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  • 6 - Genocide in Ancient Israelite and Early Jewish Sources

  • from Part II - The Ancient World
  • Edited by Ben Kiernan, Yale University, Connecticut, T. M. Lemos, Huron University College, University of Western Ontario, Tristan S. Taylor, University of New England, Australia
  • General editor Ben Kiernan, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book:
    The Cambridge World History of Genocide
    Published online:
    23 June 2023
    Print publication:
    04 May 2023, pp 185-208

  • Summary

    This chapter explores the pervasiveness of narratives of genocide and mass violence in Israelite and early Jewish sources and relate this genocidal impulse to the interethnic violence that occurred in the ancient Levant in different periods. It argues that various historical factors contributed to the prevalence of extreme violence in these sources: the brutality of imperialistic aggression carried out against the Israelites by several ancient Near Eastern empires; the demographic shifts that contributed to material scarcities in the Iron Age II and the Hellenistic-Roman era; and the dichotomized processes of ethnic boundary-marking that characterize so many Israelite and early Jewish texts. The merging of these factors generated an abundance of literature depicting genocide and other forms of mass violence.