Shifting Identities in a World of Change: an Old Testament Journey
EACH INDIVIDUAL has multiple identities: Irish, British, Jewish; Catholic, Protestant, atheist; teacher, nurse, lawyer, banker, or whatever. None of these has priority over the others at all times. Yet the many identities of an individual are coherent, held together by an “I”, however that “I” is to be understood, according to the needs of particular times and contexts.
EACH INDIVIDUAL has multiple identities: Irish, British, Jewish; Catholic, Protestant, atheist; teacher, nurse, lawyer, banker, or whatever. None of these has priority over the others at all times. Yet the many identities of an individual are coherent, held together by an “I”, however that “I” is to be understood, according to the needs of particular times and contexts.
If this is true of individuals, how much more is it true of peoples, of nations? Such conglomerates are comprised of individuals, and, like individuals, they have di erent identities, which are partly given and partly determined by their time and circumstance. The identity of each people is a shifting thing; it comes to expression in different forms, relating not necessarily to any essential nature of the people, but rather to the circumstances to which that identity responds. This is the theme of the following re ections in relation to ancient Israel and the Old Testament.
In the Pentateuch the origins of Israel are described in terms of descent from a common ancestor. Abraham had a son Isaac, who had a son Jacob, and he in turn had twelve sons. The family of Jacob migrated to Egypt, and there the twelve sons became twelve tribes who were enslaved in Egypt, led out by Moses in the exodus, to arrive eventually in the land of Canaan. So Israel is a tribal brotherhood with a common ancestor.
* Full article available in printed copies.
Andrew Mayes
is Emeritus Professor of Hebrew at Trinity College, Dublin, with a special interest in Deuteronomy and the sociology of ancient Israel.