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The Bible contains passages that allow both scholars and believers
to project their hopes and fears onto ever-changing empirical
realities. By reading specific biblical passages as utopia and
dystopia, this volume raises questions about reconstructing the
past, the impact of wishful imagination on reality, and the
hermeneutic implications of dealing with utopia - "good place" yet
"no place" - as a method and a concept in biblical studies. A
believer like William Bradford might approach a biblical passage as
utopia by reading it as instructions for bringing about a
significantly changed society in reality, even at the cost of
becoming an oppressor. A contemporary biblical scholar might
approach the same passage with the ambition of locating the
historical reality behind it - finding the places it describes on a
map, or arriving at a conclusion about the social reality
experienced by a historical community of redactors. These utopian
goals are projected onto a utopian text. This volume advocates an
honest hermeneutical approach to the question of how reliably a
past reality can be reconstructed from a biblical passage, and it
aims to provide an example of disclosing - not obscuring -
pre-suppositions brought to the text.
The idea of Utopia was first made current and popular by Sir Thomas
More with the publication of his book by the same name in 1516. The
'no-place' that was created has had a fantastic reception history,
which makes its application to the biblical books of Nehemiah, Ezra
and Chronicles as vibrant as the current scholarship which is
ongoing into the Renaissance term and its implications. The essays
in this collection take different approaches to the question: are
there proto-utopian elements in the three books from the Hebrew
Bible? Methodological considerations are to be found, but each
essay also moves beyond the methodological constraint to raise the
hypothetical question of 'what if?' in different ways. The essays
evaluate the potential, and pitfalls, of reading Biblical books as
(proto-)utopian. Topics include how utopia construct intricate
counter-realities, and how to tell whether a proposal diagnosed as
'utopian' from a modern point of view is meant to motivate its
audience to political action. Case studies which read aspects of
Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah as potential utopian traits include
the restoration project of Ezra-Nehemiah and the rejection of
foreign wives, utopian concerns in Chronicles, as well as the
empire's role in writing a putative utopia, and King Solomon as a
utopian fantasy-king.
The idea of Utopia was first made current and popular by Sir Thomas
More with the publication of his book by the same name in 1516. The
'no-place' that was created has had a fantastic reception history,
which makes its application to the biblical books of Nehemiah, Ezra
and Chronicles as vibrant as the current scholarship which is
ongoing into the Renaissance term and its implications. The essays
in this collection take different approaches to the question: are
there proto-utopian elements in the three books from the Hebrew
Bible? Methodological considerations are to be found, but each
essay also moves beyond the methodological constraint to raise the
hypothetical question of 'what if?' in different ways. The essays
evaluate the potential, and pitfalls, of reading Biblical books as
(proto-)utopian. Topics include how utopia construct intricate
counter-realities, and how to tell whether a proposal diagnosed as
'utopian' from a modern point of view is meant to motivate its
audience to political action. Case studies which read aspects of
Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah as potential utopian traits include
the restoration project of Ezra-Nehemiah and the rejection of
foreign wives, utopian concerns in Chronicles, as well as the
empire's role in writing a putative utopia, and King Solomon as a
utopian fantasy-king.
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