The Opposite of Indigenous: Divergent biblical models for what it means to come from another land

• In Event: Bible & Biblical Interpretation

Abstract

Any anthropological analysis of the festivals, rituals and laws of the Torah shows that they are uniquely keyed to the ecological rhythms of the land of Canaan. This is one way of measuring the degree to which a tradition or civilization is indigenous to a particular land. Yet throughout the stories of the Torah and the entire bible, the people of Israel are portrayed outsiders who inherit a land that is not their own, that they did not cultivate or originate from. There are no threads in the Bible that argue that the Israelites are ”indigenous” to that land. There are, instead, conflicting models that explain what it means to believe that the people come from outside the land. One model can be derived from the stories of the "avot" in Genesis, while a very different model can be derived from the stories of conquest, especially in the book of Joshua. In the ancestral "avot" tales, even though the forefathers are promised the land by God, they insist on acting as strangers in the land, consistently deferring to the people that they are supposed to disinherit. This represents the ideal according to Genesis. The Joshua stories, on the other hand, portray the right relationship between the people Israel and the land to be one of conquest and genocide against the people that lived there before them. Within each cycle of stories, one finds passionate criticism of the opposite cycle of stories. The Joshua stories imply that the reason for exile is because the original conquest didn't complete its destruction of the land's former inhabitants and their culture, whereas in the avot stories, the gravest sin that compromises being in the land is incurred when Shimon and Levi wipe out the tribe of Shechem, even though they behave exactly as the Joshua stories would valorize. This paper will focus on drawing out the implications of these contradictions for understanding biblical literature, and will also examine how this division between being conquerors and being ethical strangers is echoed in contemporary political discussions about the land and state of Israel.

Author

• David Seidenberg, neohasid.org