Ethnic Fiction and Identity-Formation

What is it about?

“Taking as his starting point the separation from foreignness in Neh 13:30, Benedikt Hensel finds the focus on separation to be a leading motif in the Ezra-story in Ezra 1– 10 and in Neh 8 – 10. Hensel addresses the particular notion of foreignness in the two books against the background of our present knowledge of the constitution of the population in the area. In so doing, he discovers an enigma, namely that there were not many foreigners to dissociate from. So what would have been the purpose of the injunction to separate from almost non-existent aliens? An answer to this question can be found by paying attention to the use of the term “Israel” in these books, a designation reserved for the returnees from exile. As “Israel” was a self-designation also of the emerging community around the Gerizim sanctuary, this usage in Ezra-Nehemiah attempts to redefine the relevant power relationships in the period, pro-Jerusalem and anti-Samaritan. Readers will be struck by a number of Hensel’s proposals, including the suggestion that the designation of the “foreigner” functions in the text as a cipher for a particular conflict, by which the “Israelite” authors of Ezra demarcate themselves from other post-exilic Yahwisms, specifically the Samarian YHWH worshipers. Hensel’s study thus revives suggestions of anti-Samaritan polemics in Ezra-Nehemiah, but with new material from Mount Gerizim and Delos as the impulse for a renewed attempt to understand the theological thrust of the book.” (Kartveit/Knoppers, Qumran, Mount Gerizim, and the Books of Moses, 12f).

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