilities in relation to some human constants at
work in both (see 1985b: 125).
Understanding magic in alien societies perfecdy illustrates what this
involves (see Taylor 1985b: 127-128). In a scientific world, there might
be nothing corresponding to magical practices and therefore such
practices should not be seen as "either proto-technology or expres-
sive activity, but rather as partaking of a mode of activity in which
this kind of clear separation and segregation is not yet made" (Tay-
lor 1985b: 118). This implies that in a language of perspicuous con-
trast an account is given of procedures in both societies.
For some scholars, Taylor's notion of human constants (such as
birth, death, marriage, drought, plenty, etc.) too heavily relies on the
metaphysical assumption that there are indeed uninterpreted human
constants (see Bohman 199lb: 133). Therefore, following Habermas,
it is argued that "the presence of certain 'learning processes' establish
commonalities across cultural boundaries" (Bohman 199lb: 138). These
commonalities allow the interpreter to act as a virtual participant in
a culture in the sense that the reasons for certain practices are un-
derstood (see Maclntyre 1971:228-229). Seeking out commonalities
and pointing out differences and conflict is a task marked by the model
of dialogical encounter (see Bernstein 1991:336-337). Understanding
does not only entail agreement but includes conflicts and differences.

5.2 Avoiding ethnocentric imposition?

T h e idea of a multiple-task process of interpretation works against

accusations of ethnocentrism in at least two ways. First, understand-
ing other peoples' self-understanding as clearly as possible protects
one from ethnocentric imposition or projection. Second, it explicates
the angle from which an interpreter looks at the world. Knowing
what kind of people we are, works against the grain of ethnocentric
imposition. The process of clarifying and getting a better understanding
of the kind of knowing, speaking and acting agents we are, also ere-
ates the space for discovering that which is different.
T h e skepticism about avoiding ethnocentrism on an epistemologi-
cal level need not be accepted. "Once the illusions of contextualism
are seen through, interpretation again becomes part of our attempt
to know the world and others in it" (Bohman 1991a: 153). Keeping
in mind that there is no claim here of reaching an objective, disen-
gaged and value-free position, the notion that interpretation is (epis-
temologically speaking) inevitably ethnocentric, can be laid to rest.
Performing a multi-task process allows for the avoidance of the blend-
ing, and consequendy the overtaking of the other horizon by that of
the interpreter. In short, it escapes ethnocentric imposition when under-
standing alien beliefs or practices. Hoy (see 1991:172) is, however,
correct in maintaining that, at least from his perspective, ethnocen-
trism has not really been avoided in this approach; the issue of criti-
cal assessment has to be dealt with.

5.3 Critical assessment

It has been argued that adequate interpretation demands comparison,

and comparison cannot take place without assessment. It should be
noted that assessment in interpretation takes at least two routes. O n e
kind of assessment is needed for understanding alien cultural beliefs
and practices, while the second kind has to do with the acceptance
or rejection of such beliefs and practices once they have been under-
stood. T h e first, it has been argued, is dealt with by means of per-
spicuous contrast. There is, however, a second kind of assessment
involved in cross-cultural comparison. That is what Jeanrond refers
to as the assessment of the subject matter and of the situation of
interpretation (see 1988:65).
Contrary to the idea that interpretation consists of a fusion of
horizons, the multiple-task view on interpretation recognises that "not
all otherness and difference are to be celebrated" (Bernstein 1991:313).
Some cultural practices and beliefs are just not real options for us—
at least not without self-deception or paranoia (see Rorty 1985:18 n.
13). O n the other hand, as Taylor reminds us, criticism is insepa-
rable from self-criticism (see 1985b: 131). Cross-cultural interpretation
is challenging in that it constantiy confronts an interpreter with choices
of truth. It can challenge our own self-definitions and practices and
point out the falseness of beliefs on which they are based (see Jarvie
1977:202). Going through the process in a critical and self-critical
way may turn out either way—showing beliefs and practices of ei-
ther culture to be wrong, confused or deluded. Ethnocentrism, when
it represents the choices made in the face of alternative ways of life,
is not the same as ethnocentric imposition.
Strong holism ends up in ethnocentric imposition, but weak ho-
lism forces a decision. Although background constraints on évalua-
tion eliminate the possibility of "uniquely true interpretations" (Bohman
199lb: 125), in a weak holistic argument there is a non-skeptical notion
of interpretive circularity: the evaluation of conflicting interpretations
will be "comparative, fallibilistic and revisable" (Bohman 199lb: 125)
but "also governed by epistemic norms like coherence and correct-
ness" (Bohman 1991b: 126).2 We can be passionately committed to
the beliefs that regulate our actions when they are based on the
stongest possible historically-contingent justifications (see Bernstein
1991:280). This is different from declaring our vocabulary final,
immune to criticism, or the norm for evaluating others. Paying
lipservice to a plurality of voices or viewpoints is easy enough. It is
however, much more difficult to live the challenges of plurality.

6. Some Concluding Remarks

The issue of ethnocentrism is important first and foremost not be-

cause there is a general consensus that it can and should be avoided,

2
A viable alternative to foundationalism, Bernstein argues, is fallibilism "where
but because it confronts all involved in cross-cultural interpretation
with some fundamental issues, both epistemological and ethical. While
there is no longer any defence for denying the role of ethnocentrism
in New Testament studies, there should also be a moral question
directed to those who "celebrate" its presence. If ethnocentric impo-
sition can be avoided in interpretation, then the explicit choice for
political-contextual interpretations (in the strong holistic tradition) can
no longer be defended as inevitable.
Adequate interpretation cannot be satisfied with either turning native
(using only emic concepts) or imposing etic concepts. The interpre-
tive process is structured by dialogue between incommensurable cul-
tural beliefs and practices and not by choosing between them. T h e
multiple-task process is not only much more challenging to perform
than the rival suggestions; it is also much more rewarding. If knowl-
edge of others is not only a possible route towards knowledge of
oneself but the only one, as Todorov maintains (see 1988:4), then
cross-cultural interpretation is not without its dividends; it can lead
to a better and more critical self-understanding. It challenges an
interpreter on the level of fundamental cultural beliefs and practices.
In short, it confronts one with alternative ways of being human and
consequently with the challenge of taking a stance with regard to the
question of truth. T h e central question New Testament scholars have
to face is what to do with the strangeness and alienness encountered
in cross-cultural interpretations of the Bible.

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 RACIAL A N D E T H N I C M I N O R I T I E S IN
BIBLICAL S T U D I E S

Fernando F. Segovia

According to the rationale that accompanied the invitation to con-

tribute to this project, the present volume was conceived with two
primary factors in mind: the eruption of the issue of ethnicity on the
global scene in recent years and the perceived and corresponding
responsibility on the part of biblical scholars to address the subject
on an explicit and sustained basis. Both concerns are clearly reflected
in the tide of the v o l u m e — E t h n i c i t y and the Bible. T h e rationale fur-
ther identified two specific goals for the project: in pursuing the issue
of ethnicity, the volume would also serve to highlight the diversity in
method and theory presendy to be found in the discipline as well as
offer a new model for doing biblical theology in the contemporary
scene, a model based on a broadly conceived theological reflection
on the Bible in the light of the new methodological and theoretical
pluralism in the discipline. Both aims are clearly reflected in the struc-
ture of the volume. While a first part brings together a variety of
different approaches to ethnicity in the Bible, with corresponding
sections on the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Scriptures, a second
part focuses on ethnicity in the contemporary world, with sections
on the relationship between the Bible and present-day ethnic issues
as well as the politics of biblical interpretation. Thus, the rationale
argued for an approach to the new and pressing question of ethnicity
from the point of view of both the text (ethnicity in the Bible) and
the readers of the text (ethnicity in the interpretation of the Bible).1

1
O n both counts the rationale for the volume closely parallels the earlier ration-
ale for the journal itself, as outlined in the Editorial Statement of the first issue
(Biblical Interpretation 1 [1993] i‫־‬ii). With regard to motivating factors, the editorial
statement cited the recent burgeoning of new approaches to textual interpretation as
well as the need for biblical studies to become more public and pluralistic. With
regard to goals in mind, the statement presented the journal as both a forum for
the fresh interpretation of texts through the use of the new critical approaches and
a forum for theoretical debate regarding the theological and political implications of
such new developments. Thus, the boldness behind the new journal—with its open
criticism of the leading journals in the field for their failure to reflect the new plu-
ralism within the discipline—was reflected in the boldness behind the proposed volume:
 My own contribution to the project belongs decidedly within the
second part of the volume. Indeed, I see my task in this study as
that of providing an overall critical view of the life and role of ethnic
and racial minorities 2 in biblical studies, by which I mean both the
discipline and the profession, especially in the light of the profound
and radical changes at work at the end of the twentieth century,
hence the rather broad tide for the essay.3 As such, I am not interested
here in the construction of ethnicity or race in the Bible or even in
the relationship between ethnicity or race and biblical interpretation;
rather, my particular concern is with ethnicity and race within the
field and the guild of biblical studies and thus with the politics of
interpretation from both a disciplinary and professional perspective.

in effect, given the rise of ethnicity as a global and public critical issue, it was
imperative for biblical scholars to take an open and systematic stand on the topic,
with particular attention to be given to the diversity of reading strategies in the
discipline as well as broad theological reflection in the light of such pluralism.
2
T h e expression "ethnic and racial minorities" represents a combination of the
terms "ethnic group" and "racial g r o u p " as well as the term "minority group," all
of which are basic concepts in the study of intergroup relations; see, e . g . , J . R . Fegin,
Racial and Ethnic Relations (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 3rd edn, 1989) esp.
pp. 4—19. A word of explanation is in order. With regard to the first two terms,
"ethnic group" and "racial group," these are concepts whose definitions vary widely
not only in terms of historical usage but also with regard to perspective and ideol-
ogy. In other words, neither "ethnicity" nor "race" are self-evident and fixed con-
cepts grounded in nature or genetics, but social constructs with an underlying his-
torical and ideological base. My own use of these terms is social in nature and
follows that of Fegin: ethnic and racial groups as social groups, singled out as such
for social interest, whether good or bad, either from inside or outside the differen-
dated groups, on the basis of certain cultural or physical characteristics, respectively.
With regard to the third term, "minority group," this is a concept that is often used
of both ethnic and racial groups and that implies the existence of a "majority group"
and the presence of ethnic or racial stratification. In other words, the term "minor-
ity group" is not just a descriptive classification but also an evaluative category. At
times, the terms "dominant group" a n d "subordinate g r o u p " are preferred in the
literature, in order to reflect the fact that a "minority group" in terms of stratifica-
tion may actually be a "majority g r o u p " with regard to numbers. My own use of
the term in this study implies both numbers and stratification.
In sum, I employ the expression "ethnic and racial minorities" to m e a n individu-
als from social groups, whether culturally (ethnic) or physically (racial) identified as
such, who have traditionally been considered inferior within a scale of stratification
set up by the West and operative in all the theological disciplines, including biblical
criticism. In effect, such individuals may be described as critics of non-Western origins
or descent who either live in their respective countries or reside within the West
itself. Moreover, while they invariably represent, as a whole, a numerical majority
in the world in terms of their own socioreligious affiliation, they represent a minor-
ity both in terms of stratification and numbers within the theological disciplines in
general and biblical criticism in particular.
3
This study is a revised version of a presentation given at the 1994 Annual
 I should like to begin, therefore, with an analysis of a number of
factors that I see as constitutive for our situadon at the turn of the
century and then conclude with a description of the life and role of
ethnic and racial minorities in the light of such a context. 4 It is my
firm belief that ethnic and racial minorities have a fundamental role
to play in the future direction of the discipline and the profession in
what I would describe as the post-Western, postcolonial world of
religious studies and theological studies in general and biblical criti-
cism in particular. It is also my firm belief, however, that such a role
is not at all an easy one to play; in fact, it involves and calls for
struggle as a way of life. In the end, however, I would argue that
such struggle is for life, and a very promising life indeed.

Racial and Ethnic Minorities in Biblical Studies at the Turn of the Century

There are three factors at work in the contemporary scene that I

regard as fundamental for the life and role of ethnic and racial
minorities in biblical studies at the turn of the century—that preg-
nant period of time, which has come to be known in intellectual
history as the fin de siècle and which we have already properly en-
tered as such, marking the close of one century and the beginning of

Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Chicago, Illinois, in a session sponsored

by the Committee on Underrepresented Racial and Ethnic Minority Persons in the
Profession. I should like to express my gratitude hereby to all of my colleagues on
the committee for their very kind invitation to serve as the keynote speaker for the
session as well as to all the members of the panel who responded to my presenta-
tion out of their own particular histories and experiences (Professors Victor Paul
Furnish, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, T X ; Gale A. Yee, University of St.
Thomas, St. Paul, MN; Cyris Moon, San Francisco Theological Seminary, San
Anselmo, CA; and Renita J . Weems, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN).
4
As my use of the first person plural adjective indicates, my approach to the
question is from an emic rather than etic perspective—the perspective of the in-
sider, a representative of ethnic and racial minorities in the field and the guild. It
is a perspective with a number of interrelated and interdependent layers of mean-
ing, which I would describe as that of (a) a critic of non-Western origins; (b) with
birth and primary socialization outside the West (in Latin American culture and,
more specifically, within its Caribbean variant); (c) with secondary socialization and
permanent residence, indeed citizenship, in the West (the United States); (d) and
hence, a member of an ethnic minority group within the United States, the His-
panic Americans, constituting at present approximately nine percent of the popula-
tion (close to twenty-two million people) and widely recognized and differentiated as
such both by the group itself and the majority culture. I would define the group as
follows: people of Hispanic descent, associated in one way or another with the
Americas, who now live permanendy, for whatever reason, in the United States.
another and so laden with meaning of all sorts, both before and
after the fact. O n e such dimension of meaning that I would associ-
ate with the present fin de siècle has to do with the drastically changed
nature of doing theology or criticism in a postcolonial, post-Western
world. T h e first factor concerns the world of global affairs—the geo-
political context; the second, the world of biblical criticism—the dis-
ciplinary context; the third, the world of the biblical guild—the pro-
fessional context.

Geopolitical Context: The World of Global Affairs

T o begin with, a few remarks are necessary with regard to the geo-
political scene at large. In a recent and much-debated article on world
politics, Samuel Huntington, Eaton Professor of the Science of Gov-
ernment and Director of the J o h n M. Olin Institute for Strategic
Studies at Harvard University, has argued that global politics is près-
ently entering a new and different phase of development altogether. 5
It is an argument that I find, on the whole, insightful as well as

Such a perspective I have characterized in terms of the diaspora. For a sharper

delineation, see: (a) regarding its hermeneutics: " T o w a r d a H e r m e n e u d c s of the
Diaspora: A Hermeneutics of Otherness and Engagement," in Fernando F. Segovia
and M a r y Ann Tolbert (eds.), Reading from This Place. Volume One: Social Location and
Biblical Interpretation in the United States (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), pp. 57-73;
and " T o w a r d Intercultural Criticism: A Reading Strategy from the Diaspora," in
Fernando F. Segovia and Mary Ann Tolbert (eds.), Reading from This Place. Volume
Two: Social Location and Biblical Interpretation in the Global Scene (Minneapolis: Fortress
Press, 1995) pp. 303-30. (b) Regarding its theological locus and mode: " T w o Places
and N o Place on Which to Stand: Mixture and Otherness in Hispanic American
Theology," Listening. A Journal of Religion and Culture 27 (1992), pp. 26-40; and "In
the World but Not of It: Exile as Locus for a Theology of the Diaspora," in Ada
Maria Isasi-Diaz and Fernando F. Segovia (eds.), Aliens in the Promised Land: Voices of
Hispanic American Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), forthcoming.
5
Samuel P. Huntington, " T h e Clash of Civilizations?" Foreign Affairs 72 (Summer
1993), pp. 22-49. T h e ensuing discussion may be traced as follows. First, a n u m b e r
of responses appeared in the very next issue of Foreign Affairs 73 (September—October
1993): Fouad Adjami, " T h e Summoning,'' pp. 2 9 ‫ ; ־‬Kishore M a h b u b a n i , " T h e
Dangers of Decadence: W h a t the Rest C a n T e a c h the West," pp. 10-14; Robert L.
Bardey, " T h e Case for Optimism," pp. 15-18; Liu Bynian, "Civilization Grafting,"
pp. 19-21; a n d j e a n e J . Kirkpatrick et al., " T h e Modernizing Imperative," pp. 2 2 ‫־‬
26. T h e n , Huntington himself responded in a second article: "If Not Civilizations,
W h a t ? " Foreign Affairs 72 ( N o v e m b e r / D e c e m b e r 1993), pp. 186-94. Since then, a
n u m b e r of studies have contributed further to the discussion, e.g., Robert D. Kaplan,
" T h e C o m i n g Anarchy," The Atlantic Monthly 273:4 (February 1994), pp. 44-76; and
Matthew Connelly and Paul Kennedy, "Must It Be the Rest Against the West?"
Atlantic Monthly 274:6 (December 1994), pp. 61-84.
persuasive and reproduce here in its essentials as an appropriate
preamble to, and overall framework for, my own reflections regard-
ing the state of affairs in the discipline and the profession.
For Huntington, this new phase in question is marked not so much
by the end of history, the return of traditional rivalries among nation-
states, or the decline of the nation-state in the face of tribalism and
globalism—as many would have it—but rather by a new source of
conflict in the world, neither economic nor ideological but cultural.
As such, nation-states will neither disappear nor go into a period of
decline; to the contrary, they shall continue to function as the most
powerful actors in world affairs. At the same time, however, global
conflict will be increasingly defined not by conflicts among nation-
states—a development which would signify a return in principle to a
previous phase of evolution, as oudined below—but rather by conflicts
between nations and groups of different civilizations, with the "fault
lines" between such civilizations as the "batde lines" of the future. 6
This new phase, moreover, represents the fourth and latest stage
in the evolution of conflict in the modern political world. Thus, while
in the past conflict has been by and large the result of conflicts within
Western civilization, with all non-Western peoples and governments
as objects of history, from this point on conflict will be driven by
conflicts between civilizations. T h e earlier development of conflict,
encompassing the last three hundred and fifty years of Western his-
tory (1640s-1990s), Huntington traces in terms of the following three
stages:

6
Huntington ("Clash of Civilizations," pp. 2325‫ )־‬defines a "civilization" as: (a)
a cultural entity—not unlike villages, regions, ethnic groups, nationalities, and reli-
gious groups, all of which are said to have distinct cultures at different levels of
cultural heterogeneity; (b) of the most comprehensive sort—involving the highest
cultural grouping of people and the broadest level of cultural identity on the part of
people. T h e concept carries a number of other connotations as well. First, civiliza-
tions include objective (language; history; religion; customs; institutions) as well as
subjective elements (the self-identification of people). Second, civilizations are fluid
rather than fixed concepts, insofar as people can and do redefine their identities
with a resulting change in the composition and boundaries of civilizations. Third,
civilizations may involve large numbers of people (e.g., China) or a very small num-
ber of people (e.g., the Anglophone Caribbean). Fourth, civilizations may include
several nation-states (e.g., Islam, Latin America, and the West) or one (e.g., Japan).
Fifth, civilizations blend and overlap and thus may include subcivilizations. Here,
the example of the West is very much to the point, with its two major variants
(Europe and the United States), although there are other examples as well (as in the
case of Islam, with its Arab, Malay, and Turkic variants). Finally, civilizations are
dynamic, not only dividing and merging but also rising and falling.
 1. T o begin with, for about a century and a half after the Peace
of Westphalia (1648-1789)—that is to say, from the end of the Thirty
Years W a r and the emergence of the modern international system in
1648 to the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789—conflict in
the West consisted largely of conflicts among princes: emperors, abso-
lute monarchs, and constitutional monarchs, all attempting to expand
their bureaucracies, armies, mercantilist economies, and territories.
2. Subsequendy, for the next one hundred and twenty-five years
(1789-1914/18)—namely, from the aftermath of the French Révolu-
tion (1789) to the conclusion of the First World W a r in 1918—con-
flict in the Western world took the form of conflicts between or among
nation-states: as princes expanded the territories over which they ruled,
nation-states came into being and clashed with one another over the
long course of the nineteenth century and right into the first decades
of the twentieth century itself.
3. Then, for the last seventy years and hence the greater part of
the twentieth century (1918-1989)—in effect, from the aftermath of
World W a r I (1918), especially in terms of the Russian Revolution
and the reaction against it, until the implosion of the Soviet Empire
and the end of the Cold War in 1989—conflict in the West con-
sisted of conflicts involving ideologies. Such conflict involved two
distinct stages: first, prior to the Second World W a r (1918-1939/45),
among communism, fascism-nazism, and liberal democracy; subse-
quentiy, during the Cold War (1945-1989), between communism and
liberal democracy, as embodied in the struggle between the two
superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States, neither of which
was a nation-state in the classical sense and each of which defined its
identity in terms of its ideology.
Again, all such conflicts amounted to conflicts within Western civi-
lization, Western civil wars as it were. However, with the collapse of
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the end of the Cold
War, Huntington sees international politics as moving beyond its long
Western phase, with enormous and radical consequences for the world
at large, including the West. O n the one hand, non-Western peoples
and governments begin to move thereby from a position as objects
of history‫—״‬or, perhaps more accurately, its targets—to a position as
movers and shapers of history alongside the West, as "subjects of
history,' ‫ י‬as Liberation Theology has so often and so aptly put it.7

7
This, however, is an aspect of the discussion that, in my opinion, Huntington
O n the other hand, conflict takes on as a result the form of conflicts
involving civilizations.8 O n one level, such conflict involves the different
civilizations, with eight identified as major in this regard—African,
Confucian, Hindu, Islamic, Japanese, Latin American, Slavic-Ortho-
dox, and Western. 9 O n another level, such conflict also involves "the
West and the Rest,5' given not only the undisputed primacy of Western
civilization but also its long history of imperialism and colonialism. 10

does not engage or pursue in adequate fashion. While quick to draw numerous
implications for the West, both short-term and long-term, of this tectonic change in
international politics and fully cognizant of how the global discussion has been
controlled for centuries by the West with its own fundamental interests in mind, he
fails to give sufficient attention to the grave responsibility borne by the West for the
present state of affairs. After all, the legacy of the West in this regard—an often-
bypassed but intrinsic part of Western civilization and culture—is a most heavy
burden indeed: from the centuries of colonialism, involving the widescale domina-
tion, exploitation, and extermination of other peoples; to the technological perfec-
tion of displacement, forced labor, and genocide by Germany, in the n a m e of a
Herrenvolk, in the course of the present century; to the ongoing and unchecked eth-
nie cleansing at work in the Balkans and the growing resentment of and hostility
toward immigrants and refugees in the West, especially those from the non-Western
world. In other words, the magnificent legacy of the West—its great "creed,' 1 for
which see n. 11 below—extended only so far and was accompanied throughout by
political domination and economic exploitation, social and cultural disdain, ethnic
and racial prejudice and discrimination, ultimately leading to the slavery and exter-
mination of millions upon n i i o n s of peoples. Indeed, it was the failure of the West
to extend its "creed" to the rest, to see the other in the light of its own "creed,"
that is largely responsible for the situation faced by the world as it begins to move
into the twenty-first century.
8
Huntington ("Clash," pp. 25-29) sees such a coming state of affairs as inevi-
table for a variety of reasons: (a) Differences a m o n g civilizations are real and basic,
the product of centuries, (b) As the world becomes a smaller place, the increasing
interactions between peoples of different civilizations intensify civilization-conscious-
ness, both in terms of similarities within civilizations and differences between civili-
zations. (c) T h e processes of economic modernization and social change separate
people from their local identities, not only weakening thereby the nation-state as a
source of identity but also giving rise to fundamentalist religious movements across
the globe, which rush in to fill the void, (d) T h e dual role of the West: a West at
the peak of its power, but also a West that no longer calls forth imitation but rather
a return-to-the-roots movement in the non-West, (e) Cultural characteristics and
differences as less mutable and less easily compromised than political or economic
ones, (f) An increase in economic regionalism, both grounded in and reinforcing
civilization-consciousness. T h e end result is an overall growth in an "us versus t h e m "
relationship between civilizations.
9
F r o m the point of view of the "us versus t h e m " mentality, such conflicts take
place at both a micro a n d a macro level. At the micro level, adjacent groups along
the "fault-lines" struggle for control of territory and each other. At the macro level,
states from different civilizations compete for relative military and economic power,
struggle over the control of international institutions, and promote their own politi-
cal and religious values.
10
T h e phrase is borrowed from an earlier piece by Kishore M a h b u b a n i ("The
 From a geopolitical point of view, therefore, ethnic and racial
minorities in biblical studies, whether based in their respective countries
and cultures or in the West itself, represent by and large the chil-
dren of cultures (1) formerly controlled by the West during its long
period of global hegemony and as a result of its extensive process of
colonial expansionism and domination in the world at large; (2) trapped
until very recently as pawns within the dualistic struggle between the
"free world" or first world and the "communist world' 5 or second
world; and (3) only now beginning to attain a measure of self-identity,
self-consciousness, and self-determination, cultural and otherwise. Those
living in the West—mosdy by way of its North American variant
(the United States) and including individuals of African, Asian, Car-
ibbean, and Latin American descent—further represent a significant
and increasingly unwelcomed presence of non-Western cultures at
the very heart of the West, no matter how inscribed in the West
they may be or how devoted to its foundational creed and principles."
In the end, the broad geopolitical shift oudined by Huntington will

West a n d the Rest," The National Interest [Summer, 1992], pp. 3-13). From the point
of view of the "us versus t h e m " mentality, the efforts of the West to promote
democracy and liberalism as universal values, maintain its military predominance,
and advance its economic interests are met with countering responses from other
civilizations, with an increasing appeal to c o m m o n religion and civilization-identity
in this regard.
11
In the past few years, the backlash against immigrants and immigration from
outside the West into the West has increased sharply, in Europe as well as in the
United States. It is a presence that is seen as harmful to the West, its culture and
way of life, and even as ultimately leading to its demise. For the European scene,
with an informative breakdown of the numbers and countries of origin involved, see
Félix Monteira, "Ser extranjero en Europa, algo poco recomendable," El Pais, (30
J u l y 1990), int. ed.: 4. In the United States in particular, the projections of the
Census Bureau have thrown fear into the heart of the majority and dominant cul-
ture, with its estimates to the effect that by the year 2050, given the continuation
of present levels of immigration, the American population will be 23 percent His-
panic-American, 16 percent African-American, and 10 percent Asian-American—in
effect, just under 50 percent of the population will be of non-European origin. See,
e.g., William A. H e n r y III, "Beyond the Melting Pot," Time (9 April 1990), p. 28.
T h e question raised by commentators from the dominant culture is posed in explicit
ethnic and racial terms: whether such immigrants will espouse the "twin bedrocks"
of the country—European culture and the "American C r e e d " of liberty, equality,
individualism, and democracy. See, e.g., Bruce D. Porter, " C a n American Democ-
racy Survive?" Commentary (November, 1993), pp. 37-40; and Huntington, "If Not
Civilizations, , ‫ י‬esp. pp. 189—190, from whom I have borrowed the terms in quota-
tion marks above.
See also the recent book by Peter Brimelow, which takes the argument to a new
and alarming level of discourse (Alien Nation: Common Sense about America's Immigration
Disaster [New York: R a n d o m House, 1995]). Brimelow, himself an immigrant from
England, argues for a drastic curtailment of present immigration policy on the part
have a further and inevitable effect on ethnic and racial minorities
in all the theological disciplines, including biblical criticism, as these
individuals and groups proceed to reflect more and more on what it
means to do theology from their own social locations and to read
and interpret the Bible from their own places.

Disciplinary Context: The World of Biblical Criticism

Some remarks are in order as well with regard to the present state
of affairs in the discipline we practice, what I call "biblical criticism"
for lack of a better name, given the inevitable but unintended ca-
nonical connotations of such a designation. 12 It is a discipline that
finds itself at present in a situation of seemingly stable anomie or
liminality, due in part to a number of theoretical and methodologi-
cal developments within the discipline itself in the course of the last
twenty-five years or so but also in part to certain important sociocul-
tural developments as well.13 It is this latter aspect that I should like
to highlight in the present context.

of the United States, in effect since the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965,
which opened the doors widely to immigrants from outside the European continent.
This clarion call for a respite in immigration again reveals strong and stereotypical
ethnic and racial connotations: a focus on the reunification of families has turned
immigration into a kind of civil right for inhabitants of third-world countries; the
new immigrants are disproportionately prone to poverty, crime, and welfare depen-
dency; and new racial minorities, such as Asians and Hispanics, will alter the very
nature of the American nation-state, traditionally white in character.
In the end, such arguments reflect the traditional position of the Protestant Anglo-
Saxon dominant culture of the country and were being voiced not too long ago,
during the last great wave of immigration into the country from the 1890s to the
1920s, against such "races" as the Jews and other ethnic groups of southern and
eastern European extraction, Catholic and Orthodox to boot. Nowadays, the face of
the enemy has changed: it is no longer the Jew, the Greek, the Slav, or the Italian
but the non-European or non-Westerner that has become the target of suspicion,
fear, and even hatred. T h a t too, I am afraid, is part of the legacy of Western civi-
lization—a profound and persistent contradiction at the heart of its "creed" of lib-
erty, equality, individualism, and democracy.
12
By "biblical criticism" I mean, therefore, from my Christian perspective, the study
not only of the canonical texts of the Bible as such—however defined, whether one
follows the Catholic tradition or the Protestant tradition—but also of all the other
extant texts of ancient Judaism and earliest Christianity. I mean as well not only the
study of literary texts and other cultural artifacts but also the study of the interpre-
tation of such "texts." I readily acknowledge the need for a more comprehensive
term for the discipline, a term that would include but not privilege the "canon" as
such, that would place the canon within the wider framework of the socioreligious
world in question; I also confess that so far I have found none to my satisfaction.
13
For a personal plotting of the course of the discipline in the present century in
 In effect, following a pattern at work not only across a broad
disciplinary spectrum but also within religious and theological studies
in general, biblical criticism, which had remained since its inception
as a discipline, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, exclusively
the preserve of Western males—Western male clerics, to be more
precise—has witnessed during the last twenty years or so an influx of
outsiders into the discipline, individuals who had never formed part
of the field before and who were now making their voices heard for
the first time: Western women; non-Western theologians and critics;
ethnic and racial minorities from non-Western civilizations in the
West. 14
Such individuals, to be sure, received their training almost exclu-
sively in the academic institutions of the West, where historical criti-
cism—the first paradigm—still reigned supreme by and large and
where they were duly introduced to the fundamentals of the method
at the hands of Western male scholars in their role as Doktorvätern or
"doctoral fathers," master researchers and teachers as well as founders
or links in all-important, patriarchal pedigree lines. As such, these
outsiders were very much subject to the powerful centripetal and

terms of four paradigms or umbrella models of interpretation (historical criticism;

literary criticism; cultural criticism; and cultural studies), see my ' " A n d T h e y Began
to Speak in O t h e r Tongues': Competing Modes of Discourse in Contemporary Biblical
Interpretation," Reading from This Place. Volume One, pp. 1 - 3 2 . For a delineation of
the fourth a n d most recent paradigm, what I call "cultural studies," see my "Cul-
tural Studies and C o n t e m p o r a r y Biblical Criticism: Ideological Criticism as M o d e of
Discourse," Reading from This Place. Volume Two, pp. 1 - 1 7 .
14
O n the globalization of the discipline, see the section on " R e a d i n g the Field"
in the first issue of Biblical Interpretation 1 (1993), pp. 3 4 - 1 1 4 , esp.: David A.J. Clines,
"Possibilities and Priorities of Biblical Interpretation in an International Perspective,"
pp. 6 7 - 8 7 ; a n d David Jobling, "Globalization in Biblical Studies/Biblical Studies in
Globalization," pp. 9 6 - 1 1 0 . See also J o h n R . Levison and Prisalla Pope-Levison,
"Global Perspectives on New Testament Interpretation," in Joel B. Green (ed.), Hearing
the New Testament· Strategies for Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), pp. 3 2 9 ‫־‬
48. For similar though earlier developments in other fields and their consequences,
see: (a) from the point of view of historical studies: J o y c e Appleby, Lynn H u n t , and
Margaret J a c o b , Telling the Truth about History (New York a n d London: W . W . Norton,
1994), pp. 126-59 (Chap. 4: " C o m p e t i n g Histories of America"); a n d Peter Novick,
That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession (Cam-
bridge: C a m b r i d g e University Press, 1988), pp. 4 6 9 - 5 2 1 (Chap. 14: "Every G r o u p
Its O w n Historian"), (b) F r o m the point of view of literary studies: Vincent B. Leitch,
Cultural Criticism, Literary Theory, Poststructuralism (New York and Oxford: Columbia
University Press, 1992), pp. 8 3 - 1 0 3 (Chap. 5: "Pluralizing Poetics"), (c) F r o m the
point of view of social studies: Steven Seidman, Contested Knowledge: Social Theory in the
Postmodern Era (Oxford a n d Cambridge, M A : Blackwell, 1994), pp. 2 3 4 - 8 0 (Chap. 7:
" T h e New Social Movements a n d the Making of New Social Knowledges).
homogenizing forces of this training, with its emphasis on the classic
ideals of the Enlightenment: all knowledge as science; the scientific
method as applicable to all areas of inquiry; nature or facts as neu-
tral and knowable; research as a search for truth involving value-free
observation and recovery of the facts; the researcher as a giant of
reason who surveys the facts with disinterested eyes.15
A further though much more implicit dimension of this process of
academic socialization, quite in keeping as well with the cult of
modernity emerging from the Enlightenment, should be noted as well:
the profound conviction that such training not only represented
progress over against traditional interpretations of the Bible (the tri-
umph of light over darkness and reason over tradition) but also the
superiority of the West over against all other cultures (the hermeneutics
of over/against and the white man's burden). In other words, his-
torical criticism was not only perceived and promoted as the sole
and proper way to read and interpret the texts of antiquity but also
as the ultimate sign of progress in the discipline, the offer of the
West to the rest of the world and the means by which the backward
and uncivilized could become modern and civilized.
Despite such overwhelming academic enculturation, it did not take
long before a good many of these individuals began to question the
character and agenda of such criticism, especially with respect to the
unquestioned and unquestionable construct of the scientific researcher,
objective and impartial—the universal and informed reader—opera-
tive in one form or another not only in historical criticism but also
in the other two emerging paradigms of literary and cultural criti-
cism and to raise instead the radical question of contextualization
and perspective. This growing insistence on the situated and inter-
ested nature of all reading and interpretation brought additional,
pointed, and unrelenting pressure on biblical criticism—already in
serious turmoil as a result of internal methodological and theoretical
challenges—to come to terms with the question of real readers, the
flesh-and-blood readers.
In so doing, of course, the long-standing project of the Enlighten-
ment, as embodied in historical criticism and continued by and large
by its emerging rivals—at least at first—was ultimately being called

15
For an excellent analysis of the operative model of history at the heart of
traditional historical criticism, see Appleby, H u n t , and J a c o b , Telling the Truth, pp.
15-90 (Chapter 1: " T h e Heroic Model of Science").
into question as well: the character of biblical studies as "science"
and the use of the "scientific" method; the nature of "history; 5 ' the
possibility of "value-free" observation; the role of the "rational, dis-
interested" researcher; the notion of "progress." In the process, his-
torical criticism, along with the new competing paradigms, began to
be analyzed—like the Enlightenment itself—in terms of contextu-
alization and perspective, social location and agenda, inextricably tied
as these were to the gender and origins of its practitioners—Western
male clerics. In other words, the thoroughly gendered and thoroughly
Western character of the discipline, lying just behind the scientific
façade of the universal and informed reader, began to be systemati-
cally exposed and critiqued.
From a disciplinary point of view, ethnic and racial minorities in
biblical studies, whether outside the West or within the West, have
resisted and continue to resist, given their cultural origins outside the
West, any view of criticism as timeless and value-free, seeing it in-
stead as thoroughly enmeshed in the public arena and thus as irre-
trievably political in character and ramifications, both from the point
of view of the narrower meaning of this term (the realm of politics
within the sphere of the sociopolitical) and its broader meaning (the
realm of power within the sphere of the ideological). In other words,
ethnic and racial minorities insist on reading with their own eyes
and making their own voices heard, while challenging their colleagues
in the West to do the same, in an explicit and public fashion. In this
regard, the profound geopolitical transformation at work outlined above
will only magnify this twofold resistance on the part of ethnic and
racial minorities against the construct of the universal and learned
reader, with its corresponding vision of a non-ideological reading,
and insistence on the construct of the flesh-and-blood reader, with
its corresponding vision of all reading as ideological to the core.

Professional Context: The World of the Biblical Guild

Finally, some remarks are in order as well with regard to the profes-
sion and its guilds, that is to say, its network of learned organiza-
tions. There is a wide range of such groups in existence: while some
have a distinctly local, national, or regional focus, others are more
international in scope. Among the latter, some focus on the study of
either the Christian Scriptures (e.g., the Society for the Study of the
New Testament) or the Hebrew Bible (e.g., the International Organ-
ization for the Study of the Old Testament), while others encompass
both areas of specialization (e.g., the Catholic Biblical Association
and the Society of Biblical Literature). All of these international or-
ganizations have, quite understandably from both a historical and an
economic point of view, their origins in the West. Moreover, although
their membership is open in principle to non-Western critics, their
overall character and orientation as well as actual attendance at the
annual meetings remain overwhelmingly Western in character. Con-
sequently, at a time when the number of biblical critics from outside
the West is clearly on the rise, there is still no international organi-
zation in the field with a primary base outside the West; no occasion
when non-Western critics from across the globe can meet on their
own, as the West so often does; no meeting in the West where non-
Western critics ever represent more than a handful of participants;
and no gathering anywhere where the West and the non-West, the
colonizers and the colonized, can come together on a regular basis
for dialogue in sufficient numbers from both sides.
Yet, an exception may be in the making, by way of the Society of
Biblical Literature. First, the Society is beginning to hold its annual
international meetings outside Europe on a regular basis, with a first
such meeting held in Australia in 1993 and a second scheduled for
South Africa in 1998. Second, as part of its Challenge Campaign, a
multiyear drive for funds and endowment, the Society has established
as one of its primary goals for the future the expansion of the circle
of voices participating in biblical studies, with increased contacts and
interaction between the West and the non-West as a concrete
desideratum. 16 Third, the makeup of the Society within the United
States, its home base, is also beginning to change. Such changes should
come as no surprise, given the broader demographic currents at work
in U.S. society at large. Two recent sets of statistics should be espe-
cially noted in this regard.
First, not long after the national census of 1990, the U.S. Census
Bureau reported a profound shift at work in the society: while in
1980 U.S. citizens of non-European descent represented one fifth or
20 percent of the nation's population, by 1990 they accounted for

16
For the scope and goals of this Challenge C a m p a i g n , see the news release and
report of the Executive Director in Religious Studies News 10 (February, 1995), pp.
15-18. T h e report indicates that SBL m e m b e r s come from eighty countries a n d
that 10 percent of the membership resides outside N o r t h America.
one fourth or 25 percent of the population—a development of unbe-
lievable proportions. 17 Second, in 1987, a few years before the cen-
sus, the Hudson Institute published a report, entitled "Workforce
2000, , ‫ י‬which has turned out to be quite influential in the national
discussion. 18 T h e report predicted, among other things, that the la-
bor force of the not too distant future would be increasingly diverse,
more and more composed of women, members of minority groups,
and other alternatives to the traditional white, male breadwinner.
Thus, what the Hudson Institute report of 1987 had anticipated for
the year 2000, the census findings of 1990 had begun to confirm in
no uncertain way.
Such demographic changes and projections, involving a rapidly
growing presence of individuals of non-Western origins or descent,
were bound to have, sooner or later, an impact on the academic
profession, its graduate programs, and its guilds. Neither biblical
criticism nor the Society of Biblical Literature have been exceptions
in this regard. Indeed, a look at program offerings and institutional
structures shows that the Society is gradually beginning to reflect
such larger societal changes as well. For example, for some time now
two such groups have been hard at work: the African-American
Theology and Biblical Hermeneutics Group and the Bible in Africa,
Asia, and Latin America Group; in addition, two more have been
recendy formed and approved: the Asian and Asian-American Bib-
lical Studies Consultation and the Bible in Caribbean Culture and
Tradition Consultation. Similarly, for the last three years the Com-
mittee on Underrepresented Racial and Ethnic Minority Persons in
the Profession has endeavored to provide leadership, community, and
advocacy within the Society for minority concerns and issues.
Given such developments within the SBL in the United States,
the Society could very well become, if it were to reach out and in-
corporate—in keeping with its stated goals—the ever-growing num-
ber of scholars from outside the West in biblical criticism, the first
truly international organization in the profession, with enormous and

17
See, e.g., Felicity Barringer, "Census Shows Profound C h a n g e in Racial M a k e u p
of the Nation," The New York Times, (11 M a r c h 1991), nat. ed.: A l . It is this trend
that is reflected in the Census Bureau's long-range progressions for the year 2050,
when the percentage of the n o n - E u r o p e a n population of the nation is expected to
reach just under 50 percent. It is also this trend that is causing increasing concern
a m o n g U.S. citizens of European descent. See n. 12 above.
18
William B. Johnston, Workforce 2000: Work and Workers for the 21st Century (Indian-
apolis: T h e H u d s o n Institute; Washington: U.S. D e p a r t m e n t of Labor, 1987).
healthy ramifications for both Western and non-Western critics alike.
Indeed, there is no other group on the horizon that could even come
close to such a reality—or would want to, for that matter. T o be
sure, even within such a transformed vision of the Society, the West
would continue to predominate, not only by way of governance and
numbers but also in terms of discourse and practice; at the same
time, however, a vital space would be open thereby for dialogue
between the West and the rest, with sufficient numbers in attendance
from both camps to ensure a balanced discussion and engagement.
From a professional point of view, ethnic and racial minorities in
biblical studies have begun to see their numbers increase and their
concerns and interests expand both inside and outside the West. Such
a presence will continue to grow as our numbers in theological edu-
cation and graduate programs continue to expand, and expand they
will: outside the West, not only because of the fundamental geopo-
litical changes taking place in the world but also because of the
continuing power and impact of Liberation Theology in all of its
various forms, with its clear call for conscientization—for a sense of
self-identity, self-consciousness, and self-determination; inside the West,
on account of the continuing factors of high immigration, a rela-
lively young population, and a high birthrate among ethnic and racial
minorities, alongside a similar impact on the part of Liberation
Theology.

Concluding Comments
Such, then, is my assessment of our overall situation as ethnic and
racial minorities in biblical studies at the turn of the century. T o
summarize: (1) From the perspective of world affairs, we represent,
whether at home or in the diaspora, the children of non-Western
cultures at a defining time in international politics, a time when the
long era of Western global domination begins to draw to a close and
"the rest" begin to regard and exert themselves as subjects of his-
tory. T h e impact of such geopolitical developments on all academic
disciplines, including religious studies and the classical theological
disciplines, is only bound to increase as this process continues to unfold,
gradually but inexorably. (2) From the perspective of the discipline,
we call into question the dominant Western and modernist myth of
the impartial and objective observer, the ideal and universal reader,
and call instead for an explicit focus on real readers, on place and
ideology. In so doing, we argue for a different approach to the dis-
cipline, involving critical analysis of contextualization and perspective
at all levels of inquiry, as well as a different approach to pedagogy.
(3) From the perspective of the profession, we witness our presence
in the guild—our numbers and influence; our concerns and interests—
very much on the rise. Highly conscious of the fact that we are no
longer solely inscribed in the West, we begin to look toward our
own cultures and histories for grounding and inspiration. With this
general context in mind, therefore, I should like to turn at this point
to an analysis of our life and role in the discipline and the profession.

Life and Role of Ethnic and Racial Minorities in Biblical Studies

Such a state of affairs, while seemingly quite promising and attrac-

tive on the surface, is, to say the least, not without untoward conse-
quences. In an earlier analysis of the life and role of ethnic and
racial minorities in theological education and scholarship, I described
our situation in terms of struggle, as a lucha, constant and unrelent-
ing but also worth fighting.19 I am afraid I cannot but describe our
situation in biblical studies, whether with reference to the discipline
or the profession, in similar terms of struggle, unremitting and
everpresent but worth engaging as well. In what follows, then, I begin
with a few observations regarding the nature of this struggle, with
recourse to the same three factors invoked above, as a point of de-
parture for a final reflection on the need to take up the struggle.

Life as Struggle

First, from a geopolitical perspective, biblical criticism is perceived as

both alien and alienating by ethnic and racial minorities. O n the
one hand, the roots and moorings of our discipline and profession
have been, as pointed out above, profoundly and understandably
Western. As such, the canon of works and authors to be read, the
issues and concerns in question, the historical contexts and perspec-

19
Fernando F. Segovia, "Theological Education and Scholarship as Struggle: T h e
Life of R a c i a l / E t h n i c Minorities in the Profession," Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theolog))
2 (1994), pp. 5 - 2 5 . In so doing, I borrowed from the popular religion of my cul-
tural group, as filtered through the prism of my own family, the focal vocabulary of
life as both struggle and counterstruggle.
tives to be studied, and the interpretive frameworks and traditions to
be used in the analysis of such works, issues, and perspectives have
been those of the West. As ethnic and racial minorities enter the
discipline and the profession from outside the West, they find that
neither the content nor the mode of discourse is their own. T h e
situation proves to be in many ways, therefore, an alien one. Such
individuals find themselves—their works and authors; their issues and
concerns; their contexts and perspectives; their interpretive frame-
works and traditions—not only out of place but also out of sight.20
For such individuals, therefore, to pursue biblical studies is to enter
yet another dimension of the Western world and to see the biblical
world as re-constructed and re-presented by the West.
O n the other hand, the problem is not only one of different con-
tents and modes of discourse but also one of sociocultural perception
and attitude. At this point, one must keep in mind the dynamics of
hegemony and colonialism—the relationship between the center and
the margins, the dominant group and the subordinate groups, the
majority group and the minority groups. Colonial discourse and prac-
tice function largely in terms of binary oppositions: a primary oppo-
sition of center/margins engendering and supporting a number of
other oppositions, such as superior/inferior, civilized/savage, advanced/
primitive—all coalescing in the end in the traditional geopolitical
opposition of the West/the rest. Consequendy, ethnic and racial minor-
ities, coming as they do from non-Western cultures, enter not only
an alien context in biblical studies but also an alienating context, a
context where the content and mode of their discourse are not acknow-
ledged, much less accepted or respected, as an equal, as a different
or alternative vision of reality. For such individuals, therefore, to pursue

20
For a constantly expanding discussion, see, e.g., Itumeleng J . Mosala, Biblical
Hermeneutics and Black Theology in South Africa (Grand Rapids: William B. Ecrdman's,
1989), esp. pp. 1 - 4 2 ; Cain H o p e Felder, Troubling Biblical Waters. Race, Class, and
Family (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1990), esp. pp. 3 - 2 1 ; idem, (ed.), Stony the Road We
Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991); R.S.
Sugirtharajah (ed.), Voices from the Margins: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World
(Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1991), esp. pp. 1 - 6 and 4 3 4 - 4 4 ; Patrick J . H a r d n , Third
World Challenges in the Teaching of Biblical Studies (Occasional Papers 25; Claremont:
T h e Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, 1993); Kathleen O'Brien Wicker, "Teach-
ing Feminist Biblical Studies in a Postcolonial Context," in Elisabeth Schiisler Fiorenza
(ed.), Searching the Scriptures. Volume One: A Feminist Introduction (New York: Crossroad,
1993), pp. 367-80; R.S. Sugirtharajah, " T h e Bible and Its Asian Readers," Biblical
Interpretation 1 (1993), pp. 5 4 - 6 6 ; and idem, ed., Commitment, Context and Text: Examples
of Asian Hermeneutics, spec, issue of Biblical Interpretation 2 [1993], pp. 2 5 1 - 3 7 6 .
biblical studies is to enter further into the world of social stratification
set up by the West vis-à-vis "the other. 5,21
T o be sure, what is true of biblical studies is true of all other
theological disciplines as well. I should like to recount in this regard
a personal vignette that Gustavo Gutierrez, the Peruvian theologian,
shared with me sometime ago in the course of a conversation on
theological studies from an international perspective. I do so not only
because it is truly a classic, a perfect example of the sense of struggle
I am striving to convey, but also because of the individual in question.
Gutiérrez recalled how, during his days as a doctoral student in
theology at the University of Lyon, a fellow student of his from Europe,
told him how hard he found it to accept that he (Gutiérrez) could
have anything to teach him at all. This is a story with which all ethnic
and racial minorities can readily identify; a situation that we have
all faced at one time or another in the course of our socioeduca-
tional journey in the West, whether in England, France, Germany,
or the United States; and a story that I hear in endless variations
not only from graduate students but also from seasoned scholars on
a fairly regular basis. In fact, as one such scholar once put it, one is
often made to feel like the man born blind of J o h n 9, as he is told
by the powers that be, "You were born in utter sin and you dare to
teach us!"
From the point of view of biblical studies in particular, I should
like to share one such close encounter of my own, which took place
some years ago at an international meeting of the discipline. It in-
volved a young German scholar who, having heard a presentation of
mine partially grounded in a hermeneutics of liberation, asked, in a
tone of arrogance and disdain such as I have seldom seen in the
whole of my professional life, what this all had to do with him. This
reaction was what I would call a variation of the center-of-the-world
syndrome: a thoroughly uncritical acceptance of European concerns
and hermeneutics as pivotal for the world at large, with a corre-
sponding dismissal of all other hermeneutics and concerns as inferior
and irrelevant. T o such individuals, it would come as a complete
and unfathomable surprise for any of us to answer the question, as
well we could, with the counterquestion, what does anything you do
have to do with us? Except that our sense of dialogue, of being in-

21
O n prejudice and discriminadon from the point of view of inter-group rela-
dons, see Fegin, Racial and Ethnic Relations, pp. 15-17.
scribed in various discourses and practices at one and the same time,
theoretically prevents us from doing so, since in fact we see all
hermeneutics and concerns as ultimately interrelated.
I could go on, of course, recounting stories that either I myself
have experienced or that others have shared with me over the years.
T h e point is clear, however: it is very difficult for the West to enter
into serious dialogue with the non-West, given the enduring psycho-
logical and cultural dynamics of hegemony and colonialism; in fact,
it is well-nigh impossible for the West to listen to the critique from
the non-West, radical and severe as it often is and must be, in the
light of the intervening historical and political relationship. It is quite
understandable: how can a position that has been dominant for so
long accept the worth, let alone the critique, of the subordinate?
How can in-subordination be tolerated, much less engaged?
Second, from a disciplinary perspective, ethnic and racial minori-
ties tend to be quite conscious and upfront about their agenda and
social location, while Westerners still hold on, by and large, in prac-
dee if not in theory, to the construct of the impartial and objective
observer. Their own perspective and contextualization are not ac-
knowledged, much less analyzed, because the construct of a univer-
sal and disinterested gaze prevents them in effect from doing so. From
such a normative gaze, therefore, what ethnic and racial minorities
do, especially since it is foregrounded as such, is seen as contextual
and limited; what they themselves do, however, is seen as world-
encompassing and significant. As a result, a historical experience and
cultural reality as particularized and contextualized as any other is
bracketed and universalized thereby as normative human experience
and reality—the reality and experience of the center, with the rest
unable to transcend their own social locations—the realities and
experiences of the margins.
Again, let me offer a personal story by way of illustration. This
one has to do with a young English scholar and a conversation, in
the course of another international meeting, on the character and
aims of traditional historical criticism. Visibly angry and turning sur-
prisingly emotional, this individual protested that the method had no
agenda as such, that its goals of impartiality and objectivity were
solid, and that the basic problem was that people such as I were
trying to politicize the discipline and derail it from its established
scientific path. This reaction reflects what I would call a variation of
the innocence syndrome: a belief to the effect that interpretation of
the Bible is beyond any and all agendas and thus entirely removed
from the political realm. For such individuals, it is impossible to see
that the myth of innocence is in itself a highly political agenda.
Third, from a professional point of view, it should also be kept in
mind that Western institutions having to do with religion, and thus
including academic guilds and graduate programs, function by and
large out of a liberal-humanist paradigm and thus presuppose a struc-
turalist-functionalist model of society and religious groupings. As such,
they replicate the profound contradictions at work in the paradigm:
on the one hand, one finds within such institutions an open and
heartfelt commitment to openness and tolerance; on the other hand,
one also finds a much more subtle but equally forceful emphasis on
consensus and conformity. Thus, while harmony and cohesion are
much loved and emphasized, conflict is greatly feared and studiously
avoided, with solutions to conflict generally sought behind the scenes
rather than face to face.
When conflict originates with those who are not only outsiders,
expected to be grateful, happy, and compliant for their very admis-
sion into such circles of privilege, but also outsiders who are by nature,
as children of the colonized, perceived as marginal and inferior, the
situation becomes especially problematic, almost intolerable, above
all if such conflict has to do, as it usually does, with issues of justice
and representation. T h e paradigm finds it very hard, if not altogether
impossible, to deal with such a situation and paternalism usually kicks
in as a result: How could those for whom we have done so much
react in such a way? T h e charges that follow are well-known: mal-
contents; ungrateful; difficult; and my favorite, politicized.
Again, a personal story will serve to illustrate this aspect of the
struggle. It concerns a young Belgian scholar and involved a conver-
sation, during yet another international meeting, on the relationship
between colonialism and hermeneutics. While quite aware of the his-
torical consequences of Western religious expansionism in the world,
involving an onslaught on all native religious beliefs and traditions as
primitive or idolatrous, this individual held on for dear life to the
belief that in the end the West had done far more good than evil for
its colonies throughout the world. This reaction represents what I
would call a variation of the all-we-have-done-for-you syndrome: a
failure to realize that the rest of the world never had much of a
choice regarding this Western program of doing good onto others
and its offer of salvation. For such individuals, it proves impossible
to deal, theologically and otherwise, with that other and highly de-
structive side of Western civilization.
In sum, it is not difficult to see why the discipline and the profes-
sion of biblical studies should prove a struggle for so many ethnic
and racial minorities. It is very difficult to deal with a discourse and
practice that are not one's own, that do not regard one's discourse
and practice as on a par with those of the reigning paradigm, that
refuse to see themselves as particularized and contextualized as any
other, and that have a visceral or structural aversion to conflict and
confrontation. Within such a paradigm, ethnic and racial minorities
are constandy reminded, whether actively or passively, of their mar-
ginal status and role in both discipline and profession. Such condi-
tions give rise to and enthrone that sense of struggle which so distin-
guishes our life in biblical criticism. I would argue that there should
be no illusions in this regard: it is a way of life that must be ac-
cepted as inevitable, not only for the time being but also, as the
stories above indicate, for the foreseeable future, given the age of the
interlocutors in question. At the same time, I believe it is a way of
life that is very much worth fighting and engaging, insofar as it is a
struggle for life.

Struggle for Life

It seems to me that ethnic and racial minorities in biblical studies, as

in religious studies or the other classical theological disciplines, em-
body a profound contradiction at the turn of the century. There is
a very real sense in which, from any number of perspectives, the
course of events favors us gready: our recent and irreversible emer-
gence as subjects of history on the world stage; the utter demise of
the modernist construct of the ideal observer and narrator and its
replacement with the postmodernist construct of the always situated
and engaged narrator and observer; our growing presence in the
profession, both outside and inside the West, with a corresponding
focus on our own concerns and interests, our own readings and inter-
pretations. At the same time, and precisely because of such reasons,
our life and role in the discipline and the profession will continue to
be one of struggle. Times of change are never easy, especially for
those used to power: it is very hard for the center, even traumatic,
to come to terms with the loss of center; to have to admit that the
center has not only shifted but actually disintegrated, giving rise to a
multiplicity of voices; and to engage all such other voices in dialogue
as one among many.
In the end, however, I would also argue that our future is a most
promising one. Several factors compel me to argue in this direction.
First, postmodernism is unstoppable, as more and more new faces
join the discussion and re-claim their voices, especially when attempts
are made to squash or derail such developments. Second, our num-
bers and our coalitions, which are crucial, will continue to push the
movement forward and make it ever stronger and more sophisti-
cated. Finally, we do have many well-meaning friends as well among
our Western colleagues. Here I have in mind not those whom I
would call cultural transvestites, who not only love to be one of us
but also wish to show us, as our leaders, the way to the promised
land, but rather those who are willing to listen and perhaps even
follow, for a change. 22 T h e future of biblical studies—like the future
of religious and theological studies in general—I am convinced is a
post-colonial, post-Western future, and in that future racial and eth-
nie minorities will have a fundamental and decisive role to play,
whether outside the West or in the trenches in the West. It is a
future in which the reading and interpretation of the Bible will be
pursued and analyzed from any number of different contexts and
perspectives, social locations and agendas, places and ideologies. It is
a future with such tasks as the following before us:
(a) First and foremost, a re-reading and re-interpretation of the
biblical texts from outside the Western context, with a focus on such
issues as the following: the self-construction of the early Christian
groups; their construction of the "other' 5 —of all those outside the
boundaries of the group—and of their relationship vis-à-vis such

22
For the same problematic from the perspective of gender, see Elaine Showalter,
"Critical Cross-Dressing: Male Feminists and T h e W o m e n of the Year," Ronton 3
(1983), pp. 130-49. I will never forget in this regard a planning conference for a
biblical project with global pretensions to which a n u m b e r of ethnic and racial
minorities, including myself, had been invited to attend. It gradually emerged in the
course of the discussions that no minority had taken part in the planning stages of
the project; that an extensive charter document had already been drafted for the
project, to which we were expected to react; and that we would not benefit at all
from the large funding in question despite the fact that our ideas and our names
would serve as the backbone for the revised draft of the document. Needless to say,
all of us left the conference with a rather bitter taste in our mouths, the taste of
having been used yet again. This is something against which we must be constandy
on the watch, putting our hermeneutics of suspicion to good use over and over
again.
 "others;" their construction of the political realm and of their rela-
donship to this realm, whether at the imperial level or at the local
level; their visions of a different world, a world in which peace and
justice prevail.
(b) A critical reading of the re-construction and re-presentation of
early Christianity on the part of the West, with a focus on such
questions as: how it was presented, or the poetics of construction;
why it was presented in the way it was presented, or the rhetoric of
the construction; and for whose benefit or detriment it was presented
as presented, or the ideology of the construction.
(c) A thorough analysis of the relationship between biblical inter-
pretation and Western hegemony and colonialism, especially in the
course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when both
the formation of the discipline and the process of expansionism find
themselves at their respective peaks.
(d) Beyond a re-reading of the texts, a critical dialogue and en-
gagement with the texts, their constructions and ideologies, in the
light of one's own contextualization and perspective. In this regard,
I believe there is an urgent need to engage the Bible not so much in
the light of events in Europe in the present century—what is often
referred to as the post-holocaust context—but rather in the light of
events outside the West, in its colonies and territories, in the course
of the last five hundred years—what I referred to earlier as the other
face of Western culture and civilization. In other words, there is a
need to address the wider question of how to read and interpret the
Bible in the aftermath of centuries of domination, discrimination,
exploitation, and the wholesale displacement and extermination of
coundess "others" who stood in the path of Western progress. While
the question of doing theology in the light of the holocaust could
hardly be ignored by the West, given its occurrence at the very heart
of Europe, the question of doing theology in the light of colonialism
has not received as much attention or sympathy on the part of the
West, no doubt given the removed nature of such policies and events.
(e) T h e pursuit of a new kind of dialogue among the colonized
themselves, that is, a dialogue between and among the different non-
Western groups and cultures in the absence of the West. This is not
to say that the dialogue between the West and the rest must come
to an end but rather that the dialogue must be expanded to cover a
variety of axes without necessary inclusion of the West at every step
of the way.
 It is in the light of tasks such as these that I describe the future of
biblical studies as a future that is very much worth the struggle, a
future full of life and, as I said at the beginning, a very promising
life indeed. As a product of the diaspora and thus as someone deeply
inscribed in the West, I would further describe it as a future in which
the admirable "creed" of the West—and admirable it is indeed—is
carried forward one step further and extended to all human beings
regardless of ethnicity or race.
 INDEX O F A U T H O R S

Abercrombie, N. 97, 115 Bernstein, R.J. 454, 458, 460, 463-65

Achtemeier, P J . 182 Bernt, R.M. 20
Adjami, F. 472 Berreman, G. 26
Aharoni, Y. 36, 42 Bertram, G. 344
Ahlström, G.W. 25, 45, 50 Betz, H.D. 183, 189, 217, 218, 237
Aland, Κ. 263 Bible and Culture Collective,
Albertz, R. 64 T h e 414
Albright, W.F. 28 Bidney, D. 450
Alexander, T.D. 60 Blenkinsopp, J . 100, 104, 122, 126,
Allison, D.C. 185, 187, 189 127, 139, 151
Alt, Α. 34 Blum, E. 60, 62, 73
Altaner, Β. 265 Boecker, H.J. 246
Alter, R. 410, 414 Boff, C. 347
Amaladoss, M.A. 425 Boff, L. 424
Andresen, C. 255, 263 Bogardus, E.S. 10
Andriolo, K.R. 60 Bohannan, L. 359, 379
Appadurai, A. 426 Bohman, J.F. 4 5 1 , 4 5 2 , 4 5 3 - 5 5 , 4 5 8 ,
Appleby, J . 478, 479 461-64
Arnold, M. 390-95, 397, 398, 400, Bonhoeffer, D. 268
406, 408 Bourdieu, P. 317, 334
Ashcroft, B. 22 Bousset, W. 439
Ateek, N.S. 21 Boyarin, D. 11, 16-20, 206-13, 441,
Avigad, M. 33 444-46
Avi-Yonah, M. 36 Brady, M. 368
Azariah, M. 350 Brady, V. 4
Brandon, S.G.F. 189
Bainton, R.H. 263 Braulik, G. 10
Bal, M. 122, 141 Brentano, C. 383-89, 400, 405, 413
Balch, D.L. 261 Brett, M.G. 3, 21, 98
Balibar, E. 15-16 Brimelow, P. 476
Banton, M. 11 Brinsmead, B.H. 217, 218
Barbieri, L.A. 257 Brown, J . 273
Barclay, J . M . G . 15,201,205,206, Brown, R. 228, 230
212, 217, 219, 221, 233, 236 Brown, S. 185
Baron, L. 128 Brownmiller, S. 128
Barr, J . 149, 151 Broshi, M. 33
Bart, P.B. 128 Brox, N. 260, 279, 282, 283
Barth, F. 13-15, 26, 222, 225, 316, Büchsei, F. 287
345 Bultmann, C. 77, 162
Barth, Κ. 440 Bultmann, R. 7, 198, 440
Bardey, R.L. 472 Burrows, M. 119,134
Batten, L. 139 Burton, E. de W. 217, 218
Baur, F.C. 197, 202, 437-39, 446 Bynian, L. 472
Beare, F.W. 189
Becker, H. 280, 281 Calhoun, C. 10
Ben-Rafael, E. 3, 9 Callan, T . 181
Ben-Yehuda, N. 280, 281 Calloud, J . 258, 259
van den Berghe, P. 9 C a m p , K.A. 26
Campbell, A.F. 27 Elliott, Ν. 201
Campbell, W.S. 201 Engberg-Pedersen, T. 211
du Cange, C. 266 Eskenazi, T . C . 103
Carey, W. 354 Esler, P.F. 173, 183, 191, 215, 220,
Carr, D. 350 230, 236
Carrington, D. 363, 373 Exum, J . C . 397, 399, 400
Carter, C.E. 99, 100
Cerroni-Long, E.L. 102, 124 Fackenheim, E.L. 157
Chouinard, L. 349, 351 Fegin, J . R . 470, 486
Clark, A. 394 Felder, C.H. 485
Claussen, D. 285 Feldman, L.H. 16, 173, 174, 176
Clines, D J . A . 123, 133, 478 Feldmeier, R. 241, 262
Cohen, A. 221, 223, 316 Fesl, E.M.D. 20
Cohen, S. 119 Fewell, D. 131
Coote, R. 25 Fichte, J . G . 3 8 9 , 4 1 3
Collins, J.J. 128, 130-31, 132, 136, Finkelstein, I. 25, 43, 44, 45, 47
150, 173, 177 Finn, T . M . 173
Comaroff, J . & J . 25, 319 Fishbane, M. 10
Conzelmann, H. 248, 279, 283, 287, Fischer, I. 76
289 Fischer, J.A. 263
Cou, J. 162 Ford, P. 339
Craffert, P. 451 Forkman, G. 190
Croix, G.E.M. de Ste. 166 Fox, E. 60
Cross, F.M. 28 Fox, R. 425
Crumlin, R. 375 France, R.T. 185
Crüsemann, F. 70, 73 Freeland, J . 322
Frei, H . 108
Dahl, N.A. 204 Frei, H.W. 349
Dandamaev, M. 100 French Smith, M. 321
Dattaray, B. 344 Fretheim, T. 119,133,134
Davies, W.D. 19, 185, 187, 189 Freund, R.A. 58
Dawson, W . H . 384 Frick, F.S. 356
Day, J . 133 Friedman, J . 317
De Labriolle, P. 264 Friedman, R.E. 27
Delitzsch, F. 63 Friere, P. 331
Dennis, P. 324, 333, 336
Dennis, R.M. 5, 11 Gadamer, H.-G. 351, 456
Dibelius, M. 217, 218, 279, 283, 287, Gager, J . G . 204, 293
289 Galling, Κ. 246
Dietrich, W. 28 Gallop, J . 412
Dihle, A. 286 Gamwell, F.I. 161
Dodd, C . H . 440-441 Gates, H.L. 8
Douglas, M. 77, 85, 104, 216 Gaventa, B.R. 134
Downs, F.S. 347, 352 Geertz, C. 6, 12, 116, 450, 452, 453,
Dreyfus, H.L. 452 457
Dunn, J.G.D. 2 0 1 - 2 0 2 , 2 0 5 , 2 1 7 , Geiss, I. 271
223, 225, 233 Genuyt, F. 258, 259
Dyck, J.E. 114 Geschnitzer, F. 68
Gibson, M. 422
Eagleton, T . 382 Giddens, A. 11
Edelman, D.V. 50 Glancy, J . 128
Eilberg-Schwartz, H. 6, 401 Glock, A.E. 32
Eliade, M. 147 Glock, C. 272
Elliott, J . 262 Gnilka, J . 185
Goldberg, D.T. 3 H u m e , L. 362, 368, 375
Goldingay, J . 132 Humphreys, W.L. 130
Gondarra, D. 364-66, 373 Hunt, L. 478, 479
Goppelt, L. 257 Huntington, S.P. 472-76
Gottwald, N. 5, 15, 396
G r a y , J . 27 Ibrahim, M.M. 45
Greenfeld, L. 98 Isaac, J . 272
Gregorios, P. 349
Guignon, C.B. 458 Jacob, B. 67
Guillaumont, A. 266 Jacob, M. 478, 479
Gustafson, J . M . 157 Jameson, F. 388
Gutiérrez, G. 302, 486 Jangala, J . 377
J a n M o h a m e d , A.R. 427
Habel, N. 21 J a p h e t , S. 9 3 - 9 4 , 1 0 1 , 1 1 0
Habermas, J . 9 Jarvie, I.C. 459, 460, 464
Hafïher, A. 267 J e a n r o n d , W.G. 457
Haenchen, Ε. 178 Jenkins, M J . 324
Hale, C. 320, 338 Jenni, E. 247
Hall, S. 317 Jensen, J . 138
von Harnack, A. 255, 263, 264, Jeremias, J . 420-22
432-33 Jobling, D. 4 0 7 , 4 0 9 , 4 1 1 , 4 1 2
Handel, W . H . 11 Johnson, M.D. 60, 61
Harris, J . 377 Johnstone, W. 112
Harrison, D.L. 48 Johnstone, W.B. 482
Harvey, V.A. 432 Jones, E.E. 226
Hasler, V. 287, 293 Joseph, G.G. 421
Haufe, G. 279 J u d d , E.P. 103
Hausmann, J . 244
Headlam, A.C. 440 Kaiser, O . 138-39
Heckel, U. 274 K a h n , A. 427
Hefner, R. 327, 330 Kallai, Z. 34
Heidel, A. 146 Kant, I. 4, 58
Helms, M. 324, 330, 331, 332, 338 Kaplan, R.D. 472
Hemelrijk, E.A. 290 Kartveit, M. 6 4 , 1 1 0
Hengel, M. 178, 179, 248 Käsemann, Ε. 198, 436
Hering, R. 57 Kasher, Α. 248
Herzog, W.R. 273 Katyirr, D. 37677‫־‬
Herzog, Ζ. 25 Kedar, B. 118
Hess, R.S. 48, 59 Keitzer, R. 354
Hesse, Β. 48 Kellerman, D. 344
Hiley, D.R. 451, 452 Kent, R.G. 107
Hm, S. 115 Kermode, F. 410, 414
Hillers, D.R. 152 Kinukawa, H. 424-25
Hirsch, E.D. 454, 457 Kippenberg, H. 91
Hoffmann, H.D. 28 Kitamori, K. 426
Hoglund, K. 101 Klijn, A.F.J. 184
Hölscher, G. 61, 65 Knauf, E.A. 69, 70, 71
Holtz, G. 291-292 Koch, K. 69, 107-8
Horowitz, W. 67 von Kortzfleisch, S. 58
van der Horst, P.W. 286 Koselleck, R. 68, 274
van Houten, C. 7 7 , 7 8 , 8 4 , 1 2 0 , 1 2 1 , Kraabel, A.T. 173
Kraus, S. 68
125, 137, 162, 344, 355, 356
Kristeva, J . 17, 18
Howard, G. 183, 217, 218
Kuhrt, A. 107
Hoy, D. 6, 450, 454, 456, 461, 463
Laclau, E. 317 Moerman, M. 40
Lacocque, A. 131, 133 Mohrlang, R. 187, 188, 193
Lämmermann, G. 272 Moltmann, J . 343, 426
Lantenari, V. 15, 315, 316, 318 Mommsen, T . 57
Leach, E. 60 Monteira, F. 476
Leitch, V.B. 478 Moore, C. 128, 129, 135
Lemaire, A. 27 Moran, E.G. 128
Lemche, N.P. 25 Moran, W.L. 153
Lett, J . 449, 459 Mosala, I J . 485
Levenson, J . D . 5, 145, 147, 152, 154, Mosis, R. 113,244,245
163, 165 Moye, R . H . 61, 66
Levinas, E. 447 Mühlmann, W.E. 63, 69, 70
Levine, A.-J. 193 Mullen, E.T. 29
Levison, J . R . 478 Musopole, A.C. 423
Lichtenberger, H. 249 Myer, S.L. 5
Linton, R. 15
Lipinski, E. 65, 70, 122 N a ' a m a n , N. 25, 33, 34
Liverani, M. 115 Nelson, R.D. 28
Lohfink, N. 76 Neu, R. 63
Luedemann, G. 179, 184 Newman, J . H . 409
Lütgert, W. 217, 218 Neyrey, J . H . 280
Luther, M. 4 3 4 - 3 5 Nicholson, E.W. 33
Luz, U. 187, 189 Niditch, S. 397
Nipperdey, T . 57
Maclntyre, A. 458, 462 Nolland, J . 176
Maddock, K. 368 Noth, M. 28-29, 9 1 - 9 3
Mahbubani, K. 472, 475-76 Novak, D. 148, 149
Malamat, A. 63 Novick, P. 478
Malchow, B.V. 292
Malina, B.J. 280, 284, 289, 290 O'Brien Wicker, Κ. 485
Manickam, T . M . 425 Oded, Β. 67
M a n n , T.W. 60 Oeming, M. 63
Manson, T.W. 189 Ohland, K. 339
Marrfurra, P. 376 Olien, M. 324
Martinez, F.G. 235, 259 Osiek, C. 424
Mauch, T . M . 344 O'Neill, J . C . 2 1 7 , 2 1 8
Marzal, M. 320 Oren, E. 45
Mayes, A.D.H. 28 Orlinsky, H.M. 156, 158
Mazar, A. 42, 45, 50 Overman, J.A. 174, 187, 190
McCarter, P.K. 28
McEleney, N.J. 177 Palmer, Κ. 368
McKnight, S. 173-75 Paranjape, M. 426
Meeks, W.A. 179, 205 Pawlikowski, J . T . 165
Meier, J.P. 179, 185, 190 Peacock, J.L. 457
Memmi, A. 285-86 Peckham, B. 28, 36
Menchu, R. 320 Perlitt, L. 62
Merton, R.K. 123, 124 Peterson, D. 117
Mesters, C. 307, 309 Plum, K.F. 60
Meyer, E. 64 Plöger, Ο. 131
Milbank, J . 22 Poliakov, L. 58
Milgrom, J . 77,83,84,162 Pollock, D. 320
Miles, M. 18 Polzin, R. 402-403, 4 1 2 - 1 4
Mill, J.S. 393 Pope-Levison, P. 478
Mires, F. 298 Popper, Κ. 454
Porter, B.D. 476 Saunders, G. 316, 319, 324
Prewitt, T J . 60, 68 Schaar, Κ. 45
Przybylski, B. 188 Schäfke, W. 255, 260
Scharbert, J . 66
Qimron, E. 224 Sherzer, S. 317
Qpinn, J . D . 279 Schindler, P. 431
Schmidt, B. 49
Rabinow, P. 452 Schmidt, E.A. 264
von Rad, G. 72, 9 1 - 9 3 Schmidt, K.L. 344
Rainey, A. 31, 38 Schmithals, W. 217, 218
Räisenän, H. 178, 233 Schmücker, R. 57
Ratzinger, J . 268 Schneider, H. 139
Redford, D.B. 38 Schneider, R. 339
Reicke, B. 260 Schönemann, B. 68
Reinink, G J . 184 Schreiner, J . 243
Renaud, B. 60, 62 Schürer, E. 173, 174
Rendsburg, G.A. 60, 70 Schüssler Fiorenza, E. 451
Rendtorff, R. 83 Schweitzer, A. 349, 433, 438
Rengstorf, K.H. 58 Schweizer, E. 260
Richard, P. 300, 302, 304, 307 Scott, J . 8
Riches, J . K . 198,433,438 Seebass, H. 152
Ricoeur, P. 116,318,347-348,351 Segal, A.F. 174, 189
Riley, W. 111,113 Segovia, F.F. 5, 472, 478, 484
Ritter, G. 435 Seidman, S. 478
Robbins, V. 216 de Sepú1veda, J . G . 298301‫־‬
Roberts, Ο . 325 van Selms, A. 70
Robinson, R.B. 60 Sevenster, J . N . 249
Rohrbaugh, R.L. 289 Shapiro, J . 320
Rowland, C. 422 Sharot, S. 3, 9
Ropes, J . H . 217,218 Shils, E. 12
Rorty, R. 450, 456, 461, 464 Showalter, E. 490
Shusterman, R. 451, 452
Rosendale, G. 363, 366, 370-72
Sigrist, C. 63
Rosenzweig, F. 165
Silber, E. 58
Rossbach, R. 325, 328, 329
Sim, D.C. 185, 187
Rowley, H . H . 154
Simon, E. 158
Royce, A. P. 14
Simons, J . 59, 61
Rubenberg, C.A. 14
Skinner, Q. 457, 458
Rudolf, W. 139
Skjeggestad, M. 25, 54
Ruether, R.R.
Smallwood, E.M., 248
Rürup, R. 57
Smelik, K.A.D. 290
Smend, R. 27
Saggs, H.W.F. 146
Sahlins, M. 8 Smith, A.D. 10, 13, 97-99, 107
Said, E. 21, 381, 419-20, 422 Smith, A.M. 317
Saldarini, A J . 188, 190, 194, 280, Smith, J.M.P. 153
281 Smith, J . Z . 10
Samartha, S J . 349 Smith, M. 100
Samuelson, N. 157 Smith-Christopher, D. 19, 100, 102,
Sanders, E.P. 7, 19, 171, 172, 103, 123, 125, 126, 423
200-201, 433, 434, 436, 438, Smutko, G. 332, 333, 334
441-44 Snowden, F.M. 286
Sanders, J . T . 280, 287 Sobrino, J . 424
Sasson, J . 133 Spina, F.A. 344
Saunders, C.J. 8 Stager, L. 37, 45, 48, 51-52
Stanfield, J . H . 5, 11 Wagua, A. 299
Stanton, G.N. 188 Wallace, A. 326
Stark, R. 272 Wallerstein, I. 15
Staub, E. 15 Walzer, M. 381
Stegemann, E. 275 Warren, Κ. 319
Steinberg, N. 60, 61 Warrior, R.A. 21, 381
Stemberger, G. 249 Washington, H.C. 102
Stendahl, K. 199-201, 203, 436 Watson, F. 183, 198, 201, 213, 237
Sternberg, M. 410-12, 414 Weber, M. 69, 345
Stowers, S.K. 201 Weimar, P. 62
Straus, M.A. 128 Weinberg, J.E. 100
Strehlow, T . G . H . 20 Weinfeld, M. 27, 30, 147, 152
Strugnell, J . 224 Weippert, H. 27
Stuhlmueller, C. 141, 147 Wellhausen, J . 91
Stuiber, A. 265 Wengst, Κ. 263, 265
Sugirtharajah, R.S. 8, 350, 422-24, Wenning, R. 53
485 Werner, K.F. 68
Sullivan, W.M. 452 West, G. 8, 360, 451
Swain, T. 14, 20, 21, 361 Westercamp, U. 384, 388, 399
Westerholm, S. 204, 213, 433
Tajfel, H. 226-227, 229-30 Westermann, C. 59, 61, 71, 118,
Taylor, A. 320, 324 138, 139
Taylor, C. 4, 6, 22, 452, 457, Wete, P. 8
459-62 de Wette, W.M.L. 90
Taylor, N. 183 White, L.M. 193
Tengström, S. 62 Whitelam, K.W. 21
Theissen, G. 205, 210 Wilde, M. 338
T h o m a , C. 245 Wilken, R.L. 179, 272
Thomas, R.K. 319 Willi, T . 59, 64
Thomas, T . G . 373-74, 378 Wills, L. 131
Thompson, T.L. 25 Williams, L.J. 4, 11
Throop, P. 117 Williamson, H . G . M . 11,65,93,95,
Todorov, T . 457, 465 101, 123, 127
Torrey, C.C. 91, 92 Winne«, F.V. 70
Tracy, D. 4 4 7 - 4 8 Winthrop, R.H. 449
Troeltsch, E. 432 Wilson, R. McL. 218
Tulpin, C. 115 Wilson, R.R. 60, 62, 63, 160
Turner, B.S. 9 7 , 1 1 5 Wlo S ù k, A. 253, 254
Tyrrell, G. 432 Wood, B. 44
Tyson, J.B. 273 Wolff, H.W. 133
Worsley, P. 4, 8, 10, 316, 324
Uehlinger, C. 72 Wright, N.T. 201
Ukpong, J.S. 431 Wyschogrod, M. 157
Urban, G. 317
Uyangoda, J . 4 Yeivin, S. 36
Yinger, J.M. 9,317
V a n Gennep, A. 221 Yoffee, N. 26
Van Seters, J . 30 Yurco, F.J. 37, 40
Vandana, S. 425
Vawter, B. 411 Zenger, E. 243
Veijola, T. 28 Zertal, A. 42, 44
Vêlez, N. 307 Zimmerli, W. 67, 76
 INDEX OF BIBLICAL REFERENCES

Genesis 17:2 73
1:1-2:3 146-47 17:5 73
1:26-27 147 17:6-8 152
1:28 71 17:6 73
2:1-3 147 17:7 76
2:4-24 146-47 17:8 73, 242
2:15 372 17:9-14 152, 175
4:26 72, 148 17: lOff 73
5 58, 71 17:11 152
6:4 62, 66 17:15ff 76
6:5 134 17:18 76
9:1-17 147, 148, 152 17:19 76
9:12-17 152, 369 17:20 76
9:1 71 17:21 76
9:2ff 71 18:19 154
9:20ff 72 19:5 128
9:25-27 388 19:9 242
9:25 72 19:30ff 70
9:26 72 20:1 242
10 59, 61, 67, 160, 386 20:11 149
10:2 65 21 398
10:2-4 65 21:23 242
10:6 160 21:34 242
10:6-20 70 22:20ff 59
10:7 61 22:21 61
10:13-14 70 23:4 77, 78, 242, 243, 250,
10:14 385, 399 264
10:16ff 62, 121 24 412
10:22-45:10 61, 70 24:67 122
10:23 61 25:2 71
10:28ff 61 25:8 139
11 58, 67, 71, 72 25:14 150
11:1-9 72 25:17 139
11:9 151 36:3 242
11:31 73 26 386, 398
12:1-3 73, 76, 151 26:34 61
12:10 242 27 70
14 60 28:4 242
14:5f 59, 62 28:9 61
14:13 68 29:18 122
15 60, 152 29:30 122
15:1-5 73 29:32 122
15:7ff 73 29:34 138
15:13 79, 264 32:5 242
15:19 59 32:1 Off 76
15:19f 62, 121 32:28 85
16:10 73 34:8 156
17 147, 152 35:10 85
35:27 242 15:20 29
36 60, 61 17:14ff 71
36:2 62, 71 18 148
36:7 242 18:3 79
36:4-14 61 19:5-6 153
36:15ff 61 19:6 76, 158
36:20ff 62 19:12 372
36:25 62 19:21 372
36:28 61 19:24 372
37:1 242 20:2 244
38:2 66 22:20 78, 85, 119, 164, 355
39:10 128 22:21 85
39:14 68 22:24 85
39:17 68 22:30 158
40:15 68 23:9 78, 85, 119, 121, 159.
41:12 68 355
41:45 66 23:12 119
41:50ff 66 23:23 120, 121
43:32 68 23:25-26 161
46 59 24 147
46:8ff 59 31:16-17 152
46:10 66 32:25 28
46:12 65 33:2 121
46:47 67 33:14-15 155
47:4 242 34:11 121
50:24 353
Leviticus
Exodus 1:3 83
1:5 67 3:2 82
l:15f 68 9:24 111
1:19 68 16:19 82
2:7 68 16:29-34 83
2:11 68 16:31 84
2:22 79 17:8 82
3 71, 72 17:9 82
3:1-10 366 17:10 82
3:8 121 17:12 82
3:16-17 353 17:13 82
3:17 121 17:15 82
3:18 68 17:15-16 158
4:22-23 154 18:24-30 83, 125
5:3 68 18:26 82, 8 3
6 72 19:10 79
6:4 242 19:18 126, 158, 217
7:16 68 19:33-34 80, 159, 244
9:1 68 19:34 77, 78, 126, 162
9:13 68 20:1-5 83
10:3 68 20:2 82
12:13 398 22:8 158
12:38 161, 163 22:10 79
12:43 77 22:17-25 83
12:45 79 22:18 82
12:48 159, 163 22:19 83
12:49 82, 163 23:22 79
15:1-18 29 24:16 82, 83
24:22 82 10:22 67
25 79 12:5 112
25:6 79 12:10-11 111
25:23 100, 246 14:1-2 154
25:24 80 14:21 158, 264, 355
25:25ff 80 14:29 85
25:28 80 15:3 158
25:29 81 16:11 85, 355
25:29ff 80 16:14 85, 355
25:35 79, 80, 264 17:15 77
25:35-54 79 20:10-18 10
25:39f 79 20:17 121
25:39-42 80 21:11 156
25:40 79, 80 23:4 162
25:44 79 23:8 159
25:45 78, 79 23:8-9 162
25:46 79 23:20-21 158
25:47-54 80 24:14 85, 355
25:47 264 24:17 85, 355
25:48-49 80 24:18 355
25:53 80 24:19 85, 355
26:39-45 156 24:20 355
26:40-43 112 24:21 85, 355
24:22 355
Numbers 25:17ff 71
9:14 82 25:23 78
14:12 155 26:5 244
15:13 82 26:5ff 353
15:14 82, 83 26:11 85, 355
15:15 82, 83 26:13 85, 355
15:16 82, 83 27:19 85, 355
18:4 138 29:9-10 355
19:10 82 29:11 355
19:10-13 83 30:15-20 167
21:14 29 31:12 355
21:18 249 32:8 68
21:27-30 30 32:20 153
22-24 148 32:43 76
26:20 65
27:1-11 102 Joshua
35:15 264 2 148
36:1-9 102 3:10 121
8:33 81
Deuteronomy 9:1 121
1:16 355 10:13 29
2:8ff 62 11:3 121
5:6 244 12:8 121
5:12-15 355 15:5 30
5:14 355 18:21 33
7:1 121 24:15 167
7:7-8 156, 159 14:20 167
9:7 159
10:17 132 Judges
10:18 355 1:27 31
10:19 78, 355 2:16 28
2:17 28 17:5-7 398
3:5 121 17:8-10 397
4 29 17:8 399
5 29, 30 17:38-39 398
5:19 31 17:43-44 397
6 70 17:43 401
10 407 18 401
10:7 406 18:17-29 400
14 386 18:25-27 397
14:4 406 18:27 402
15:4—5 384 19:11-19 407
15:13 386 21 398, 403
16:4 122, 400 21:10-15 397
16:5 398 21:22-34 403
16:9 384 21:23 403
16:15 122 26 403
16:23-25 397 27 398
17:6 407 27:5-28:2 397
21:25 407, 411 28:16-17 112
29 403
Ruth
28:29 397
1:14 402
29:3 396
1:16 137, 162
29:7 399
4:5 162
29:9 399
1 Samuel 29:13 58
4 398, 406 31:8-10 398
4:1 402
2 Samuel
4:6 68, 396
1:18 29
4:9 68, 396, 399
2:9 41
5-6 398
7:8-16 154
5:6 386
11 120
5:7 403
12 365
6 405
21:15-22 397
6:6 403
23:9-17 397
6:9 403, 412, 413, 414
28:7 112
7 398, 403, 406, 407
8 407 1 Kings
9:16 28 1:46 134
9:17 28 4:12 31
13:1 122 5:9 150
13:3 68, 396 5:10-11 150
13:4 122 8:41 121
13:7 68 8:43 121
13:17 398 10:2-3 150
13:19 68, 396 10:5 150
13:19-22 396 11:1-2 122
14 398 11:35-36 94
14:2 405 12:19 85
14:6-15 397 12:23 95
14:11 68, 396 15:12 134
14:11-12 397 21 365
14:15-17 397
2 Kings
14:21 68, 396
5 148
15:1-2 397
17:5-6 106
17 397
17:24ff 94, 106 11:16 94
23:4 33 12:1 94
23:15-18 33 12:40 94
13:2 94
1 Chronicles
13:8 90
1:1-4 105
13:12 90
1:5-7 65, 105
14:7ff 93
1:8-16 70, 105
15:8-9 94
1:17-23 105
15:9 113
1:24-27 105
19:3 90
1:28-33 105
20 104
1:34-54 105
20:5 105
2:3-4:23 110 25:7 94
7:6ff 65
28:4 113
7:6-12 110
28:5 113
8 110
28:8 94, 113
8: Iff 65
28:8-15 113
8:8ff 65
30 106
8:29-38 110
30:1 106
9 65
30:6 113
9:1 105
30:8 113
9:2-3 105
30:10-11 106
9:4 65
30:11 94
9:5 65
30:25 78, 94, 106
9:6 65
31:1 93
9:7ff 65
34:5-7 94
9:35-44 110
36:21 113
10 110
112
36:22-23 108
10:13-14
11:1 111 Ezra
11:4 94, 111 1 100
11:10 111 2 100
12:38 111 2:1 100
13:3 113 2:2 85
13:5 111, 115 2:59 92, 105
13:6 94 2:64 100
14:8 94 4 101
21: 1 - 5 94 4:1-2 94
21:26 111 6:17 92
22:1 111 6:21 139
22:2 78 7:13 85
22:18 111 7:28 92
28:11-19 111 8:28 92
29:1 Off 246 8:35 92
29:14ff 246 9 11, 89, 102-103, 118,
29:15 78 122, 162
9:1-2 86, 101
2 Chronicles
9:1 92, 125, 129
1:2-3 94
9:4 103, 124
2:16 78
10 102, 162
7:1 111
10: Iff 92
7:4-6 94
10:3 103
10 90
10:5 92
10:16 94, 95
10:10 92
11:3 92, 94, 95
11:13-17 94, 112
Nehemiah 137:7-9 140
1:2 92 143:9 140
2:16 92 145:18 149
3:33 92 146:9 78
3:34 92
Proverbs
4 101
2:21-22 102
4:6 92
3:32 125
4:7 105
5 122
5:1 92
11:1 125
5:8 92
11:20 125
5:17 92
15:8 125
6:6 92
15:9 125
7 100
17:15 129
7:6 100
20:23 125
7:61 105
22:17-24:22 151
8:1 92
24:24 129
9:2 92
26:27 150
9:8 121, 129
30:1 150
9:36f 245
31:1-9 150
11 65
11:3-19 105 Isaiah
11:3 105 1:17 77
11:4 65 2 134
11:6 65 2:6 400
11:7 65 5:23 129
11:24 65 10:3 139
13 89, 118 11:13-16 140
13:3 123 13:17 65
13:23 92 14:1 138, 139
13:23-31 123, 162 19 141, 164
19:16 164
Esther
19:24-25 140, 142
8:17 162
21:2 65
9:27 139
29:21 129
Job 40 129, 133
1:1 61 43:10 155
44:24—45:10 148
Psalms
45:4 155
2 154
45:6 155
18:2 423
45:14 141
37:35 81
50:9 129
39:13 247
51:6 129
63:10-11 121
56 141, 163
72:1-4 154
56:3 139
72:12-14 154
56:6-7 138, 163
73 245
56:6 139
83:9 138
60 104, 134
89:27-28 154
60:1-6 103
105:12 242
62:8-9 121
115 133
119 247 Jeremiah
119:19 247 7:6 128, 129
119:54 264 16:19 129
136 132 19:4 129
137 121 22:3 129
22:17 129 4:37 132
29 128, 129 6 130-32, 135,
31:18-20 154 6:25 132
36:22 134 11:34 135
50:5 138, 139
Hosea
51 121
1:9 155
51:11 65
2:25 155
51:18 65
11 154
52 121
11:1 153
Ezekiel
Amos
5:9 125
3:2 156, 159
5:11 125
6:3 129
7:3 125
9:7 156, 404
7:8 125
11:15-17 100 Jonah
16:3 129 3:6-9 134
16:22 125
Zechariah
16:36 125
2 140
20:5 153
2:10-11 138
44:31 158
2:11 139, 140, 141
47:22 78, 81, 85
3:4 134
47:23 78
8:20-23 164
Daniel 13:2 134
2:47 132
4 132

APOCRYPHA

Judith 28-32 136

5:5-21 247 28 136
5:6 247
5:7 247 2 Maccabees
5:9 247 4:1 248
5:10 247 4:5 248
5:15 247 4:50 248
5:16 121 5:6 248
5:18ff 247 5:8 248
5:19 247 5:9 248
12:16 128 5:15 248
14:10 175 5:23 248
8:21 248
Sirach
8:33 248
29:23-28 241
9:17 132
44:21 248
9:19 248
44:23 248
13:3 248
Susanna 13:10 248
36-41 128 13:14 248
56 121, 129 14:8 248
14:18 248
Bel and the Dragon
15:30 248
1 139
 NEW TESTAMENT

Matthew 7:1-30 191-192

2:23 288 7:1-23 187, 191
3:7-12 188 7:24-30 191
3:8 188 7:27-28 191
5:17-19 186, 10:2-12 187
5:18 187 13:9-13 252
5:19 187, 13:13 256
5:21-48 187
Luke
5:46-47 190
3:20 139
6:7-8 190
10:3 290
6:16 261
13:3 If 290
6:27 139
16:1-9 421
6:32 190
21:12-17 252
6:33 139
7:12 187 John
7:15-23 189 1:46 288
7:24-27 186 6:50-71 423
8:11-12 186 8:48 288
9:35-11:1 185 8:52 288
10 185 18:5 288
10:5 193 18:7 288
10:16 290 19:19 288
10:17f 252
Acts
10:23 185
1:15 177
10:34-37 18, 5 353
2:1-17
12:1-14 187
2:5 177
12:24 288 177
2:14
13:41-42 189 2:22 177
15:1-28 192 2:41 177
15:20 192 3:12 177
15:21-28 192 4:10-11 215
19:3-9 187 4:21 217
16:18-19 186
5:13-6:10 215-21
18:15-17 190
5:13 216
18:17 192, 216
5:13-15
19:28 188 217
5:14
20:1-19 421 5:16-24 216
22:34-40 187 216
5:25-6:6
23:4-39 188
6 178
23:15 188
6:5 178
23:33 188, 217
6:7-10
23:23 187 178
6:8-7:60
25:31-46 187 178
6:9
26:69 288 215
6:12-13
26:71 288 178
6:13-14
28:16-20 184, 178
7:7
28:19 184, 8:2 178
Mark 10:2 173
3:1-6 187 10:22 173
3:23-8 187 10:35 173
6:3 288 10:45 286
6:4 334 11:2 179, 286
11:19-21 179 10:12 179, 274, 275
11:25-26 179 10:17-11:36 203
11:27 274 11:1-6 165
13:16 173 11:13-18 165
13:26 173 11:19-24 165
13:36 139 11:25 274
13:50 173 11:32 213
14:4f 252 11:33-36 213
15 181 12:5 276
15:1 179 14:1-15:6 210, 212
15:2 181 14:5-6 210
15:5 178, 179 14:17 210
15:13-29 181 15:8 211
15:20 181 15:10 76
15:22 181 16:4 276
15:29 181
1 Corinthians
16:9-22 252
1:18 213
16:14 174
1:22 274
17:4 174
1:23 274
17:8 252
1:24 274
17:13 252
2:10-16 438
17:17 174
3:16f 276
17:26 370, 371 7:18f 274
18:7 174 7:19 208
18:10 276 8:1-3 212
19:23-40 252 9:19-23 211
21:25 182 9:20-22 275
21:27-40 252 9:21 211
Romans 9:25 276
1:7 275 10:16-17 220, 276
1:16 274 10:18 207, 275
1:17 433, 434 10:32 274, 275
l:18ff 275 12-14 230
2:9f 274 12:2 275
2:16 435 12:13 179, 274
2:25-29 207, 211, 274 12:27 276
3:1-2 211 15:8-10 213
3:9 274
2 Corinthians
3:22 179, 275
3 207
3:29 274
6:14ff 259
3:30 274
6:16 276
4 166
11:24-29 276
4:4-5 213
4:9-12 274 Galatians
4:12 286 1:2 226
5:12-21 166 1:6 227
8:2 307 1:9 230
8:6 307 1:11 226
9-11 436 1:13-16 213
9:4-5 211 1:13-14 197
9:6-13 165 1:18-20 179
9:24 274 1:16 231
9:30f 274 1:22 276
10:4 179, 188 2:1-10 181
2:1-2 181 5:17 445
2:2f 289 5:18 233
2:4 179, 232 5:19-21 235, 236
2:5 182 5:22-23 236
2:6 182 5:22 233
2:7 186, 274, 276 5:26 236
2:11-14 182, 210, 274 6:1-6 236
2:12 179, 286, 288 6:1 226, 236
2:14 211, 288 6:2 217, 237
2:15-21 224, 226, 232 6:3 288
2:15-17 231 6:7-9 237
2:15 274, 275 6:10 236
2:16 197, 231, 234 6:11-16 210
2:17 231 6:12-13 229
2:18 233 6:12 179, 227, 232
2:20 231 6:13 233, 234
2:21 201, 230 6:15 179, 208,
3:1-5 213, 224, 288 6:16 275
3:2-5 231, 234 6:18 226
3:2-3 226, 230, 232
Ephesians
3:2 234, 237
2:1 Iff 275
3:3 197, 232, 233, 234
4:18f 260
3:5 234
5:3f 260
3:7-14 224
5:5f 260
3:10 234
5:7f 260
3:15 226
11 251
3:26-29 165, 166
3:26 226 Philippians
3:28-29 11, 179, 226 3 436
3:28 197, 207, 210, 274, 3:2-11 183
275, 445 3:2 179
3:29 222 3:20 251
4:8-9 232 4:8 211
4:12 226
Colossians
4:21-31 207, 232
2:22 287
4:25 232
3:1-4:6 218
4:28 226
3:11 179
4:29 12, 222, 227, 232
4:11 286
4:31 222, 226
5:1 232, 366 1 Thessalonians
5:2 228 1:9 210, 275
5:3 177, 228, 233 2:14 252, 276
5:4 224, 230 4:1-12 218
5:6 166, 208, 210, 274 4:5 275
5:7f 288 5:lff 218
5:10 229
2 Thessahnians
5:11 226, 227, 228
1:5-9 260
5:12 230
2:8-12 260
5:13-6:10 210
3:2 260
5:13 226, 233, 237
5:14 233 1 Timothy
5:15 231, 233 1:4 183, 287
5:16-26 226, 232 1:5 284
5:16-22 234 1:6-7 183
5:16 234 1:7 287
1:7-10 277 James
1:14 183 4:4ff 260
1:17 277
1 Peter
2:4 277
1:3 257, 261
2:5 277
1:4 257, 261
2:7 277
1:6 258
3 283
1:13 257
3:5f 277
l:13ff 259, 262
3:9 284
1:18 257, 261, 262, 269
3:15 277
1:23 257, 261
3:16 277
1:24 262
4:3-5 183
2:2 257, 261
4:7 183, 287 2:5 262
4:10 277 2:9f 262, 275
4:11 277 2:11 257, 261, 264, 266
5:8 277 2:12 252, 260, 262
6: If 277
2:13-3:7 261
6:21 277
2:13-17 261
2 Timothy 2:13 269
1:3 284 2:15 262
1:9 277 2:18-3:7 261
2:8 277 2:23 252
2:10f 277 2:24 261
2:11-14 277 2:25 261
2:18 282 3:lff 254, 260
2:22 284 3:14-17 252
3: Iff 260 3:8 261
4:4 183, 287 3:9 262
4:17 277 3:11 261
3:15ff 260, 261
Titus
3:16 261
1:1 277
3:18 261
1:5-9 282
4:3f 254
1:5 289
4:4 252
1:10-16 273, 2 7 8 - 8 0 , 282‫־‬88,
4:12 258
293
4:14-16 252
1:10 277
l:14f 277 2 Peter
2: Iff 282 1:4 260
2:14 277, 287 3:5ff 260
3:lff 282
1 John
3:2 276
2:15ff 260
3:2ff 277
4:3ff 260
3:3-6 276
3:9 183, 277 Revelation
3:9f 279, 284 8:7-9 260
8:21 260
Hebrews
3:1
12 260
275
8:7ff
14:14-16 260
275
14:21 260
11:13 264