Overview

"The nation--particularly in Exodus and Numbers--is not an abstract concept but rather a grand character whose history is fleshed out with remarkable literary power. In her innovative exploration of national imagination in the Bible, Pardes highlights the textual manifestations of the metaphor, the many anthropomorphisms by which a collective character named ""Israel"" springs to life. She explores the representation of communal motives, hidden desires, collective anxieties, the drama and suspense embedded in each phase of the nation's life: from birth in exile, to suckling in the wilderness, to a long process of maturation that has no definite end. In the Bible, Pardes suggests, history and literature go hand in hand more explicitly than in modern historiography, which is why the Bible serves as a paradigmatic case for examining the narrative base of national constructions. Pardes calls for a consideration of the Bible's penetrating renditions of national ambivalence. She reads the rebellious conduct of the nation against the grain, probing the murmurings of the people, foregrounding their critique of the official line. The Bible does not provide a homogeneous account of nation formation, according to Pardes, but rather reveals points of tension between different perceptions of the nation's history and destiny. This fresh and beautifully rendered portrayal of the history of ancient Israel will be of vital interest to anyone interested in the Bible, in the interrelations of literature and history, in nationhood, in feminist thought, and in psychoanalysis."

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9780520236868

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A creative reading of the text emerges that helps explain its continual power to shape individual and communal identities far beyond its historical and geographic origins.... A wonderfully written book. - Choice

To Ilana Pardes, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel isn't so much a land as a complex collective character. 'The history of the children of Israel is shaped as a biography,' she says in her introduction, and she traces that history through close readings of the Bible and its numerous metaphors, from birth in Egypt to the threshold of maturity on the plains of Moab. Her readings of Genesis, Exodus and Numbers are based on literary analysis and on psychoanalytic theory. Thus she acknowledges a huge debt to Freud's ground-breaking Moses and Monotheism, which applied Freud's theories about the individual to what he termed 'mass psychology' (rather like Jung's 'collective unconscious'). Pardes explores the representation of 'collective murmurs', hidden desires, conflicting memories, and the drama and ambivalence embedded in each phase of the nation's life. She highlights the many anthropomorphisms by which the collective character of Israel springs to life, and, from the key metaphors and narrative details of the Old Testament, teases out a compelling picture of the formation of the Israelite nation. All of this is much less daunting than it sounds. What seems on the surface an obscure academic exercise proves surprisingly engaging and accessible. It is certain to be of interest, not only to all biblical scholars, but to anyone fascinated by the construction of Jewish identity, and national identities in general. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Ilana Pardes is an Professor of Comparative Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is the author of Countertraditions in the Bible: A Feminist Approach (1992).

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