The Biography of Ancient Israel: National Narratives in the by Ilana Pardes

The Biography of Ancient Israel: National Narratives in the by Ilana Pardes

By Ilana Pardes

The nation--particularly in Exodus and Numbers--is now not an summary inspiration yet fairly a grand personality whose heritage is fleshed out with amazing literary strength. In her leading edge exploration of nationwide mind's eye within the Bible, Pardes highlights the textual manifestations of the metaphor, the numerous anthropomorphisms wherein a collective personality named ''Israel'' springs to lifestyles. She explores the illustration of communal explanations, hidden wants, collective anxieties, the drama and suspense embedded in every one section of the nation's existence: from start in exile, to suckling within the desert, to an extended strategy of maturation that has no yes finish. within the Bible, Pardes indicates, heritage and literature pass hand in hand extra explicitly than in smooth historiography, that's why the Bible serves as a paradigmatic case for interpreting the narrative base of nationwide buildings. Pardes demands a attention of the Bible's penetrating renditions of nationwide ambivalence. She reads the rebellious behavior of the country opposed to the grain, probing the murmurings of the folks, foregrounding their critique of the reliable line. The Bible doesn't offer a homogeneous account of state formation, in accordance with Pardes, yet quite finds issues of hysteria among varied perceptions of the nation's historical past and future. This clean and fantastically rendered portrayal of the background of historic Israel can be of significant curiosity to somebody drawn to the Bible, within the interrelations of literature and background, in nationhood, in feminist proposal, and in psychoanalysis.

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Deserted at birth, they now feel deserted once again in an unbearable exile. The wandering Israelites cry much as the exiles who sat by the rivers of Babylon cried on remembering Zion (Ps. 137:1), only their notion of motherland does not coincide with the official one. Egypt is the land they mourn over, the land of their dreams, not Zion. The metaphor of national suckling is explicitly dealt with in Numbers 11, at another site of complaint. On this occasion the people once again crave the food they thrived on back in Egypt.

But then a process of recovery begins that entails the inversion of exposure from an antinatal act to a means of rescue. Yocheved casts her son into the Nile, but Moses’ exposure is not meant to comply with Pharaoh’s decree but rather to undo it. Similarly, the nation as a whole multiplies despite Pharaoh’s tortuous measures and tireless attempts to restrict its growth: “But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew” (Exod. 1:12). The relation between affliction and growth is provocatively inverted.

The master falls and the oppressed spring to life. From now on, time will be perceived differently. Everything will be measured in relation to the moment in which God delivered Israel from Egypt. “This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you” (Exod. 12:2). A new calendar is established with the birth of the nation as its point of departure. 19 Slavery is left behind, and the intoxicating smell of freedom is in the air. Wonder God performs a variety of wonders in Egypt (the ten plagues in fact are perceived as such), but the parting of the Red Sea seems to surpass them all.

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