Shared Jewish Kinship and Pan-Israelite “Brotherhood”

• In Event: Kinship and Networks in Antiquity

Abstract

Research shows that contemporary Jews, while often avoiding the language of race, nevertheless frequently point to biological substance and its transmission, or “kinship,” when attempting to define the origin and fundamental boundaries of their Jewish identity, even connecting this notion to the biblical depiction of the Israelite peoples’ shared lineage. Similarly, claims to biological substance linked to the biblical Israelites remains important for communities such as the BƎNÊ MƎNAŠŠEH, whose modern origins are rooted in the region of Myanmar, but who assert descent from the ancient Israelite tribe of Manasseh. The biblical depiction of the tribes’ lineage and shared Israelite identity, therefore, appears to play an important ongoing role in structuring and legitimating notions of intra-Jewish communal identity. However, a debate has arisen within biblical studies regarding the origin and development of an “All-Israel” identity that encompassed all of the tribes, and which also crossed the border between the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. By placing its analytical focus on use of the term ʼĀḤ (“brother” or “kinsman”) in the Hebrew Bible to identify an individual “All-Israel” identity, the present paper offers new evidence regarding this debate and notes its implications for understanding the emergence of early Jewish identity. In particular, the paper will show that references to pan-Israelite “brotherhood” in the Hebrew Bible are restricted to a definable corpus of texts, tying this usage to scribal contexts and interests that achieved their greatest prominence in late and post-monarchic biblical writing. Consequently, the text of the Hebrew Bible indicates that imagining every Israelite as a “brother,” and thus possessing a shared individually-based kin connection with all other Israelites, is an idea that developed no earlier than the period immediately preceding Judah’s conquest by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. All of this highlights the extent to which notions of shared “Israeliteness” were dynamic and varied during the biblical period, suggesting that early Jewish and later conceptions of communal shared biological substance are rooted in a particular late formation of Israelite identity.

Author

• Dustin Nash, Muhlenberg College