Rebuilding a Post-exilic Community
The Golah Community and the “Other” in the Book of Ezra
- Biblical Studies & Commentaries
- Publisher: Pickwick Publications (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2019
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Publisher's Description
The book of Ezra is generally known for its negative and exclusivist attitude towards the other. Others are the cause of dread in one part of the book, and in another part they are adversarial. Furthermore, Ezra commands that foreign wives and their children be sent away. Yet the book of Ezra also features an exceptional account of welcome. In Rebuilding a Post-exilic Community, Chingboi Guite Phaipi examines what drives negative attitudes toward the other, and argues that beneath the presence of different attitudes toward the other within the book of Ezra lies a coherent foundation. That is, negative attitudes toward others make sense in light of the community's strong self-perception in the book of Ezra.
Endorsements (4)
“A careful and nuanced literary study of a key issue in the book of Ezra. In this revised dissertation, Phaipi deftly moves between a detailed exegesis of key texts and a nuanced analysis of the entire book. Her work models thoughtful biblical scholarship that addresses ancient and contemporary concerns regarding projections of difference, inclusion, and communal boundaries.”
“In our age of intense cultural polemics, Chingboi Guite Phaipi’s creative exploration of cultural tensions in Scripture is essential reading. She focuses on the attitudes of returned exiles toward others in the land, investigating the reasons for both exclusivist and inclusivist attitudes. By studying the social reasons for these diverse perspectives, she throws light on both biblical and contemporary dynamics of difference.”
“C. Phaipi sheds new light on alterity discourses in Second Temple Judaism. Through her culturally sensitive and textually informed reading she reconstructs the ways in which alterity in Ezra 1-6 and 9-10 became specifically essential to the identity of the exiles (golah). She aptly scrutinizes the processes of stigmatization of cultural and religious alterity. This nuanced reading uncovers in a fresh way the mesmerizing dynamic of Second Temple Jewish leadership to claim their religious and ethnic identity. Its profound analyses also contribute to discourses of exclusion of alterity today and on the processes in which religious and cultural alterity discourses shape contemporary culture.”
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