Power and Emotion in Ancient Judaism: Community and Identity in Formation

Description

In this book, Ari Mermelstein examines the mutually-reinforcing relationship between power and emotion in ancient Judaism. Ancient Jewish writers in both Palestine and the diaspora contended that Jewish identity entails not simply allegiance to God and performance of the commandments but also the acquisition of specific emotional norms. These rules regarding feeling were both shaped by and responses to networks of power - God, the foreign empire, and other groups of Jews - which threatened Jews' sense of agency. According to these writers, emotional communities that felt Jewish would succeed in neutralizing the power wielded over them by others and, depending on the circumstances, restore their power to acculturate, maintain their Jewish identity, and achieve redemption. An important contribution to the history of emotions, this book argues that power relations are the basis for historical changes in emotion discourse.

Ari Mermelstein is the author of Creation, Covenant, and the Beginnings of Judaism: Reconceiving Historical Time in the Second Temple Period (2014) and co-editor of The Divine Courtroom in Comparative Perspective (2014). He is a member of the steering committee of the Society of Biblical Literature's 'Bible and Emotion' group.