The Old Testament Hebrew Scriptures in Five Minutes - Philippe Guillaume
80. How Is Social Anthropology Used to Understand the Hebrew Bible?
The Old Testament Hebrew Scriptures in Five Minutes - Philippe Guillaume
Emanuel Pfoh [+]
CONICET & University of Helsinki
Emanuel Pfoh, Ph.D., is a researcher at the National Research Council (CONICET), Argentina, and at the Centre of Excellence "Ancient Near Eastern Empires", University of Helsinki, Finland. His publications include The Emergence of Israel in Ancient Palestine: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (Equinox, 2009), Anthropology and the Bible: Critical Perspectives (edited for Gorgias Press, 2010), The Politics of Israel’s Past: The Bible, Archaeology and Nation-Building (co-edited with Keith W. Whitelam for Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2013), and T&T Clark Handbook of Anthropology and the Hebrew Bible (edited for Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2022). His research interests are the historical and political anthropology of Syria–Palestine in the Late Bronze Age, the history of Israel and Palestine in the first millennium BCE and the politics of biblical scholarship.
Description
A key issue of social anthropology is its emphasis on detecting cultural diversity. The recognition of cultural diversity reveals the process of othering at work in the Bible. Not only is Israel presented as having to be entirely other than Canaan, but the Israel of the Bible also ignores most of the social components that constituted the actual Israel within which the Bible arose.