The Jewish holiday of Purim began last night, and earlier today I happened upon an interesting interview with Professor Jacob L. Wright in The Times of Israel under the headline:
Excerpting ...
In my opinion it really is an interesting interview. I've ordered the book. Hopefully, it will arrive tomorrow.
Excerpting ...
As Jews around the world hear the Book of Esther read aloud this Purim, they might not know that they’re listening to the most biblical of all Jewish texts — or so claims Prof. Jacob L. Wright in the final chapter of his thought-provoking new book, “Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and Its Origins.”
... Wright believes it was national rather than religious ideology that motivated anonymous scribes to write the Bible over various periods spanning the fall of the previous Kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE, the decline of Judah, and the centuries after the Babylonian capture of Jerusalem. The Bible’s ultimate purpose, he states, was to create an unprecedented sense of peoplehood for the Jews, especially after the end of Judah.
There are several key terms to keep track of here. The author distinguishes between a nation and a state, writing that the former is “a political community held together by shared memories and a will to act in solidarity,” while the latter is “a polity with institutions of government and a territory that can be conquered and destroyed.” He also distinguishes between “national” and “ethnic,” stating that the ancient Israelites consisted of multiple ethnicities, including among the Transjordanian and Negev communities.
But, you might ask, what about religion? What about monotheism, Yahweh or the Ten Commandments? For the author, they are very much part of the narrative – only in a perhaps unfamiliar way. The incorporation of a shared monotheistic religion was one way that biblical scribes preserved a Jewish sense of peoplehood, editing out past references to polytheism as they did so.
With respect to Israel’s national deity, Wright argues that at the beginning, there were many deities bearing the name Yahweh: “Maybe, at some level, they referred to the same god. But they represented rival cities and regions. At some point, and especially after the fall of the Northern kingdom in 722 BCE, many were looking for a new point of unity. Without a palace or a dynasty, the biblical scribes affirmed that Yahweh is the nation’s God, and that there is only Yahweh. ‘Hear O Israel, Yhwh is our God, Yhwh is one!’”
In my opinion it really is an interesting interview. I've ordered the book. Hopefully, it will arrive tomorrow.