Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Israel: Prolegomena to the Study of Ethnic Sentiments and Their Expressions in the Hebrew Bible.

AuthorFOX, NILI S.
PositionReview

Ethnicity and Identity in Ancient Israel: Prolegomena to the Study of Ethnic Sentiments and Their Expressions in the Hebrew Bible. By KENTON L. SPARKS. Winona Lake, Ind.: EISENBRAUNS, 1998. Pp. xiv + 344. $37.50.

This book is the outgrowth of K. Sparks' doctoral dissertation written under the guidance of John Van Seters. As implied by the title, the author's primary objective is to elucidate evidence of ethnic consciousness in biblical Israel. In utilizing the Hebrew Bible, the most comprehensive collection of written sources on ancient Israel and Judab, Sparks adopts a "minimalist perspective" (p. xiii), though one far less so than most other biblicists associated with this trendy school of thought. Sparks endeavors to bypass certain controversies surrounding the dating of biblical material, such as the Pentateuchal narratives most concerned with issues of ethnicity, by deriving his basic data from sources datable with relative certainty. These include the prophets Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and the book of Deuteronomy. To this corpus he adds the Song of Deborah and, with some reservation, the Egyptian Merneptah Stele.

This well written and organized volume is divided into seven chapters. Chapter one, the introduction, not only outlines issues pertinent to a study of Israel's ethnic identity, but tackles head on the task of defining "ethnicity," the key concept prevalent throughout the work. Sparks rightly recognizes the value of ethnic studies in general to an investigation of ancient Israel in particular. He introduces two popular anthropological theories dealing with the development of ethnic sentiments in society: I. Wallerstein's core/periphery model (The Capitalist World-Economy [Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1979]) and P. L. van den Berghe's kinship model (The Ethnic Phenomenon [New York: Elsevier, 1981]). In subsequent sections of the book he applies and tests these theories.

Chapter two is a brief comparative study of concepts of ethnicity and identity as manifest in the records of first-millennium Assyria, archaic and classical Greece, and Egypt. From the outset, Sparks contrasts the notions of ethnic consciousness in Assyrian and Egyptian societies with those of Israel. At the same time, he stresses the similar role that ethnicity played in group identity in the ancient Greek and Israelite societies.

Chapter three focuses on the two earliest witnesses reflecting Israel's ethnic distinctiveness: the Merneptah...

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT