Religion, Ethnicity and Xenophobia in the Bible: A Theoretical, Exegetical and Theological Survey [Hardcover]

Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Chapter One Biblical scholarship and the Other ; Chapter Two Birds of a feather: explaining ethnic foreignness; Chapter Three Brood of destruction : Mesopotamian caricatures of foreigners; Chapter Four He fixed the boundaries of the earth : some biblical idioms of ethnicity; Chapter Five A non-people, a foolish nation : caricatures of foreigners in Deuteronomistic texts; Chapter Six I was repulsed by them : caricatures of foreigners in holiness texts; Chapter Seven Foolish by nature : the reverberations of ethnic polemics in the Bible; Chapter Eight In order that I might horrify them : a theological appraisal; Bibliography; Index

Religion, Ethnicity and Xenophobia in the Bible looks at some of the Bibles most hostile and violent anti-foreigner texts and raises critical questions about how students of the Bible and ancient Near East should grapple with ethnicity and foreignness conceptually, hermeneutically and theologically. The author uses insights from social psychology, cognitive psychology, anthropology, sociology and ethnic studies to develop his own perspective on ethnicity and foreignness.

Starting with legends about Mesopotamian kings from the third millennium BCE, then navigating the Deuteronomistic and Holiness traditions of the Hebrew Bible, and finally turning to Deuterocanonicals and the Apostle Paul, the book assesses the diverse and often inconsistent portrayals of foreigners in these ancient texts. This examination of the negative portrayal of foreigners in biblical and Mesopotamian texts also leads to a broader discussion about how to tlC/