Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T15:10:19.206Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Jews and Israelites in Antiquity

The Need for a New Paradigm

from Part I - Israel’s Disputed Birthright

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2021

Jason A. Staples
Affiliation:
North Carolina State University, Raleigh
Get access

Summary

Most modern studies of early Judaism or Christianity have presumed that the terms "Israelite" and "Jew" are coextensive, referring to the same people group. For nearly a century, the most commonly held model for the relationship between these terms is that "Israel" was the preferred insider term typically used by the people themselves, while "Jew" was an "outsider" term that insiders sometimes used by accommodation to outsider contexts. This chapter argues not only that the ancient evidence does not support this model but that the insider/outsider model is the result of assuming that these terms were used in antiquity as they were in pre-World War II Europe. The chapter concludes with a preliminary look at these terms and the related term "Hebrew" in the corpus of Josephus and proposes a new model that better accounts for the ways these terms were actually used in antiquity, arguing that they are not in fact coextensive but instead refer to overlapping but distinct groups.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism
A New Theory of People, Exile, and Israelite Identity
, pp. 25 - 53
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×