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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
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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

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