What Makes a People?

Early Jewish Ideas of Peoplehood and Their Evolving Impact

Dionisio Candido, Renate Egger-Wenzel, Stefan C. Reif

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9783111334851
• eBook ISBN: 9783111338057
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

This set of varied and stimulating papers, by an international group of younger as well as senior scholars, examines the manner in which peoplehood was understood by the Jewish communities of the Second Temple period and by the religious traditions that emerged from those communities and later flourished in Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. The Hebrew and Greek terms for "people" and "nation" and the name "Israel" are closely analyzed, especially in forays into wisdom literature, Jewish apologetic and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and their uses are related to geographical, political and theological developments, as well as statehood, authority and rulership in the Persian world, Hasmonean times and Ptolemaic Egypt. Especially interesting are the carefully argued and documented suggestions about how Jewish peoplehood expressed itself with regard to charitable behavior, pagan deities, and marital regulations. Those interested in the history of cultural and theological tensions will be intrigued by the studies centered on how the opponents of Jews behaved towards "the people of God", how Hellenistic Jewish culture located the Jews on the Roman rather than on the Greek side, and how early Christian discourse saw the mission among the peoples and interpreted earlier sources accordingly. The idea of the Jewish "way of life" is seen to have influenced the writer of the longer Greek version of Esther and works of fiction are shown to have had important historical data within them. Modern social theory also has its say here in a careful consideration of Cognitive theory of ethnicity and the dynamic of ethnic boundary-making.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Social Conflicts in the Persian Period: Yehud, Elephantine and Samaria
• What Makes a People According to Israel’s Wisdom Literature? ἔθνος and ἔθνη in Proverbs, Wisdom of Sirach and Wisdom of Solomon
• Laos in the First Book of Maccabees: A Hasmonean Perspective in the Context of Limited Statehood
• Sociology of Ben Sira’s Patriarchal Society: Textual and Papyrological Perspectives
• Ben Sira’s Catalogue of Generosity (Sir 7:32‒36)
• “When one is wise to his people’s advantage” (Sir 37:23): Political Intelligence in the Book of Ben Sira
• Konfrontationen. Die Kontrahenten des Volkes im Buch der Weisheit
• Die jüdische Lebensweise in den griechischen Versionen des Buches Esther
• The Identity of “Israel” in the Book of Tobit: How to Create an ethnos?
• The Heroes of the Book of Tobit as Figures of the Assyrian Diaspora
• “For we are the sons of the prophets”: The Idea of a People in the Book of Tobit
• Which Idols? The Criticism of Idolatry in the Epistle of Jeremiah (Bar 6)
• What Makes a People in the Dead Sea Scrolls?
• Entangled Jewish Identities in Rome. The Case of “Barbarians” in Philo and Josephus
• μαθητεύσατε πάντα τὰ ἔθνη (Matt 28:19): Jesus’s Cosmocracy and the Universalization of Discipleship–an “Inclusive” Reading
• The Mixed Marriage Crisis (Ezra 9‒10, Nehemiah 13), and Its Resonance in Jewish Law and Lore
• The Notion of the Nation: How Hebrew Terminology Has Adjusted to Changing Circumstances—A Tale of Cultural Semantics
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Modern Authors
• Index of Sources