Post-Conference Thoughts
Mandy and I had a wonderful time at a conference this weekend. All of the papers were pretty good, though my favorites were Samuel Adams’ paper entitled “Poverty and Otherness in Second Temple Instructions” he dealt with a variety of literature from the Second Temple Period, but focused primarily on 4QInstruction and Joel Kaminsky’s “Israel and the ‘Other’ in Late Biblical and Early Rabbinic Thought.” Kaminsky has a monograph out that he drew from where he divides the world, in Israel’s view, into three sections:
1. Elect (Israel)
2. Non-Elect (Most of the rest of the world outside the land)
3. Anti-Elect (Canaanites, Amalekites, etc)
Several of the other presenters cited Kaminsky in their own work. I find the ideas that he lays out absolutely fascinating and a good challenge to the standard binary opposition of Elect vs. Non-Elect.
Carol Newsom’s keynote was also excellent, and actually tied in well with Kaminsky’s categories, though perhaps not deliberately. She spoke about God’s “other” being the gentile kings whom he fought and/or used. She set up a series of ways in which God interacted with this other. On one end of this spectrum was elimination, God destroyed the king, or Israel was supposed to destroy them. Near the opposite pole was assimilation. This side of the spectrum sees Israel assimilating the gentile king into their own theology. Cyrus, or perhaps Nebuchadnezzer, is the example par excellence of this way of dealing with the gentile king.
We also had a great time talking with Adam and Jenn. They showed us around Amherst, let us spend the night at their place, and otherwise made going to this thing possible. Add to that an excellent lunch on Saturday at a local pub (good beer too!) that left us to full to think about dinner, and the weekend was an absolutely wonderful time. I also had the opportunity to briefly meet John Collins since the conference was small and quite intimate.
Did the author of “Poverty and Otherness…” bring his famous Boston lager? Da-duh-dun!
No, but seriously, the idea of elect, non-elect, and anti-elect is very interesting to me as well. I wonder…
Oh good, now that we’ve gotten the beer jokes out of the way (relatedly, I had a really good locally brewed beer with my lunch. It bit on the bitter side, but otherwise delicious)…
I’m curious as to what you’re wondering about now. I think it’s interesting because there is a general tendency, at least in conservative circles, to view election in the Hebrew Bible as a very clear “in” or “out” binary opposition. Kaminsky’s paradigm, I think, provides a much more nuanced way to see things. If you were to combine that with some of Newsom’s comments from her keynote I think it could actually become very nuanced.
Hey, you brought up the beer.
The stuff I am wondering about is either “way out there” or “way stupid” so I can’t post it publicly, but perhaps I’ll talk to you about it telephonically.
Well, call sometime then. Heresy is always best discussed in the dark of night over a secure line anyway.
[...] week before last, The Other in Second Temple Judaism. Calvin has already posted about it here and here. Susan Ackermann, who was on the panel of three ladies that gave some closing thoughts on the [...]