This powerful collection of essays focuses on the representation of God in the Book of Ezekiel. With topics spanning across projections of God, through to the implications of these creations, the question of the divine presence in Ezekiel is explored. Madhavi Nevader analyses Divine Sovereignty and its relation to creation, while Dexter E. Callender Jnr and Ellen van Wolde route their studies in the image of God, as generated by the character of Ezekiel. The assumption of the title is then inverted, as Stephen L. Cook writes on 'The God that the Temple Blueprint Creates', which is taken to its other extreme by Marvin A. Sweeney in his chapter on 'The Ezekiel that God Creates', and finds a nice reconciliation in Daniel I. Block's chapter, 'The God Ezekiel Wants Us to Meet.' Finally, two essays from Christian biblical scholar Nathan MacDonald and Jewish biblical scholar, Rimon Kasher, offer a reflection on the essays about Ezekiel and his God.

The sixth and fifth centuries BCE were a time of constant re-identifications within Judean communities, both in exile and in the land; it was a time when Babylonian exilic ideologies captured a central position in Judean (Jewish) history and literature at the expense of silencing the voices of any other Judean communities.Proceeding from the later biblical evidence to the earlier, from the Persian period sources (Ezra-Nehemiah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Deutero-Isaiah) to the Neo-Babylonian prophecy of Ezekiel and Jeremiah, "Exclusive Inclusivity" explores the ideological transformations within these writings using the sociological rubric of exclusivity. Social psychology categories of ethnicity and group identity provide the analytical framework to clarify that Ezekiel, the prophet of the Jehoiachin Exiles, was the earliest constructor of these exclusive ideologies. Thus, already from the Neo-Babylonian period, definitions of otherness were being set to shape the self-understanding of each of the post-586 communities, in Judah (Yehud) and in the Babylonian Diaspora, as the exclusive People of God. As each community reidentified itself as the in-group, arguments of otherness were adduced to diregard and delegitimize the sister community. The polemics against "foreigners" in the Persian period literature are the ideological successors to the earlier ideological conflict.

The sixth and fifth centuries BCE were a time of constant re-identifications within Judean communities, both in exile and in the land; it was a time when Babylonian exilic ideologies captured a central position in Judean (Jewish) history and literature at the expense of silencing the voices of any other Judean communities. Proceeding from the later biblical evidence to the earlier, from the Persian period sources (Ezra-Nehemiah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Deutero-Isaiah) to the Neo-Babylonian prophecy of Ezekiel and Jeremiah, Exclusive Inclusivity explores the ideological transformations within these writings using the sociological rubric of exclusivity. Social psychology categories of ethnicity and group identity provide the analytical framework to clarify that Ezekiel, the prophet of the Jehoiachin Exiles, was the earliest constructor of these exclusive ideologies. Thus, already from the Neo-Babylonian period, definitions of otherness were being set to shape the self-understanding of each of the post-586 communities, in Judah (Yehud) and in the Babylonian Diaspora, as the exclusive People of God. As each community reidentified itself as the in-group, arguments of otherness were adduced to diregard and delegitimize the sister community. The polemics against "foreigners" in the Persian period literature are the ideological successors to the earlier ideological conflict.

This powerful collection of essays focuses on the representation of God in the Book of Ezekiel. With topics spanning across projections of God, through to the implications of these creations, the question of the divine presence in Ezekiel is explored. Madhavi Nevader analyses Divine Sovereignty and its relation to creation, while Dexter E. Callender Jnr and Ellen van Wolde route their studies in the image of God, as generated by the character of Ezekiel. The assumption of the title is then inverted, as Stephen L. Cook writes on 'The God that the Temple Blueprint Creates', which is taken to its other extreme by Marvin A. Sweeney in his chapter on 'The Ezekiel that God Creates', and finds a nice reconciliation in Daniel I. Block's chapter, 'The God Ezekiel Wants Us to Meet.' Finally, two essays from Christian biblical scholar Nathan MacDonald and Jewish biblical scholar, Rimon Kasher, offer a reflection on the essays about Ezekiel and his God.