Imagining the Other and Constructing Israelite Identity in the Early Second Temple Period

This volume sheds light on how particular constructions of the ‘Other’ contributed to an ongoing process of defining what ‘Israel’ or an ‘Israelite’ was or was supposed to be in literature taken to be authoritative in the latePersian and Early Hellenistic periods. It asks, who is an insider and who anoutsider? Are boundaries permeable? Are there different ideas expressed withinindividual books? What about constructions of the (partial) ‘Other’ frominside, e.g., women, people whose body did not fit social constructions ofnormalness? It includes chapters dealing with theoretical issues and casestudies, and addresses similar issues from the perspective of groups in thelate Second Temple period so as to shed light on processes of continuity anddiscontinuity on these matters. Preliminary forms of five of the contributions werepresented in Thessaloniki in 2011 in the research programme, ‘Production andReception of Authoritative Books in the Persian and Hellenistic Period,’ at theAnnual Meeting of European Association of Biblical Studies (EABS).