War, Memory, and National Identity in the Hebrew Bible

Shows how biblical authors, like more recent architects of national identities, constructed identity in direct relation to memories of war.

Jacob L. Wright (Author)

9781108480895, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 23 July 2020

296 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.4 cm, 0.6 kg

'This monograph is impressively erudite as well as densely written, citing widely from a plethora of ancient and more recent sources. For all this, it is also readable and enjoyable.' Johanna Stiebert, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

The Hebrew Bible is permeated with depictions of military conflicts that have profoundly shaped the way many think about war. Why does war occupy so much space in the Bible? In this book, Jacob Wright offers a fresh and fascinating response to this question: War pervades the Bible not because ancient Israel was governed by religious factors (such as 'holy war') or because this people, along with its neighbors in the ancient Near East, was especially bellicose. The reason is rather that the Bible is fundamentally a project of constructing a new national identity for Israel, one that can both transcend deep divisions within the population and withstand military conquest by imperial armies. Drawing on the intriguing interdisciplinary research on war commemoration, Wright shows how biblical authors, like the architects of national identities from more recent times, constructed a new and influential notion of peoplehood in direct relation to memories of war, both real and imagined. This book is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Part 1. Refugee Memories: Negotiating Relations and Borders to Neighboring States
1. Passages to Peace
2. Edom as Israel's Other
Part 2. Kinship and Commandment: The Transjordanian Tribes and the Conquest of Canaan
3. Mapping the Promised Land
4. The Nation's Transjordanian Vanguard
5. A Nation Beyond Its Borders
6. Kinship, Law, and Narrative
Part 3. Rahab: An Archetypal Outsider
7. Between Faith and Works
8. The Composition of the Rahab Story
9. Rahab's Courage and the Gibeonites' Cowardice
Part 4. Deborah: Mother of a Voluntary Nation
10. A Prophet and Her General
11. A Poetic War Monument
12. A National Anthem for the North
13. Women and War Commemoration
14. Jael's Identities.

Subject Areas: Political science & theory [JPA], Jewish studies [JFSR1], Judaism: theology [HRJT]