Abstract
I examine here the literary portrayal of enemies, lands, and borders in biblical texts depicting Israel crossing its own territory, the Reed Sea, and the Jordan River (Exodus 15:1b–18, Exodus 14, and Joshua 2–10, 14–20). These texts share a number of motifs, which I enumerate. I trace continuities and divergences in how these texts conceptualize enemies, lands and borders. I observe their depictions of the structural relationships between Israel’s enemies and their land, Israel’s deity and his land, and Israel and its land. I thus reconstruct the literary practice of territoriality—how scribes asserted a particular relationship between Israel and its land—in first millennium BCE Judah. In the context of other ancient Near Eastern societies explored in this volume, I highlight one striking feature of Joshua’s presentation of Israel’s territory: it is imagined as being acquired through the contingent processes of history rather than in the mythological time of origins.
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© 2018 Walter de Gruyter Inc., Boston/Berlin
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- The Disciplines of Geography: Constructing Space in the Ancient World
- A Land with No Borders: A New Interpretation of the Babylonian “Map of the World”
- Hittite Geographers: Geographical Perceptions and Practices in Hittite Anatolia
- Assyrians Abroad: Expanding Borders Through Mobile Identities in the Middle Bronze Age
- “They Heard from a Distance”: The šemû-rūqu Paradigm in the Late Neo-Assyrian Empire
- Neighbors through Imperial Eyes: Depicting Babylonia in the Assyrian Campaign Reliefs
- Enemies, Lands, and Borders in Biblical Crossing Traditions
- The Center of the Earth in Ancient Thought
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- The Disciplines of Geography: Constructing Space in the Ancient World
- A Land with No Borders: A New Interpretation of the Babylonian “Map of the World”
- Hittite Geographers: Geographical Perceptions and Practices in Hittite Anatolia
- Assyrians Abroad: Expanding Borders Through Mobile Identities in the Middle Bronze Age
- “They Heard from a Distance”: The šemû-rūqu Paradigm in the Late Neo-Assyrian Empire
- Neighbors through Imperial Eyes: Depicting Babylonia in the Assyrian Campaign Reliefs
- Enemies, Lands, and Borders in Biblical Crossing Traditions
- The Center of the Earth in Ancient Thought