'From beyond the rivers of Cush' : negotiating ethnic identity and Cushite-Israelite interrelations in the Hebrew Bible

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: It is almost axiomatic that the impetus to study the past is occasioned by contemporary paradigms and circumstances. In recent years the steady flow of critical investigations of ethnic sentiments in the biblical literature can be directly correlated to the salience of ethnic dynamics in our modern, multicultural context. It is reasonable to assert then that the biblical scholar's primary purpose for studying ethnic dynamics in Israel's past is to inform, in one way or another, the contemporary struggle for identity in an ethnically and racially fractured social landscape. The primary objective of this work is to investigate representations of Cushites in the Hebrew Bible, and as such it is a study of the past. But relevant to the present, one of the main goals of this project is to provide a more balanced view of Cushite ethnographic representations in the biblical literature by consciously departing from accepted stereotypes of Africa and people of African descent which are largely a feature of the modern age. Varying degrees of racial stereotyping expressed in otherwise competent biblical interpretation tend to emphasize unfavourable portraits of the people the biblical writers called Cushites. Such views are revealed, for example, through a tacit assumption of the slave status of certain Cushites who appear in the pages of the Hebrew Bible. It is a working assumption of this study that modern notions of race and ethnicity were understood differently in the ancient and biblical contexts. Thus, in contrast to racial assumptions, this work seeks to comprehend the biblical view of Cushites first by undertaking a comprehensive examination of comparative representations of Cushites in ancient Egypt and the Mediterranean, and second by a critical examination of the theological outlook of the biblical authors who wrote about them. This study contributes to a clearer understanding of the theological, historical, and ethnic dynamics underpinning representations of Cushites in the Hebrew Bible.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University