Overview

In this book, Katherine E. Southwood offers a new approach to interpreting Judges 21. Breaking away from traditional interpretations of kingship, feminism, or comparisons with Greek or Roman mythology, she explores the concepts of marriage, ethnicity, rape, and power as means of ethnic preservation and exclusion. She also exposes the many reasons why marriage by capture occurred during the post-exilic period. Judges 21 served as a warning against compromise - submission to superficial unity between the Israelites and the Benjaminites. Any such unity would result in drastic changes in the character, culture, and values of the ethnic group 'Israel'. The chapter encouraged post-exilic audiences to socially construct those categorised as 'Benjaminites' as foreigners who do not belong within the group, thereby silencing doubts about the merits of unity.

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9781107145245

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'In the best tradition of radically innovative biblical interpretation, Southwood has established a framework for the discussion of the historical meaning of Judges 21 that is now the inevitable starting point for future analysis, whether or not one agrees with all the details of her particular conclusion. The members of the Society for Old Testament Study should be gratified that their new Monograph Series has been inaugurated by so substantial a work of original scholarship as this.' Philip F. Esler, Journal of Jewish Studies

Author Information

Katherine E. Southwood is University Lecturer in Old Testament and Fellow and Tutor in Theology and Religion at St John's College, Oxford. Her research focuses on and promotes interdisciplinary approaches to the Hebrew Bible through engagement with social anthropology to understand Israelite marriage practices and the impact of forced and return migrations on Israelite identity. She is the author of Ethnicity and the Mixed Marriage Crisis in Ezra 9-10: An Anthropological Approach (2012).

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