Imagining the Other and Constructing Israelite Identity in the Early Second Temple Period

This volume sheds light on how particular constructions of the 'Other' contributed to an ongoing process of defining what 'Israel' or an 'Israelite' was, or was supposed to be in literature taken to be authoritative in the late Persian and Early Hellenistic periods. It asks, who is an insider and who an outsider? Are boundaries permeable? Are there different ideas expressed within individual books? What about constructions of the (partial) 'Other' from inside, e.g., women, people whose body did not fit social constructions of normalness? It includes chapters dealing with theoretical issues and case studies, and addresses similar issues from the perspective of groups in the late Second Temple period so as to shed light on processes of continuity and discontinuity on these matters. Preliminary forms of five of the contributions were presented in Thessaloniki in 2011 in the research programme, 'Production and Reception of Authoritative Books in the Persian and Hellenistic Period,' at the Annual Meeting of European Association of Biblical Studies (EABS).

• Table Of Contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction - Diana V. Edelman
• 1. The Other: Sociological Perspectives in a Post-Colonial Age - Jeremiah W. Cataldo
• 2. 'Othering, Selfing, 'Boundarying' and 'Crossing-Boundarying' as Interwoven with Socially Shared Memories: Some Observations - Ehud Ben Zvi
• 3. YHWH's Othering of Israel - Diana V. Edelman
• 4. Categorical Identities: 'Ethnified Otherness and Sameness'–A Tool for Understanding Boundary Negotiation in the Pentateuch? - Kåre Berge
• 5. Natives and Immigrants in the Social Imagination of the Holiness School - Mark G. Brett
• 6. Gender and Identity in the Book of Numbers - Claudia V. Camp
• 7. Women on the Edge - Carey Walsh
• 8. Ruth–A Born-Again Israelite? One Woman's Journey through Space and Time - Anne-Mareike Wetter
• 9. Overcoming Otherness in the Book of Ruth - Robert L. Cohn
• 10. Imagined and Forgotten Communities: Othering in the Story of Josiah's Reform (2 Kings 23) - Terje Stordalen
• 11. Jonah and the Other: A Discourse on Interpretative Competence - Suzanne Gilmayr-Bucher
• 12. Denial, Deception or Force: How to Deal with Powerful Others in the Book of Esther - Jean-Daniel Macchi
• 13. Imagining the Other in the Construction of Judahite Identity in Ezra-Nehemiah - Tamara Cohn Eskenazi
• 14. Phinehas and the Other Priests in Ben Sira and 1 Maccabees - Tobias Funke
• 15. Disability, Identity, and Otherness in Persian Period Israelite Thought - Rebecca Raphael
• 16. The Other Others–A Qumran Perspective on Disability - Anke Dorman
• Bibliography