The Bible, Qumran, and the Samaritans by Magnar Kartveit & Gary N. Knoppers

Author:Magnar Kartveit & Gary N. Knoppers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Published: 2018-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

5 Conclusions

The conclusions may be summarized as follows: First, it is shown that in reference to “separation from all foreigners” the Ezra-tradition presupposes a very specific, exclusivistic use of the term “Israel,” which essentially sees only the returnee-community as representatives of the Qahal Yiśrael. The decisive marker of the “foreigner” for the intermarriage question is preeminently and for the purposes of the narrative logic ethnic-genealogically determined, but it is aimed at the cultic-religious demarcation of the Galuth-community from “the other.” The designation of the “foreigner” functions in the text as a cipher for a particular conflict, by which the “Israelite” authors of Ezra demarcate themselves from other groups, who are defined as “not Israel.” It has been suggested in this essay that behind the usage of the term “foreigner” may lie other post-exilic Yahwisms, which likewise applied the “Israel” title to themselves positively and, when these other post-exilic Yahwisms are viewed historically, were equivalent to the Judean form of Yahwism. In particular, this Judean boundary-marking polemic may refer to the Samarian Yhwh-worshipers, because these worshipers were certainly no marginal religio-historical phenomenon in the post-exilic period (a “Jewish sect”), but instead were the most theological-historically significant form of Yahwism in the Levant heartland, outside of Judah.479 Within the ethnic fiction of the Ezra-tradition (and essentially of the entire book of Ezra-Nehemiah480), which developed concerning the question of intermarriage, the Samaritan Yhwh-community is declassified as a group that is impure, ineligible for the cult, and multi-ethnic, and consequently delegitimized as representatives of “Israel”; the Ezra-tradition stands in line with a tradition of “foreigner” polemic against the Samaritans that continues up to the modern period.481

The concrete cause for the sharp polemic of the Ezra-story is the situation that the (Judean) authors stand against a denomination of “Israel” that was in every way comparable to the post-exilic Yahwism of Jerusalem. The Samaritan Yhwh-worshippers likewise understood themselves as “Israel,” were perceived as such from outside, shared a “common Pentateuch” with Judah and operated their own central Yahwistic sanctuary. Literarily and ideologically, a clear, restrictive boundary between the two denominations of “Israel” was drawn over the polemic. Only through the discrediting of the Samaritan Yhwh-cult could the exclusive legitimacy and therefore the justifiable uniqueness of the Judean Yhwh-faith (particularly that of the Jerusalem Temple) be ensured.

In the idealistic reconstruction of the restoration of this “Israel,” which within the Ezra-story ultimately experiences its normative founding in the recapitulation and promulgation of the Torah (Ezra 7),482 the grounds may be sought for the fact that the Gerizim community is never explicitly mentioned, and a cipher is used. The claim is developed in the texts that the Torah – as essential spiritual center483 of the Jerusalem community – unrestrictedly serves to decipher all political religious and social questions, and as an authoritative medium possesses an undisputed significance. Because the Torah does not (explicitly) mention the Samaritans or the Gerizim community as an individual group or “people,”484 these terms are also not available to the Ezra-community. One is reliant on

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