Research Group Details

Israel and the Production and Reception of Authoritative Books in the Persian and Hellenistic Period

Category: Hebrew Bible/Old Testament
Research Group Co-ordinator: Ehud BenZvi

The goal of this research programme is to explore the social processes, ideological matrices, and matters of identity formation involved in the production and use of authoritative texts in the Persian and Early Hellenistic periods.

Papers (and thematic sessions) may deal with:
How the various books in the Hebrew Bible have been shaped in order to serve as guidelines and authoritative illustrations for behaviour for the emerging Jewish communities in Yehud or in the diaspora in the Persian and early Hellenistic periods;
How some books were intended to socialize their readers by constructing shared images of the past;
How authoritative books shaped and reflected a system of shared sites of memory that contributed to self-understanding and social cohesion;
How and why books became authoritative and what 'authoritative' may mean in this regard;
Anything related to the production and reception of authoritative books in the Persian and Early Hellenistic period, from socio-political considerations to studies of the discursive environment within which the books emerged or read and reread.

Thematic sessions may deal with individual books, collections of books; or may focus on some aspect of the production and reception of the relevant books.

Papers will be invited, but EABS members are also welcome to submit proposals.

Chairs

Diana Edelman, Department of Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield (D. Edelman@shef.ac.uk)
Ehud Ben Zvi, History and Classics, University of Alberta (Ehud.Ben.Zvi@ualberta.ca)

2011 Programme

There will be at least two sessions at this meeting.

The first (two) session(/s) will be on Imagining the Other and Constructing Israelite Identity.

We encourage papers that deal with questions such as what defines 'Israel' or an 'Israelite' in literature taken to be authoritative in the late Persian and Early Hellenistic periods? Who is an insider and who an outsider? Are the boundaries permeable? Are there different ideas expressed within individual books? If so, why? Are there certain views that cut across books? If so, how do these views inform one another?

The deadline for submitting proposals for this session is Oct. 1, 2010. Depending on the response, we will decide whether to hold two sessions on this topic or only one. Although some papers will be invited, there will be sufficient space for new proposals and for a general discussion on the topic.

The final session is a joint session with the research program Cultural Memory in Biblical Exegesis on the theme Cities as Sites of Memory. Papers for this session will be invited.

Publications

D. V. Edelman and E. Ben Zvi (eds), The Production of Prophecy: Constructing Prophecy and Prophets in Yehud (London: Equinox, 2009).

E. Ben Zvi, D. V. Edelman and F. Polak (eds), A Palimpsest: Rhetoric, Ideology, Stylistics and Language Relating to Persian Israel (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2009).

Forthcoming Publications

E. Ben Zvi and D. V. Edelman (eds), What is Authoritative for Chronicles (Eisenbrauns).