Wednesday, April 14, 2004

Interesting Point

"The method of describing political alliances, etc. in terms of family relationships is not specific to Israel. We have already studied how it worked during the first centuries of Islam, and it is found in many societies. But the system found in the Pentateuch is unique in its scope: all the peoples of the earth ultimately belong to one family. There are no barbarians. Together with this goes the fact that Israel is seen as not belonging to the family since the beginning, since it did not exist from the beginning. Both P and J depict a world which, in different ways, is complete and finished without the existence of their own people. Israel is the last people in the world to emerge, the little brother of all the others."

-Jan Retso (The Arabs in Antiquity: Their History from the Assyrians to the Umayyads, pp. 213-4)

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