Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Click here to sign up for SAGE Journal Email Alerts today!

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Currents in Biblical Research
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Miller, J. C.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Ethnicity and the Hebrew Bible: Problems and Prospects

James C. Miller

Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology, Nairobi, Kenya, james.miller{at}negst.edu

This article examines recent studies of ethnicity in the Hebrew Bible. A subsequent article will analyze similar studies of the New Testament writings. After a brief overview of selected trends in the study of ethnic identity, I organize my analysis according to broad historical periods in the biblical narrative: pre-monarchic, monarchic, and exilic/postexilic eras with monographs receiving the bulk of attention. I conclude that three persistent problems hinder progress in these investigations. First, the inability of scholars to agree upon dates for biblical texts, our best source for ascertaining ethnicity, limits our capacity to locate them within specific socio-historical contexts and thereby reconstruct Israel's ethnic identity at a given time and place. Second, the evidence that can be dated most accurately, archaeological remains, provides inadequate data for drawing conclusions about ethnic self-perceptions. Finally, vague definitions of ethnicity result in imprecise characterizations of Israel's identity. Such methodological and theoretical difficulties are not unique to this young sub-discipline of Hebrew Bible studies, nor should they detract from the fact that analysis of ethnic dynamics in the Hebrew Bible is a promising development in the overall study of ancient Israelite identity.

Key Words: ethnicity • ethnicity and the Hebrew Bible • ethnogenesis • Israelite ethnicity.

Currents in Biblical Research, Vol. 6, No. 2, 170-213 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1476993X07083627
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?