[the Library of Hebrew Bible_Old Testament Studies] Steven J. Schweitzer_ Frauke Uhlenbruch - Worlds That Could Not Be_ Utopia in Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah (2016, Bloomsbury T&T Clark) [10.5040_9780567664068]

LIBRARY OF HEBREW BIBLE/
OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES
620
Formerly Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series
Editors
Claudia V. Camp, Texas Christian University
Andrew Mein, Westcott House, Cambridge
Founding Editors
David J. A. Clines, Philip R. Davies and David M. Gunn
Editorial Board
Alan Cooper, John Goldingay, Robert P. Gordon,
Norman K. Gottwald, James E. Harding, John Jarick, Carol Meyers,
Carolyn J. Sharp, Daniel L. Smith-Christopher, Francesca Stavrakopoulou,
James W. Watts
WORLDS THAT COULD NOT BE
Utopia in Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah
Edited by
Steven J. Schweitzer and Frauke Uhlenbruch

T&T CLARK
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Copyright © Steven J. Schweitzer, Frauke Uhlenbruch and Contributors, 2016
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Schweitzer, Steven James, editor.
Title: Worlds that could not be : Utopia in Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah /
edited by Steven Schweitzer and Frauke Uhlenbruch.
Description: New York : Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015040645 (print) | LCCN 2015041622 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780567664051 (alk. paper) | ISBN 9780567664044 ()
Subjects: LCSH: Bible. Chronicles–Criticism, interpretation, etc. | Bible.
Ezra–Criticism, interpretation, etc. | Bible. Nehemiah–Criticism,
interpretation, etc. | Utopias–Biblical teaching.
Classification: LCC BS1345.52 .W67 2016 (print) | LCC BS1345.52 (ebook) | DDC
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CONTENTS
Preface and Acknowledgments vii

List of Contributors ix
Abbreviations xi
INTRODUCTION
Frauke Uhlenbruch 1
Part I
TESTING UTOPIA AS A CONTEMPORARY METHOD
IN BIBLICAL STUDIES
WORLDS THAT COULD NOT BE:

REALISM AND IRREALISM IN THOMAS MORE’S UTOPIA
Terje Stordalen 13
“UTOPIA WHERE IT IS TO BE HOPED THAT THE COFFEE

IS A LITTLE LESS SOUR”?
DR WHO’S “UTOPIA” AND CHRONICLES
Gerrie Snyman 38
WORLD-BUILDING AND TEMPLE-BUILDING:

A GAME OF UTOPIAN PASTICHE IN 2 CHRONICLES 1–9
Frauke Uhlenbruch 59
Part II
AFTER EXILE, UNDER EMPIRE:
UTOPIAN IDENTITY NEGOTIATIONS
IN EZRA–NEHEMIAH AND CHRONICLES
EXILE, EMPIRE, AND PROPHECY:

REFRAMING UTOPIAN CONCERNS IN CHRONICLES
Steven J. Schweitzer 81
1
vi Contents
RE-NEGOTIATING A PUTATIVE UTOPIA AND THE STORIES

OF THE REJECTION OF FOREIGN WIVES IN EZRA–NEHEMIAH
Ehud Ben Zvi 105
WRITING AND THE CHRONICLER:

AUTHORSHIP, AMBIVALENCE, AND UTOPIA
Donald Polaski 129
UTOPIA IN AGONY: THE ROLE OF PREJUDICE

IN EZRA–NEHEMIAH’S IDEAL FOR RESTORATION
Jeremiah Cataldo 144
Part III
SEARCHING FOR THE PLACE:
THEOLOGIES OF UTOPIA
TAKING THE READER INTO UTOPIA

Matthias Jendrek 171
DIE SUCHE NACH DEM ORT IN DER CHRONIK:

EINE U-TOPIE?
Thomas Willi 183
RESPONSE
Vincent Geoghegan 193
Index of References 205

Index of Authors 209
1
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The essays collected in this volume are based on work originally pres-
ented in two sessions at conferences: in an invited session by the
Chronicles–Ezra–Nehemiah Section at the 2013 annual meeting of the
Society of Biblical Literature in Baltimore, and at the workshop
“Chronicles and Utopia” held at the 2014 international meeting of the
Society of Biblical Literature and the European Association of Biblical
Studies in Vienna. These essays build on previous work in biblical stud-
ies that brings utopian studies into conversation with the biblical text,
providing an alternative lens for reading these particular biblical books
that opens up new possibilities for engaging new questions generated as
a result of shifting the types of questions being asked.
The editors would like to thank series editors Claudia Camp and
Andrew Mein for encouraging us to create this volume of essays that we
hope will provide a helpful resource for scholars studying Chronicles–
Ezra–Nehemiah and for those desiring to explore utopian readings of
biblical and other texts.
CONTRIBUTORS
Ehud Ben Zvi, University of Alberta
Jeremiah Cataldo, Grand Valley State University
Vincent Geoghegan, Queen’s University, Belfast
Matthias Jendrek, Theological Faculty Paderborn
Donal Polaski, Randolph-Macon College
Steven J. Schweitzer, Bethany Theological Seminary
Gerrie Snyman, University of South Africa
Terje Stordalen, Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo, Centre for

Advanced Study, The Norwegian Academy for Science and Letters
Frauke Uhlenbruch, Independent Scholar
Thomas Willi, University of Greifswald

1
ABBREVIATIONS
AB Anchor Bible
BEATAJ Beiträge zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments und des Antiken
Judentums
Bib Biblica
BibInt Biblical Interpretation
BKAT Biblischer Kommentar, Altes Testament
BN Biblische Notizen
BZ Biblische Zeitschrift
BZAW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
ESV English Standard Version
FRLANT Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen
Testaments
HAR Hebrew Annual Review
HAT Handbuch zum Alten Testament
HTKAT Herders theologischer Kommentar zum Alten Testament.
IBC International Bible Commentary
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series
JSPSup Journal for the Study of Pseudepigrapha Supplement Series
LBH Late Biblical Hebrew
LHBOTS Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies
LXX Septuagint
MMT Miqৢat Ma!aĞê ha-Torah
MT Masoretic Text
NCB New Century Bible
NEB New English Bible
NM Nehemiah Memoir
NSK-AT Neuer Stuttgarter Kommentar - Altes Testament
RB Revue biblique
SBH Standard Biblical Hebrew
SBLAIL Society of Biblical Literature Ancient Israel and Its Literature
SBLDS Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series
SBR Studies in the Bible and Its Reception
SBS Stuttgarter Bibelstudien
SJ Studia Judaica
xii Abbreviations
SJOT Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament

SR Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses
STAR Studies in Theology and Religion
WMANT Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament
1
INTRODUCTION
Frauke Uhlenbruch
What Is Utopia?
The de¿nition of utopia is disputed. Often de¿nitions are drawn from
works by scholars like Darko Suvin or Lyman Tower Sargent, two
important contributors to the ¿eld of Utopian Studies from its initial
emergence in ca. the 1970s. Many of the de¿nitions referred to today
stem from around that time. By the time scholarly engagement with
utopia began in a systematic way, works that we would refer to as utopias
had been produced more or less constantly since the sixteenth century,
when Thomas More invented the word utopia. Arguably, utopian content
could be found even in works that pre-date More’s. Utopia is an open
canon, constantly changing and amended, always involved in a game
between proposal, fantasy, reality, and de¿nition.
I have proposed to approach the concept apart from de¿nitions in
order to glimpse beyond the classic trinity proposed by Lyman Tower
Sargent of literary genre, communal movement (utopian/intentional
communities), and social theory.1 It is possible to move away from a
strict de¿nition mainly in order to see clearly utopia’s core as a heuristic
model.2 However, this is not to say that an engagement with what is
meant when we say utopia is not necessary: it is crucial. De¿ning utopia
at least for a given purpose is essential, because too many assumptions
about what utopia is and does Àoat around, which can make reading an
essay that engages with the topic of utopia seem blurry and out of focus
if one has to infer what its author thinks of as constitutive of utopia. For
example, utopia is not a one-off power fantasy. It is a serious engage-
ment with a fundamentally changed society. It is not the imagination of
one day of rage, victory, and vindication, but an image of lasting change
for the better. Utopia is more than an annual day of role-reversal and
1. Lyman Tower Sargent, “The Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited,” Utopian

Studies 5 (1994): 4.
2. Frauke Uhlenbruch, The Nowhere Bible (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015).
2 Worlds That Could Not Be
carnival, and more than ritual sanctioned mocking of authority—it is

serious heuristic play with a given social situation and how it might
relate to a hypothetical different situation.
Utopia being ¿rst and foremost a heuristic model it really cannot but
be applied with a level of remove. Utopia is a methodological restriction
put upon the discussion of a text or an artifact as utopia. This restriction
may be applied in addition to other methodological restrictions such as
historical-critical method, critical theory, social scienti¿c approaches,
and theological exegesis, which are all present in this volume. Adding
utopia mixes things up and adds the aforementioned level of remove:
Before discussing anything in conjunction with the concept of utopia, it
is worthwhile or even necessary to step back and consider what utopia
means with regard to literature, sociology, history, and theology. Ideally,
methodological questions must be considered, such as: is joining
historical-critical approaches and utopia possible at all? If so, on which
level and with which constraints? A consideration or re-consideration of
the axioms of the “home discipline” should be part of a utopian reading.
Utopia is always “not here.” I have pointed out elsewhere that really
getting at a biblical text—be the focus its redaction history, its theo-
logical meaning to the creating community, the authorial intention, its
mirror value (or not) of a historical situation—might just be a utopian
endeavour.3 It is a large-scale critical project that sometimes seems
achievable if only the right approach, the right material, the right insights
(or—I dare hardly mention it—the right consensus) could be found. In
fact the biblical texts and their meanings are always one step removed
from joining us in reality. It seems that we can only ever tiptoe around
hard facts, if we apply methods and come to conclusions responsibly.
But tiptoeing is what utopia does, too: those fantastic, ideal places can
never quite be found, the question of how to get there in reality is never
quite answered, there always seems to be yet another bridge to cross
when we get to it (but we never even get to it). We are in good company.
Utopia—as I hope to show in the next two paragraphs about utopia as a
warning and utopia as freedom—is a heuristic tool and it is, at the very
least, a conversation starter. The conversation does not need to become a
¿ght if the participating parties acknowledge that the aim is probably
beyond realistic reach and that the achievable goal might just be the
journey (der Weg ist das Ziel).
1
3. Ibid., esp. Chapter 7.
UHLENBRUCH Introduction 3
Utopia as a Warning
Anti-utopians often argue that systems described in literary utopias are
conforming, even oppressive, conservative, and if that were not enough,
plain boring. Everyone is aware of this point of critique by now, but
utopia is still around as a genre and a concept, now, however, inextric-
ably intertwined with critique and attack of it. It has been pointed out
abundantly that enforcing a utopian proposal will not bring about utopia,
because utopian systems hardly ever cater to a viably large number of
individuals. There will not be a happy consensus society, simply because
of human difference.4 The warning to take away from anti-utopian
discussions of utopia is that overly much enthusiasm in favor of a
utopian proposal may bring about negative real consequences for those
excluded by the proposal. The only solution to this conundrum would be
to take into account everyone’s opinion, let everyone have a voice.
Biblical Studies is only just now starting to pay attention to the voices of
a signi¿cant number of scholars from different backgrounds and with
different approaches (doing so kicking and screaming, I might add).
Paying attention to all voices can be safely considered an in¿nite project.
We cannot enforce a scholarly utopia—working towards it involves
opening the conversation up to hear the voices of all those affected. This
is a never-ending process as it will also incorporate future political,
scienti¿c, and social developments. The anti-utopian’s warning is acknow-
ledged and heeded but the concept of utopia is still present and useful.
Utopia As Freedom/Chance
Quite often these days, audiences seem to be especially eager to pay for
entertainment that shows them dystopian extrapolations from given real-
ity rather than utopian ones. In a utopia nobody needs to rebel because
everybody is numbly happy, but this is not the stuff stories (or realities)
are made of. Dystopia implies rebellion.5 Even in dystopias the utopia
tends to be present in undertones—Katniss’s utopia within her dystopian
world of The Hunger Games is freedom from oppression and self-
determination, for example.
4. Isaiah Berlin discusses this in The Crooked Timber of Humanity (London:

Pimlico, 2003).
5. There are interesting examples of literary dystopias in which rebellion is
hauntingly absent. These works seem to critique system-enforced numbing to issues,
passivity, and conforming non-action. Examples are Louise O’Neill’s Only Ever
Yours (2014) or Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005).
The aspect of utopia which is often discussed with some internal

conÀict is its potential to inspire action: not destructive oppressive
fervor, but creative empowerment to take charge and to change the world
(nothing short of that). It inevitably contains both the danger of forcing
one’s own utopian views upon those who would prefer the world to
function according to different principles but also the powerful positive
drive towards change (I am consciously not saying “for the better” or
“towards perfection”). As long as the utopian impulse is not inhibited
by totalitarian-minded oppressors hogging “the truth,” it is what it also
always has been: a catalyst for re-thinking, or thinking differently, explor-
ing alternatives to what is. This volume is thus very much part of that
endeavor of re-thinking. The contributors hardly discard anything, but
rather—another utopian feature—extrapolate from what is already there:
previous scholarship in Biblical Studies and theology and also other
disciplines, combining the existing approaches with the concept of utopia
in different ways to explore different aspects for the ¿rst time or anew.
Utopian Binaries
Exploring the concept of utopia is often done by testing it in binary
opposition to other concepts, it seems: “Utopia versus History”—what
does this opposition tell us about utopia and also about history or histor-
ical positivism? “Utopia versus Reality”—how does or did a fantastic
proposal relate to an author’s or an audience’s reality? How can we tell
what the reality was? “Utopia versus Theology”—how do different ideas
of different futures differ in utopias and in religious imagination? Are the
terms even comparable?
a. Utopia and History

One important opposition we should explore in theoretical terms before
embarking on the essays presented in this volume is the opposition—or
binary pair—utopia and history.
How do we deal conceptually with proposals for and imaginations
of the future found in ancient works? Probably in a similar way as we
deal with works such as Kubrick and Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey
(1968) or Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)—both were once set in
futures, but are now set in pasts. They are never taken as prophetic
visions or as political extrapolations whose authors were convinced they
would come true. They are read nowadays as visions appropriate to the
time and circumstances of their creation. When time “overtakes” the year
in which these visions are set they are not automatically ridiculed for
being “outdated” or seen as false prophecies, but rather they become
1
culturally important artifacts. They are not usually condemned because

their authors “failed” to predict the future accurately, but rather praised
as innovative and culturally important explorations at their time, which
often happen to contain more abstract messages that are relevant beyond
their time. We may observe, for example, that in contemporary surveil-
lance society, Nineteen Eighty-Four may not be understood as dystopian
anymore, simply because surveillance has actually become such an
inevitable part of reality. Unfortunately biblical literatures contain many
texts whose readers still claim that they are “true” in some way—true
predictions of salvi¿c futures, true accounts of the past, visions of the
future, whose ancient authors honestly thought would come “true.”
Luckily, it does not detract from the texts’ importance or signi¿cance to
admit that this need not be so. The utopian approach is sooner inclined to
attribute visions of the future from the past to a sophisticated utopian
impulse of negotiating identity in an historic present rather than to fanci-
ful visions of what would surely be “if only…” (the community would
not intermarry, be faithful, not worship idols, keep all commandments,
follow their elite leaders, be docile etc., etc.), that can then—futures
later—only be smiled upon as naive power-fantasies.
Using utopia we are approaching many different historical levels of
such utopian proposals that were crafted by past communities from
accounts about their respective historical pasts. Fredric Jameson’s
brilliant paradox (and title of a 2005 book) “Archaeologies of the Future”
comes to mind here. We are in a way conducting a textual excavation,
but of an authoring community’s futures, constructed from authoritative
accounts of their pasts. Using utopia (or any modern method for that
matter), we cannot pretend to be detached observers, because we become
active agents by imposing our contemporary methodology upon the
already entangled situation of past–future–past. We must admit that since
we are adapting this modern concept and applying it to a realm of the
past, we are committing an anachronism.
While a utopian proposal may be set in the future (or far away), the
concept of utopia as a response to current circumstances is ¿rmly lodged
in history. It came into being at a speci¿c moment in history, but has
thence developed until it became a concept deemed ¿t to use by an
academic discipline as a new method or approach. The word and the
concept “utopia” are connected to Thomas More and the Renaissance.
More’s work is so potent as an ever-open, ever-newly-interpreted artifact
due to the impossibility of More’s island. From the start, the island
remained open to interpretation and raised interest throughout history,
because it could not be located. More’s Utopia and the Bible are both
texts of perpetual relevance, among other reasons because they are still
open to interpretation. When speaking of history and utopia, this is one

aspect, easy enough to grasp: Utopia goes back to More but how did
More engage with his contemporary reality? This question is still open to
research, discussion, and speculation. How can we relate the different
aspects of the historicity of More’s work to the Bible?—another question
still open to discussion.
The wish for better places and states (of being) is at the same time a-
historical by being set in intangible futures or far-away fantastic places,
but also historical (Thomas More used the word for the ¿rst time in 1516)
and contemporary (there is now such a thing as Utopian Studies). The
utopian impulse is something almost everybody will be able to relate to.
It is one of those traits of common humanity that connects contemporary
selves to the realm of the past whose faint traces we are encountering
when we are reading the Bible.
As Vincent Geoghegan points out in his response to the essays
presented in this volume, in utopian theory, utopia is not seen as
temporally one-dimensional, i.e., not exclusively future-oriented yet also
not simply dreaming about bygone days of a Golden Age: “the forward
and the backward glance,” so writes Geoghegan in his response, “have
complex modes of interaction in any given present.” This insight is
utilized by the contributors of this volume when exploring biblical texts
in conjunction with concepts such as utopia, but also concepts such as
memory and prophecy.
b. Utopia and Reality

What is real about utopia is its ubiquity. Utopias were produced more or
less since humans ¿rst began writing. But utopia’s relationship with
reality is an opposition that brings about all kinds of heuristic trouble.
The utopia’s reality is its unreality: it is never there, it is always removed
from “a” reality, but this reality might not be the reader’s reality. Since it
may not be the reader’s reality, the reader may misunderstand a utopia as
once having been a realistic proposal or somebody’s sincere conviction
that this is what their future was to look like. The contributors to this
volume are careful to point out exactly whose reality they are speaking
of—the past community’s, the intended readers’, or contemporary
believers’ or scholars’. The problem is, of course, that utopia is always
meant to be read as juxtaposition to reality, and that we are frequently
left making assumptions or guesses about exactly which aspects of a
utopia a past reading community would have picked up on. What would
they have read and understood? What could they have read and under-
stood and how can we re¿ne contemporary methods to reach any insights
into this aspect of a utopia?
1
A literary utopia is not an ideal candidate for a New Critical read-

ing: its meaning is bound to the environment in which it was produced,
bound to its “author” (by extension, speaking of Chronicles, Ezra, and
Nehemiah, its authoring-redacting community) and the dialogue of the
author with the intended audience to which the piece was addressed.
Attempting to read a utopia in a historical vacuum is a superÀuous exer-
cise, because it is often extrapolated from a concern the author of the
utopia shares with the intended audience. Both author and audience will
have had access to the same cultural “libraries.” So this aspect has to be
added to the list of caveats that come with utopian readings: we must
check whether we are convinced that we know enough about the
historical situation and those cultural libraries before making any ¿nal
statements about utopian content.
A big problem appears of course when we are not certain what exactly
the historical circumstances were—not sure exactly about dating, not
sure exactly about authors, whether authors are reliable or unreliable
narrators or whether their accounts of their situation and their past are
apologetic white-washings or polemic blaming. The jury is still out on
many of these aspects in Chronicles and Ezra–Nehemiah. So attempting
utopian readings on these texts is usually a thought-experiment: “what
if” we assumed for a moment that the account is not accurately histori-
cal? “What if” we assumed for a moment that ancient authors were
capable of calculated narrative construction, capable of cynicism, inside
jokes, exaggeration, and acid polemics? “What if” we took the ancients
completely out of the experiment for a moment and dealt with the text as
purely contemporary artifact?
A de¿ning element of utopia, it turns out, is its intertextuality.
Geoghegan reminds us in his response that already Ernst Bloch drew
upon the Bible and its contradictions and intertextualities in his work
The Principle of Hope (1954, 1955, 1959). Sometimes inner-biblical
intertextuality can be shown or traced, sometimes “external intertext-
uality” is made explicit by a scholar consciously approaching the biblical
text in an intertextual way. Intertextuality is always present, whether
made explicit or not. Once again, thinking about utopia before reading
brings to the front of one’s mind a heuristic axiom: the text that is being
read stands in an intertextual relationship with the texts that were read.
This is true both for the redacting ancient communities and for the
contemporary scholar/ reader. From a utopian theoretical point of view
the reality of the text is multiple texts and multiple eras.
c. Utopia and Theology

Suvin once declared religion and utopia to be incompatible: one, he says,
strives for change in this life, the other, for perfect happiness in the
beyond.6 Since most other binaries in discussions about utopia are not
clean-cut, the incompatibility of religious or theological enquiry and
utopia should not be declared too sweepingly and too quickly. All terms
involved are too volatile to make a sweeping statement: the relationship
between utopia and theology can be explored in speci¿c case studies, but
grand conclusions both from utopian scholars and from biblical scholars
or theologians should only be made after wider engagement with both
“religion,” “theology,” and “utopia.”
Geoghegan, at the conclusion of this volume, puts theology and utopia
into a relationship by referring to Edmund Burke’s investigation of the
sublime, and by exploring astonishment and awe as overarching notions
found both in utopia and in accounts of encounters with the divine in
the Bible. Geoghegan sketches for us once again the interplay between
utopia, a biblical theological reÀection, and a much later response to it
(by Ernst Bloch, responding to Job and Corinthians, in this case). Once
again, we seem to have two concepts emanating from two sources,
coming together in an external focal point: the Bible, and the concept of
utopia becomes focused in Bloch’s thought. In this way, we can put many
other concepts, passages, philosophies, and approaches into relationships
and sear new holes by focusing different existing rays of thought through
new lenses.
Theology and utopia are probably related in many ways. The element
of continuous searching, discussing, and improving that is not aimless
but implicitly directed is an aspect that theology and utopia may have in
common: a sustained search, a never-quite-arriving, but a strong hope of
an arrival, some time, somewhere. Even if one were to follow Suvin’s
rather sweeping implicit de¿nition of religion as a search for heaven, the
steps necessary are taken in this world—the same with utopia, as said
above: the aim may or may not arrive, but utopia can urge action in this
world.
Between the contributions presented here, different de¿nitions of utopia

are found, proposed by different theorists—each relevant and appropriate
to the respective essay. This variety is expected and welcome. It testi-
¿es to the breadth and depth of utopia as a phenomenon, method, and
6. Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (New Haven, Conn.: Yale

University Press), 43.
1
heuristic tool. It also testi¿es to the challenge that utopia is not an easy
way out or a method or concept less slippery than other methods and
concepts. Utopian Studies is a thriving academic discipline, and employ-
ing the concept acknowledges that a dialogue is entered with a large
interdisciplinary ¿eld. All the happier are we to contribute to the inter-
disciplinarity of Utopian Studies (and Biblical Studies/theology) by
making available our authors’ insights from Biblical Studies/theological
point of views in this volume.
Bibliography
Berlin, Isaiah. The Crooked Timber of Humanity. London: Pimlico, 2003.
Bloch, Ernst. Das Prinzip Hoffnung. 3 vols. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1985.
Clarke, Arthur C. 2001: A Space Odyssey. New York: Penguin, 2000.
Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go. London: Faber, 2006.
Jameson, Fredric. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other
Science Fictions. London: Verso, 2005.
More, Thomas. Utopia. London: Penguin, 2003.
O’Neill, Louise. Only Ever Yours. London: Quercus, 2014.
Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. Harlow: Longman, 1991.
Sargent, Lyman Tower. “The Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited.” Utopian Studies 5
(1994): 1–37.
Suvin, Darko. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press, 1979.
Uhlenbruch, Frauke. The Nowhere Bible. SBR 4. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015.
Part I
TESTING UTOPIA AS A CONTEMPORARY METHOD

IN BIBLICAL STUDIES
1
WORLDS THAT COULD NOT BE:
REALISM AND IRREALISM IN THOMAS MORE’S UTOPIA
Terje Stordalen
Modern Concepts of Utopia

Due to an unusually productive and connected history in European
language and thought the word “utopia” (and “utopian,” “utopianism,”
etc.) has a semantically wide and paradoxical pro¿le.1 Since biblical
scholars too must rely on these contemporary semantics, we need to start
with a brief reÀection on this term, or at least on those aspects of it that
are relevant for the discussion at hand.
Having been coined by Sir Thomas More as part of the title for his
novel (1516), the term utopia(n) now means a genre of ¿ctional
literature as a well as a discursive mode in literary genres, ¿lm, and
other media. Known ¿rst as the name of an unreachable island, utopia
can also designate imaginary or lost paradisiacal places. Since More’s
book is read as a political text, utopia may refer to an ideal state or
society: various historical ideological political projects, political ideol-
ogies, and even aspects of (urban) architecture or practice. Following
Bloch, Ricoeur, Jameson, and others, “utopian” is also the name for a
kind of hermeneutics or a mode of reÀection, funded for instance on
hope of (Bloch) or desire for (Jameson) a better life. In addition, utopian
may also signal evaluation, either positive (as in “paradisiacal”),2 but in
recent years also often negative (as in “unrealistic” or “foolish”).
1. For the following, compare Fátima Vieira, “The Concept of Utopia,” in The
Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature (ed. Gregory Claeys; Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010), 3–27; Lyman Tower Sargent, Utopianism: A
Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), esp. 1–9; Klaus
von Stosch, “Utopie,” in Lexikon philosophischer Grundbegriffe der Theologie (ed.
Albert Franz, Wolfgang Baum, and Karsten Kreutzer; Freiburg: Herder, 2003), 422–
24; Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s.v. “utopia” [cited 30 June 2014]. Online:
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/620755/utopia.
2. In More’s Latin novel an inhabitant of Utopia claims that the island would
have deserved the name Evtopia (Greek ev-topos meaning good-place) instead of
Utopia (Greek: ou-topos meaning no-place). In the English reception of the novel
One dominant line of interpretation has claimed Sir Thomas’s novel as

a charter text for the modern. When read as a modern book More’s
Utopia is oriented towards social con¿gurations that are basically
realistic, initiated by humans and carried out in a rationally conceived
universe. Grey and Garsten exemplify this position on Utopia. Building
upon Karl Mannheim’s analysis in Ideology and Utopia they declare that
utopias are “related to reality” and therefore “can be analysed sociologic-
ally and politically (rather than, for example theologically).”3 Charles
Taylor, too, thinks that the underlying idea of utopias is “that these
things are really possible in the sense that they lie in the bent of human
nature.”4 Fátima Vieira aptly sees a characteristic in the reception of
utopia as “the tension between the af¿rmation of a possibility and the
negation of its ful¿lment.”5 The central issue in European intellectual
involvement with utopias has been the question of their relationships to
reality. “Reality” is of course anything but a neutral concept to European
philosophy. This term epitomized the transition in Europe from myth to
ethics, from tradition to ration. And utopia, hovering as it were between
fantasy and ration, got deeply entangled in this process. To those who
saw myth and make-belief as dangerous, “utopian” became a negatively
charged characteristic. Those who retained a positive sense of human
social imagination, retained positive connotations for utopia.
Leading theorist of Utopian Studies, Lyman Tower Sargent, identi¿es
two lines of utopian ¿ction running alongside each other, from antiquity
until today. One focuses on bodily pleasures and the good life in a world
generated by gods. The other focuses on social organization manufactured
by humankind.6 It was the latter that became important for political
these two names are almost homonymous. So, in English parlance, at least, utopia is
also the professed good place.
3. Christopher Grey and Christina Garsten, “Organized and Disorganized
Utopias: An Essay on Presumption,” in Utopia and Organization (ed. Martin Parker;
Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 9–23 (11). Similarly, Susan Bruce, ed., Thomas More
Utopia; Francis Bacon New Atlantis; Henry Neville the Isle of Pines (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999), xiii, quotes J. C. Davies with approval: “Ideal world
narratives can be classi¿ed according to the way they negotiate the problem of supply
and demand. Ancient narratives envision an ideal world of unlimited supplies, while
early Modern utopias deal with the limitations of the real world.” See also Lewis
Mumford, The Story of Utopias [1922] (LaVergne, Tenn.: Dodo, 2010), Chapter 4.
4. Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham, N.C.: Duke University
Press, 2004), 23–26. Later on Taylor refers to Bronislaw Baczko in support of the
claim that this is also the idea of the narrator in Thomas More’s Utopia (p. 199 n. 2).
5. Vieira, “The Concept of Utopia,” 6, cf. 9–15.
1
6. Sargent, Utopianism, 11–12.
STORDALEN Worlds That Could Not Be 15
philosophers. (The picture seems more nuanced for literary scholarship.7)

These philosophers thought that More’s Utopia addressed problematic
aspects of European society and made a call for realistic political change.
They saw the Republic of Utopia as an inspiration, sometimes even a
blueprint, for such political change. In the heyday of modernist philo-
sophy “proper” utopias—like those of Plato, Sir Thomas, H. G. Wells,
and others—were emphatically contrasted to “false,” mythical utopias.8
In short, in current language there is a resilient impulse to see More’s
Utopia as an expression of political ideals that are in some sense real-
istic, meant in some sense to be actually implemented in the process of
social change.9 In current political discourse utopia seems to have been
scaled down, and “by emphasising its pragmatic features, it came to be
associated with the idea of social betterment…a program for change
and…a means towards political, economic, social, moral, pedagogical
reorientation.”10
Utopia in Recent Biblical Studies

Turning to biblical scholarship on utopianism, the most striking feature is
how little has been written on the topic.11 This may reÀect a negative
evaluation of utopianism in modern theology.12 Turning to those who did
address the topic, one may summarily say that scholars applying classical
7. Vieira, “The Concept of Utopia,” 15–18.

8. The inÀuential work of Lewis Mumford launched this distinction between
“real” and “false” utopias. False utopias were myths looking back “to a dim golden
age in the past when all men were virtuous and happy.” The “Modern Utopia strikes
a new note, the note of reality, the note of the daily world from which we endeavor
in vain to escape.” Mumford, The Story of Utopias, 34 and 122, cf. 118–22 and
Chapters 3; 6; 8–12.
9. See Bruce, Utopia, ix–xv. Cf. Vieira, “The Concept of Utopia,” 12–15; Steven
J. Schweitzer, Reading Utopia in Chronicles (New York: T&T Clark International,
2007), 17–18. For a laconic commentary on the one-sidedness of such interpretation,
see Sargent, Utopianism, 22–23.
10. Vieira, “The Concept of Utopia,” 22–23.
11. It is dif¿cult to document something that is not there, but here is one attempt:
A search for “utop” in the online catalogue of L’école biblique in Jerusalem returns
126 results. For a catalogue indexing every article of every major publication in
Biblical Studies spanning more than one century, this seems meagre. In comparison
“eden” produced 1256 and “paradi” 757 search results, and during the period cov-
ered by this catalogue, literary scholars frequently discussed both Paradise and the
Garden of Eden as forms of utopia.
12. Cf. Eyal Naveh, Reinhold Niebuhr and Non-Utopian Liberalism: Beyond
Illusion and Despair (Sussex: Sussex Academic, 2002).
twentieth-century paradigms of Biblical Studies tended to link the

concept of utopia to discussions of paradise and the good life.13 A more
recent line of scholarship emerged in the wake of a study by Roland
Boer, taken up and further developed in the works of scholars like Steven
Schweitzer, Ehud Ben Zvi, Kåre Berge, and Jeremiah Cataldo.14 This
research reÀects the other line of utopian thought identi¿ed by Sargent
(above); associating the concept of utopia with issues of social organi-
sation. As a consequence, these scholars engage different biblical texts.
Corresponding to the orientation towards social (and political) issues,
there is also a tendency in this recent scholarship to see the concept of
utopia as in some sense oriented towards the realistic. Roland Boer
argued in favor of seeing the utopian politics of the Chronicler as a
reduction and exclusion of certain aspects of reality, a reÀection of
political desire, and a strategy for future ful¿lment.15 To Boer utopia has
a paradoxical relation to reality: “…there [are] unexpected connections
between the Utopian state and our own, but at the same time it is
13. Some examples: Yehuda Radday, “The Four Rivers of Paradise,” Hebrew
Studies 23 (1982): 23–31; Yairah Amit, “Biblical Utopianism: A Mapmakers Guide
to Eden,” USQR 44 (1990): 11–17. I would include also John J. Collins, “Models of
Utopia in the Biblical Tradition,” in “A Wise and Discerning Mind”: Essays in
Honor of Burke O. Long (ed. Saul M. Olyan and Robert C. Culley; Providence, R.I.:
Brown Judaic Studies, 2000), 51–67, and my own work (although I did not employ
the term “utopia” at the time): Terje Stordalen, “Heaven on Earth—Or Not?
Jerusalem as Eden in Biblical Literature,” in Beyond Eden: The Biblical Story of
Paradise (Genesis 2–3) and Its Reception History (ed. Christoph Riedweg and
Konrad Schmid; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2008), 28–57; Terje Stordalen, “Heaven
on Earth: Jerusalem, Temple, and the Cosmography of the Garden of Eden,”
Biblicum (2009): 7–20.
14. Roland Boer, “Utopian Politics in 2 Chronicles 10–13,” in The Chronicler as
Author: Studies in Text and Texture (ed. M. Patrick Graham and Steven L.
McKenzie; Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld Academic, 1999), 360–94; Roland Boer, “Review of
Ehud Ben Zvi (ed.) Utopia and Dystopia in Prophetic Literature,” BCT 4, no. 1
(2008): 07.1–0.7.3; Roland Boer, “Review of Steven Schweitzer, Reading Utopia in
Chronicles,” BCT 4, no. 2 (2008): 30.1–3; Steven J. Schweitzer, “Utopia and
Utopian Literary Theory: Some Preliminary Observations,” in Utopia and Dystopia
in Prophetic Literature (ed. Ehud Ben Zvi; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
2006), 13–26; Schweitzer, Reading Utopia in Chronicles; Steven J. Schweitzer, “A
Response,” JHS 9, no. 11 (2009): 15–19; Ehud Ben Zvi, ed., Utopia and Dystopia in
Prophetic Literature (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006); Kåre Berge,
“Literacy, Utopia and Memory: Is There a Public Teaching in Deuteronomy?,” JHS
12, no. 3 (2012): 1–19; Jeremiah Cataldo, “Whispered Utopia: Dreams, Agendas,
and Theocratic Aspirations in Yehud,” SJOT 24 (2010): 53–70.
15. Boer, “Utopian Politics,” 370–83, largely relying upon Jameson’s perception
of the relationship of utopia to reality and realism.
1
impossible to see the way through to Utopia; for this we require the
revolutionaries.”16 This keeps the utopian vision open rather than
closed.17 Steven Schweitzer’s exciting study saw utopias not as blueprints
for ideal societies but as revolutionary texts challenging and questioning
the status quo.18 In their call for social change utopian visions are still in
a sense realistic, depicting worlds as these could or should be—as is
reÀected also in Schweitzer’s programmatic expression: “a better alterna-
tive reality.” Mirroring Boer’s emphasis upon openness, Schweitzer
portrays the instability and adaptability in the Chronicler’s utopian vision.
The “‘better alternative reality’…may adapt as historical circumstances
change.”19 Indeed, the “Chronicler is not a radical, but a pragmatist,”20
who displays sensitivity but nevertheless applies the utopian ideal for
basically realistic purposes.21
It seems fair to say that for biblical scholars who engaged theoretically
with the concept of utopia,22 the view of utopia as somehow realistic (in
“soft” ways) seems to dominate.23 Alternative views, associating utopias
with the non-real, are fewer and less intensely theoretically argued.24
16. Ibid., 381. He continues: “This sharp relation of disjunction and connection is
characteristic of Utopian construction: a Utopia requires a radical disjunction with its
dismal world as a condition of its possibility, yet in order to be possible in the ¿rst
place, it must ¿nd another way to re-open the connection… Utopias may be mentally
assembled only on the building blocks supplied by the present.”
17. Boer, “Review of Steven Schweitzer.”
18. Schweitzer, Reading Utopia in Chronicles, 18, cf. 14–23.
19. Ibid., 125, cf. 21–22, 74–75, 174–75.
20. Schweitzer, “A Response,” 18.
21. See Schweitzer, “Utopia and Utopian Literary Theory,” 18 (cf. n. 15).
22. My impression parallels that of Boer, “Review of Ehud Ben Zvi”: several
recent studies used the concept of utopia without serious intervention in utopian
theory.
23. See for instance Berge, “Literacy, Utopia, and Memory,” 9f, etc.; several
authors in Ben Zvi’s Utopia and Dystopia, like Neujahr (see 48–49, etc.); Ben Zvi
(56, etc.); O’Connor (86–87); Boda (247–48); Schweitzer (see above). Even
Cataldo, who shows that the theocratic ideal of the golah community was not
practicable, thinks it was designed as an “attempted creation of a blueprint for an
entirely new state” (Cataldo, “Whispered Utopia,” 69).
24. To Collins “properly utopian” biblical texts imagine a place out of this world
(“Models of Utopia,” 52). This is a concept of utopia as close to mythic, and
apparently without any impulse for social or other change. The perception of utopia
in Lea Mazor (“Myth, History, and Utopia in the Prophecy of the Shoot [Isaiah
10:33–11:9],” In Sefer Moshe: The Moshe Weinfeld Jubilee Volume [ed. Chaim
Cohen, Avi Hurvitz, and Shalom M. Paul; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2004],
73–90) is similar, and also Harold Brodsky (“The Utopian Map in Ezekiel [48:1–
35],” JBQ 34, no. 1 [2006]: 20–26) takes “utopian” to mean non-realistic and
An interesting middle position was taken by Erin Runions, who com-

pared utopia to Homi Babha’s “third space”—a space where conÀicting
realities are negotiated by way of de-realiziation.25
Two questions remain to be further addressed in the framework of this
scholarship. One concerns the applicability of the concept of utopia to
texts like Deuteronomy, Chronicles, and Ezra–Nehemiah. The other
concerns the nagging potential that “realist utopian” ideology can be
used to legitimize the status quo and ongoing domination or suppression.
This essay shall not be able to address these questions explicitly. Rather,
I hope to lay a foundation for doing so by returning to Sir Thomas’s
novel and its potential link to biblical literature. The two main questions
are: (a) What is the relation between the world of utopia and the every-
day world in More’s text? (b) Is a similar con¿guration of ¿ction and
reality known in biblical literature? To this, I add a third question:
(c) Does that con¿guration in Utopia (and possibly biblical literature)
have any potential for preventing totalitarian abuse? These three aspects
are intertwined, and my analysis will oscillate between them.
The Island of Utopia and the World of the Novel’s Audience

a) More’s novel ingeniously activated a web of contemporary commu-
nicative competences, and it is impossible to read the story without
engaging these competences. The novel explicitly mentions Plato’s
Republic and obviously feeds on Renaissance engagement with the bulk
of classical literature and culture. The narrative mentions the contem-
porary explorer Amerigo Vespucci, and it addresses certain social
aspects of contemporary life. Relating to the issue of audience compe-
tences, one must remember that the novel—the text as well as the
growing body of illustrations—was the result of a long and complex
authorial process that included many individuals.26 And, as it turns out,
symbolic. To Nathanael Warren (“Tenure and Grant in Ezekiel’s Paradise [73:13–

48:29],” VT 63 [2013]: 323–34) utopia seems basically to be a religious symbolism
with a spatial dimension (cf. 325–26, 330). James L. Crenshaw (“Deceitful Minds
and Theological Dogma: Jer 17:5–11,” in Ben Zvi, ed., Utopia and Dystopia, 105–
21) relies on Jonathan Z. Smith and sees utopia as primarily imaginative.
25. Erin Runions, “Playing It Again: Utopia, Contradiction, Hybrid Space and
the Bright Future in Micah,” in The Labour of Reading: Desire, Alienation, and
Biblical Interpretation (ed. Fiona C. Black, Roland Boer, and Erin Runions; Atlanta,
Ga.: Society of Biblical Literature, 1999), 285–300.
26. For this and the following, see Terence Cave, Thomas More’s Utopia in
Early Modern Europe: Paratexts and Contexts (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2008).
1
precisely those aspects of the novel that are thought to connect to the
social and political world of the sixteenth century were the parts that
were the longest in the making and that involved the highest number of
co-authoring agents. One can safely say that the novel’s connection to
contemporary reality engaged an entire generation of European Humanist
authors, editors, and book printers and that in the end it reÀected their
combined sense of communicative competence on this matter.
Thomas More (1478–1583) ¿nished the ¿rst part (in Latin), now
known as Book II, possibly in 1515. This is the part in which the
explorer Raphael Hythloday gives an account of the topography and
society of Utopia. Framing the narration of Raphael, there is the voice of
the narrator, let us call him Sir Thomas. This voice ¿lters what is
rendered from Raphael’s story and occasionally reports a reaction by the
audience to what is narrated (this audience being the narrator himself and
Mr. Giles). In the last paragraph of Book II the narrator also reports a
decision to save his objections concerning laws, institutions, and religion
of Utopia for another day. If, indeed, the narrator Sir Thomas meant to
offer these objections later his intentions were crossed by the author, let
us call him Thomas More, who concluded the novel before Sir Thomas
could air his objections.
Book I was apparently written during 1516. In this book the narrator
(still Sir Thomas) gives an account of the assignment and the travels that
brought him into contact with Raphael in the ¿rst place. This story
relates to an actual assignment of the author Thomas More. The intro-
duction of Raphael links him to historical individuals like Amerigo
Vespucci and to geographical locations like Sri Lanka and Calcutta.
Book I also reports on the dialogue between Sir Thomas and Raphael
about the journey that brought Raphael from the known world into the
world of Utopia. Several characters are reported to react to Raphael’s
story, in particular the characters of Mr. Giles, the Cardinal, and Sir
Thomas. In many ways, therefore, Book I brings the story of Book II
much closer to the historical world of the reader.
The book was ¿rst printed in Louvain in 1516. Already two years
later, in the 1518 version from Basel, Thomas More himself made revi-
sions in the work. In subsequent years a number of editors, translators,
and printers kept working on this textual complex. Whenever the text
was printed there occurred a bulk of supporting material: maps of the
land of Utopia, a chart of the Utopian alphabet, poems, letters written by
and to members of the European Humanist circles concerning the novel,
an address from the printer to the reader, etc. This body of additional
material underwent changes during the four Latin editions (1516–18),
and it kept changing and growing in posthumous English translations

(1551, 1556) and in other vernacular editions.27 A ¿nal body of substan-
tial additions in the English version were the marginal glosses entered by
the English translator Ralph Robinson in the 1551 and 1556 editions.
One central aspect of this entire body of additional material is that it
continues to play with relations between the island of Utopia and the
everyday world of the audience. This particular aspect of the novel was
in the making during the ¿rst forty years of the book’s printing history.
b) Importantly for our purpose, the parts of this collective authorial

process that concerned the mapping of Utopia seem to be playing with a
medieval cartographic genre called mappae mundi (World Maps). Poten-
tially contributing to the web of communicative competences for the
novel, there are the letters from Christopher Columbus to the monarchs
of Aragon (1493 and 1503). In these letters Columbus made reference to
the mappae mundi as evidence that he had in fact passed the terrestrial
paradise when navigating islands off Cuba.28 These mappae mundi
regained attention and status in European academic discourse after the
wonderful study of Alessandro Sca¿.29 Sca¿ concludes that these graphic
artefacts were not maps in the modern sense; they were, for instance, not
used for travel purposes. These graphics chart geographic, historical,
symbolical, and religious matters in one and the same space. Very often
they accompany religious or cosmological reÀective texts.
Reading a mappa mundi through modern geographical convention
fails completely. For instance, one would expect that users of these maps
should have been aware that the Don river does not connect to the
Mediterranean Sea. Still, this is precisely what is drawn on most such
maps. Sca¿ explains this as a function of the convention of a T-O pattern
in this cosmography. This convention sketches the world as a circle (O-
shape) divided by known watercourses that form a T-shape when seen
together. Another feature in this convention is that all main world rivers
connect to an ocean that surrounds the earth disc (see Fig. 1).30
27. See extensive discussion in ibid.

28. Kevin Rushby, Paradise: A History of the Idea That Rules the World (New
York: Carrol & Graf, 2007), 69–78. Valerie Flint (The Imaginative Landscape of
Cristopher Columbus [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992]) gives an
elaborate reconstruction of the mental world of admiral Columbus.
29. Alessandro Sca¿, Mapping Paradise: A History of Heaven on Earth (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2006).
1
30. Sca¿, Mapping Paradise, 89–94 (et passim).
Figure 1. Ideal Reconstruction of Medieval World Maps

(from Meyers Konversationslexikon, 1895). Public domain.
For our purpose the salient point is that these graphic sheets also
depict the Garden of Eden as a terrestrial paradise31 in the utmost east
(that is: at the top) of the map.32 This choice of location was of course
inÀuenced by the Greek version of Genesis in which God plants a
paradise in the east.33 In the mappae mundi the terrestrial paradise is an
island in the sea. A well on the island appears to be feeding the ocean
that surrounds the earth disc, and through the ocean it also feeds those
main rivers of the world depicted in the T-O convention. Again, this
corresponds to the Genesis text, where the well in the garden supplies
water to the main rivers of the world (Gen 2:10–14). These mappae
mundi concepts of paradise seem to have been widely connected in
31. In contemporaneous philosophy one made a distinction between the terrestrial

paradise (once inhabited by Adam and Eve), the celestial paradise (inhabited by
saints and angels), and the spiritual paradise (already inhabited by the faithful
through their participation in the Church).
32. An excellent example would be the Hereford mappa mundi (see Fig. 2).
33. ëÅ »¼Ä Á¸ÌÛ ÒÅ¸ÌÇÂÛË, Gen 2:8 LXX. Do note that the Latin Vulgate locates
Eden in the distant past: paradisum voluptatis a principio (Gen 2:8 Vg.). The
alternative translations go back to a linguistic ambiguity in the Hebrew, and it is
possible that the Vulgate, which is siding with the Aramaic Targums, has the more
original rendition; see Terje Stordalen, Echoes of Eden: Genesis 2–3 and Symbolism
of the Eden Garden in Biblical Hebrew Literature (Louvain: Peeters, 2000), 263–70.
medieval European culture. Paradise is imagined as an island in a

number of classical Greek texts as well as in medieval and Renaissance
European texts.34
Figure 2. Hereford Mappa Mundi. Public domain.
34. See for instance Sargent, Utopianism; Glyn Burgess, The Voyage of St.
Brendan (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002), 10–19; Proinsias Mac Cana,
“The Sinless Otherworld of Immram Brain,” in The Otherworld Voyage in Early
Irish Literature: An Anthology of Criticism (ed. Jonathan M. Wooding; Dublin: Four
Courts, 2000), 52–72; A. Barlett Giamatti, The Earthly Paradise and the
Renaissance Epic (New York: W. W. Norton, 1966).
1
Turning to the question of realism, we note that texts accompanying

the mappae mundi describe the region around Paradise as inaccessible
and unknown: a terra incognita, sometimes hidden behind sharp moun-
tains. So, while Paradise was perhaps a “place” on the map, the reader of
the map would nevertheless not have expected to be able to go there.
Returning to Thomas More’s Utopia, the situation seems to be much the
same. Raphael, when reporting on the journey to Utopia, points out that
the island is locked off from the mainland in marvellous ways. He also
never gets around to revealing how, precisely, he was nevertheless able
to visit the island. And Sir Thomas, the narrator, had intended to ask but,
alas, he “forgets” to do so. Obviously, especially in connecting the island
of Utopia to current society, the novel Utopia went far beyond conven-
tional application of the motif of a remote terrestrial paradise. Neverthe-
less, on the speci¿c topic of the accessibility of the island, More’s novel
seems to follow the inherited pattern. And it seems to me that precisely
this combination of novelty and tradition produced the wonderfully
unstable and playful relations between Utopia and the everyday world,
which inspired the many printers and editors of the novel.
Ancient Cosmography
The cosmography celebrated in the medieval mappae mundi had pre-
cursors in ancient culture. I have argued this case at length elsewhere and
cannot go into details here.35 Suf¿ce it to point to the so-called Baby-
lonian world map (sixth century B.C.E.), ¿rst drawn and translated by
Eckard Unger.36 This map has an ocean of salt water Àoating around the
earth disc. Waterways from the periphery towards the center divide the
world in a pattern that is unmistakably similar to the much later medieval
T-O pattern.
35. See Stordalen, “Heaven on Earth—Or Not?”; Stordalen, “Heaven on Earth.”

36. Sca¿ (Mapping Paradise, 85) mentions a connection between medieval
and late antique cosmography. P. S. Alexander (“Geography and the Bible [Early
Jewish],” ABD 2:977–98) takes the case further. As for the tablet in question,
see Eckhard Unger, Babylon: Die Heilige Stadt Nach der Beschreibung der Baby-
lonier (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1931), Plate 3, ¿g. 4. An up-to-date discussion is found
in Wayne Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography (Winona Lake, Ind.:
Eisenbrauns, 1998), 402. For a drawing of the tablet before reconstruction, see
Othmar Keel, Die Welt der Altorientalischen Bildsymbolik und das Alte Testament:
Am Beispiel Der Psalmen (Zürich: Benziger, 1972), 17. A photo of the tablet along
with an interpretive drawing is available online: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Babylonian_Map_of_the_World#/media/File:Baylonianmaps.JPG [cited 20 April
2015].
Figure 3. Protection plate against Lamashtu.

Neo-Assyrian era. Louvre, Paris. Public domain.
1
Contributing to the impression of similarities between ancient and

medieval concepts, let me brieÀy state my reading of Gen 2:10–14 as a
narrative fragment reÀecting standard iconography for rendering
cosmographic conventions.37 We should start by imagining this fragment
to be a narrative reÀection of the contents of a tablet with two sides, not
unlike the Neo Assyrian bronze tablet depicting Lamashtu (see Fig. 3).
The textual breaking point between the two sides of our imaginary tablet
is, as will become clearer, the odd description in Gen 2:10 of what hap-
pens to the river that emerged from Eden and divided into four branches:
-'f: !3:+ !'!# (literally: “[and] it became four heads”). In the
imaginary two-sided tablet, the obverse depicts the emergence of the
water sources in mythic space, Àowing from one source and spreading in
four branches, presumably to the four corners of the world.38 This motif
is well known in Mesopotamian iconography. Special attention must be
paid to the sources out of which, and indeed into which, water Àows.
These sources have a particular iconography and they seem to serve as
transit points: “portals” where water slips from one reality into another.39
This is, I believe, what is meant in Gen 2:10; water from the river “ports”
from the mythic into the historical world, where it emanates in what
seems to be perceived as the four main rivers of the world running from
four peripheral points towards the center of the known world. At this
centre, of course, is Jerusalem, the temple, and even a small branch of
Gihon, one of the paradisiacal rivers. As would be evident, the idea of
rivers dividing the known world and marking its center is not very
different from what is seen in the mappae mundi and indeed in the
Babylonian world map (above).
Surrounding the narrative fragment is the story of the Garden of Eden.
Now, the motif of iconic gardens is fairly widespread in ancient Near
Eastern literature.40 Images of paradisiacal gardens at the border of the
universe occur in Ugaritic as well as Akkadian literature, and they are
known also in several Greek variants.41 Contrary to modern perceptions
37. This reconstruction is based on Stordalen, Echoes of Eden, Chapter 10;

Stordalen, “Heaven on Earth—Or Not?”; Stordalen, “Heaven on Earth.”
38. An iconic presentation of this motif occurs in a Neo Assyrian wall relief,
rendered for instance in Keel, Die Welt der altorientalischen Bildsymbolik, no. 76.
39. This point is argued in Stordalen, “Heaven on Earth.” One illustration of the
idea of vases used for transit points is found in a tenth-century B.C.E. Assyrian roll
seal rendered in Keel, Die Welt der altorientalischen Bildsymbolik, no. 23 (and see
also no. 185).
40. See Stordalen, Echoes of Eden, in particular Parts II and IV.
41. See already Holger Thesleff, “Notes on the Paradise Myth in Ancient
Greece,” Temenos 22 (1986): 129–39.
of the story of paradise as an isolated piece in biblical literature,42 the

motif is richly nested in the Hebrew Bible. The motif of these cosmic
gardens echoes not only in ancient literature but also in manners of
popular speech as well as in iconography and architecture of royal
palaces, national temples, etc. Cosmic garden symbolism seems to have
been relevant to people’s daily life and perception of the world, and
therefore also to political symbolism. All this is in the background when
events associated with the Garden of Eden serve as a parable for caution
(Ezek 28:11–19; 31) as well as for joy (Qoh 2:1–11).
A Biblical Subtext in Utopia

I would, of course, not claim that Sir Thomas and his co-workers had any
particular interest in researching ancient cosmography and iconography.
What they did know and relate to, however, were common adaptions of
this cosmography in medieval culture and also the claim that such con-
cepts had originated in the ancient world. These trajectories of ancient
cosmography were mediated not only in the mappae mundi but in an
entire web of cultural and philosophical topoi. One excellent entry point
into this web would be the Glossa ordinaria of the late medieval Bible.43
For the current purpose I am referring to an early printed version of late
medieval manuscripts: Bibliorum sacrorum cum glossa ordinaria,
Venice 1603.44 It shows that the Glossa ordinaria too located the terres-
trial paradise in the utmost, unavailable east (or, alternatively in the past,
shifting between the Greek and the Hebrew rendition of Gen 2:8). In
addition, there are comments going straight to the complex considered
above. The gloss of the Venice copy to Gen 2:10–14 has an entry by
Augustine, rendering conventional cosmological speculations about the
location of the Garden of Eden, stating “…it should not be taken literally
that [the four rivers] spread from one source, because the location of this
paradise is beyond human cognition.”45 In the context of this remark
42. A view recently repeated by Collins, “Models of Utopia.”

43. For a general orientation, see Beryl Smalley, “Glossa ordinaria,” TRE 13:452–
57, and The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984).
44. This version was said to have been collected by Strabo Fulgensi and includes
as an addition the postilla of Nicholaus of Lyra, which commented upon the Hebrew.
The work was printed in Venice in ¿ve volumes, now commonly available through
the Internet Archive, at https://archive.org/details/bibliorumsacroru01strauoft (for
volume 1, being used here).
45. Latin: “… non videntur ad literam ex uno fonte diuidi, quia locus ille para-
disi remonts est a cognitione hominium.” Venice Bible column 71, entry AVG
(Augustine).
1
Beda, Augustine, and Nicholaus of Lyra all depict the river from Eden as
mysteriously feeding all waterways of the world, thus apparently per-
ceiving the river from Eden to be a primeval water source.
For the present purpose the interesting point is that these medieval
speculations professedly anchored in biblical texts do seem to occur as
subtexts in Utopia, as I now hope to demonstrate in some detail.46 For a
start, let it be clear that there are explicit references to biblical tradition in
the novel. For instance, when Raphael starts his attack on the death
penalty—a cause, we might conjecture, that seems to lie close to heart of
the author of the work as well—he claims support from Roman Law as
well as from the laws of Moses. Neither of the two legal corpuses, he
argues, would administer the death penalty for theft.47 Correspondingly,
when Raphael reports on the royal law of the Macarians,48 the law that he
summarizes looks much like the royal law which according to Deut
17:14–20 had been given by Moses.
A more formal, and perhaps less obvious, connection lies in the
strategy of the novel to use names with symbolic meaning where these
meanings contribute to the plot of the story. Such popular etymology was
conventional in ancient Hebrew literature, and the feature is prominent in
Gen 2–3 (for instance for Eden, Adam, and Eve). Translators of Greek
and Latin versions of Genesis had attempted to render this Hebrew
technique into the target languages, which made the literary contribution
of symbolic naming evident also for readers of the Greek and Latin ver-
sions. This insight was further strengthened by the gloss to the Gen 2–3
passage.49 The popular etymologies of Utopia are virtually countless.
Among them are the name of the island itself Utopia, a pun on the Greek
ou topos which means “no place.” The main river of Utopia, Anyder,
would go back to the Greek an-hyder and translates “waterless.” A group
of people in Utopia live in the land Achoria—a latinized rendition of the
Greek a-choros, “no land.” And the Macarians encountered above can be
46. I have chosen, for reasons of convenience, to refer to the edition of J. H.

Lupton, ed., The Utopia of Thomas More (London: Henry Rowde, 1895) [cited 20
April 2015]. Online: https://archive.org/details/utopiasirthomas00robigoog. Online
access to the novel is also found at http://theopenutopia.org/ [cited 20 April 2015].
47. Lupton, Utopia, 60–62.
48. Ibid., 95–98.
49. For instance Bibliorum sacrorum, vol. 1, column 68, where the entry of
Theodoret shifts between naming Adam “the human” and “Adam”—thereby render-
ing the Hebrew popular etymology. Similarly, for the word !eden, which means
“delight, luxuriance”: the Hebrew phrase -9/ 03 0 (“a garden in Eden in the
east”/“in the ¿rst Eden”) is rendered as paradisum voluptatis a principio in the
Latin: “a delightful paradise in the beginning of time.”
easily associated with hoi makarioi in the benedictions in the Gospel of

Matthew ch. 5.50 I do believe a reader among Sir Thomas’s peers would
recognize the similar literary strategies in the respective reports on two
landscapes, and indeed he himself made a note of this in one of his letters,
stating that this naming business in the novel was for the learned.51
According to Raphael, Utopian philosophy dismisses any abandon-
ment of natural pleasures (Latin: voluptas).52 The Latin Bible, of course,
saw Eden as a lost “paradise of original pleasure” (paradisum voluptatis
a principio). In one of St. Paul’s letters (Rom 5:12–21) this loss of
paradise is also the reason why there is suffering and death in the world.
Raphael, on the other hand, seems to think that it should be possible to
restore the qualities of pleasure to common people.53 In an apparent
follow-up he puts great emphasis upon distinguishing between pleasures
that are honest and lead to continued pleasure for all, and those that are
not. Among people who pursue unjust pleasures are counted “them that
take pleasure and delight…in gems and precious stones, and think them-
selves almost gods…”54 The allusion to Adam and Eve seems quite likely
when one considers ¿rst the desire of the ¿rst humans to become like
God (Gen 3:5, 7, 22) and secondly the fact that the precious stones of the
Prince of Tyre are associated with the Garden of Eden (Ezek 28:12, esp.
LXX). Raphael seems to engage in a sort of Christian midrashic exegesis,
saying that these precious stones were the reason that the humans in Eden
were driven out of the garden. The pleasures sought by the Utopians, on
the other hand, are good for the body and for the soul. There are two
bodily pleasures: First, the one where delectation is felt, as in eating or
“when we be doing the act of generation.” Corresponding terms are used
in the Latin version of what happened inside the garden in the Eden
story. The second bodily pleasure is good health, which is paired in the
Latin appropriation of the story of Eden with the human couple’s living
an everlasting life—boosted through the life-giving trees along the
paradisiacal river in Ezekiel (Ezek 47:12, cf. Gen 3:22).55 In short, when
Raphael pleads for the superiority of the philosophy of the Utopians, he
argues that their religion and society had a biblical predecessor in the
religion of Adam and Eve before the expulsion—while still in paradisum
50. As noted also by Lupton, Utopia, 95.

51. See Sargent, Utopianism , 23.
52. Cf. Lupton, Utopia, 194. Citations are found on this and the ¿rst following
pages.
53. Cf. ibid., 122.
54. Ibid., 176, cf. 146–47.
1
55. For Ezek 47, see Stordalen, Echoes of Paradise, 363–68.
voluptatis a principio. And to Raphael voluptas designates not only the

desires of the Utopians but also the social world that they had con-
structed. Utopia is the Land of Pleasure. A pun on this perception surfaces
in the voice of Sir Thomas in a letter to Peter Giles in the accompanying
material in the early versions. The letter relates “a professor of divinity,
who is exceeding desirous to go unto Utopia, not for a vain and curious
desire to see the news, but to the intent he may further and increase our
religion which there already luckily begun.”56
One peculiar topographic matter concerns the River Anyder, which
starts in a small well and grows to a world-class river comparable to the
Thames. Because of ebb and Àow the lower parts of the Anyder are ¿lled
with fresh water half the time and salt water for the other half. This
aligns the Anyder with the rivers emerging from the paradises on the
mappae mundi. These rivers not only feed all the important fresh water
courses of the world, they also feed the world ocean, which is of course
salty.
Attached to the Anyder is a small rivulet that “riseth even out of the
same hill that the city standeth upon, and runneth down a slope through
the midst of the city into Anyder.”57 Because the well is outside of the
city, the city’s inhabitants made defensive bulwarks to protect the well
during times of enemy attacks—which is conspicuous, since external
enemies do not enter Utopia and internally in the island there is no war.
So what is the signi¿cance of this description? The entire section seems
inspired by a topographical (and biblical) complex associated with the
source Gihon in Jerusalem. Gihon was, of course, the name of one of the
four rivers in Gen 2:10–14, and it was also the name of a small brook on
the slope just outside of the old City of David in Jerusalem. Already in
ancient times this well and its brook had military and religious signi¿-
cance, and it was surrounded by military bulwark and later by tunneling
facilities. In times of siege this water was “the water of salvation” (Isa
8:5–8), and in Ezek 47:1–12 the river from this well creates marvelous
trees and transforms the desert land and the Dead Sea into paradisiacal
locations. In times of peace, this river was the source also of spiritual
life, which is why Isidore in the gloss to Gihon in Gen 2 pointed to
Ps 36:9 (= Vg. Ps 35) and its “rivulet of joy.” The mythology of Gihon
extends into New Testament literature, where water from Gihon runs into
the pool of Siloam, or the Bethesda. The Gospel of John ch. 5 reports
56. “…qui miro Àagrat desyderio adeundae Vtopiae, non inani et curiosa libidine
collustrandi noua, sed uti religionem nostram, feliciter ibi coeptam, foueat atque
adaugeat.” Lupton, Utopia, 7.
57. Ibid., 129–30.
that people would wait for an angel to stir the pool so the sick would be
healed. All these passages had been collected and further mythologized
in medieval theology. In the gloss of Theodotion to 1 Kgs 1 (where
Solomon is crowned by the Gihon), the connection between the brook
Gihon and the Nile as one of the world rivers from Eden is established.
As noted by Adrian Boas, the Gihon spring and associated waterworks

were still in use during the times of the crusades and Gihon was
commented upon in crusaders’ reports.58 So I suggest the educated reader
of Utopia would see similarities between the Anyder (the “waterless”)
and Gihon / the Nile, which was thought to have re-surfaced in the slopes
of Jerusalem as a small brook only.
Additional allusions could be named. Hopefully what has been men-
tioned is enough to render it plausible that a sixteenth-century learned
Humanist reader of Utopia should recognize a biblical/Christian subtext
in Utopia along with other trajectories like that of classical Greek litera-
ture or contemporary exploration narratives. The presence of such a
subtext begins to answer my initial questions above concerning utopian
connections in biblical literature.
Worlds That Could Not Be

The one point that I wish to bring out in this essay is simple: the ideal
worlds presented in biblical and other ancient literature seem to have a
con¿guration that made it unlikely for the common reader to expect them
to actually have been or become simple reality. And, to my mind, a
similar con¿guration occurs in Thomas More’s Utopia.
The “irrealities” of the biblical myth with its magical fruit and
speaking serpent are evident. Perhaps less appreciated is the fact that the
story also holds elements that would presumably be strange or even
morally questionable in the original setting. For instance, the apparent
matrilocal paradigm in Gen 2 is peculiar. So is the fact that God appears
to be ignorant that animals do not make for human companionship. More
pointedly, biblical literature does not approve of exposing nakedness,
and certainly not before God.59 But within the universe of the story the
58. Adrian Boas, Jerusalem in the Time of the Crusades: Society, Landscape,
and Art in the Holy City Under Frankish Rule (London: Routledge, 2001), Chapter
18.
59. Lev 18:7–16; Exod 20:26; Gen 9:22–23. For a summary of the discussion of
a contrast world in Gen 2–3, see Stordalen, Echoes of Eden, 296–97. As for the
challenges in the story for medieval readers, cf. the many attempts in the gloss to
1
morally necessary insight—that “people should wear clothes”—only

emerges because humans violate a divine decree! Before that they seem
to be strolling around naked before God. This very human negligence
about sexuality is itself “irreal”: in a similar garden in the Song of
Solomon sexuality is the main issue (Cant 4:12–16, etc.). And in Genesis
Adam only “knows” Eve in the sexual sense once they are outside of the
garden (Gen 4:1). These and other contrast features of the world
depicted in Gen 2–3 call for suspensive laughter much in the sense of
medieval mystery plays as analyzed by Mikhail Bakhtin.60 And the
Glossa ordinaria documents that medieval readers did in fact sense these
dimensions in the biblical story.61
Often overlooked by modernist and “realist” readers, Raphael reports
a number of opinions, positions, and practices from Utopia that must
have seemed morally and socially strange to Renaissance readers. Some
of these are in fact openly questioned by characters in the novel.
Occasionally, they are questioned even by Raphael himself, who in fact
opens his praise for the philosophy of pleasure in Utopia (cf. below) on a
rather defensive note: “Wherin whether they belyue well or no, nother
the tyme dothe suffer us to discusse, nother it ys nowe necessarye. For
we haue taken vpon vs to shewe and declare theyr lores and ordenaunces,
and not to defende them.”62 One of the presumably less defendable
practices goes directly to the heart of the novel: the treatment of old and
weak people. The principle of Utopia, we remember, is that everyone
should be happy. In order for this to come through, Utopian priests may
respect the wish of old and ill people to kill themselves in order to avoid
pain and anguish.63 One gets the sense from Raphael’s careful exposition
that he knows this practice of legal suicide, or even euthanasia, is going
to be controversial with Sir Thomas (and with the reader). Lupton’s
discussion reÀects how this continued to be so even in nineteenth-
century readings.
Another example of controversial practices in Utopia would be habits
for preparing for marriage.64 Again for the purpose of securing lasting
satisfaction, the Utopians would let an old woman expose the girl naked
interpret the couple’s nakedness allegorically, see Bibliorum sacrorum vol 1, col.
83–86.
60. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1968).
61. Isidore says the lack of shame in Eden signi¿ed “animal-like simplicity”
(simplicitatem animæ).
62. Lupton, Utopia, 211.
63. Ibid., 222–24. For his discussion, see p. 223 n. 1.
64. Ibid., 225–26. The habit is characterized as foolish even by Raphael himself.
before the man, and an old man would expose the young man to the girl,
so they can see if they really desire each other. While a postmodern
European might think of this as actually a good idea, Raphael appears
more in line with Renaissance morals when airing his reservation
towards taking this practice as a blueprint for Europe.
After Marx, utopia is known ¿rst and foremost as a society without
private property. Raphael, in Book I, argues that the lack of personal
ownership makes for a better world. Sir Thomas is of a different opinion:
“men shall never there live wealthily, where all things be common. For
how can there be abundance of goods…where every man withdraweth
his hand from labour?” Raphael answers Àat out that this problem does
not apply in Utopia: society simply works differently. “…For you con-
ceaule in your mynde…a very false ymage and symylitude of thys
thynge.”65 This objection closes the discourse in Book I. A point in Book
II, however, echoes that objection by Sir Thomas.66 Considering the
possibility that a Utopian worker could withdraw from his duties and
unproductively wander off, Raphael reports a Utopia without taverns and
pubs, where everyone is constantly monitored by the others and there
simply is no opportunity to even imagine non-productivity. Translated
into theological discourse of the time, Utopia has no evil because society
leaves no space for free will. I take it for granted that to Humanist
Catholic circles of the time such a denial of free will would be undesir-
able indeed. And, as is well known, Thomas More was passionately
engaged on the Humanist Roman Catholic side of the ongoing religious
conÀict in Europe.
In conclusion, Fritz Stolz argued that biblical reÀections on paradise,
as well as comparable stories from around the ancient world, were not
simply stories about an ideal or idyllic world. Instead, he claimed, they
should be perceived of as depicting “contrast worlds” (Gegenwelten).67
In his view, these are worlds that admittedly convey “realistic” hopes
or dreams, but which are nevertheless so different from the human every-
day experience that they cannot be conceived of as “real.” Rather than
providing simply dream-like ideals, these stories provide contrast per-
65. Ibid., 110.

66. “…There be nether wyn tauernes, nor ale houses, nor stewes, nor any
occasion of uice or wickednes, no lurking corners, no places of wicked councelles or
vnlawfull assembles; but they be in the present sight, and vnder the iyes of euery
man.” (ibid., 169). The reference back to Book I is implicit only. This is a typical
feature of Book II, which was apparently completed ¿rst.
67. Fritz Stolz,”Paradiese und Gegenwelten,” Zeitschrift für Religionswissen-
schaft 1 (1993): 5–24; Fritz Stolz, “Paradies, I: Religionsgeschichtlich; II: Biblisch,”
TRE 25:705–11.
1
spectives from which one would see familiar features of the everyday
world in a new light. In so doing, stories of contrast worlds would seem
to provide as much critical reÀection on dreams and ideals as they
provide on petty political experience. And to my mind this double
critique, in diametrically opposite directions, is a very important feature
if one were to employ utopian stories or literature successfully in an
attempt at political reÀection. Hence I like to keep thinking of utopias as
“places that could not be”: they seem to remain “real” and “irreal” at the
same time.
Potentials of Utopia
Christopher Columbus thought he had veri¿ed the ecclesial dogma
surfacing in the mappae mundi when ¿nding his terrestrial paradise.
Thomas More, contrastingly, depicted a place where nobody could ever
go. It seems to me that if either of these were to be associated with the
much later modernist disenchantment with the world, it would in fact
have to be Columbus. When bravely defending the existence of a
terrestrial paradise, he was already under inÀuence of the realist mental
paradigm that would eventually wipe paradise off any serious carto-
graphic representation of the world. Thomas More’s Utopia, on the other
hand, remained and retained public interest precisely because it was
nowhere to be found.
The days are past when historians referred to the time between antiquity
and the Renaissance as “the Dark Ages.” Hopefully, I have demonstrated
that we would do well in resisting the typical modernist impulse to
canonize Utopia as a modernist European work by bridging directly over
from More to Plato on the one hand and to Marx on the other. Seeing Sir
Thomas’s book in its historical context raises several interesting possi-
bilities for biblical scholars. One of them is that this move recognizes the
Bible as an on-going cultural product rather than simply a past text.
Another issue, and one that has been more fully explored here, is that this
gaze may help clarify what quali¿es as utopian thought and utopian
literature. The mine of playful representations in Utopia may inspire a
sharper apprehension of the interface between the utopian and the more
generally ideological also in biblical literature. (And for this purpose, of
course, we would again also consult Karl Mannheim, Paul Ricoeur, and
other philosophers.) If the utopian gains in speci¿city, it would perhaps
also be more feasible to ask just how for instance Chronicles or
Deuteronomy take part in this mode of writing and thinking.
Another advantage of reading Utopia in historical context is a sharper

apprehension of the communicative signi¿cance of any “irrealistic”
trajectories of ancient medieval and Renaissance utopias. Like Erin
Runions,68 who at this point relied on Louis Marin, I see the playful
integration of the real and the unreal, the ideal and the impossible, as
perhaps the most important characteristic of utopian writing and thought.
Wishful realism pierced by the occasional fantasmatic or burlesque
prepares for seeing status quo in a new light. Obviously, such a literary
mode could be engineered in different ways and applied in different
directions. It could be used to legitimate current power and state of
affairs. In the biblical and medieval version discussed above, however, it
seems to me that this con¿guration helped to take some of the dignity out
of contemporary social doxa. Asking about the signi¿cance of utopian
thought in Deuteronomy or Chronicles, I would probably have started
here. Should we expect some signs of the “irreal” also in this kind of
biblical utopian writing? And if so, what are they?
And then, to the political implications of biblical (and other) utopias.
In his excellent book Steven Schweitzer carefully points out that what he
perceives as the utopian strategy of Chronicles does not simply provide
legitimation of present reality. Good! But does it also help to take some
social doxa out of contemporary ideologies—or is it rather the opposite:
that it lends social and religious doxa to certain ideals that have fairly
explicit implications for establishing social domination?69 Falling back
on categories taken from Sargent,70 the picture drawn by Schweitzer
seems to me to translate as a sort of settler utopianism, but one that
nevertheless imagines the settlers as administrators over the indigenous.
Is there not, therefore, a scent of colonialist utopian thought in that
biblical book? I am not an expert on this literature, and I can only ask.
But if there were such an impulse, would it not be part of the obligation
of biblical scholars to address this political aspect of the text? And in that
case, should we then not also address the possibility that religious
utopias could be used in suppressive ways? I believe scholars curating a
canonical cultural resource like the Bible need to be aware of these
dimensions—without, I should hasten to add, taking neither utopias nor
our interpretations of them too seriously.
68. Runions, “Playing It Again,” 291.

69. Cf. the argument in Schweitzer, Reading Utopia in Chronicles, 173, on the
role of the Levites in the future better reality.
1
70. Sargent, Utopianism, Chapter 3.
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Rushby, Kevin. Paradise: A History of the Idea That Rules the World. New York: Carrol
& Graf, 2007.
Sargent, Lyman Tower. Utopianism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2010.
Sca¿, Alessandro. Mapping Paradise: A History of Heaven on Earth. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2006.
Schweitzer, Steven James. Reading Utopia in Chronicles. New York: T&T Clark
International, 2007.
———. “A Response.” JHS 9, no. 11 (2009): 15–19.
———. “Utopia and Utopian Literary Theory: Some Preliminary Observations.” Pages
Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006.
Smalley, Beryl. “Glossa ordinaria.” Pages 452–57 in vol. 13 of Theologische
Realenzyklopädie. Edited by G. Müller et al. 36 vols. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1984.
———. The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages. 3d enlarged ed. Oxford: Blackwell,
1984.
Stolz, Fritz. “Paradiese und Gegenwelten.” Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 1 (1993):
5–24.
———. “Paradies, I: Religionsgeschichtlich; II: Biblisch.” Pages 705–11 in vol. 25 of
Theologische Realenzyklopädie. Edited by G. Müller et al. 36 vols. Berlin: de
Gruyter, 1995.
Stordalen, Terje. Echoes of Eden: Genesis 2–3 and Symbolism of the Eden Garden in
Biblical Hebrew Literature. Louvain: Peeters, 2000.
———. “Heaven on Earth—Or Not? Jerusalem as Eden in Biblical Literature.” Pages 28–
57 in Beyond Eden: The Biblical Story of Paradise (Genesis 2–3) and Its Reception
History. Edited by Christoph Riedweg and Konrad Schmid. Tübingen: Mohr-
Siebeck, 2008.
———. “Heaven on Earth: Jerusalem, Temple, and the Cosmography of the Garden of
Eden.” Biblicum (2009): 7–20.
Stosch, Klaus, von. “Utopie.” Pages 422–24 in Lexikon philosophischer Grundbegriffe
der Theologie. Edited by Albert Franz, Wolfgang Baum, and Karsten Kreutzer.
Freiburg: Herder, 2003.
Taylor, Charles. Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004.
1
Thesleff, Holger. “Notes on the Paradise Myth in Ancient Greece.” Temenos 22 (1986):
129–39.
Unger, Eckhard. Babylon: Die Heilige Stadt Nach der Beschreibung der Babylonier.
Berlin: de Gruyter, 1931.
Vieira, Fátima. “The Concept of Utopia.” Pages 3–27 in The Cambridge Companion to
Utopian Literature. Edited by Gregory Claeys. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2010.
Warren, Nathanael. “Tenure and Grant in Ezekiel’s Paradise (73:13–48:29).” VT 63
(2013): 323–34.
“UTOPIA WHERE IT IS TO BE HOPED THAT THE COFFEE
IS A LITTLE LESS SOUR”?
DR WHO’S “UTOPIA” AND CHRONICLES
Gerrie Snyman
1. Introduction
In an episode called “Utopia” in the third season of the revived BBC
television show Doctor Who the viewer is provided with a de¿nition of
utopia as well as the problematic around the concept. Having just arrived
at the end of the universe, the Doctor realizes that the rocket and its
would-be passengers gathering around it he found a moment ago, were
on their way to what is called “Planet Utopia.” He recognizes the project
as an old dream that never goes away: “The perfect place. Hundred
trillion years, it’s the same old dream.” He inquires into the meaning of
utopia, but he never seems to get an adequate answer. For example, he
receives the following response from his antagonist, the Master: “Oh,
every human knows of Utopia. Where have you been?” Even when he
narrows down his question: “What do you think is out there?” the Master
is elusive as utopia itself: “Now perhaps they found it. Perhaps not. But
it’s worth a look, don’t you think?”
Utopia is part of our (I can only speak within the parameters of
Western culture) common sense—a common sense not the least fed by
visions of the eschaton, one of the main themes within the Judeo-
Christian tradition, as well as by Thomas More’s book Utopia in the
sixteenth century, on which the genre of utopia has ever since been
moulded.1 Throughout the centuries Judeo-Christianity grasped at the
straw of hope given by the doctrine of the eschaton, a hope for a better
time to come.2 The roots of science ¿ction’s depiction of catastrophes go
1. Lyman Tower Sargent, “The Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited,” Utopian

Studies 5, no. 1 (1994): 2, argues that although utopia is not solely a product of the
Christian West, as a genre of literature it possesses certain formal characteristics that
are common in the Christian West.
2. Darren Webb, “Christian Hope and the Politics of Utopia,” Utopian Studies
19, no. 1 (2008): 113, speaks of the “intrinsic, positive relationship” between utopia
and hope.
SNYMAN Dr Who’s “Utopia” and Chronicles 39
back to Judeo-Christianity’s notions of the end of time, judgment day or

the Day of YHWH, when a new order will come into existence, when sin
and evil will be ruled out, a moment when the world as God’s creation
will be consummated. In Judeo-Christianity the message of hope played
a large role in the prophetic books in which utopian images are thought
to be present.3 This hope that is particularly linked to a radically recon-
stituted society has proved to be quite resilient—for “a hundred trillion
years” utopia is seen as a way of surviving amidst collapse of reality.
Yet it remains elusive, and thus always worth a look. Whereas it is
anachronistic to utilize the notion of utopia in reading biblical texts—
after all, utopia only got its name with Thomas More’s Utopia in the
sixteenth century—the religious link allows for such endeavours. And
Doctor Who intersects quite often with religion.4
The depiction of catastrophes is a recurring feature of science ¿ction.
In Doctor Who speci¿cally “the pressing danger of apocalyptic annihila-
tion” is never far away.5 Most of the time science ¿ction reveals a sense
of apocalyptic doom without hope.6 That sense of lurking hopelessness is
exposed in one of the opening scenes where the Professor wryly remarks,
“Utopia. Where it is to be hoped the coffee is a little less sour.”
But the biblical text is not science ¿ction, and its origins are much
earlier than utopia as a genre. Yet it is possible that these texts exhibit
features usually associated with what came to be known later as utopia.
With regard to the prophetic books Ehud Ben Zvi asks: What do utopian
images teach one about the societies in whose midst the books emerged,
and who were the targeted audiences of the utopian images in these
3. Ehud Ben Zvi, “Utopias, Multiple Utopias, and Why Utopias at All? The
Social Roles of Utopian Visions in Prophetic Books Within Their Historical
Context,” in Utopia and Dystopia in Prophetic Literature (ed. Ehud Ben Zvi;
Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006), 55–85, provides a detailed analysis of
utopian images in the prophetic books.
4. See Andrew Crome and James McGrath, Time and Relative Dimensions in
Faith: Religion and Doctor Who (Eugene, Ore.: Cascade, 2013), xix. The book
draws on the way fans of the series have used the religious ideas expressed in the
series to either question religion or promote it: “It offers a fascinating window into
the way in which fans consume texts, and the way in which religious (or, indeed,
anti-religious) communities reinterpret the product of popular culture.”
5. Andrew Crome, “‘There Never Was a Golden Age’: Doctor Who and the
Apocalypse,” in Crome and McGrath, Religion and Doctor Who, 204.
6. Alex Wright, “An Ambiguous Utopia,” Political Theology 5, no. 2 (2004):
232. In the episodes that followed “Utopia” it becomes clear that Utopia was just
another form of hell where humans were transformed from their original shapes into
spheres killing for sport. See Crome, “‘There Never Was a Golden Age,’” 202.
books?7 Jeremiah Cataldo reads in Persian-period Hebrew texts such as

Ezra and Nehemiah “a schema of theocratic utopia” within a dystopic
reality de¿ned by profanity and disobedience.8 Roland Boer reads utopia
in speci¿c texts of Chronicles where he argues for a radical disjunction
with the dismal world of the Chronicler—a disjunction between contem-
porary space and time and that of Utopia.9 Cataldo refers to boundaries
around no land, with the walls of Jerusalem signifying the utopian state,10
or in Boer’s words, “independent and sharply separated from the Other.”11
My interest is to see what I can learn from the world of text production
and text reception if I utilize the notion of utopia as a heuristic key to
understand the book of Chronicles. Does utopia provide a framework for
reading the book? If, in the words of Boer, the book is “an effort to
represent an ideal world that resists the world as it is,”12 what does the
world as it is look like? In other words, if Chronicles is the utopia where
the coffee is a little less sour, what does the reality looks like where the
coffee was indeed sour? Should one expect dystopian conditions or is it
simply a difference in degrees?13
The essay will proceed as follows: ¿rst the notion of utopia and three
kinds of utopia will be brieÀy discussed in the light of presupposed
dystopian conditions in which a speci¿c utopia might be literary con-
structed; secondly, the relationship between utopia and science ¿ction14
will be touched upon with reference to the episode “Utopia” in the
7. Ben Zvi, “Utopias, Multiple Utopias, and Why Utopias at All?,” 55.
8. Jeremiah W. Cataldo, “Dreams, Agendas, and Theocratic Aspirations in
Yehud,” SJOT 24 (2010): 53–70.
9. Roland Boer, “Utopian Politics in 2 Chronicles 10–13,” in The Chronicler as
Author: Studies in Text and Texture (ed. Patrick M. Graham and Steven L.
McKenzie; JSOTSup 263; Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld Academic, 1999), 381.
10. Cataldo, “Dreams,” 64–66.
11. Boer, “Utopian Politics in 2 Chronicles 10–13,” 381.
12. Roland Boer, “Of Fine Wine, Incense and Spices: The Unstable Masculine
Hegemony of the Books of Chronicles,” Journal of Men, Masculinities and
Spirituality 4, no. 1 (2010): 21.
13. The question I pose is perhaps more focused on historical considerations than
on literary aspects, although the literary should provide clues as to the historical
context of text production. I can surmise that Chronicles creates a utopia over
against the dystopia of Samuel–Kings (as suggested by Boer, “Of Fine Wine,
Incense and Spices,” 21) but it still does not say much about the circumstances of the
real world in which the text was produced.
14. Wright, “An Ambiguous Utopia,” 233, warns one about the nature of utopia
in science ¿ction. In fact, according to Wright, the utopias created in current science
¿ction not only “most truthfully” hold up a mirror to current Western society, but
also project societies and worlds into the future that are “much too close to our own
anxieties and preoccupations to be truly hopeful or utopian.”
1
TV series Doctor Who in order to see how utopia works; and thirdly,
there will follow a discussion whether there are dystopian conditions in
the world of text production on which basis one may argue in favor of
utopian qualities in the text of Chronicles.
2. Utopia
As a literary work Darko Suvin de¿nes utopia as a
verbal construction of a particular quasi-human community where socio-
political institutions, norms and individual relationships are organized
according to a more perfect principle than in the author’s community, this
construction being based on estrangement arising out of an alternative
historical hypothesis.15
Suvin sees utopia as an “as if,” an imaginative experiment, making the
literary text an epistemological entity and not an ontological one. The
utopian text is a heuristic device for what he calls “perfectibility.”16
Lyman Tower Sargent differs regarding the issue of perfectibility, and
rather de¿nes it in terms of time and space viewed by the reader “as
considerably better than the society in which [the] reader lived.”17
One deals here then with a literary text whose story world constructs
an alternative society based on what is lacking in the contemporary
world of the readers (world of reception). There is a disjunction between
the world of reception/production and the story world or utopian world.
The text is based on an imaginary construction that provides an irreality
as a world that could be but that is not existent. This alternative society
can be deemed better or worse than the readers’ own world. In the
confrontation with the disconnectedness with the utopian world in the
text the readers become able to sharpen their awareness of the problems
in their society in order to transform it.18
15. Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History
of a Literary Genre (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 132. Dingbo Wu,
“Understanding Utopian Literature,” Extrapolation 34, no. 3 (1993): 236, questions
Suvin’s utilisation of the term “verbal construction” in order to distinguish between
utopian literature from general and abstract utopian beliefs and programs. But
Suvin’s book is about a particular genre in literature, thus subsuming textuality in
the de¿nition.
16. Darko Suvin, “Locus, Horizon, and Orientation: The Concept of Possible
Worlds as a Key to Utopian Studies,” Utopian Studies 1, no. 2 (1990): 74.
17. Lyman Tower Sargent, Utopianism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2010; E-book, cited 11 May 2014), 27 (italics original).
The notion of disjunction does not ¿gure very strongly in his de¿nition.
18. Wu, “Understanding Utopian Literature,” 243.
I would agree with Steven Schweitzer when he reads into Chronicles

the construction of an alternative society.19 As the book cannot be
typically classi¿ed as a utopia in the generic sense of the word, the most
a reader can do is to look for utopian content from a utopian literary
theoretical point of view. In other words, one will be looking for certain
phenomena that can be associated with utopia as a topos or utopian
impulses in the text. What is important to note is the literary nature of
utopia over-against utopian thought found in, for example, political
sciences, philosophy or socio-political programs.20 What is of interest
here is the ¿ctionalizing process.21
Utopia comprises of the construction of a radically different society as
an alternative to the readers’ own world and it mirrors the de¿ciencies
found in that world. But is utopia necessarily a good place? The word
itself, coined by Thomas More in his work Utopia, is a compositum from
ou and topos with the effect of a double entendre: no place and a pun on
the Greek eu to mean a good place. In other words, utopia is a non-
existing good place.22 And it is a good place but not necessarily a perfect
place.23 It is for this reason that Sargent utilizes in his de¿nition the word
“better” and not “perfect” as Suvin does.24 Thus the Professor may refer
to coffee in utopia as a little less sour than in his reality. And given that
19. Steven Schweitzer, Reading Utopia in Chronicles (London: T&T Clark

International, 2007), 14.
20. Ruth Levitas and Lucy Sargisson, “Utopia in Dark Times. Optimism/
Pessimism and Utopia/Dystopia,” in Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and the
Utopian Imagination (ed. Tom Moylan and Raffaella Baccolini; London: Routledge,
2003), 15–16, distinguish between utopia as system and utopia as process. They link
utopia as system to political transformation and utopia as process to the literary.
21. Suvin, “Locus, Horizon, and Orientation,” 70, distinguishes in fact between
two disciplines in utopian studies: The empirical focuses on history, political theory,
planning, religion, ecology, futurology, but rarely philosophy or literary studies. The
¿ctional looks at science ¿ction, woman’s studies, literary theory, political
philosophy. What connects the two could be what Suvin labels as “utopian thought.”
22. Sargent, Utopianism, 22.
23. Sargent, “Three Faces of Utopianism,” 7.
24. Wu, “Understanding Utopian Literature,” 231, also thinks that the reference
to “perfect” is problematic, since despite a qualitative difference between absolute
perfection and more perfect, the point is that perfection forms part of the working
de¿nition, a notion very few utopian writers ascribed to. Even More’s Utopia is far
from perfect, given its totalitarian direction. Sargent, “Three Faces of Utopianism,”
9, is very clear on the issue of perfection: it is not a notion that should be present in
the de¿nition of utopia, because with the notion of perfection the logic of the anti-
utopian argument disappears. It is for this reason that Sargent employs the word
“better” in his de¿nition.
1
his dystopian reality is not that far away from the utopian one that the
people will encounter, it is only a difference in degrees.
To summarize: Utopia can thus be de¿ned as a literary text that
constructs an imaginary world as a disjunctive alternative to the con-
temporaneous social reality of the targeted audience who experiences
their reality as de¿cient—a ¿ctional reality in which an imagined com-
munity is thought to be at a better place—although not perfect—than the
one the readers currently inhabit.
Utopias can be constructed in a variety of ways and with various
purposes in mind. Of considerable importance for the discussion on
Chronicles, are dystopia, critical utopia, and nostalgic utopia.
Critical utopia disrupts the uni¿ed and homogenous narrative of tradi-
tional utopia, rejecting domination and hierarchy.25 It is linked to actual
socio-historical movements, and it is aware of its own limitations, thus
incorporating contradictions, ambiguities, and openness.26 In feminism,
for example, existing patriarchal relations of domination are censured
whilst “an alternative vision of social organization”27 is suggested that is
thought to be better suited for the needs and desires of society.28
Whereas a eutopia is positive, dystopia is a negative utopia in which
the author intended the contemporaneous reader to view the story world
as considerably worse than the historical world of reception in which the
reader resides. Moylan and Boccanelli de¿ne dystopia as follows:
Unlike the “typical” eutopian narrative with a visitor’s guided journey
through a utopian society which leads to a comparative response that
indicts the visitor’s own society, the dystopian text usually begins directly
in the terrible new world; and yet, even without a dislocating move to an
elsewhere, the element of textual estrangement remains in effect since the
focus is frequently on a character who questions the dystopian society.29
25. Michael Gardiner, “Bakhtin’s Carnival: Utopia as Critique,” Utopian Studies

3, no. 2 (1992): 25. Gardiner argues that Michal Bakhtin’s concept of carnival in
Rabelais and His World is an example of critical utopia.
26. Gardiner (ibid.) calls it “a heterodox manifestation of a diffuse ‘utopian
impulse’ which steadfastly resists systematization and closure characteristic of the
traditional utopia.”
27. Ibid., 28.
28. Ibid., 27: Utopia tends to play a central role in the critiquing of patriarchy,
especially in the works of Cixous and Irigaray.
29. Raffaella Baccolini and Tom Moylan, “Dystopia and Histories,” in Dark
Horizons: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination (ed. Tom Moylan and
Raffaella Baccolini; London: Routledge, 2003), 5. The text is constructed around a
hegemonic order with a counter-narrative of resistance.
Sargent combines critical utopia and dystopia in what he calls “critical

dystopia,” which he de¿nes as
a non-existent society described in considerable detail and normally
located in time and space that the author intended a contemporaneous
reader to view as worse than contemporary society but that normally
includes at least one eutopian enclave or holds out hope that the dystopia
can be overcome and replaced by a eutopia.30
A nostalgic utopia, by invoking a past idyllic or golden age, may have a

critical function, but it can also simply play a compensatory or reac-
tionary role.31 In idealizing the past, the reader is rendered powerless
because the only legitimate form of political action is preservation and
retrenchment in order to counter degeneration or to boost recurrent
revival. A utopia that looks backward, into history, depends on tradi-
tional modes of legitimation, for example, appeals to customs, ancient
practices, shared mythological origins. Backward looking utopias “seek
to enshrine existing inequalities (or resurrect earlier ones), and so sanc-
tion hierarchy, received authority, and ‘stability’ in the interest of
particular social elites.”32
It is common knowledge that the Chronicler utilizes Deuteronomistic
history. Its disruption of that construction is also evident. Can one argue
that there is something nostalgic in the Chronicler’s construction of the
history, especially with regard to the whitewashing of David and
Solomon and the tainted brush with which the rest of the royal dynasties
of Judah have been portrayed? Most importantly, is their alienation and
resistance involved in the construction of the story world, even to the
extent that the story world is entirely dystopian with one ray of hope
present, namely Cyrus? In other words, for the Chronicler to present
readers with some kind of utopia, are there suf¿cient dystopian qualities
in his world of text production that warrants utopian politics?33
30. Lyman Tower Sargent , “US Utopias in the 1980s and 1990s: Self-fashioning
in a World of Multiple Identities,” in Utopianism/Literary Utopias and National
Cultural Identities: a Comparative Perspective (ed. Paula Spinozzi; Bologne:
COTEPRA; University of Bologne, 2001), 22.
31. Gardiner, “Bakhtin’s Carnival,” 23–24: “Particular institutions, rituals or
symbols are valorized because they represent the immanence of the past within the
present, and hence must be protected at all costs.”
32. Ibid., 24.
1
33. See Boer, “Utopian Politics in 2 Chronicles 10–13,” 382.
3. Dystopia in Science Fiction and Doctor Who

Whereas utopia does away with the ills that plague society, dystopia
nurtures them. In Doctor Who’s “Utopia” any hope of apocalypse for
change is denied. Ironically, it is only the enemies of the Doctor who
can imagine change, but when they are brought about, they turn into
nightmares.34 In the episode “Last of the Time Lords” the wife of the
Doctor’s antagonist, the Master, reveals her impressions of utopia: death,
pointlessness, darkness and cold. Utopia has turned into dystopia—a bad
place characterized by suffering, tyranny, and oppression. Margaret
Atwood argues that with each utopia a dystopia is concealed and vice
versa.35 For this reason she utilizes the term “ustopia,” a mixture of
utopia and dystopia.36
It is to such a place where Doctor Who takes the reader in the eleventh
episode (called “Utopia”).37 The Doctor and his companion Martha land
with the Tardis on Malcassairo,38 one of the last surviving planets and the
last known outpost of humanity in the year one hundred trillion. It was a
complete dystopia: no sun, the universe was approaching a heat death
and the planet consisted of dead bush and hills. The only structure left
was Silo 16, a rocket launching site where the last remnant of the human
race took refuge in the hope of going to the planet Utopia. With them
was the last surviving member of the Malmooth Conglomeration and
Professor Yana, later revealed as the “Master,” the nemesis of Doctor
Who. For all purposes they were an intentional community: people
gathering to board the rocket in order to go to the planet Utopia. Outside
34. Crome, “‘There Never Was a Golden Age,’” 202.

35. Margaret Atwood, In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination (New
York: Doubleday, 2011), 85. She mentions wars, social inequality, poverty and
famine, and fallen arches.
36. Ibid., 66. To her, it is an imagined “perfect” community and its opposite,
since each contains “a latent version of the other.” Thomas M. Disch, The Dreams
Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 2000), 104, suggests that utopia in Science Fiction provides “the
theory for the world we would be living in now—if only its residents would behave
as the theory requires.”
37. The next two episodes were called “The Sound of the Drums” and “Last of
the Time Lords.” For the plot of each episode, see: http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/
Utopia_(TV_story); http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki /The_Sound_of_Drums_(TV_story)
and http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Last_of_the_Time_Lords_(TV_story) [cited 19
April 2015].
38. “Malcassairo.” N.p. [cited 29 May 2014]. Online: http://tardis.wikia.com/
wiki/Malcassairo.
the parameters of the silo were members of Futurekind,39 a humanoid

race with fangs to cut into human Àesh.
The episode plays on the audience’s common sense knowledge of
utopia. Just after the Doctor arrived at Malcassairo, the viewer’s atten-
tion is drawn to a man running away from members of Futurekind (who
are hunting him down) towards the safety of the silo where other human
beings have gathered in the hope of boarding the rocket that will take
them to Utopia. The Master as Professor Yana sees the commotion on a
monitor and wryly remarks: “One more lost soul dreaming of Utopia.”40
Utopia is ¿ctional, a non-space, in fact a chimera and a delusion.
Whereas he appears cynical towards the notion, his assistant admon-
ishes him not to give up. His response by toasting Utopia with a cup of
coffee, saying “Where it is to be hoped the coffee is a little less sour,”
plays on the concept of utopia as a better place than the current dystopian
one. In the meantime, the running man reached the gate of the silo and
asks the guard if they can take him to Utopia, upon which they answer in
the af¿rmative while opening the gate. Within the intentional community
Utopia is a de¿nable place where people physically can go to.
The Doctor and his companions enter the safe surrounding with him,
exploring it as they enter the silo itself. They discover the rocket and
realize that the people there are not refugees but would-be passengers in
the rocket to a planet called Utopia, immediately de¿ned by the Doctor
as “The perfect place. Hundred trillion years, it’s the same old dream.”
The episode plays off the two de¿nitions of utopia against one another:
a “better” place or a “perfect” place. And it recognizes the continuous
presence of the idea within humankind, at that stage which is the end of
the universe a hundred trillion years on since More’s Utopia that coined
the term and de¿ned the notion.
The episode links utopia to dystopia, and with the universe coming to
its end the Doctor rightfully asks: “But if the universe is falling apart,
what does Utopia mean?” Again the episode plays with utopia as a
location that does not exist or an orientation towards a better place. The
Master does not want to be drawn into a philosophical discussion on this
matter, and brusquely replies: “Oh, every human knows of Utopia.
Where have you been?” Utopia is part of common sense, or at least,
common sense within the Western tradition.
39. “Futurekind,” N.p. [cited 29 May 2014]. Online: http://tardis.wikia.com/

wiki/Futurekind.
40. The text has been transcribed from the televised show by Chrissie’s
Transcripts Site. N.p. [cited April 2015]. Online: http://www.chakoteya.net/
doctorwho/29–11.htm.
1
Not satis¿ed the Doctor narrows down his question: “What do you
think is out there?” Utopia is seen as a way of surviving amidst collapse
of reality. But it is not certain whether it was really found. The Master
answers: “Now perhaps they found it. Perhaps not. But it’s worth a look,
don’t you think?” Utopia is a non-place, a chimera. But for the would-be
passengers, the place is real: there is a rocket taking them there, a place
one of the passengers claims to be made of diamond skies—irreality.
Its non-existence is sharply underlined in one of the scenes where the
Master takes a circuit board while throwing it away, shrugging his
shoulders and murmuring nonchalantly “Utopia,” as if he knows these
people in the rocket are not going there, but somewhere else.
With Doctor Who one knows one deals with science ¿ction.41 Utopia
in this episode of Doctor Who is a non-place and in fact very dystopian.
The coffee is indeed sourer than at Silo 16 on Malcassairo. But what
drives the community to utopia? The dawn of the apocalypse. With
regard to Chronicles, then, the question would be what would have
driven the Chronicler to embed utopian features in his rendition of the
royal history of Judah? Can one detect dystopian elements in the world
of text production and reception that would give credence to utopian
politics in the book?
4. Chronicles and Utopia

Utopia as a literary text concerns a story world an author constructed
as an imaginary world in order to provide the readers an alternative to
the readers’ social reality. This alternative that is provided is based on
de¿ciencies and lacks the author perceives within the world of text
production and text reception. These de¿ciencies create a disjunction
between the real world and story world, which presents a ¿ctional reality
that is perceived to be better than the reality the readers inhabit. In this
41. Cf. Graeme McMillan, “Why Doctor Who Is Pop Culture Sci-Fi At Its Best,”
Time (15 March 2013). N.p. [cited 26 May 2014]. Online: http://entertainment
.time.com/2013/03/15/why-doctor-who-is-pop-culture-sci-¿-at-its-best/: “Doctor
Who is science-¿ction that takes humanity’s ¿nest points – our intelligence, curiosity
and kindness – in every conceivable direction. Instead of celebrating combat and
strife (Star Wars) or hive-mind conformity (Star Trek, arguably), Who stands for
novelty and for being different, demonstrating the bene¿ts of our bene¿ts as a
species. At its best, it’s about the best in us – and the endless possibilities when we
remain open to them. Isn’t that the point of science ¿ction?” For a counter view, see
Terry Pratchett, “Terry Pratchett vs Who,” SFX 3, May 2010. N.p. [cited 25 May
2014]. Online: http://www.sfx.co.uk/2010/05/03/guest-blog-terry-pratchett-on-
doctor-who/.
imagined story world the readers are invited to identify in some way or
another with an intentional community which inhabits the space of the
story world.
4.1. The Literary Nature of Utopia and the Fictionalizing Nature of the
Biblical Text
In contrast to planet Utopia in the story of Doctor Who that is a non-
place yet somewhere the intentional community thought they were going
to, utopia in this discussion is literary in nature. As a literary phenom-
enon it is a social product and not based on personal fantasies. Utopian
images originate from particular historical circumstances and provide
critical comments on these circumstances as a perceived reality.42 To
Ehud Ben Zvi these utopian images shed light on the intellectual and
social world of the literati in Yehud.43 As a social product utopian images
are shared amongst people, in this case those who can read and write
within society. Ben Zvi, whose focus was on utopia in prophetic books,
stresses the imaginary character of utopia.
Support for the imaginary character of the biblical text other than
prophetic books or utopia can be found in Jon Berquist’s statement about
the Deuteronomistic History, which he regards as a fantasy or a myth of
origins that engages the reader’s imagination about an alternate world
detached from the present realities of empire.44 It resists empire “by
imagining an alternative world in which smaller communities (mon-
archies, clans, or villages) can live independently.”45 Much earlier, in
1992, Philip R. Davies made a similar claim with regard to the Israel one
¿nds within the biblical text and the one in history.46 He argued that
42. Ben Zvi, “Utopias, Multiple Utopias,” 59: “[U]topian images not only
convey hope, but communicate to, and socialize people into positions of estrange-
ment and critique from reality.”
43. Ibid., 57.
44. Jon Berquist, “Identities and Empire: Historiographic Questions for the
Deuteronomistic History in the Persian Period,” in Historiography and Identity (Re)
formulation in Second Temple Historiographical Literature (ed. Louis Jonker;
LHBOTS 534; London: Continuum, 2010), 11.
45. Berquist, “Identities and Empire,” 11. He deems the “scholarly move” to read
the Deuteronomistic History as an exilic text also a fantasy, a deliberate misreading
that places the history into a different context. It obscures empire in that the new
context for the story is the exile imagined as a time without government whilst
empire is de facto the government.
46. Philip R. Davies, In Search of “Ancient Israel” (Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld
Academic, 1992), 23. He adds that the construct has been given “a (sometimes
vague) geographical and temporal setting in an historical world, presented as a
society historically, religiously and ethnically continuous and living in Palestine
1
biblical Israel found within the pages of the biblical text is a literary
construct. It may be historical, but not necessarily so.47
It is in the light of the construction of the imaginary and the ¿ction-
alizing process that I understand Steven Schweitzer’s remark about the
literary nature of the text of Chronicles as utopia. The literary character
of Chronicles in terms of the imaginary is not in doubt here. Schweitzer
argues that the story and the cultic practices reÀect a desired reality and
not a historical one.48 Chronicles constitutes an ideal or desired system
which could have been implemented in the future. It does not legitimize
any status quo but rather presents the reader with an alternative, thereby
challenging the status quo.49 Moreover, the desired system is in line with
Ezekiel’s restored temple. Whereas Ezekiel’s vision of the temple is an
ideal vision in the future, Chronicles
presents its utopian future as an idealized portrayal set in Israel’s historical
past. Rather than a literary device designed to encourage legitimation of
the present, this anchors the desired changes solidly in the hallowed past.
Chronicles, if not supplying rationale for “why it is this way,” points to the
alternative reality constructed in this version of Israel’s past as “how it
should be.”50
If one encounters an idealized portrayal of Israel’s historical past, can

one then read Chronicles as a nostalgic utopia? What happens with the
presentation of the history in the book? Schweitzer’s utilization of utopia
stands in contrast to this kind of legitimating of practices via a text. It is
not a source for historical data, because that would exclude any utopian
aspect de facto.51 What is clear from Davies’s approach is that the bibli-
cal texts provide examples of literary constructs that are ideologically
driven in terms of a power relation set by a ruling class. In other words, it
is not the history that is compared with the real events, but the way in
which the story is constructed that tells one something of the world of
text production.52
from at least the beginning of what we now term the Iron Age (c. 1250–600 B.C.E.;
biblical scholars more commonly use the term ‘pre-exilic’ or ‘monarchic’ when
speaking of this era).”
47. Ibid., 25.
48. Schweitzer, Reading Utopia in Chronicles, 29.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid., 30.
51. Ibid., 29.
52. I ¿nd Schweitzer here somewhat elusive. He would be suggesting many
possibilities for the world of text production but the suggestions are too manifold to
act upon and to draw consequences.
Louis Jonker sees Chronicles as a new literary text in which the

Chronicler “adapts, reinterprets, and even merges different traditions.”53
The result was a literary construct that can be designed as “reforming
history,”54 comprising a double attempt, one to reformulate and sanitize
older traditions of the past and one to reformulate the identity of God’s
people in the changed circumstances within the late Persian period—a
change from independent monarchic rule with its own cult to imperial
rule that recognizes different cults.55 It meant that the past had to be
recon¿gured and narrated differently in order to be useful in the new
dispensation.56 But in Jonker’s terms, it is not nostalgic. The special
treatment of David and Solomon is suggested as a model of kingship
expected under Persian rule. Jonker sees here a subtle polemic against
Persian rulers: good rulers seek YHWH and bad rulers will receive
punishment.57 To Jonker, there was a discontinuity between being ruled
by a satrapy and by a monarch in an independent kingdom. The status of
Yehud as a province necessitated “a new phase of reÀection among the
Yehudites on their own identity.”58
Does this reÀection constitute the construction of an alternative reality
with regard to the de¿ciency caused by the loss of political independence
and the monarchy?
4.2. Alternative Reality and De¿ciencies

Utopia as a literary text constructs an imaginary world that functions as
an alternative to the contemporaneous social reality of the targeted
audience who experience their social reality as lacking or de¿cient in
some way. In Doctor Who Planet Utopia is invented as a (non)-location
where the last survivors of the universe thought they could escape to in
order not to be consumed by the end of time. It is thought to be a better
place (not perfect) where the coffee would be less sour. By the time the
rocket is launched towards the so-called planet, the viewer realizes that
such a place is non-existent and the rocket is going to end up somewhere
equally dystopian. The last humans cannot escape their own social
reality.
53. Louis Jonker, 1 & 2 Chronicles (Understanding the Bible Commentary;

Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2013), 13. See also Louis Jonker, “Engaging with
Different Contexts: A Survey of the Various Levels of Identity Negotiation in
Chronicles,” in Jonker, ed., Texts, Contexts, and Readings, 63–94.
54. Jonker, 1 & 2 Chronicles, 14.
55. Ibid., 14.
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid., 17.
1
58. Ibid., 15.
Utopian images juxtapose and contrast what is perceived as an inferior

reality with a portrayal of a utopian future that is supposed to be superior
to past dystopias and even to the present of the community in whose
midst the utopian image emerged:
Utopia is precisely not what is but what should, and in the discourses of
Yehud, mainly what will be. As the readers imagine and partake vicari-
ously in these utopian worlds, they certainly felt and were supposed to
feel estranged from their present situation. Moreover, the very portrayal
of an imaginary ideal world carries a critique and ideological rejection of
present conditions.59
Schweitzer bases his argument of utopia in Chronicles on an

alternative reality that the book is thought to present to the reader. With
regard to the genealogies, Schweitzer says:
Perhaps Chronicles is arguing that the relationship between “Israel” and
the nations is one of great complexity (which it is in historical reality),
and that no clear policy can be instituted to cover the variety of concerns
that will arise. However, some principles for this relationship accord-
ing to Chronicles can be adduced: (1) intermarriage is not condemned;
(2) war against foreigners is not condemned (however, victory is not
guaranteed in every instance, so the people should not be hasty to engage
in conÀict and should rather depend on God’s intervention to occur); and
(3) religious ¿delity, seeking God with proper attitude, supporting the
temple and its cult, and the proper internal relations of the community are
of primary concern—much more important for the continued existence
of the community than the establishment of borders and boundaries to
distinguish between “us” and “them.”60
Time and again Schweitzer states what the alternative reality is, or what
it should be. What is much more dif¿cult to ascertain, are the conditions
and ideologies that are critiqued and problematized. The reader knows
what the book of Chronicles stands for, but the world of text production,
the social reality within which it emerged and which it critiques, stays
as elusive as Chronicles’ scholarship remains ambiguous on this issue
itself!
One of the issues is whether Chronicles constitutes an internal debate
and whether this internal debate is set off against a foreign world.
Schweitzer regards Chronicles as insider literature, “concerned with
issues important to the internal affairs of the Israelite/Yehudite commu-
nity.”61 It does not constitute crisis literature in the way Ezra–Nehemiah
59. Ben Zvi, “Utopias, Multiple Utopias,” 59.

60. Schweitzer, Reading Utopia in Chronicles, 74–75.
61. Ibid., 71.
seems to. It is not concerned with establishing outside borders or with

survival issues in the midst of a hostile environment.62
Similarly, Ben Zvi argues for Chronicles as a book dealing with inner
conÀicts within Yehud. Ben Zvi de¿nes it in terms of the temple in
Jerusalem: With “Israel” and its relationship with YHWH as self-evident,
the only problem was that of competition between different cultic
centers.63 The Jerusalemite cultic center developed from a “minor
incipient temple in a marginal area within Yehud” into the main institu-
tion in Yehud.64 He remarks that the only anxiety present was about the
success or failure of centralizing the temple. That anxiety disappeared in
the late Persian period (in which he dates Chronicles) when Jerusalem
became the capital of Yehud and the temple the central focal point.65
But does this lack of anxiety not deny the book of Chronicles its
utopian character because there seems to be no real dystopia in contrast
to which the book provides utopian images?
4.3. Dystopia as/and the Reality on Which an Alternative Is Served

In Doctor Who, at the beginning of the story, dystopia is quite visible as
the viewer sees a man running away from a group of humanoids with
fangs that chase him in order to eat him. Everyone seems to be in a sur-
vival mode. Dystopia is further recognizable when the Doctor observes
that he and his partner arrived at the end of the universe, implying there
is no place or time further. Dystopia is thus to be found in the ¿nal
moments of the universe, whatever length those moments might be. The
intentional community gathering around the rocket wants to escape from
this dystopia to a better world where the sky is made from diamonds.
Dystopia is a place where the coffee is sour.
But the socio-political circumstances of Yehud before and at the time
of the emergence of the book of Chronicles do not seem to be that of
sour coffee. Or at least, some scholars do not see it as such. Schweitzer
fails to see a dystopian context when he rejects the notion of Chronicles
62. Ibid.: “Put another way, Chronicles is not so much concerned with threats
from without as it is in addressing various issues of contention and dispute that have
developed within the entity known as ‘Israel’.”
63. Ehud Ben Zvi, “On Social Memory and Identity Formation in Late Persian
Yehud: A Historian’s Viewpoint with a Focus on Prophetic Literature, Chronicles
and the Deuteronomistic Historical Collection,” in Jonker, ed., Texts, Contexts, and
Readings, 118.
64. Ibid.
1
65. Ibid., 119.
as propaganda for a community in survival mode within hostile surround-

ings and in need of drawing external borders.66 Although the alternative
reality he depicts in some of the stories about the kings indeed has
dystopian features, for example his reading of the Chronicler’s construc-
tion of Jehoram’s history,67 these depictions do not translate into the
construction of a dystopian reality in the world of text production that
will justify the alternative reality.
In Ben Zvi’s arguments it is clear that the eschatological expecta-
tions—or “temperature”—were low. He sees a lack of rigidity which he
ascribes to a lack of a sense of being besieged that would have required
strong defensive positions.68 In Ben Zvi’s discussion on utopian images
in the prophetic books, he argues that the dominant worldview of the
ruling elite is not questioned as the institutions that support them are
rendered intact. The texts reinforce their central ideologies and their
de¿ance is aimed outwards: “a world outside Yehud or potential inner
challenges to the (dominant) ideological worldviews of the local elite.”69
The intent of such utopian images was to reinforce “a Yehudite…inner
communal sense of belonging to a particular group with a singular
relationship with YHWH.”70
But he does not rule out dystopia, so that the question is how far back
one must seek for a dystopian context if the world of text production is
of low eschatological temperature. Gary Knoppers draws attention to the
centrality of the Babylonian exile and its concomitant dislocation and
disruption in a large part of the biblical text. He argues that the same can
be said of Chronicles as an “alternative history” even if it was con-
structed two centuries after the Deuteronomistic history:71 “Exile was a
horri¿c fact of life in the late Iron age.”72 One thing to remember is that
the effect of the exile created dystopia:
66. Schweitzer, Reading Utopia in Chronicles, 71.

67. Ibid., 101.
68. Zvi, “On Social Memory and Identity Formation in Late Persian Yehud,”
143.
69. Zvi, “Utopias, Multiple Utopias,” 62.
70. Ibid.
71. Gary Knoppers, “Exile, Return, and Diaspora: Expatriates and Repatriates in
Late Biblical Literature,” in Jonker, ed., Texts, Contexts, and Readings, 30–31. He
acknowledges that the idea of the centrality of the Babylonian exile can be mis-
leading, because there was more than one Babylonian deportation, an Egyptian one,
as well as other population movements (32).
72. Ibid., 35.
Given the debilitating effects of famine and disease, the loss of life, the
disintegration of traditional kinship groups, the shrinkage of Judahite
territory, the voluntary migrations to other lands, and the forced deporta-
tions, it is not surprising that it took Judah centuries to recover from the
Neo-Assyrian and the Neo-Babylonian invasions.73
Oded Lipschits similarly refers to the destruction and upheaval
brought about by the invasion of Tiglath-Pileser III (745–727 B.C.E.)
that was so deep and far reaching that “no independent political entity
developed in the conquered Assyrian areas in the following centuries,
nor was there any military threat to Egyptian, Babylonian, or Persian
imperial rule from them.”74
Ehud Ben Zvi looks into the issue of ontological security in the light
of the catastrophe that befell Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E., namely the fall of
Jerusalem, the end of the monarchy and the deportation of a large group
of the upper class. He argues that a group with a strong sense of security
will not feel threatened by the calamity that befell them. Ben Zvi does
not entirely agree with the argument that this was not the case in Judah in
586. He is of the opinion that later on in the later Persian period the
anxiety about survival did not diminish if one takes into account “the
ubiquity of promises of a utopian future for Israel and the equally
ubiquitous ‘didactic’ explanations of the catastrophe in the discourse of
the Persian-period Yehud.”75 Yet Ben Zvi thinks that the people never
felt that their entire existence was at risk.76 There certainly would have
been a place for anxiety about future disasters or divine judgment, but
not in the sense that their identity as a text-centered community follow-
ing YHWH’s laws would have been threatened.77 What Ben Zvi sees is a
society that is internally focused and that mobilizes internal resources for
didactic purposes.78 The picture Ben Zvi paints is far from dystopian. In
fact, one gets a rather utopian idea about the community when he implies
that its members had time to play with texts despite being poor and
deprived of resources.79
73. Ibid., 42. It is especially the prophets (Jeremiah and Ezekiel) who underscore
the disruptive effect of the exile (46).
74. Oded Lipschits, “Achaemenid Imperial Policy, Settlement Processes in
Palestine, and the Status of Jerusalem in the Middle of the Fifth Century BCE,”
in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period (ed. Oded Lipschits and Manfred
Oeming; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 20.
75. Ben Zvi, “On Social Memory,” 106.
76. Ibid. The province of Yehud was very poor and marginal to the Persian
Empire, and thus unlikely to be drawn into a military campaign.
77. Ibid., 108.
78. Ibid., 109.
1
79. Ibid., 141.
Louis Jonker’s construction of the world of text production of

Chronicles similarly emphasizes peace and tranquillity due to the Pax
Achaemenidica. The cultic context was determined by the Persian
context in that the Pax Achaemenidica meant that the Persian religion
was not forced upon the subjugated peoples. This allowed the inner cult
of the territories to continue and to develop. According to Jonker this
was the case with the Yahwistic temple cult in Jerusalem which devel-
oped into the central cult of Yehud.80 The suggestion is that if there was
conÀict, its consequences were not dystopian in nature. If the focus was
on the inner workings of the community, Jonker argues that the prepon-
derance of peace and order within the Persian imperial kingdom would
have made any disturbance between those living in Jerusalem and those
within the Benjaminite tribal land undesirable: “[T]he proximity of this
tribal border to Jerusalem and the fact that the borders shifted over time
most certainly created awareness in Jerusalem of the contiguity of
Benjamin and Judah.”81
Yairah Amit,82 with reference to the way Saul is treated in the books of
Chronicles, suggests that this hidden polemic attested to in the book in
fact reared its head during the transition from Babylonian to Persian rule.
At the time of Chronicles, the polemic became more open and unambi-
guous, but in the book of Esther it went again underground and expressed
itself covertly. Amit says the problem of leadership did not go away and
the need to justify the Davidic dynasty’s leadership or ¿nding alterna-
tives to the House of David, “continued to preoccupy biblical literature
during the Persian period.”83 Amit states with reference to the advent of
Cyrus that went with the demise of the house of David:
at such a time of upheaval, and against a background of various changes
of power and government and a decline in the prestige of the House of
David, a polemic could well arise on the issue of leadership. It is possible
that in these circumstances the population of Benjaminite origin hoped to
assume the local leadership, a hope that reÀected their relative strength in
the recovering province of Yehud, as well as their disappointment in the
House of David.84
80. Jonker, “Engaging with Different Contexts,” 72.

81. Ibid., 71.
82. Yairah Amit, “The Saul Polemic in the Persian Period,” in Lipschitz and
Oeming, eds., Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, 647–61.
83. Ibid., 658.
84. Ibid., 657.
It does not look as if the immediate world of text production for Chron-
icles is suggestive of any dystopian elements. The dystopian element is
found in the history of two hundred years earlier with the Babylonian
invasion and the subsequent disruption of life within Judah. However,
in the immediate world of text production there seems to appear
polemics within the groups inhabiting the space of Yehud itself. Yet
these polemics do not appear to have caused dystopian circumstances
from which Chronicles emerged. Nonetheless, the issue of polemics
indicates boundary maintenance which may point to issues with the
composition of the intentional community of utopia.
5. Conclusion
In order to answer the question about what a utopian reading can say
about the world of text production of Chronicles, this essay employed a
particular de¿nition of utopia as a literary construct in order to determine
if a reading of Chronicles as utopia contributes to the world of text pro-
duction or text reception. The key elements that make up the de¿nition
were found to be an imaginary world, an alternative social reality, a
de¿ciency or lack, a better place and an imagined community. Dystopia
and a nostalgic utopia were found to be useful categories to explore some
elements in Chronicles.
The notion of utopia was explained with the help of a science ¿ction
text, namely the series of Doctor Who, more speci¿cally the episode
called “Utopia.” From that discussion it became clear that utopia and
dystopia are different sides of the same coin. The one cannot exist
without the other. What would have given Chronicles a utopian streak? If
the story of Chronicles served as a nostalgic utopia there would need to
be a context that would feed this nostalgia and utopia. Science ¿ction’s
linking of utopia and dystopia may provide an answer here so that one
needs to search for a dystopian context from which the text could have
emerged. The disruption of the exile could provide that impetus, but then
one would need to argue why that disruption became a primer for a text
whose physical world of production is one of relative peace and low
eschatological temperature.
1
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Judeans in the Persian Period. Edited by O. Lipschits and M. Oeming. Winona
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1
WORLD-BUILDING AND TEMPLE-BUILDING:
A GAME OF UTOPIAN PASTICHE IN 2 CHRONICLES 1–9
Frauke Uhlenbruch
1. Introduction
In this essay, two texts are read: an ancient text and a modern text. Of
course the texts’ wordings are very similar; one might say they are the
same text: 2 Chr 1–9. The same text is read as an ancient text—which is
a hypothetical task, as even an ancient text cannot be read completely
objectively and divorced from contemporary insights about it—and as a
contemporary text. A more natural reading might just be the reading
of the ancient text as modern. In this essay, I shall try to voice con-
temporary cross-associations, investigating the test-text 2 Chr 1–9 as a
potentially utopian reworking of similar material found in the book of
Kings. At the same time the passage is compared with contemporary
discussions about narrated worlds, as found in literary theoretical
material on utopian literature, as well as science ¿ction and fantasy.
Ehud Ben Zvi writes, “…what was authoritative for the literati and
their Chronicler was the outcome or outcomes of an interaction between
an authoritative source text they possessed and the world of knowledge
they used to decode it.”1 Here, I approach the outcome of an interaction
between source texts—1 Kings and 2 Chronicles—and the world of
knowledge we possess to decode these intermingled source texts today.
Second Chronicles portrays similar characters and similar story
features as Kings, but the narrative ground rules surrounding some of the
story’s features seem to have changed. Between 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles
it seems that 2 Chronicles “utopianizes” 1 Kings, which can make the
joint reading of both texts appear as a pastiche, raising many questions
about creating, circulating, and re-writing in ancient communities. Since
these questions are raised in contemporary scholarly discourse, it is also
1. Ehud Ben Zvi, “One Size Does Not Fit All: Observations on the Different
Ways That Chronicles Dealt with the Authoritative Literature of Its Time,” in What
Was Authoritative for Chronicles? (ed. Ehud Ben Zvi and Diana V. Edelman;
Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2011), 20.
interesting and worthwhile to look at how these questions are raised, and
what dif¿culties and opportunities appear for a contemporary reader
when she encounters these texts.
A pastiche is an assembly or collage made up of known parts. It does
not necessarily need to be a meaningless and contrived convergence
of knowns, although Fredric Jameson describes pastiche rather pessim-
istically in the following way: “Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of
a peculiar or unique, idiosyncratic style, the wearing of a linguistic
mask, speech in a dead language.” 2 With a nod to emergence theory,3
and against Jameson’s pessimistic statements about pastiche, I would
approach any sum of parts at least with the bene¿t of the doubt: a suf¿-
ciently complex new arrangement even of known parts has the capacity
of emerging as something new with previously unknown features. Those
who encounter the pastiche without being familiar with the original parts
of which it is made up may add their interpretation and their uniqueness,
which those who have known the originals might scorn or might embrace,
and de¿nitely have to acknowledge. (I am thinking of Instagram: while it
is admittedly a strange social phenomenon to take pictures of food with
my phone and make the picture look like I ate the food in 1973, this
high-tech nod to older aesthetics and technology adds something unique
and meaningful to contemporary life and it is all but a ridicule or scorn
of the past.)
In this essay I establish a series of more or less tenuous connections
between ancient texts and modern genres and theories, many of which
might appear to be prohibitively anachronistic. Calling 2 Chronicles,
or parts of it (steering clear of sweeping generalizations) utopian is an
anachronism, because the term and the concept of utopia were ¿rst intro-
duced by Thomas More in his work Utopia in 1516. When one refers to
Chronicles as utopia, it is viewed as disconnected from direct linear
inÀuences: Thomas More cannot have inÀuenced the Bible in conven-
tional direct lines of reception. Reading the Bible as utopia one implicitly
admits that there exists a utopian impulse that received its name from
Thomas More but has existed before that. Reading the Bible as an
ancient precursor to utopia seems to imply that there is a tendency in
humans to imagine improved states of being and to ¿nd ways to explain
2. Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

(London: Verso, 1991), 17.
3. Previously unknown properties can emerge if a suf¿ciently complex sum of
parts is assembled. I have dealt with this in some detail in “Hacked Aqedah—
Genesis 22 in Dialogue with Contemporary Political Science Fiction,” in “Not in the
Spaces We Know”: An Exploration of Science Fiction and the Bible (a forthcoming
special issue of Journal of Hebrew Scriptures).
1
UHLENBRUCH World-Building and Temple-Building 61
why the present consistently fails to ful¿l all wishes and desires. By
introducing a name for the phenomenon, Thomas More and the genre
that inherited the name “utopia” enable us to look back at older artefacts
informed by More and his utopian successors.
Utopia, however, is a slippery phenomenon: its de¿nition is still a
matter of discussion in Utopian Studies, which is necessary because
utopias and dystopias are still being produced. Recent times have seen a
signi¿cant turn in mainstream popular culture to tropes and themes
indebted to utopia—most often in the shape of the dystopia, and often in
science ¿ction. Current events such as surveillance by the NSA, covert
mood experiments by Facebook of which users were unaware, police
violence in the U.S.A., will inÀuence what is seen as dystopian. In a very
thought-provoking discussion on a podcast by cracked.com titled “Loss
of Privacy: Why People Born After 1995 Can’t Understand the Book
‘1984,’”4 it was asked why a dystopia in which total surveillance reigns
supreme (Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four) does not seem to be dystopian
to a contemporary younger generation anymore, and why it becomes
more and more dif¿cult to explain why this idea seems dystopian.
Surveillance has become a fact of life. It is already present in contem-
porary society and often defended by either appealing to a sense of fear
and then to a sense of security, or defended by appealing to service,
convenience, or customization. What this indicates is really that a
dystopian vision has an expiry date, which coincides with the main-
stream implementation of a formerly dystopian seeming idea, which in
reality, then does not seem as awful as in a ¿lm or book.
De¿nitions Àuctuate and should be updated as events warrant. For
the time being, I follow Darko Suvin when asked for a de¿nition of
utopia. Utopias are “verbal constructions of a quasi-human community
where socio-political institutions, norms and individual relationships are
organized according to a more perfect principle than in the author’s
community…”5 One might add that a dystopia could be de¿ned as
describing a society in whose members live in signi¿cantly worse
circumstances than in the author’s community. What is meant by “more
perfect” or “worse” changes, as I have tried to indicate by the example of
the podcast above: whether a text is understood as a utopia or dystopia
will depend strongly on the lived reality of the reader.
4. Jack O’Brien and David Wong, Why People Born After 1995 Can’t Under-
stand the Book “1984,” The Cracked Podcast. N.p. [cited 2 February 2015]. Online:
http://www.cracked.com/podcast/why-people-born-after–1995-cant-understand-
book–1984/.
5. Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History
of a Literary Genre (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 49.
With this brief introduction to de¿nitions and dif¿culties in mind, we

can approach utopia, dystopia (and related genres and de¿nitions), and
the Bible as an intricate play of contemporary associations, contem-
porary scholarship, and an ancient document. Reading as utopia may
help to take forward some interesting conjectures about past commu-
nities. The fact that we approve of utopia as a way of reading says a lot
about present ways in which we read, reconstruct, and accept intertextu-
alities, too. The novelty and the conclusion appear somewhere in
between an interest in modern hermeneutics and an historian’s interest in
a past community.
Reading as utopia is not a purely historical endeavour because it has
to be acknowledged that there is a certain disjunction as one enters a
discussion using terms such as “ancient” and “modern.” Reading as
utopia is a challenging endeavour, because we are faced with an intricate
problem: “meaning” is not found in the utopian description alone; it is
what was supposed to happen between a utopia and its intended readers,
conveyed via the point of view of an author or authoring community.
Seen from a non-faith perspective, contemporary readers are not the
intended readers of the Bible. Reading as utopia is not an easy or reliable
way to come to de¿nitive conclusions about an elusive past community,
but it does open an ancient text up to interesting questions and discus-
sions one may otherwise not have approached from this angle.
In order to read the test passage 2 Chr 1–9 as a pastiche of intertextu-
alities and meanings to a modern-day reader, a “family resemblance”
approach6 is advocated here to observe consciously how past, present,
and meaning Àuctuate (this approach is derived from the Weberian ideal
type method). If item (a) and item (b) exhibit a certain family resem-
blance, the resemblance is investigated, even if it is impossible that there
were direct historical, chronological inÀuences. For example, Raphael
Hythloday—the protagonist of More’s Utopia—is compared to the Queen
of Sheba, and General Utopus—builder-founder of More’s island—
is compared to King Solomon. I discuss how slight changes in narrated
worlds can inÀuence a text’s genre—utopia, dystopia, fantasy, fairy
tale—and thereby its intended function. The way in which the test
passage from 2 Chronicles engages with source texts is ¿nally compared
to Fredric Jameson’s description of postmodern pastiche, but it is con-
cluded that the passages from 2 Chronicles are different from a pastiche
in Jameson’s sense. The reconciliatory conclusion will be to leave the
6. Discussed in more detail in Frauke Uhlenbruch, The Nowhere Bible: Utopia,

Dystopia, Science Fiction (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015), esp. Chapter 3.
1
test passage be, as a hybrid text, made up of a fusion of ancient sources,

ancient imaginations, modern attempts at undoing ancient sutures, and
modern scholarly commentary.
In what follows 2 Chr 1–9 is approached in a series of more or less
interconnected case studies, mostly character-driven—King Solomon,
the Queen of Sheba—and also concept-driven: pastiche, genre.
2. World-Reduction and World-Building

In this section, the ¿gure of King Solomon is discussed as represented in
the test passage 2 Chr 1–9 and in parallel passages in the book of Kings.
Stuart Lasine writes about Solomon:
…the narratives that describe him merely simulate the reality of a potent
imperial king, who degenerates into a simulation of a despotic one. This
makes Solomon our contemporary, considering that we are now said to
live in a postmodern cyberspace in which “privacy and publicity dissolve
into one another.”7
This observation is contemporary and political: in the modern world we

are used to seeing shining ¿gures of political potency degenerate on
public stages into “simulations” when the campaign image fades in the
challenge of actual political of¿ce. Interestingly, if we were to follow up
this association, Chronicles’ Solomon appears more as the shining
campaign-image of a ruler and Kings’ Solomon more as a real-life ruler,
not immune to temptations, misjudgments, and political dif¿culties.
Chronicles as compared to passages describing similar events in 1 Kings
seems to offer a highlight-reel, biased towards representing an idealized
version. Descriptions of the temple and of Solomon’s wisdom and wealth
in 1 Kings are grand, too, but Kings also retains a certain grittiness, a
three-dimensionality: I would count the story about the harlots (1 Kgs
3:16–27) as evidence of this grittiness, and in addition to that the foreign
wives and worship of foreign gods (11:1–8) and the association of
Solomon as bringing about the division into two kingdoms (11:31–33).
The Solomon of the hypothetical utopia of Chronicles is compara-
tively Àat—a predictably beautiful, photoshopped campaign poster, not
likely to lapse verbally or behaviorally. His Àat representation is to some
degree expected if the text is regarded as a utopian depiction because
7. Stuart Lasine, Knowing Kings: Knowledge, Power, and Narcissism in the

Hebrew Bible (Atlanta, Ga.: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001), 14. In the citation,
Lasine quotes William Bogard, The Simulation of Surveillance: Hypercontrol in
Telematic Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 140.
utopias are not full representations of an idealized society. Ben Zvi

writes that “the depictions of utopian circumstances tend to appear in
short, poignant passages, they do not and cannot deal with all aspects of
the new ideal world, these texts suggest a prioritization of perceived
lacks and high desires…”8 A utopia is an arti¿cial construction of
descriptions of the most important advantages and signi¿cant differences
of a ¿ctional society, structured and described according to the priorities
of its authors.
As Sara Japhet observes, the Solomon of Chronicles is “indeed
Àawless, and several positive qualities are appended to his ¿gure, such
as his personal election, his special relationship with God, and the
achievement in his time of ‘rest’ and ‘peace’.”9 His wisdom, Japhet adds
to this differentiation of Kings-Solomon and Chronicles-Solomon, is
systematically understated in Chronicles.10 The Chronicler appears to be
more interested in focusing on Solomon as the temple builder than on his
legendary wisdom (though wisdom is of course also present). Between
both accounts he is both emphatically wise and emphatically a builder,
but Chronicles’ Solomon appears as somewhat more of a doer rather than
a thinker. It is possible to ask a highly relevant question to inquire into
the thoughts of the authoring community who crafted Chronicles’
Solomon, and also to inquire into the text-as-a-utopia: Is Solomon a
doer-¿gure who is supposed to inspire action in the intended readership?
Or is he a proxy-doer crafted to reassure that action is not currently
needed? He might inspire action or communicate that action should only
be taken by someone as shining and glorious as Solomon, providing a
story to experience building vicariously because it is not done (or not
possible to do it) in experienced reality.
Northrop Frye writes: “The utopian writer looks at his own society
¿rst and tries to see what, for his purposes, its signi¿cant elements are.”11
8. Ehud Ben Zvi, “Utopias, Multiple Utopias, and Why Utopias at All? The
Social Roles of Utopian Visions in Prophetic Books Within Their Historical
Context,” in Utopia and Dystopia in Prophetic Literature (ed. Ehud Ben Zvi;
Helsinki: Finnish Exegetical Society; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006),
60.
9. Sara Japhet, I & II Chronicles: A Commentary (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster
John Knox, 1993), 48.
10. Ibid. In Kings Solomon’s main task is to be a judge (ibid., 531); a charac-
teristic is his discernment in administering judgment. The story about the harlots is
presented as a case study. “In Chronicles, the more speci¿c connotation of
‘judgment’ is entirely omitted” (ibid.).
11. Northrop Frye, “Varieties of Literary Utopias,” in Utopias and Utopian
Thought (ed. Frank E. Manuel; London: Souvenir, 1965), 26.
1
If the society the utopian writer of Chronicles looks at were to be the

world of perceived historical facts of Kings, then the element thought to
be slightly more signi¿cant about Solomon is building the temple, with
his wisdom taking second place.12 The Chronicler might be inspired to
choose to focus on this speci¿c aspect or a pre-existing account because
of circumstances in his empirical reality. No easy conclusion can be
drawn though: if Chronicles were indeed a utopia that functions as we
expect a utopia to function—by juxtaposition of a ¿ctional better world
to a less ideal real world—then the Chronicler might depict an ideal
king who “does” more than he “thinks.” If these texts contain elements
of world-juxtaposition to be understood by its intended readers, maybe
“thinking,” wisdom, learning, was already deemed present among the
literati, but hands-on action was not, so that the wise, gritty Solomon was
rewritten according to popular discursive needs. Some utopias were
written as calls to action, some were written as thought games, but if an
author is not available to comment on whether a utopia was meant as
satire, call to action, or thought game, it is easy to misjudge this aspect
about a utopian text.13 Lacking such statements by the creator of a utopia,
it will be dif¿cult for a reader far removed in time to judge the utopia’s
intention. Some utopias, especially contemporary ones, are scathing
critiques of circumstances already present in contemporary society and
may contain an urgent warning to keep an eye on and raise awareness of
these issues.14
The meaning and mechanisms we are trying to trace with the help of
the concept of utopia are located somewhere between Kings, the focused
12. Roddy L. Braun, “Solomonic Apologetic in Chronicles,” JBL 92 (1973): 503.

Roddy L. Braun, “Solomon, the Chosen Temple Builder: The Signi¿cance of
1 Chronicles 22, 28, and 29 for the Theology of Chronicles,” JBL 95 (1976): 581.
13. Uhlenbruch, Nowhere Bible, 49. Cited there, are statements by two writers
of utopias about whether their utopia was intended as a call to action or not.
B. F. Skinner reports that his Walden Two was meant as quite a serious proposal but
was mostly misunderstood as satire, in B. F. Skinner, “Utopia as an Experimental
Culture,” in America as Utopia (ed. Kenneth M. Roemer; New York: Burt Franklin
& Co., 1981), 29. Edward Bellamy, on the other hand, reports that his Looking
Backward, which contributed to a social reform movement, was not actually intended
to inspire hands-on action towards social change, but was rather meant as a thought
experiment in Edward Bellamy, “How and Why I Wrote Looking Backward,” in
Roemer, ed., America as Utopia, 22.
14. One example of an especially dire contemporary dystopia, which lacks the
powerful aspects of rebellion and change for the better of most mainstream
contemporary Young Adult Dystopias, was written by Louise O’Neill after working
in the fashion industry: Only Ever Yours (London: Quercus, 2014).
utopianized version of Kings in Chronicles, and the empirical reality

surrounding the utopianizer, that is, the Chronicler.
Moving slightly away from speculations about possible utopian
propensities, in what follows I discuss world-building and functions of
literary characters in utopia. Having read both Utopia by Thomas More
and 2 Chr 1–9 it is possible to say that Chronicles-Solomon has more
than a few characteristics in common with Utopus, founder and builder
of Thomas More’s island.
Utopus creates an island: He “brought the rude and uncivilized inhabi-
tants into such a good government, and to that measure of politeness, that
they now far excel all the rest of mankind.” Utopus is part of the origin
myth of utopia. The thriving society that is endorsed by protagonist
Hythloday is something that only took its fully developed shape much
later.
Solomon creates a temple for Yahweh’s chosen people who already
“far excel all the rest of mankind.” The building in both cases brings
about a kingdom with a utopian-like governmental system, in Chronicles
something like a theocracy under Yahweh (if only for the duration of a
few verses), in Utopia something like a proto-socialist utopia.
What is the function of the character of Utopus and can we make any
statements derived from it about the function of the utopianized Solomon
in Chronicles?
The characters function as follows: Utopus is a ¿ctional character,
who, in the narrated world of Utopia, is already receded into (Utopia’s
¿ctional) history books. He is the world-builder of Utopia, not the
current reigning governor, and not a currently reigning governor in
the world of More’s initial readers. In the world of the Chronicler the
situation must have been analogous. Solomon was a legendary character,
already receded into history recorded in texts read by a community. Both
Utopus and Solomon are absent, invisible15 world-builders of worlds that
are symbolically juxtaposed with the real world.
As mentioned above, the meaning of Utopia is not the ¿ctional world
described in a given utopian setting, but rather what happens between the
¿ctional setting and those who read the story about it. Thus, with regard
to Chronicles-Solomon, it might be possible to say: the utopia is not just
15. Stuart Lasine shows how invisible or ungraspable Solomon is in his Knowing
Kings, Chapter 6, especially from p. 135. Other characters speak much, Solomon
does not. No back story about him is offered. He appears mainly as the temple-
builder; David’s hand, so to say, who cannot build the temple himself. “All that’s
left for Solomon is to ‘arise and do.’” Lasine, Knowing Kings, 136.
1
the temple, it is what happens between the temple and those who read the
Chroniclers’ story about Solomon and the temple.
Solomon is a world-builder, he builds a temple with appropriate cults,
diplomatic relationships (Huram of Tyre; the Queen of Sheba), gover-
nance, hierarchy, decorum; he establishes a home, a shrine, a center. But
in a utopian reading the description of such achievements is not the main
point; in utopia meaning is created because the narrated world is not
experienced by the audience. Chronicles focuses on Solomon the temple
builder, yet it and he are utopian: a game of being and not-being, gov-
erning and being governed, temple-building and temple-destruction,
being in the future and being in the past.
If the story about Solomon the temple builder is read in an empirical
reality of non-dominance, of no shining Solomon unequivocally
supported by uni¿ed all-Israel, then this story is not about building a
perfect structure, but rather about not-building. The utopia is nowhere
seen in reality; in this lacking reality, it exists only in a text, highlighting
the reduced possibilities of empirical reality.
Utopia is, in Jameson’s words “a kind of surgical excision of empirical
reality,…in which the sheer teeming multiplicity of what exists, of what
we call reality, is deliberately thinned and weeded out through an opera-
tion of radical abstraction and simpli¿cation which we will henceforth
term world-reduction.”16
In a utopian or science ¿ction reading, the Solomon of Chronicles
together with his reader who does not see his shining ¿gure and a shining
temple in contemporary reality, Solomon is not a world-builder so much
as a world-reducer, focusing reality on what the Chroniclers thought it
lacked: cohesion, dominance, a center, and a direct relationship with a
utopian deity.
2. Queen of Sheba
Utopian King Solomon receives a utopian traveler when he is visited by
the Queen of Sheba, the gender-bending Raphael Hythloday to his
General Utopus.
Raphael Hythloday—Raphael ‘Knowing about Nonsense’ as his name
translates—narrates in great detail and following an encyclopaedic
structure a paradigmatic-seeming society. All societal aspects deemed
important are described in neatly titled sections, such as “Of their towns”
16. Fredric Jameson, “World Reduction in Le Guin: The Emergence of Utopian

Narrative,” Science Fiction Studies 2, no. 3 (1975). Cited 1 February 2015. Online:
http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/7/jameson7art.htm.
or “Of their traf¿c.” This creates an effect that is uniquely utopian

and has been criticized many times, especially by anti-utopians or in
dystopias: the narrated world appears Àat, boring, and static, mainly
because divergences from the narrated situation are not reported.17 The
impression evoked, if one were to judge a utopia too quickly, would
be that the utopia’s author is endorsing a completely uniform society,
in which everyone follows robotically what everyone else does and has
been doing in exactly the same way ever since the ¿ctional republic was
founded. Assuming that it were legitimate to read a small passage from
2 Chronicles as a utopia, what Japhet writes about 2 Chr 9:3–4 rings true:
“What the queen saw in Jerusalem, and the impression it made, are
described in great detail.”18 Given the relatively concise style of much
biblical narrative, the impressions of the traveling queen are indeed
described in comparatively great detail:
When the Queen of Sheba saw how wise Solomon was and the palace he
had built, the fare of his table, the seating of his courtiers, the service and
attire of his attendants, his butlers and their attire, and the procession with
which he went up to the House of the Lord, it took her breath away.
(2 Chr 9:3–4, NJPS)
Note, though, that this is not the socialist everyman’s utopia we come to
expect from the genre of utopia. Solomon’s wisdom is alluded to, and in
a utopian socialist reading the butlers, attendants, and procession are
paradigmatic utopian stand-ins for the general population. An attempted
utopian reading of these verses can yield different outcomes: the atten-
dants and butlers are an intrusion of the everyday person into a courtly
romance. They are also backdrop to a courtly romance if one did not ask
for their perspective to be included. Who does the story ask us (or an
ancient reader?) to identify with? The glamour—the king, the queen—or
the below-stairs? The answer to this question can be genre-making, as
I will demonstrate below in more detail. But the issue also links in with
the unanswerable question from above. What is the purpose of this
passage-as-utopia? In a call-to-action the message of this passage to
its intended readers could be: “in an ideal kingdom, even servants are
well-dressed, included, present, well-behaved (this means you, average
person!).” But it might also be just a poetic detail, shaping a courtly story
of high romance told to an audience that has to ¿nd a narrative strategy
to portray itself as chosen while experiencing a disappointing reality.
17. For divergence as the norm, it pays off to turn to the genre of dystopia—
these narratives are most often concerned with those who ¿nd themselves
questioning the system, or for some reason “outside” of it.
1
18. Japhet, I & II Chronicles, 635.
With regard to gender a contemporary utopian reading of the encounter

between the Queen of Sheba and Solomon might and/or might not work.
Claudia Camp says that the Queen of Sheba is Woman Wisdom, come to
test Solomon. His wisdom equals hers. This could be a utopian and a
non-utopian cipher. Only in some utopias the utopian traveler travels to
Utopia on purpose. Often, the traveler stumbles upon the strange space
and gets to know it progressively. However, most utopias (unlike some
science ¿ction) are optimistic that communication between the traveler
and the newly encountered society and its members is quite easily possi-
ble. One might say: the traveler’s wisdom matches the utopian host’s
wisdom. Utopian travelers are estranged sometimes, but they are insight-
ful and overcome their xenophobia (if they even experience any) and are
met in a friendly way. In a utopia the visiting protagonists have to be if
not loveable, at least not negative characters: they are the representative
of the average-Joe (or average-Jane, see below) reader; their function in
the narrative is to ask those questions the reader would ask the proposer
of the utopian society. Since the traveler is the reader-representative of
the reader who is ultimately the addressee of the utopian proposal for
societal change, utopia portrays the home society as being worth the
effort: capable and intelligent enough to change for the better.
Interesting and puzzling with regard to gender is that utopian
protagonists are often male. The three protagonists of the feminist utopia
Herland (1915) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman are male, and also the
protagonist of The Dispossessed (1974) by Ursula K. Le Guin, though
the protagonists of the feminist utopia Mizora (1880/81) by Mary E.
Bradley Lane and Xenogenesis (also known by the title Lilith’s Brood;
1987–89) by Octavia Butler are female. There will be more examples on
both sides, but the general tendency seems to be a male utopian traveler
protagonist. In utopia, I would venture to propose—if the utopian
traveler is read as a representative of the home society, the traveler is
often male because the society from which he travels to utopia is/was
white and male. The presence of a black female traveler in 2 Chronicles
can probably be read as either empowering if we so choose, or
dismissing. The positive reading would be that the utopian traveler is
seen as a fairly positive representative of their society, who will be in
charge of bringing back knowledge to initiate a change for better; a
leader character, an adventurer, an open-minded, curious person, who is
respected both in her home society as well as in the society she visits.
The reader will identify with her and marvel vicariously through her at
the splendour of the ideal king. Another reading, as it were: if you see
yourself, that is, your home society as a woman, already equipped with
knowledge, riches and splendours of her own (“…came to Jerusalem to
test Solomon with hard questions, accompanied by a very large retinue,

including camels bearing spices, a great quantity of gold, and precious
stones,” 2 Chr 9:1), who is bedazzled by the much greater riches of the
king that she can only aspire to be—would this not require a utopian
reading that would tell the intended reader that they are best represented
by a “frail” woman who believes her riches to equal those of the ideal
male, but is foolishly mistaken?
One question this passage raises is whether a statement by the queen
indicates her conversion (the NT answers this positively in Luke 11:31
and Matt 12:42). “Sheba praises Solomon’s God but it is not clear that
she renounces her own religious traditions or converts to Solomon’s.”19
Does she convert, then? Does she surrender what is unique about herself
to the ideal? Is she the home society representative if this utopia is meant
to inspire action? Is she meant to inspire vicarious action or is she just
part of a beautiful reinforcing conversion story about how powerful the
religion of the intended readership is?
If the queen is a home society representative, then she converts and
abandons her old beliefs: in utopias the traveler often nearly worships the
new system. The travelers are enthusiastic converts to it, once they learn
everything about it, and vow to bring back their insights to their home
society and initiate changes for the better there. If the queen is just a plot
feature to underline an ideal king—not necessarily a utopian king—it
might be suf¿cient for the story if she praises Solomon’s god to add an
element of outside veneration to the validation of Solomon’s regime.
The Queen of Sheba in this snippet could be read as a utopian traveler,
but again, conclusions do not come easily. In this utopian pastiche of
Solomon’s fairy-tale-like riches and wisdom, the Queen of Sheba can be
read as the readership-representative within the story. She is somebody
who is as removed from the utopian state as the reader, and equally
dazzled and inspired by incredible wisdom and wealth. Her conversion to
Solomon’s faith might make the story more utopian; just praising, not
converting, lessens its utopian-ness somewhat.
3. Solomon the Science-Fiction/Fantasy King

One intriguing question to pose to the ancient text concerns the author-
ity of the “history” of Kings. Ben Zvi says that the Chronicler tested
the boundaries of what was considered a ¿xed fact of the past. The
19. Alice Ogden Bellis, “The Queen of Sheba: A Gender-Sensitive Reading,”

JRT 51, no. 2 (1995): 17.
1
Chronicler re-coded even ¿xed facts by adding, omitting, and trans-

forming.20 While perceived historical facts are not changeable, the
narrative that surrounds them is, but against changed surroundings the
facts may actually appear changed. In modern literary criticism genres
are differentiated by the construction of the narratives surrounding such
facts. The same basic storyline can easily turn into science ¿ction,
utopia, horror, fantasy, or fairy tale depending on how the storyline is
integrated into the narrated world.
Eric Rabkin’s21 nuanced investigation about the fantastic in literature
takes into account the context established by an author in a text and the
expectations with which a reader approaches the text. Fairy tales, for
example, should not be considered fantasy literature, according to
Rabkin, because between the narrated world and the reader’s expecta-
tions when reading a fairy tale, a talking wolf is entirely not unexpected.22
However, if a talking wolf would appear in a narrated world that gen-
erally operates according to more realistic principles, it would appear
to be fantastic. Another example of basic story tenets staying the same
in changed narrative surroundings comes from Suvin. He is actually
speaking about fantasy being an impure genre, how it plays with narrated
worlds versus empirical worlds, but his example illustrates changed
narrated surroundings well: “Gogol’s Nose is so interesting because it
is walking down the Nevski Prospect, with a certain rank in the civil
service, etc.; if the Nose were in a completely fantastic world—say
H. P. Lovecraft’s—it would be just another ghoulish thrill.”23
The fact that a wolf can talk does not really surprise Little Red Riding
Hood (nor is the protagonist of “The Nose” surprised that his nose has
left—only annoyed and inconvenienced, it seems). Were Little Red
Riding Hood a character in a Lovecraftian horror universe, the talking
wolf-monster might just make her lose her little red riding hood in the
same indescribable horror that routinely prevents Lovecraft’s prota-
gonists from going into too much gory detail.
The story feature I would like to engage to try the theory that facts can
stay but narrative changes so facts are changed, is Solomon’s theophany
at Gibeon. In 1 Kgs 3:5 and 3:15 Solomon’s theophany at Gibeon is
described (twice) as a dream. The same event in 2 Chr 1 is not described
as a dream: “That night, God appeared to Solomon” (2 Chr 1:7). Sara
20. Ben Zvi, “One Size Does Not Fit All,” 21.
21. Eric S. Rabkin, The Fantastic in Literature (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1976).
22. Ibid.
23. Darko Suvin, “On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre,” College English
34, no. 3 (1972): 376.
Japhet writes: “How signi¿cant this point is for the Chronicler’s religious
outlook is dif¿cult to say, as no further dreams appear in his sources; the
Chronicler himself makes no reference to dreams anywhere in his
book.”24
The change from the doubled insistence of 1 Kings that Solomon’s
theophany occurs in a dream to 2 Chronicles, where there is no such
hedging, is a change in the game rules of the narrated world of the past.
This change can make 2 Chronicles more fantastic, more utopian, and
less realistic. The fact that God communicates with Solomon is not
changed, but the narrative world is, by the omission of the mentioning of
the dream.
If we presuppose a readership used to the narrated, gritty, three-
dimensional world of 1 Kings, in which Solomon dreams about talking
to God—something that can surely happen to everyone—to 2 Chroni-
cles, where we can speculate that God appears to Solomon in something
that is not necessarily a dream, this might strike the trained reader of
historical fact in Kings as possibly more fantastic; and if not as more
fantastic, then de¿nitely as more open to interpretation and reÀection.
By adjusting the surrounding narrative ¿xed facts can suddenly be
presented within a loftier genre—maybe utopia, maybe fantasy, maybe
something like symbolism, or allegory—the formerly closed past is
signi¿cantly more available for re-appropriation and re-interpretation.
Maybe in a call-to-action utopian sense, the story is suddenly less of a
sober account of a communal past, but with the right interpretation and
re-appropriation becomes a metaphor for a shining future.
If the story in general is opened up towards being seen as more open
to interpretation, call to action, metaphor by allegory, this can easily
happen through small signals, like leaving out the rational explanation
that Solomon had a fanciful dream. If small signals change the game
rules of the narrated world ever so slightly, even those passages which do
not differ signi¿cantly are now part of a narrated world with different
rules. The lavish description of Solomon’s temple, which stresses gold
and precious stones over verses and verses appearing in a more fantastic
or utopian world reminds one of exaggerated riches of fairy tale
worlds—those old yet somehow timeless archetypical genres that are so
strikingly wide open to contemporary reinterpretation (cf. e.g., the recent
inÀux in fairy tale remakes—Into the Woods, Once Upon a Time, Snow
White and the Huntsman, Male¿cent etc. etc.—with a recognizable
framework but a lot darker to match the trendy dystopian look). Maybe
something similar happened here.
1
4. Pastiche and the Bible

Assessing what has been observed so far: there seems to be a generally
utopian overhaul of Kings, in which one can recognize some traits of
utopia, and some hints that there may have been a genre-changing
operation going on, enabling a re-appropriation of what may have been
perceived as historical fact.
I am not the only one who struggles with seeing the blurry reÀections
of Solomon or the Queen of Sheba in these texts. Stuart Lasine writes
that maybe the stories about the hidden, elusive Solomon are “encourag-
ing a variety of subjective responses to the texts.”25 Second Chronicles
might be a revamped version of utopia—one that had to be amended in
one or more ways:
x To ¿t a new reality: Little Red Riding Hood ¿lms no longer feature
a cute little girl and an actor dressed up in a wolf costume; the fairy
tale is made into a horror story to match contemporary fashion,
sensibilities, and markets; maybe Chronicles’ Solomon was not
deemed ¿t for a particular reality anymore, so made open to
interpretation again.
x To make the utopia a call to action: if the past account were seen as
¿xed, the reader would not deem change to the past possible; if the
story is made more eternal, symbolic-seeming, more fantastic,
there is more space for interpretation and more space for being
called to action in contemporary reality by it.
x To make the utopia a discouragement of action: by overempha-
sizing some larger-than-life features, this also removes the shining
royal from realistic attainability. Updating the past in such a way
might also convey a message of all the rest just being inspirational
symbols, not a call to action, just a thought-game encouraging
patience while circumstances outside were less than ideal.
I agree with Lasine, who writes:
Solomon appears one way in Kings and another in Chronicles, not to
mention the variety of different ways he appears to different commentators.
Are these varying images of Solomon also a function of the observer’s
“momentary mood” (or ideology, or hermeneutical habits)? Scholars would
not like to say so. Yet if the texts describe the king in such a way that the
“real” Solomon (both the literary Solomon and the historical personage)
remains invisible, it is unlikely that any academic attempt to bracket out
subjective factors will produce an “objective” portrait of the king.26
25. Lasine, Knowing Kings, 139 (emphasis original).

26. Ibid.
Made up of all these parts—Kings, Chronicles, scholarly commen-

taries—Solomon is a pastiched king in the contemporary imagination.
John Van Seters writes: “It takes no more than a moment’s reÀection
to realize that imitation plays a major role in the creation of literary
works and objects of art everywhere and in all ages.”27 He says that this
is certainly true also for the Bible. But, “the problem in the Hebrew Bible
lies in the anonymity of its authors (as compared with Greek authors),
which makes direction of dependence more dif¿cult to decide, but that
does not mean that literary dependence did not exist.”28
Let the mind of a contemporary reader be the place where the
intertextuality exists synchronically, independently of a “direction of
dependence.” “Consciously or unconsciously,” Lasine writes, “readers
make choices concerning the genre of the text they are reading. In so
doing, they expand the intertextual matrix of their reading by linking the
text with biblical and extrabiblical literature that is perceived as belong-
ing to the same genre.”29 This results in a constantly Àuctuating text,
because the genre a reader chooses for the text can change quickly: a text
can be swapped from history to fairy tale to fantasy easily and as subtly
as by removing a reference to a dream. It is possible that this does not
reÀect messiness or relativism, but that it is actually one of the few
reliable statements we can possibly make about the Bible and biblical
interpretation in the contemporary plus ancient worlds. It is always
changing and will not stay the same for even a moment.
The family resemblance approach is a heuristic device of sorts. The
family resemblances though are not static, especially not in my test
passage. I found it hard to make up my mind about whether the conclu-
sion is, yes 2 Chr 1–9 looks a lot like utopia—or no, there are too many
discontinuities, too many factors that can swing either way.
I think the key is that it actually is all-at-once, not just for the contem-
porary reader or scholar, but possibly even for the ancient community,
because—to complicate matters: “This social memory is neither the
Chronistic nor the Deuteronomistic narrative but what was in the mind of
the members of the community that read both of them.”30
27. John Van Seters, “Creative Imitation in the Hebrew Bible,” 6, presidential
address to the Candian Society of Biblial Studies, 2000 [cited 2 February 2015].
Online: ccsr.ca/csbs/2000prez.pdf.
28. Ibid., 7.
29. Lasine, Knowing Kings, 143.
1
30. Ben Zvi, “Utopias, Multiple Utopias, and Why Utopias at All?,” 23.
Hence, I want to close by proposing to read the text hermeneutically

as a cyborg, as a “whole” made up of parts. The story happens between
two accounts and their many readers. Ben Zvi speaks about the ancient
community in late Persian or early Hellenistic times of course. This can
be expanded to include modern readers, too, scholars and believers alike.
What can be seen in the test passage is what appears to be pastiche,
something that uses a seemingly random assortment of well-known
styles.31 Jameson, we remember, wrote that “Pastiche is, like parody, the
imitation of a peculiar or unique, idiosyncratic style, the wearing of a
linguistic mask, speech in a dead language.”32 This is not what happens
literally between Kings and Chronicles. Ehud Ben Zvi, for example,
observes that Chronicles tends to update the language of Kings and uses
Late Biblical Hebrew, not Standard Biblical Hebrew. But still: “Segments
of various biblical portions are employed in an anthological mosaic.”33
Whereas a mosaic seems to imply crafting stunning art from small
pieces, pastiche carries a connotation of irony, of satire, of being very
aware that old material is recycled, and quite possibly of an intention to
deface, desacralize the old by attacking it, and smashing it up and back
together violently. While Kings plus Chronicles may have made up a
mosaic, today the combination of Kings plus Chronicles plus modern
styles becomes pastiche in a post-secular environment in which academic
disciplines like Biblical Studies are struggling for survival.
In the mind of a contemporary reader, the Bible is very much and
quite literally “speech in a dead language,” whether one speaks about
Hebrew or translations like the KJV, which to some readers might be
familiar only because comic book villains are known to speak in KJV
citations.34 The Bible generates arbitrary and disjointed associations that
could not be direct linear inÀuences: “…pastiche plays with our fan-
tasies, teases us and changes shape before we can pin any meaning on it.
Ambiguity and ambivalence prevail.”35
31. “Or is it only modern historical scepticism, a modern unwillingness to

suspend disbelief when reading imperial propaganda, and modern uneasiness with
social strati¿cation and national service programs that make the Solomon of 1 Kgs
4–10 seem unbelievable or condemnable and his depiction ironic?” Lasine, Knowing
Kings, 144.
32. Jameson, Postmodernism, 17.
34. See Dan Clanton, “Graphic Novel,” in Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its
Reception, vol. 10 (ed. D. C. Allison; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015), 821–24.
35. Myra Macdonald, Representing Women: Myths of Femininity in the Popular
Media (London: Arnold, 1995), 114.
Sara Japhet writes, that “one of the book’s [Chronicles] most conspicu-
ous features, [is] its heterogeneity, which attracts the reader’s attention
on ¿rst reading.” Style, language, modes of writing, genres, differences
between historical records and lists, are “found by some scholars to be
irreconcilable in one author and to suggest different author-personalities
from the outset.”36
This, too, sounds very much like pastiche, even ancient pastiche.
Rather than being as pessimistic as Jameson about pastiche being a
random assortment of known styles which loses all its meaning, I would
want to counter with Donna Haraway37 and propose to embrace this text
as an incorporated cyborg: “A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid
of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature
of ¿ction.” 38 I believe this is true not only for Chronicles, but for most of
the Bible in today’s world. It is a hybrid of a book once organically
grown, now engineered and poked at by the machine of academia. It
exists in social reality, and it exists in the realm of ¿ction. “Cyborg
reproduction is uncoupled from organic reproduction.”39 I can bring a
modern theory—utopian theory—to the text and produce a cyborg text,
not at all organically grown, but fabricated from the juxtaposition of a
modern idea with an ancient text. And, as with Haraway, “This chapter
[this essay] is an argument for pleasure in the confusion of boundaries
and for responsibility in their construction.”40
The cyborg, Haraway writes, “is wary of holism, but needy for
connection.”41 By ¿rst disconnecting the biblical text from a linear chron-
ology, then re-connecting it with contemporary theory and unexpected
intertextualities we are creating an astonishing and very lively cyborg
text—an ancient text supplemented with modern associations, questions,
and techniques.
Bibliography
Bellamy, Edward. “How and Why I Wrote Looking Backward.” Pages 22–27 in America
as Utopia. Edited by K. M. Roemer. New York: Burt Franklin & Co., 1981.
Bellis, Alice Ogden. “The Queen of Sheba: A Gender-Sensitive Reading.” JRT 51, no. 2
(1995): 17–28.

37. Donna Jeanne Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and
Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” in Simians, Cyborgs, and
Women: The Reinvention of Nature (London: Free Association, 1991), 149.
38. Ibid., 150.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid. (my emphases).
1
41. Ibid.
Ben Zvi, Ehud. “One Size Does Not Fit All: Observations on the Different Ways That
Chronicles Dealt with the Authoritative Literature of Its Time.” Pages 13–35 in What
Was Authoritative for Chronicles? Edited by E. Ben Zvi and D. V. Edelman. Winona
———. “Utopias, Multiple Utopias, and Why Utopias at All? The Social Roles of
Utopian Visions in Prophetic Books Within Their Historical Context.” Pages 55–85
in Utopia and Dystopia in Prophetic Literature. Edited by E. Ben Zvi. Helsinki:
Finnish Exegetical Society. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006.
William Bogard, The Simulation of Surveillance: Hypercontrol in Telematic Societies.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Braun, Roddy L. “Solomonic Apologetic in Chronicles.” JBL 92 (1973): 503–16.
———. “Solomon, the Chosen Temple Builder: The Signi¿cance of 1 Chronicles 22, 28,
and 29 for the Theology of Chronicles.” JBL 95 (1976): 581–90.
Clanton, Dan. “Graphic Novel.” Pages 821–24 in Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its
Reception, vol. 10. Edited by D. C. Allison, C. Helmer, T. Römer, C.-L. Seow,
B. D. Wal¿sh, and E. Ziolkowski. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015.
Frye, Northrop. “Varieties of Literary Utopias.” Pages 25–49 in Utopias and Utopian
Thought. Edited by F. E. Manuel. London: Souvenir, 1965.
Haraway, Donna Jeanne. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-
Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” Pages 149–81 in Simians, Cyborgs, and
Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association, 1991.
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. London:
Verso, 1991.
———. “World Reduction in Le Guin: The Emergence of Utopian Narrative.”
Science Fiction Studies 2, no. 3 (1975). Online: http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/
backissues/7/jameson7art.htm.
Japhet, Sara. I & II Chronicles: A Commentary. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox,
1993.
Lasine, Stuart. Knowing Kings: Knowledge, Power, and Narcissism in the Hebrew Bible.
Atlanta, Ga.: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001.
Macdonald, Myra. Representing Women: Myths of Femininity in the Popular Media.
London: Arnold, 1995.
O’Brien, J., and D. Wong. Why People Born After 1995 Can’t Understand the Book
“1984.” The Cracked Podcast. Online: http://www.cracked.com/podcast/why-
people-born-after–1995-cant-understand-book–1984/.
O’Neill, Louise. Only Ever Yours. London: Quercus, 2014.
Rabkin, Eric S. The Fantastic in Literature. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1976.
Skinner, B. F. “Utopia as an Experimental Culture.” Pages 28–42 in America as Utopia.
Edited by K. M. Roemer. New York: Burt Franklin & Co, 1981.
Suvin, Darko. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a
Literary Genre. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979.
———. “On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre.” College English 34, no. 3 (1972):
372–82.
Uhlenbruch, Frauke. The Nowhere Bible: Utopia, Dystopia, Science Fiction. Berlin:
de Gruyter, 2015.
Van Seters, John. “Creative Imitation in the Hebrew Bible.” Presidential address to the
Canadian Society of Biblical Studies, 2000. Cited 2 February 2015. Online:
ccsr.ca/csbs/2000prez.pdf.
Part II
AFTER EXILE, UNDER EMPIRE:

UTOPIAN IDENTITY NEGOTIATIONS IN EZRA–NEHEMIAH
AND CHRONICLES
1
EXILE, EMPIRE, AND PROPHECY:
REFRAMING UTOPIAN CONCERNS IN CHRONICLES*
Steven J. Schweitzer
In my previously published work1 and in several presentations, I have

used the methodology of utopian literary theory to assist in reading the
book of Chronicles and the book of Ezra–Nehemiah. In this essay, I will
be approaching how Chronicles conveys its utopia with attention to three
speci¿c concerns—the exile, the empire, and the role and function of
prophecy—using this same interpretive lens. I will ¿rst summarize
brieÀy key aspects of this perspective as I understand it, and then move
into a discussion of these concerns in Chronicles.
Utopian literary theory is an approach developed over the last four
decades by scholars whose primary areas of research are utopian and
dystopian literature and science ¿ction. The terms utopian and dystopian
are related to the broader concept of utopianism, which seems the more
appropriate point of departure for clarifying the scope of these two
* This essay originated as two presentations, one in the Chronicles–Ezra–

Nehemiah Section at the SBL Annual Meeting in Baltimore, November 24, 2013,
and the other in a special session on Utopia and Chronicles at the European Asso-
ciation of Biblical Studies Meeting, held at the University of Wien in Vienna,
Austria, July 8, 2014.
1. Steven J. Schweitzer, Reading Utopia in Chronicles (LHBOTS 442; London:
T&T Clark International, 2007); idem, “The Genealogies of 1 Chronicles 1–9:
Purposes, Forms, and the Utopian Identity of Israel,” in Chronicling the Chronicler:
The Book of Chronicles and Early Second Temple Historiography (ed. P. Evans and
T. Williams; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2013), 9–27; idem, “Judging a Book
by Its Citations: Sources and Authority in Chronicles,” in What Was Authoritative
for Chronicles? (ed. E. Ben Zvi and D. Edelman; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns,
2011), 37–65; idem, “Exploring the Utopian Space of Chronicles: Some Spatial
Anomalies,” in Constructions of Space I: Theory, Geography, and Narrative (ed.
J. L. Berquist and C. V. Camp; LHBOTS 481; London: T&T Clark International,
2007), 141–56; idem, “Utopia and Utopian Literary Theory: Some Preliminary
Observations,” and “Visions of the Future as Critique of the Present: Utopian and
Dystopian Images of the Future in Second Zechariah,” in Utopia and Dystopia in
Prophetic Texts (ed. E. Ben Zvi; Publications of the Finnish Exegetical Society 92;
Helsinki: Finnish Exegetical Society, 2006), 13–26 and 249–67.
adjectives. Utopianism is the representative label for three manifesta-

tions: (1) as the literary genre of utopia; (2) as an ideology through which
the world is viewed; and (3) as a sociological movement that writes
utopias.2 Thus, just as biblical scholars now restrict the designation of
“apocalypse” to a literary genre, but are willing to discuss the “apoca-
lyptic” content of a text composed in the milieu of “apocalypticism” by
a community or individual, so a similar distinction must be made when
the terms “utopia,” “utopian,” and “utopianism” are employed.3 This
precision allows for the reading of “utopian” content in a work that
would not typically be classi¿ed as a “utopia” proper by generic
considerations. The same nuances obviously apply to the three inverse
terms “dystopia,” “dystopian,” and “dystopianism.” It is also worth
emphasizing that utopia and dystopia are relative and subjective terms:
one person’s or community’s utopia is another’s dystopia, and vice
versa. One must always ask: A utopia for whom? A dystopia for whom?
“Utopia” is itself, of course, the name of the ¿ctional remote island
created by Thomas More in his famous work of the same name. The
word, like many names in his text, is Greek in origin and was, most
likely, used because of its meaning.4 However, the literal meaning of
2. See the highly inÀuential works by Lyman Tower Sargent, “The Three Faces
of Utopianism,” Minnesota Review 7, no. 3 (1967): 222–30; idem, “Utopia: The
Problem of De¿nition,” Extrapolation 16 (1975): 137–48; idem, “Eutopias and
Dystopias in Science Fiction: 1950–75,” in America as Utopia (ed. K. M. Roemer;
New York: Burt Franklin, 1981), 347–66; idem, “The Three Faces of Utopianism
Revisited,” Utopian Studies 5, no. 1 (1994): 1–37; idem, “The Problem of the
‘Flawed Utopia’: A Note on the Costs of Eutopia,” in Dark Horizons: Science
Fiction and the Dystopian Imagination (ed. R. Baccolini and T. Moylan; New York:
Routledge, 2003), 225–31; idem, “Utopian Traditions: Themes and Variations,” in
Utopia: The Search for the Ideal Society in the Western World (ed. R. Schaer,
G. Claeys, and L. T. Sargent; New York: New York Public Library and Oxford
University Press, 2000), 8–17. This understanding made an immediate change in
utopian studies as evidenced by the de¿nition’s complete acceptance by Kenneth M.
Roemer, “De¿ning America as Utopia,” in Roemer, ed., America as Utopia, 1–15.
3. As mentioned, biblical scholars will recognize that these same classi¿cations
have been employed by Paul D. Hanson to address the nature of “apocalyptic”:
literary genre, worldview, and social movement lying behind the production of such
literature (“Apocalypticism,” IDBSup: 28–34); cf. John J. Collins, “Introduction:
Towards the Morphology of a Genre,” Semeia 14 (1979): 1–20. While having other
dif¿culties, Hanson’s distinctions have aided in the further exploration and, at times,
complete reversal of previous thinking and associations of the term. A similar
phenomenon can be found in the critical literature on utopianism.
4. See, e.g., the comments by Eugene D. Hill, “The Place of the Future: Louis
Marin and his Utopiques,” Science Fiction Studies 9 (1982): 167–79, esp. 173–74.
1
SCHWEITZER Exile, Empire, and Prophecy 83
“Utopia” is not obvious. It is both the “good place” (eutopia) and “no
place” (ou topia). This ambiguity has provided the basis for subsequent
studies of utopias.5 The imagined place is both idealized and does not
exist in reality. Thus, “utopian” has come to mean “fanciful,” “fantastic,”
“impossible,” and “unrealizable.” However, it can also mean “visionary,”
“ideal,” “better-than-the-present,” and “an alternative reality.” The
tension between these understandings of the adjective is essential to
interpreting utopian literature and should not be readily dismissed in
favor of one or the other connotations.
In terms of its temporal location, it is clear that utopia is not
necessarily a future place.6 That utopia does not have to be a future place,
but can exist in the present (just as More’s island of Utopia does)
eliminates an automatic equivalency between eschatology and utopia.7 It
5. See the scholarly literature cited and further discussion of this point in my
doctoral dissertation, “Reading Utopia in Chronicles” (University of Notre Dame,
2005).
6. Often passed over without much thought is the fact that More’s famous island
of Utopia existed contemporaneously with medieval England and that the lands of
Euhemerus and Iambulus (in Diodorus Siculus 5.41.1–46.7; 2.55.1–60.3) were also
contemporary societies with ancient Greece. Temporal distance is more typically
invoked in Urzeit and Endzeit myths, such as the Garden of Eden and the New
Jerusalem or in Plato’s myth of the then 9,000-year-old Atlantis civilization (in
Crit. 108e–115d and Tim. 23d–25d). Temporal displacement can be past or future
depending on the individual utopian or dystopian work; and while spatial displace-
ment towards the Other is very common (i.e., journeys to remote regions), it can also
be articulated as the Other coming near (i.e., visitors from remote regions).
7. The following Greek texts have been discussed in light of their utopian
content or as depictions of classical utopias: Hesiod’s Golden Age (in Theogony and
Op. 109–180, 822–824); Homer’s societies of Phaeakia (in Od. Bks. 6–8), and the
Ethiopians (in Il 1.423; 23.205; Od. 1.22; cf. the Lotus-eaters in Od. 9.83–104);
Herodotus’s description of the Ethiopians (in Hist. 3.22–23); Plato’s Republic, Laws
(esp. 3.702a-b), and his description of Atlantis (in Crit. 108e–115d and Tim. 23d–
25d); Xenophon’s Cyropaeida and Anabasis; the land of Meropis in Theopompus (in
Strabo, Geogr. 7.3.6); the travel narratives of Euhemerus (in Diod. Sic. 5.41.1–46.7)
and Iambulus (in Diod. Sic. 2.55.1–60.3); Hecataeus of Abdera’s On the
Hyperboreans (in Diod. Sic. 2.47.1–6); Heliodorus’s Aethiopica; and Lucian’s Verae
Historiae. Note that the societies depicted in these works are located in all three
possible temporal relationships with the present: past, contemporary, and future.
However, while such an association is not always the case, many of the
constructions of society in utopian and dystopian terms that appear in the Hebrew
Bible and the New Testament are in fact eschatological or future-oriented. Several
texts or descriptions from the biblical corpus and works related to it have also been
labeled “utopian”: the Garden of Eden (Gen 2); the eschatological visions of the
prophets (esp. in Amos, Hosea, Micah, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Second Isaiah, Third Isaiah,
is not the temporal placement of the utopia, but rather the depiction of
the society which it aims to portray that is central. In fact, the organi-
zation and qualities of the society depicted are the one commonality
between all works considered to be utopian in nature.8 Whatever else
utopian literature may be, the term utopian describes a good society that
is better than that of the author’s present, just as the term dystopian refers
to a society that is worse than the present.9
As a recognized methodology in literary criticism, utopian theory is
related to a number of contemporary literary theories, especially decon-
structionism, sharing many of the same presuppositions regarding the
means by which a text generates meaning. Of particular importance are
the ideas of “neutralization” and “defamiliarization” or ostranenie.10
Second Zechariah); the Priestly Source of the Pentateuch; the “Jerusalem-theology”

of the HB; the temple society of Ezek 40–48; the Christian community of Acts 2–4;
the Letter of Aristeas; the Temple Scroll, the War Scroll, and New Jerusalem texts
from Qumran; the description of the Essenes in Philo (Prob. 75–91; Hypoth. 11.1–
11.18 in Eusebius, Praep. ev. 8.6,1–7; 8:11,1–8) and in Josephus (Ant. 13.171–173;
18.18–22; B.J. 2.119–161); the description of the New Jerusalem in Rev 21:1–22:5;
and Augustine’s De civitate Dei. Note the placement of these utopias in all three
temporal frames as in the Hellenistic material, but with many more examples of
eschatological, and particularly apocalyptic, scenarios.
8. Darko Suvin notes that utopias come in a variety of models and proposals, but
all of them are organized; there are no disorganized utopias (Metamorphoses of
Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre [New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1979], 50).
9. This conclusion is also partially demonstrated by the fact that a dystopia, the
“bad” society and inverse of utopia, has the portrayal of an inherently “worse”
society than the present situation as its common theme. The dystopia typically is
depicted as the result of the logical extrapolation of present abuses or problems
either in terms of their intensity or pervasiveness in the literary reality of the dys-
topian text. However, a dystopia may also be formed by the removal of key elements
in the present society that either promote well-being or hope for the future. Thus,
stripped of the good, society succumbs to its worst aspects, practices, and beliefs in
the realization of a dystopia. See the comments by M. Keith Booker, The Dystopian
Impulse in Modern Literature: Fiction as Social Criticism (Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood, 1994), 18–20; Tom Moylan, Scraps of the Untainted Sky: Science
Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia (Boulder: Westview, 2000); and the essays in the volume
Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and the Dystopian Imagination (ed. R. Baccolini
and T. Moylan; New York: Routledge, 2003).
10. These related ideas, long associated with Russian Formalism, are the back-
bone of deconstructionism. The gaps, seams, and inconsistencies of the text provide
the place where a meaning can be constructed. On the relationship between utopian
theory and deconstructionism, see, e.g., Roland T. Boer, Novel Histories: The Fiction
of Biblical Criticism (Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld Academic, 1997), 104–68, esp. 109;
1
In this view, utopian literature invites readers “to reconsider their notions
of the normal and the familiar…[so that] one can safely assume that
contemporary readers are particularly aware of the tensions and ambigui-
ties observable in utopian visions. This emphasis on the provisional
nature of all utopian systems encourages readers to employ their own
utopian imagination.”11 In this light, the organizational structure of the
utopia becomes a means of social critique, whether deriving ultimately
from the reader or from the text, which constructs an alternative world
that calls the present order into question at every turn.
Indeed, in More’s Utopia—the central, but not only, text in de¿nitions
of the literary genre of utopia—the island of Utopia exists as a better
alternative reality ¿lled with critiques of More’s present social situa-
tion.12 The same is true for the various examples of Hellenistic utopian
Paul Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia (ed. G. H. Taylor; New York:
Columbia University Press, 1986), 16–17; and Erin Runions, “Playing It Again:
Utopia, Contradiction, Hybrid Space and the Bright Future in Micah,” in The Labour
of Reading: Desire, Alienation, and Biblical Interpretation (ed. F. C. Black, R. T.
Boer, and E. Runions; SemeiaSt 36; Atlanta: SBL, 1999), 285–300. The “singular
relevance” of deconstructionism to utopian theory is noted by Hill (“Place of the
Future,” 167). He also advocates, based on the landmark work by Louis Marin
(Utopics: Spatial Play [trans. R. A. Vollrath; Atlantic Heights, N.J.: Humanities
Press, 1984]), the central place which neutralization and self-deconstruction holds in
the ideology of the utopian text. Departing from Marin’s system, Hill returns to
“authorial intention” as playing an important role in situating the ideology of the
utopian text in its “ideological context.” This blending of more traditional “historical-
critical” analysis and contemporary literary theory, particularly reader-response, is
common to most recent works in utopian theory, including that of Boer; cf. the claim
that utopias and works of science ¿ction tend to be written in the context of “sudden
whirlpools of history” which produce radical change that inÀuences the perspective
of the authors according to Darko Suvin, “The Alternate Islands: A Chapter in the
History of SF, with a Bibliography on the SF of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the
Renaissance,” Science Fiction Studies 10 (1983): 239–48, here 242. See also the
inÀuential works by Fredric Jameson, “Of Islands and Trenches: Neutralization and
the Production of Utopian Discourse,” in The Ideologies of Theory: Essays 1971–
1986. Vol. 2, The Syntax of History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1988), 75–101; repr. from diacritics 7, no. 2 (1977): 2–21; and Michel Foucault, “Of
Other Spaces,” diacritics 16, no. 1 (1986): 22–27.
11. Frank Dietz, “Utopian Re-visions of German History: Carl Amery’s An den
Feuern der Leyermark and Stefan Heym’s Schwarzenberg,” Extrapolation 31
(1990): 24–35, here 33.
12. The relationship between alternative reality and historical present is well
articulated by Northrop Frye: “The utopian writer looks at the ritual habits of his
own society and tries to see what society would be like if these ritual habits were
made more consistent and more inclusive” (“Varieties of Literary Utopias,” in
literature, which include such examples as Hesiod’s “Golden Age” in

Works and Days, the Republic of Plato, the depiction of Distant Lands in
Homer, Herodotus, Theopompus, Hecataeus of Abdera, and Heliodorus,
the Panchaeans in Euhemerus and the Island of the Sun in Iambulus, and
the portrayal of Cyrus in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia. The importance of
social critique in utopian literature is emphasized in recent critical theory
as a means of reading such works not as blueprints for ideal societies,
but rather as revolutionary texts designed to challenge the status quo and
question the way things presently are being done. Thus, utopias depict
the world “as it should be” not “why it is the way it is.” In other words,
utopias are not works of legitimation (which provide a grounding for the
present reality), but works of innovation (which suggest a reality that
could be, if its parameters were accepted). Largely under the inÀuence of
Marxism, utopias have traditionally been viewed negatively as literary
works of oppression that restrict the “revolutionary” spirit as the power-
ful elite impose a system on the masses. Given the highly detailed
organizational structures, especially hierarchical social pyramids, com-
mon to utopias, such a reaction is not surprising. However, the inter-
relationship between the utopian text and the reality against which it
de¿nes its values has provided a means of assessing the “utopian
ideology” of the text. This phrase, “utopian ideology,” is an oxymoron in
Marxism, which distinguishes between the two concepts as opposites.
Since, in the traditional Marxist system, ideology leads to revolution,
while utopia is viewed as a vehicle for maintaining the status quo, Marx-
ism has traditionally rejected utopia and favored ideology. However,
from a literary critical perspective drawn from contemporary scholars
working on utopian literature rather than utopian communities or
communities founded on utopian principles, the typical Marxist de¿ni-
tions of utopia and ideology are inadequate to account for the true nature
of utopia: it is an ideology, and one which can be revolutionary in that it
provides a strong social critique. Utopia is not opposed to ideology, but
is an ideological position itself that can be identi¿ed in a text, a counter-
ideology designed to question the present historical situation.13
Utopias and Utopian Thought [ed. F. E. Manuel; Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton

MifÀin, 1966], 25–49; repr. in The Stubborn Structure: Essays on Criticism and
Society [Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1970], 109–34, here 124).
13. This dichotomy is part of the heritage of Marx and Engels; cf. Lyman Tower
Sargent, “Authority and Utopia: Utopianism in Political Thought,” Polity 14 (1982):
565–84.
1
This reassessment of utopian literature produces a signi¿cant by-

product: the utopian construct does not necessarily reÀect the historical
situation of the author, that is, the author does not legitimize his present,
but criticizes it by depicting the literary reality in terms not to be found
in the author’s society. The utopian text does not reÀect historical reality,
but future possibility. For example, attempting to ¿nd the structures of
society from More’s Utopia in his contemporary England would produce
a distorted view of England during this time period.14 However, to take
More’s portrayal as the opposite or another view of constructing society,
the problems of his contemporary English society (at least in More’s own
view) would become accessible to the reader.
In summary, the methodology of utopian literary theory contends that
utopian literature functions as a rejection of the present status quo
instead of a rigid blueprint for the present and unchanged future. It
af¿rms that the portrayal of society in a work of utopian literature is a
critique of the present situation by offering in its place a better alterna-
tive reality that is based on different principles than the current reality.15
Utopian images construct an alternative reality to the present, and reveal
something about the ideological conÀict out of which a better or worse
future is being articulated.
Many scholars have observed that Chronicles is not an eschatological
text, but one with deep concerns for the future of the community. I
contend that this future-orientation of the book provides the reader with
an alternative reality, one couched in the literary past, but calling out
possibilities for new structures, systems, and perspectives on how the
community should respond to the challenges of its day. In this way, the
utopianism of Chronicles has a great deal in common with Ezekiel’s
restored temple, the New Heavens and New Earth, the New Jerusalem,
and the future anticipated by the Qumran community. However, while
these other texts present their utopian ideology as future idealized
visions, Chronicles presents its utopian future as an idealized portrayal
set in Israel’s historical past, meant to provide alternative understandings
of the present and address what the Chronicler perceives as pressing
concerns for his audience.
14. This point is repeatedly made, with examples, by Sarah R. Jones, “Thomas
More’s ‘Utopia’ and Medieval London,” in Pragmatic Utopias: Ideals and Commu-
nities, 1200–1630 (ed. R. Horrox and S. R. Jones; Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001), 117–35.
15. In a similar way, dystopian literature critiques the present by either rejecting
certain practices of the contemporary society or highlighting a ¿xation on its baser
elements, or both.
Utopia After Exile

The two exiles imposed on the people of Israel (the Assyrian deportation
of 722/721 B.C.E. and the Babylonian exile of 587/586 B.C.E.) are
depicted as catastrophic events in both the genealogies and narrative of
Chronicles. “Unfaithfulness” (+3/) has produced these dystopias for the
people. However, this is not the end of history, nor is it the end of Israel.
Indeed, although the northern kingdom was still perceived to be in a state
of exile at the time of the Chronicler (1 Chr 5:26), Chronicles suggests
the possibility of a future return for these tribes (2 Chr 30:6–9). In the
same regard, the Babylonian exile was not the end for the southern
kingdom of Judah, but Chronicles presents it as only a temporary period
of rest which “wiped the slate clean” to provide a new opportunity to
rebuild a society that is not hindered by the failures of the past. Thus, in
Chronicles, the land is empty during the exile (2 Chr 36:21), which
disrupts the spatial-temporal lines of continuity with the past.
The period of exile witnesses the cessation of the monarchy, the tem-
ple cult, the people’s dwelling in the land, and, at least by implication, the
prophetic word. Cyrus’s decree at the conclusion of the book indicates
that the temple will be rebuilt, the people will return to the land, and the
prophetic voice and its ful¿llment are active once again. However,
the only monarch mentioned is the Persian Cyrus, who speaks with a
message from God and acts in obedience to it.16 The dystopian political
organization of the past, under the Davidic kings, remains in the past.
The future utopia in Chronicles will not necessarily be realized through
the reestablishment of the Davidic dynasty. While the Chronicler holds
out the possibility of a restored Davidic monarch, as evidenced by the
Solomonic genealogy in 1 Chr 3:17–21 and the recounting of the Davidic
covenant in 1 Chr 17, 28–29, there is nothing in Chronicles that requires
the re-establishment of a Davidic ruler. Thus, the exile serves as a
moment of discontinuity between the political system of the past and the
16. John W. Wright correctly notes that this assertion of direct divine com-
munication by Cyrus is a “Solomonic claim” by the foreign ruler, but proceeds to
state that “No assessment is made of the validity of this claim, however” (“Beyond
Transcendence and Immanence: The Characterization of the Presence and Activity
of God in the Book of Chronicles,” in The Chronicler as Theologian: Essays in
Honor of Ralph W. Klein [ed. M. P. Graham, S. L. McKenzie, and G. N. Knoppers;
JSOTSup 371; London: T. & T. Clark, 2003], 240–67, here 258). Yet, coupled with
the Chronicler’s previous attribution of direct divine communication to Pharaoh
Neco, the Chronicler’s assessment seems to af¿rm the claim by Cyrus and indeed
heightens the prestige of Cyrus by recourse to a Solomonic parallel.
1
present day, with temple and Torah as the two primary means by which
to transcend this rupture and serve as sources of continuity with the
hallowed past.
Again, the exile serves as the spatial-temporal line of demarcation in
Chronicles.17 The future cannot be the same as the past, nor is it a simple
continuation of it. Much of the past is irrevocably lost (e.g., the temple
vessels, the ark, and the borders of the Israelite nation) without any
possibility of restoring these original conditions or items. Instead,
adaptation in the face of historical change is the avenue to be pursued in
the construction of a better alternative reality to the past and present. As
I have argued in other publications, the Chronicler’s rejection of a single
ideal time or condition in the past—that is, there is no one moment that is
set up as the goal toward which the community seeks to recover and
reshape itself—this rejection of a singular event or time in favor of
multiple potential better constructs, opens up numerous possibilities for
the future. This is particularly evident in the details of various cultic
reforms. None is identical. Variation and adaptation are the keys to
success, while under the guise of continuity to a utopian construct.
So also with the political dimension: none of the judicial systems in
Chronicles is identical nor is the spatial extent of Israel’s land consistent
nor does the Davidic monarchy seem to have a particular function in
the restoration society. The past should not be replicated, but its positive
and negative lessons should be learned for living in the present and
future. There is no blueprint for a future political utopia in Chronicles.
Rather, Chronicles presents a better alternative reality that has a political
dimension, but which focuses on the cult rather than political organiza-
tion.18
In order to move his audience past the “trauma of exile,” the Chronic-
ler mitigates the lasting repercussions and signi¿cance of that particular
event. The exile is not eliminated from the retelling of Israel’s history,
but it is recast. While in the Deuteronomistic History, the exile hangs as
a shadow over all of the narrative and is itself the culmination to which
that story has been leading, this focus is downplayed and rede¿ned in
17. This is a common device in Hellenistic utopian literature and in More’s

Utopia for establishing a key point in the historical development of a utopian
community. See the remarks about the exile’s relegation to an “interruption” in
Chronicles by Knoppers (I Chronicles 1–9, 514; idem, I Chronicles 10–29, 889).
18. This makes Chronicles very different from Hellenistic utopian literature,
which almost never discusses a utopia with cultic concerns as a key component of its
political program. The exception to this is the political utopia with priests as the ¿nal
authority in Euhemerus (in Diod. Sic. 5.42.5; 5.45.3b–5; 5.46.2–3).
Chronicles. The exile is a fact, but not the ongoing reality for the
Chronicler. The exile happened, but the community does not need to live
as if it still suffers under its weight. The Chronicler is clear that the exile
for the southern kingdom is over. Cyrus, through divine direction and
intervention, brought it to an end. Through repentance, the northern
tribes may be restored, but the southern tribes have already been brought
back to the land. The books of Samuel and Kings are a “negative”
history, of what not to do and how things fell apart, resulting in exile.
As the people live in exile, this account both explains how the current
trauma occurred and how to avoid it in the future. However, there is not
much in Samuel and Kings to build on when that community has
returned to the land and begins to recreate a society that is constructed to
succeed (as opposed to not failing). Thus, the community has a new
opportunity to create a new future, no longer shackled by the past and the
“negative history” that the Deuteronomistic History had espoused, as it
draws on the utopian principles from this new positive version of Israel’s
history, the book of Chronicles.
As a parallel to this marginalization of the exile, another minimiza-
tion occurs in Chronicles concerning the exodus event. This signi¿cant
moment both for Israel’s history and its theology is acknowledged in
Chronicles, but without much focus or commentary. The exodus is not
explicitly mentioned in genealogies in 1 Chr 1–9 and not in 1 Chr 2
(where one might expect it chronologically), as there are no narrative
asides or other chronological markers that are linked to the event. While
key individuals (such as Moses, Aaron, and Phineas) or objects (such as
the tabernacle and its apparatus) are mentioned, they are invoked without
reference to the exodus itself. Indeed, it is absent from the genealogical
material and only appears very few times throughout the narratives
which follow in the book of Chronicles.
I want to outline quickly nine instances concerning the exodus in
Chronicles. The ¿rst is the narrative comment that the Levites carried the
ark as Moses had commanded (1 Chr 15:15). This, of course, occurred
during the exodus, but it is not explicitly mentioned. Similarly, in 1 Chr
21:29, the text reports that Moses made the tabernacle in the wilderness,
again without further development.
Both of these texts are unique to Chronicles, but do not explicitly
mention the exodus itself. However, in 2 Chr 20:10–11, part of the
Chronicler’s Sondergut, Jehoshaphat’s prayer for deliverance from the
current military threat recounts God’s previous command to leave these
very nations alone when the people came from the land of Egypt. Now,
these peoples are attacking, and Jehoshaphat recognizes that they are
1
“powerless,” proclaiming “We do not know what to do, but our eyes
are on you.” The prophetic word from the Levite Jahaziel, which
immediately follows Jehoshaphat’s prayer for assistance, uses language
from the crossing of the Sea in proclaiming that the “battle is not yours
to ¿ght, but God’s” and that the people are to “stand still and see the
victory of the LORD” (2 Chr 20:13–17). The people are victorious
because of God’s intervention and their belief in the LORD and his
prophets (so 2 Chr 20:20), and not due to military power against a
signi¿cantly larger enemy army.
The next four instances of the exodus in Chronicles have parallels in
Samuel–Kings. First, David’s prayer to God (1 Chr 17:21) mentions
Israel’s redemption out of Egypt, with the parallel in 2 Sam 7:23; second,
the narrative statement that Moses put the tablets in the ark at Horeb,
after God brought the people out of Egypt (2 Chr 5:10), with its parallel
in 1 Kgs 8:9; third, Solomon’s prayer of dedication (2 Chr 6:5) mentions
that God had brought the people out of Egypt with its parallel in 1 Kgs
8:16; and fourth, Solomon’s prayer following the dedication (2 Chr 7:22)
again mentions God’s deliverance of Israel out of Egypt, with its parallel
in 1 Kgs 9:9. In these texts, the Chronicler retains brief references to the
exodus and all focus on God’s role in being the one who performed the
act, similar to the event at the time of Jehoshaphat above.
There are also two instances in which source material mentions the
exodus and resulting wilderness wanderings, but Chronicles lacks that
information. The ¿rst is in the composite song in 1 Chr 16, drawn from
Pss 105, 96, 106, which constitutes the ¿rst formal worship in the book.
While copying portions of each psalm and piecing them together to
create something new, the Chronicler also deletes the references to the
wanderings during the period of the exodus from those earlier works in
choosing which parts have been recast into this new composition, now
one without reference to the exodus. Second, the Chronicler does not
mention the importance of the date of the building of temple in terms
of the date of the exodus, as is done famously in 1 Kgs 6:1. This theo-
logically signi¿cant moment in 1 Kings is linked directly to another
theologically signi¿cant moment in Israel’s past, one which Chronicles
fails to highlight. Thus, in the ¿rst worship described in the book and at
the dedication of the temple, the exodus is absent.
Thus, in the Chronicler’s utopia, the exodus has been minimized and
its importance controlled. I believe this parallels the restricted nature of
the exile in the book. That the exodus motif and the exile are linked in
other books, such as the intimate and creative association in Second
Isaiah, it may be that the Chronicler saw them as connected ideas, and so
sought to restrict both the exodus and the exile in his work, to move the
people beyond this exilic theology towards a better alternative reality
that they should embrace.
Utopia Under Empire

By controlling the exile (and its corollary, the exodus), a dystopia is
being overcome and the Chronicler can suggest a way forward. However,
in this utopia, in contrast to the overthrow of the Egyptians as a result
of the exodus, the foreign empire remains in control after the exile. The
subjugation of Israel under a foreign power without an independent
political system raises serious questions concerning the Chronicler’s
advocacy of such prospects for the future, in his work composed some-
time during the transitional fourth century B.C.E.19 Whether the foreign
power from the fourth century B.C.E. in question is Persia or Greece is
relevant to the discussion, but the answer does not alter the main points
that I wish to make.20 Is political independence a necessity for utopia, or
can utopia exist under an empire?
If the Chronicler, as seems to be the case and argued by several recent
scholars, fails to advocate the overthrow of or revolt against the imperial
regime, then the implementation of a better alternative reality by the
removal of the foreign power can only come through God’s action. The
Chronicler may allow for such to happen, but this is not the primary
message which he wishes to convey. The readers of Chronicles gain no
insight into the process by which such events would occur. Instead, the
Chronicler does provide evidence that the current power is to be accepted
and dealt with for the bene¿t of the community, as they are the instru-
ments of God at this time. God’s control of history is a central concern in
Chronicles. If this present empire (whether Persian or Greek) should be
overthrown by another, then that must be the will of God or a result of
19. The precise date of Chronicles is a matter of dispute, while there is broad
agreement on the general window of the late fourth or early third century B.C.E.
Apart from the complexity of the textual variants in the postexilic segment of the
Solomonic genealogy in 1 Chr 3:17–24, there is nothing that requires dating the
book past the transitional period from the Persian to Hellenistic eras (Gary Knoppers,
1 Chronicles 1–9: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AB 12;
New York: Doubleday, 2004], 116; Schweitzer, Reading Utopia in Chronicles, 3–5).
20. The issue of whether the late Persian period or early Hellenistic era is more
probable will not be addressed here; cf. Section 1.1.2 on the date of Chronicles in
Reading Utopia in Chronicles. The subject here is restricted to the issue of Israel’s
subjugation to a foreign power as an ideological problem for a utopian construction
of reality.
1
God’s involvement in human affairs. However, the community is not to

seek the overthrow of the foreign power, as their current situation is the
will of God for them at this time.
God provided the means to attain a utopia, a lasting utopia, by the
actions of Cyrus and the Persian Empire.21 I will not recount here the
arguments by many scholars in favor of viewing the restoration of the
Davidic dynasty as unnecessary according to Chronicles, but rather
af¿rm that the role and function of the monarch has shifted away from
the Davidides to the Persian rulers and to the worship of God at the
temple which they authorized. One is tempted to agree with Jonathan
Dyck that if the Chronicler had been among those in the procession to
greet Alexander the Great as recorded in Josephus (Ant. 11.326–339), the
Chronicler would have been at the front leading the way for the arrival of
this next instrument of God.22 The community’s obligation is to respond
accordingly and take advantage of the situation in which they ¿nd them-
selves. Two passages are signi¿cant in this respect: Shishak’s invasion at
the time of Rehoboam (2 Chr 12:7–12) and a section of Solomon’s
prayer at the temple dedication (2 Chr 6:36–40).
In the ¿rst, God allows Jerusalem to become temporarily subject to
Egypt to instruct the Israelites in “the difference between serving [God]
and serving the kingdoms of other lands” (2 Chr 12:8). This verse could
be read as a reÀection by the Chronicler on the state of subjection to
Persia (or Greece) in his own day. Such a reading would echo the
perception of slavery to Persia expressed as a complaint in Neh 9:36–37.
However, the Chronicler is quick to conclude the section on Shishak’s
invasion with the comment that “conditions were good in Judah” (2 Chr
12:12). The conditions in this state of affairs were thus better and more
desirable than those under most of the subsequent Davidic monarchs
whose rules are viewed negatively, even though they were not subjected
to foreign powers. Conditions can still be good—L&—even under
empire, at least according to the Chronicler.
21. This assumes a Persian date for Chronicles, but is still valid for a Hellenistic
date. The process begun under the Persians could continue under these new leaders.
The point of departure for a new future in Chronicles is the exile and the promised
restoration, not the subsequent shift in world powers. Compare the remark that “the
effective political power of the day is not a matter of concern to the Chronicler” by
Richard J. Coggins, “Theology and Hermeneutics in the Books of Chronicles,” in
In Search of True Wisdom: Essays in Old Testament Interpretation in Honour of
Ronald E. Clements (ed. E. Ball; JSOTSup 300; Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld Academic,
1999), 263–78, here 266.
22. Jonathan E. Dyck, The Theocratic Ideology of the Chronicler (BIS 33;
Leiden: Brill, 1998), 3.
In the second, Solomon concludes his prayer with a brief petition for
God to forgive the people once they have repented in their state of
punishment: an exile from the land (2 Chr 6:36–40). What Solomon does
not say about the state of exile in this prayer is signi¿cant. If the
Davidic–Solomonic era is an “ideal” state to which Israel should hope to
return by replication, as many scholars have believed, then this would be
an appropriate location for comments regarding the future restoration
of the people from exile, of the temple complex, and of the Davidic
dynasty. However, all that the text relates is that God should forgive
them without specifying how that forgiveness would take practical form.
Chronicles also lacks the line in 1 Kgs 8:50b–51 that God should cause
their “captors” (-!' f) to grant the people compassion. Perhaps the
Chronicler wishes to avoid the possible labeling of the Persians (or
Greeks) as “captors” who are holding the community as prisoners.
Perhaps this is one additional way in which the Chronicler presents the
foreign kings as the legitimate political authority in his utopian con-
struction of reality. In the Chronicler’s opinion, the Persians (or Greeks)
should not be compared to the Egyptians who held Israel in the “furnace
of iron” (+ $: C ! :KV), as they are negatively described in that same text
from 1 Kgs 8:50b–51. This, again, ¿ts nicely with the marginalization of
the exodus in the book. Instead, similar to the main message in Second
Isaiah, which also reworks the exodus tradition but in more explicit
ways, the foreign empire is the divine agent through whom God is
working to establish a better alternative reality for the community if they
too will join in this process.
If this position of tolerance by the Chronicler of foreign powers in his
political utopia is accepted, then Chronicles has no direct political
parallel in the utopian literature from antiquity. That the Hellenistic
utopias should be independent city-states is not surprising given the
Greek’s loathing of kings and propensity toward local autonomy.23 The
vast majority of texts in the HB, NT, and Second Temple period reÀect
the belief that either a Davidic descendant or God himself will rule over
the chosen community. Perhaps the lone exception is the local Christian
communities of the NT and of the book of Acts in particular.24 These
utopian Christian communities accept—or are instructed to accept—
23. See the comments by Erich S. Gruen, “Introduction,” in Images and

Ideologies: Self-de¿nition in the Hellenistic World (ed. A. Bulloch, E. S. Gruen,
A. A. Long, and A. Stewart; Hellenistic Culture and Society 12; Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1993), 3–6, esp. 4–5.
24. See the detailed discussions of these various primary texts in my dissertation,
“Reading Utopia in Chronicles,” pp. 159–81.
1
many, though not all, of the social parameters imposed on them, working
within the overall limits of the socio-politico-economic system of the
Roman Empire. These communities do not attempt social upheaval or
political revolt. Such would have likely been disastrous for the Àedgling
Christian communities. The Chronicler has a parallel interest: identifying
what must change and what cannot change given the present historical
situation, so the community may Àourish. The Chronicler fails to see the
wisdom of political revolt, so that course of action is discouraged.
However, the future of the community can be built on the temple cult,
since this institution has the backing of the political power of his day,
and provides the source of stability and identity for the community.
This view of utopia under empire is also consistent with the
Chronicler’s understanding that God is really the true ruler, regardless of
who sits on the physical throne. That the LORD is the true king and that
the kingdom belongs to him is explicit in the unique phrase “the king-
dom of the LORD” (!#!' =) + / /),
which appears once in the entire
Hebrew Bible, in 2 Chr 13:8. The passage recounts a conÀict between
Jeroboam of the northern kingdom and Abijah. The Davidide Abjiah
states, “And now you [the northern tribes] think that you can withstand
the kingdom of the LORD in the hand of the sons of David, because you
are a great multitude and have with you the golden calves that Jeroboam
made as gods for you.”25 The Chronicler emphasizes that the kingdom is
God’s, while it is entrusted to David and his sons. This is consistent with
the statement earlier in the narrative at the death of Saul (1 Chr 10:14),
when the narrator provides the unique explanation, “Therefore the LORD
put him [Saul] to death and turned the kingdom over to David son of
Jesse.” It was God’s kingdom entrusted to Saul and given, by God, to
David. It is God’s action, and not human action; it is God’s kingdom and
not a human empire. A similar point is made by the Chronicler at the
time of the transition to Solomon in 1 Chr 29:23 in comparison to the
parallel in 1 Kgs 2:2. The 1 Kgs 2 passage reads, “So Solomon sat on the
throne of his father David; and his kingdom was ¿rmly established”
while 1 Chr 29:23 reads, “Then Solomon sat on the throne of the LORD,
succeeding his father David as king.” Again, the difference between
these texts highlights that the throne truly belongs to God.
25. The phrase “kingdom of the LORD” also appears in the LXX of 1 Chr 28:5, but
not in the MT: In the transition to Solomon, David states, “And of all my sons, for the
LORD has given me many, he has chosen my son Solomon to sit upon the throne of
the kingdom of the LORD over Israel.”
Further, as is well known, at the end of his book (2 Chr 35:20–22), the
Chronicler claims that Pharaoh Neco spoke words from the mouth of
God and that Cyrus was “stirred up” by God to ful¿llment of the
prophetic word. There is no Davidic king; there are foreign kings being
used by God to ful¿ll God’s purposes. Davidic kings could not produce
utopia, but only dystopia. However, the Chronicler’s present is different.
A foreign king, over a foreign empire, has been established by God. Yet
the true king, regardless of who is on the physical throne—whether
Davidide or Persian—is ultimately God, according to the Chronicler.
Thus, the Chronicler contends, as long as the people follow God,
whether through the temple or through the Torah by “seeking the
LORD”—then their future will be secure, and the reality that awaits them
is utopian, for they are now after the exile and under empire, both seen as
a result of God’s gracious acts to Israel. One dystopia has been overcome
and another potential dystopia has been signi¿cantly rede¿ned. From this
perspective, at least according to Chronicles, utopia is reality.
Utopia Through Prophecy

Scholars have recognized that the treatment of prophecy (as well as the
numerous speeches) reported throughout the narrative of Chronicles
performs the function of communicating the book’s ideology and
dominate themes.26 These two devices are among the multiple “authority-
conferring strategies” employed by the Chronicler.27 While this assess-
26. See, e.g., Simon J. De Vries, “The Forms of Prophetic Address in

Chronicles,” HAR 10 (1986): 15–36; Rex Mason, Preaching the Tradition: Homily
and Hermeneutics After the Exile: Based on the “Addresses” in Chronicles, the
“Speeches” in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah and the Post-Exilic Prophetic Books
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), esp. 13–144, 257–62; Otto Plöger,
“Reden und Gebete im deuteronomistischen und chronistischen Geschichtswerk,” in
Aus der Spätzeit des Alten Testaments (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971),
50–66, esp. 54–66; repr. from Festschrift für Günther Dehn zum 75. Geburtstag (ed.
W. Schneemelcher; Neukirchen–Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1957), 35–49; Mark
A. Throntveit, When Kings Speak: Royal Speech and Royal Prayer in Chronicles
(SBLDS 93; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987); and Claus Westermann, “Excursus:
Prophetic Speeches in the Books of Chronicles,” in Basic Forms of Prophetic
Speech (trans. H. C. White; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1967), 163–68. On speeches
revealing the author’s purpose and themes in Hellenistic historiographic works, see
Charles W. Fornara, The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1983), 142–68.
27. The phrase and concept is taken from Hindy Najman, “Interpretation as
Primordial Writing: Jubilees and Its Authority Conferring Strategies,” JSJ 30 (1999):
379–410, here 381.
1
ment of the Chronicler’s use of prophecy and speeches has tended to

emphasize how the status quo is reinforced and authorized by such
rhetoric, utopian literary theory would suggest such proclamations indeed
express the desire for something different and better than the present
circumstances. Thus, rather than maintenance of the status quo, prophets
and prophecy convey other aspects of the Chronicler’s utopia, couched
in the authoritative prophetic voice. Further, the ability of the Chronicler
to convince his audience that the utopia presented in the text is indeed
a better alternative reality rests heavily on the authoritative status of
Chronicles itself, and that it may in fact present itself as having prophetic
status.28
The unique roles of prophecy and prophets in Chronicles indicate a
transition in the understanding of these phenomena during the Second
Temple period. William Schniedewind lists several observations about
the prophets in Chronicles: (1) When Kings is unclear about why certain
events happened, prophets may be invoked to provide the answer in
Chronicles; (2) They most typically function as interpreters of past and
present events, rather than predictors of the future; and (3) Perhaps most
importantly, prophets have become historians, the writers of the histor-
ical sources mentioned in Chronicles.29 This third prophetic function is
¿rst attested in the book of Chronicles. Does the Chronicler create this
association or does he build on a common idea of his time and capitalize
on it? While it is dif¿cult to determine, the role of the prophet as histor-
ian functions within the utopian society depicted in the book, claiming
a role for prophets essential to this construction of reality—they are the
ones who interpret it and give it meaning—and one previously not
explicit in the tradition. The Chronicler presents something new: prophets
write history. Scribalism and prophecy are related activities. Thus,
scribal activity may be considered prophetic in nature. By association,
this link established between scribalism, prophets, and historical writing
functions as a means of asserting the authority of the Chronicler’s own
composition—an account of the past most likely written by a scribe who
28. Compare the similar remarks by Louis Jonker, “The Chronicler and the
Prophets: Who Were His Authoritative Sources?,” in What Was Authoritative for
Chronicles? (ed. E. Ben Zvi and D. Edelman; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns,
2011), 145–64, here 160–61.
29. William M. Schniedewind, “The Chronicler as an Interpreter of Scripture,”
in The Chronicler as Author: Studies in Text and Texture (ed. M. P. Graham and
S. L. McKenzie; JSOTSup 263; Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld Academic, 1999), 158–80;
idem, The Word of God in Transition: From Prophet to Exegete in the Second
Temple Period (JSOTSup 197; Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld Academic, 1995).
would claim the same prophetic inspiration for his own work as he
assigned to the “prophetic” scribes of the past.30
As part of the Chronicler’s utopian construct, prophecy functions
to connect the past with the present by the interpretation of events.
Prophecy and prophets function in a very speci¿c way in Chronicles:
they are one of the means for promoting innovation in the tradition while
at the same time af¿rming continuity with it. These dual, and seemingly
contradictory, functions convey the essence of the Chronicler’s vision for
a utopian future without expressing it in the form of predictive prophecy.
Instead, the past and present are recorded and interpreted by prophets for
the bene¿t of the community centered around Jerusalem—whether in the
preexilic period as in the narrative or in the postexilic period during the
time of the Chronicler.
In his own authoritative composition, the Chronicler has retrojected
his utopian vision into the past in order to actualize it in his present and
into the future. This utopian vision does not replicate the past nor
continue the status quo of the present. By his use of the prophets, the
Chronicler critiques the present and offers his understanding of a better
alternative reality anchored in the words and inherent authority of these
30. While Chronicles certainly exhibits characteristics of a text produced by

scribes, not many scholars would argue that it is a prophetic text, at least on the basis
of form. However, the lack or scarcity of prophetic oracles does not determine the
“prophetic” nature of any given text. Chronicles itself claims that historical writings
as well as oracular material were composed by prophets in the past.
Chronicles is not an apocalyptic text, but it does exhibit scribal features, especially
those associated with the wisdom tradition. See, e.g., Joseph Blenkinsopp, “The
Sage, the Scribe, and Scribalism in the Chronicler’s Work,” in The Sage in Israel
and the Ancient Near East (ed. J. G. Gammie and L. G. Perdue; Winona Lake,
Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 307–15; idem, “Wisdom in the Chronicler’s Work,” in
In Search of Wisdom: Essays in Memory of John G. Gammie (ed. L. G. Perdue,
B. B. Scott, and W. J. Wiseman; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1993),
19–30; Christine Schams, “1 and 2 Chronicles,” in Jewish Scribes in the Second-
Temple Period (JSOTSup 291; Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld Academic, 1998), 60–71; and
Antje Labahn, “Antitheocratic Tendencies in Chronicles,” in Yahwism After the
Exile: Perspective on Israelite Religion in the Persian Era (ed. R. Albertz and
B. Becking; STAR 5; Assen: Van Gorcum, 2003), 115–35, esp. 123–35.
See, e.g., 1 Chr 29:29–30; 2 Chr 9:29; 12:15; 13:22; 20:34; 21:12–15; 24:27?;
26:22; 32:32; 33:18?; 33:19?; 35:25. The division between history and prophecy on
the basis of form is to be rejected. Compare the labels the “Former Prophets”
assigned to the historical narrative of the Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings and the
“Latter Prophets” used to refer collectively to the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel,
and the Book of the Twelve. The so-called “historical psalms” are another example
of the blurring of formal genre distinctions, in this case, between history and poetry
(or liturgy).
1
personages and concepts. It is signi¿cant that the Chronicler does not

offer an apology for their authoritative status. The Chronicler has not
created new sources of authority, but draws on those already prominent
in the tradition. This is true despite the “creation” or presentation of
named prophets known only in Chronicles. That is, the Chronicler may
“invent” particular individuals, but their authority is based on their
identity and function as prophets within the narrative of Chronicles. The
Chronicler chose categories from his own day that were already invested
with authority and supplied the content of their messages to allow for
these sources to support his own presentation of Israel’s past. In the
creation of the content of these sources, the Chronicler anticipates a trend
in later Jewish literature to appeal to sources of authority for supporting
particular practices.31 With these strategies for conferring authority, the
Chronicler attempts to solidify the status of his own composition.
Louis Jonker notes that several prophetic ¿gures known from Samuel–
Kings have been used with little adjustment in Chronicles, such as
Nathan, Ahijah, Shemaiah, Micaiah ben Imlah, and Huldah.32 However,
it should be observed that even these common presentations have
particular emphases in Chronicles: the centrality of the Jerusalem temple,
authentic worship of God, and trust in God rather than military strength
and alliances.
Jonker has also argued correctly that prophetic ¿gures unique to
Chronicles appear in the context of battle accounts or cultic reforms.33
Of these unique portrayals, the function of the Levitical singers and
musicians as prophets has drawn much scholarly attention, particularly
as a supposed reÀection of contemporary practice in the Second Temple
period. However, I want to suggest that perhaps we should not see this as
a statement of historical reality. That is, instead of taking this to mean
that Levitical singers and musicians were commonly understood to be
prophets and that there was some need to anchor the present practice in
the hallowed past (to give it authoritative status), we might rather view
this as an innovation on the part of the Chronicler desiring a new and
alternative perception of the activity of these singers and musicians. In a
new historical context without a royal court, where can the prophetic
voice be found? In the temple, among the Levitical singers and musi-
cians. A royal court is not necessary for the prophets to bring the word—
31. Compare, as only one example among many, the appeal to the Heavenly
Tablets and other sources of authority in Jubilees. See, e.g., Najman, “Interpretation
as Primordial Writing”; and the similar remarks made concerning Chronicles by
Knoppers, I Chronicles 1–9, 133.
32. Jonker, “The Chronicler and the Prophets,” 147–48.
33. Ibid., 148.
singers and musicians are, or should be, the carriers of the prophetic
word. Prophecy is now linked with the temple, and not as a marginal
activity. Prophecy is part of the normal operation of the temple liturgy.
This link of prophecy and the temple in Chronicles is a dramatic shift
from the tradition. Does this reÀect historical circumstances or a desired
reality?
The further repeated connections between Levites and prophets
throughout the book of Chronicles suggests a desire to associate more
closely prophecy and the Levites. As with other activities associated with
the Levites, this is not to the strict exclusion of non-Levitical prophets,
but rather points to greater trust and recognition of Levites as prophets
and to fewer authentic prophets recognized apart from the Levitical
orders. Again, from my view, this type of rhetorical strategy not only
serves to control the prophetic voice, but it also ¿ts with the Chronicler’s
utopian vision of greater importance, involvement, and authority for the
Levites as they are explicitly identi¿ed with roles and functions previ-
ously marginal or unknown for them in the tradition. The Chronicler’s
utopia is a Levitical one, and the use of authoritative prophets and
prophecy in this way serves to enhance their position within it.
Additional prophets appear in the context of cultic reforms, such as
Azariah ben Oded at the time of Asa in 2 Chr 15:1–19, Zechariah ben
Jehoiada at the time of Joash in 2 Chr 24:17–22, and the unnamed
prophet at the time of Amaziah in 2 Chr 25:15–16. Their messages
emphasize the worship of God at Jerusalem with appropriate Levitical
personnel and the removal of other deities and practices associated with
them. The prophetic word serves the purpose of unity around the central-
ity of the temple and the deity worshipped there and the marginalization
of alternatives to that center in this utopian construction of society.
While several prophets appear in the narrative to encourage the people
in the context of battle, the Levite Jahaziel at the time of Jehoshaphat in
2 Chr 20:13–19 stands out with his impassioned proclamation drawing
heavily on language from the deliverance at the Sea in exodus. The next
morning, Jehoshaphat encourages the people with words echoing lan-
guage from the book of Isaiah that they should “believe in the LORD your
God and you will be established.” To this, the Chronicler’s Jehoshaphat
adds the imperative to “believe his prophets.” The parallel command to
believe God and believe the prophets certainly enhances the prestige of
these prophets, and note that it is now plural rather than the singular
Jahaziel as the referent. Of course, the Israelites do so, and experience
miraculous deliverance from an overwhelming coalition coming against
them. While this could be simply labeled as propaganda, it is of a parti-
cular type: it is utopian. It is easy to see how the prophetic word from
1
Jahaziel and the exhortation from Jehoshaphat are messages for the
Chronicler’s contemporary audience sometime in the late Persian or
early Hellenistic period. Their words call the Chronicler’s audience to
live in another reality, a utopian reality, guided by the prophetic word to
trust God and believe the Levitical prophets, singing praise as the means
of combat and relying on God rather than relying on their military
strength in the face of external armed threats.
The ¿nal reference to prophets as a group in Chronicles occurs at the
culmination of the story, 2 Chr 36:15–16, which describes the circum-
stances of Jerusalem’s destruction and the exile of the people. In contrast
to Jehoshaphat and the people of his time, the “leading priests and the
people” at Jerusalem’s demise did not believe the prophetic words sent
by God, and instead mocked the messengers and scoffed at the prophets.
Ultimately, this passage understands that the devastation wrought by
Babylon comes on Israel as a direct result of the failure to obey the
prophetic word. At the book’s ¿nal conclusion, the prophetic word of
restoration offered by the prophet Jeremiah is understood to be ful¿lled
by the words and actions of King Cyrus of Persia. The open invitation to
return offers an opportunity again to choose between believing God and
the prophetic word as those who returned from exile did or to ignore it
and risk exile again as those at the time of Zedekiah had done.
Thus, prophecy and prophets in Chronicles serve to provide innovative
changes such as the character of historical writing being prophetic
writing and the role of Levites in singing and music. Prophets serve to
call the people to what the Chronicler views as appropriate belief and
practice. Prophets also give the impression of continuity between these
ancient narratives and the present, as they interpret the past for the
present audience to create a different future based on that same past—
which itself is a utopian construction. Prophets and prophecy are one of
the many vehicles and means of authority that the Chronicler utilizes in
the creation of a utopia for his audience, if they would believe God and
the prophets, including his own writing—his own prophetic composition.
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1
RE-NEGOTIATING A PUTATIVE UTOPIA
AND THE STORIES OF THE REJECTION OF FOREIGN WIVES
IN EZRA–NEHEMIAH*
Ehud Ben Zvi
1. On the Role of a Social Memory Approach in the Study of the

Expulsion of the “Foreign” Wives and Children in Ezra–Nehemiah
The stories about the rejection of “foreigners,” including “foreign” wives
and the children they bore to “Israelites” in Ezra–Nehemiah, have been
studied from multiple historical perspectives. Some of this research has
focused on the history of the text/s, mainly redactional history, and on
the potential implications that the various layers advanced within differ-
ent models for the development of the text may have for reconstructions
of historical shifts in the world of thought of the communities to which
the said proposed layers and, above all, their distinct and distinctive
proposed authors/redactors may attest.1
Others have focused more directly on the possible reasons for the
historical expulsion of the “foreign” wives and those of “impure birth”
(Ezra 9:1–10:44; cf. Neh 9:2; 13:3, 23–29). Such actions relate, for
obvious reasons, to matters of “identity formation” and boundaries.
These matters are usually, and with very good reason, tackled with social,
anthropological, political, and economic—essentially transcultural—
approaches, and thus it is not surprising that a variety of explanations for
the rejection of these mothers and children has been advanced on the
basis of these approaches and comparative historical studies. Thus, some
* The research leading to this essay and related works has been supported by a
grant of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
1. E.g., Yonina Dor, “The Composition of the Episode of the Foreign Women in
Ezra IX–X,” VT 53 (2003): 26–47; and her comprehensive, Have the “Foreign
Women” Really Been Expelled? Separation and Exclusion in the Restoration Period
(Jerusalem: Magnes, 2006) (in Hebrew). The strong presence of these approaches is
easy to understand, given (a) that there is more than one story of forced dissolution
of “mixed” marriages and expulsions, (b) that it is extremely unlikely that the
present Ezra–Nehemiah was written at once, by one author and out of whole cloth,
and (c) the traditional importance of redactional-critical methods in historical studies
of (eventually) “biblical” texts.
scholars approached these issues in light of Pericles’s citizenship law and

arrived at a number of different explanations,2 while others thought this
comparison at least partially ill-¿tting.3 Some researchers addressed the
matter in terms of, inter alia, “heightened ethnic consciousness as a
result of return migration,”4 Victor Turner’s social drama model,5 or
“witch-hunting.”6 Some scholars have accounted for, at least in part, the
expulsion of the women in terms of a proposed struggle to avert losses of
land holdings,7 while others focused on ideologies of purity and their
social implementation.8 It has also been proposed that the immigrant
golah community should be understood as “a minority with an ideo-
logical [utopian] vision driven by a desire for cultural exclusion and
2. E.g., Lisbeth S. Fried, “The Concept of ‘Impure Birth’ in 5th Century Athens
and Judea,” in In the Wake of Tikva Frymer-Kensky: Tikva Frymer-Kensky
Memorial Volume (ed. S. Holloway, J. Scurlock, and R. Beal; Piscataway, N.J.:
Gorgias, 2009), 121–42; Wolfgang Oswald, “Foreign Marriages and Citizenship in
Persian Period Judah,” JHS 12, no. 6 (2012). Online: http://www.jhsonline.org
(= Wolfgang Oswald, “Foreign Marriages and Citizenship in Persian Period Judah,”
in Perspectives in Hebrew Scriptures IX: Comprising the Contents of Journal of
Hebrew Scriptures, vol. 12 (ed. E. Ben Zvi and C. Nihan; Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias,
2014), 107–24.
3. E.g., Lester L. Grabbe, A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second
Temple Period. Vol. 1, Yehud: A History of the Persian Province of Judah (LSTS
47; London: T&T Clark International, 2004), 307.
4. See, e.g., Katherine E. Southwood, Ethnicity and the Mixed Marriage Crisis in
Ezra 9–10: An Anthropological Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2012)—citation from p. 210; and cf. Rainer Albertz, “Purity Strategies and Political
Interests in the Policy of Nehemiah,” in Confronting the Past: Archaeological and
Historical Essays on Ancient Israel in Honor of William G. Dever (ed. Seymour
Gitin, J. Edward Wright, and J. P. Dessel; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2006),
199–206.
5. Donald P. Moffat, Ezra’s Social Drama: Identity Formation, Marriage and
Social ConÀict in Ezra 9 and 10 (LHBOTS 579; London: T&T Clark International,
2013).
6. David Janzen, Witch-hunts, Purity and Social Boundaries: The Expulsion of
the Foreign Women in Ezra 9–10 (JSOTSup 350; Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld Academic,
2002).
7. E.g., Tamara C. Eskenazi, “Out from the Shadows: Biblical Women in
the Postexilic Era,” JSOT 54 (1992): 25–43 (see esp. p. 35); Joseph Blenkinsopp,
Ezra–Nehemiah: A Commentary (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1988), 176–77.
8. E.g., Saul M. Olyan, “Purity Ideology in Ezra–Nehemiah as a Tool to Recon-
stitute the Community,” JJS 35 (2004): 1–16 (republished in idem, Social Inequality
in the World of the Text: The Signi¿cance of Ritual and Social Distinctions in the
Hebrew Bible [Journal of Ancient Judaism Supplements 4; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 2011], 159–72); Hannah K. Harrington, “The Use of Leviticus in Ezra–
Nehemiah,” JHS 13, no. 3 (2013). Online: http://www.jhsonline.org.
1
BEN ZVI Re-negotiating a Putative Utopia 107
dominance.”9 Not only the reasons for the dissolutions of the “mixed”
marriages, but also the reasons for their existence and seeming popularity
in Yehud, in the ¿rst place, have been discussed from a variety of social
and anthropological perspectives, from hypergamy theory to assumptions
about a population gender imbalance in Yehud, with more males than
females.10
The preceding survey of current common approaches to the matter of
the expulsion of the “foreign” wives and their children that are parti-
cularly informed by social or anthropological models is obviously far
from being comprehensive. This said, for the present purposes at least, it
suf¿ces to show in broad strokes a reasonably representative image of
widespread scholarly tendencies in the ¿eld on these matters; an image
that is representative enough to raise a number of observations and
concerns about the basic assumptions underlying the shared landscape on
which the range of common socio-anthropological approaches that are
adopted to address matters such as the rejection of the “foreign” wives
and their children are grounded.11
To begin with, studying the reasons for the historical expulsion of the
“foreign” wives and the children they had with male members of the
community in Yehud during the putative time of Ezra, in contradis-
tinction to studying why a “memory” of such an event emerged and was
successfully transmitted, implies an assumption that the expulsion did
historically happen.
Second, the often related endeavor of reconstructing the world of
thought of a minority golah community in the Persian period that stood
distinct and against the majority of the population in Yehud implies an
assumption that there was such a golah community and that its counter-
part, a non-golah community, existed as well, and that they competed for
power, in one way or another for a signi¿cant time.
9. E.g., Jeremiah W. Cataldo, “Whispered Utopia: Dreams, Agendas, and

Theocratic Aspirations in Yehud,” SJOT 24 (2010): 53–70 (67).
10. See Daniel L. Smith-Christopher, “The Mixed Marriage Crisis in Ezra 9–10
and Nehemiah 13: A Study of the Sociology of the Post-Exilic Judaean Commu-
nity,” in Second Temple Studies 2: Temple Community in the Persian Period (ed.
Tamara C. Eskenazi and Kent H. Richards; JSOTSup 175; Shef¿eld: JSOT, 1994),
243–65 and bibliography cited there.
11. It is worth stressing that the range of proposed approaches is wider than the
examples brought up in the text, but to a large extent the basic underlying grounds
on which they rest are not necessarily so. See, for instance, the case of comparative
studies between the rejection of “foreign women” in Ezra–Nehemiah in Yehud and
socio-ideological processes in contemporary Israel: see Tamara C. Eskenazi and
Eleanore P. Judd, “Marriage to a Stranger in Ezra 9–10,” in Eskenazi and Richards,
eds., Second Temple Studies 2, 266–85.
Third, although transcultural studies indicate that a return migration

may well lead to a heightened ethnic (or religious) consciousness (as for
that matter, diaspora conditions often do among some groups), the point
would be moot for historical studies of Persian Yehud, if there was no
substantial return migration in order to shape a long-term counter-
community that stood in contradistinction and opposed to the already
existing community for a signi¿cant time.
Fourth, the explanation of the expulsion in terms of witch-hunting
processes assumes (as do several explanations as well) a compelling
sense of existential anxiety and the related existence of strong external
boundaries within the community.
At the same time, one may consider that, ¿rst, the archaeological
evidence does not suggest a massive return.12 Second, the rise of the
temple in Jerusalem to a central position in Yehud would have been
unlikely if the small group responsible for running it would have
excluded the vast majority of the population in Yehud, which consisted
of those who remained in the land. In fact, proposals about a long term
dual social structure in Yehud are unlikely.13 Third, the core corpus of
authoritative texts that existed in the Persian period does not reÀect a
community with a strong level of existential anxiety, unlike the one
implied in Ezra–Nehemiah.14 Fourth, the notion of universal matrilinearity
12. See, e.g., Oded Lipschits, “Demographic Changes in Judah Between the
Seventh and the Fifth Centuries BCE,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-
Babylonian Period (ed. Oded Lipschits and Joseph Blenkinsopp; Winona Lake, Ind.:
Eisenbrauns, 2003), 323–76 and note in particular the following statement, “the
‘return to Zion’ did not leave its imprint on the archaeological data, nor is there any
demographic testimony of it” (365). Elsewhere Lipschits writes “there is no
supporting evidence in the archaeological and historical record for demographic
changes to the extent of this list [the ‘list of returnees’ in Ezra 2 and Neh 9], either at
the end of the sixth or the beginning of the ¿fth centuries, or even during the course
of the ¿fth century.” Oded Lipschits, “Achaemenid Imperial Policy, Settlement
Processes in Palestine, and the Status of Jerusalem in the Middle of the Fifth Century
B.C.E.,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period (ed. Oded Lipschits and
Manfred Oeming; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 19–52 (33 n. 46).
13. See Ehud Ben Zvi, “Total Exile, Empty Land and the General Intellectual
Discourse in Yehud,” in The Concept of Exile in Ancient Israel and Its Historical
Contexts (ed. Ehud Ben Zvi and Christoph Levin; BZAW 404; Berlin: de Gruyter,
2010), 155–68, and bibliography cited there.
14. And unlike the one implied in texts such as Jubilees, 1–2 Maccabees or much
of the so-called “sectarian” Qumran texts. I have argued on different occasions for
the lack of existential anxiety among the literati of the Persian period. See, e.g.,
Ehud Ben Zvi, “Othering, Sel¿ng, ‘Boundarying’ and ‘Cross-Boundarying’ as Inter-
woven with Socially Shared Memories: Some Observations,” in Imagining the Other
1
(to be distinguished from matrilocal matrilinearity) or alternatively, of

universal dual patri-matrilinearity that is crucial to the story of the
rejection of the women and their children appears nowhere else until
rabbinic literature.15
Fifth, neither the notion of <9! 3:$ in relation to Israel as a whole
and particularly relevant to the rejection of the wives and their children,
nor that of the intrinsically (non-contingent and unsolvable) polluting
character of the “foreigner” (Neh 13:4–9) appear elsewhere.16 In fact,
these notions are contradicted by the corpus of authoritative texts of the
Persian period and had they been accepted, they would have prevented
the inclusion of any “foreigner” in Israel or their descendants.
And, sixth, there is, of course, the matter of the very complex history
of composition of Ezra–Nehemiah as a whole and of Ezra 9–10 in
particular,17 and the concerns that such a history of composition and
and Constructing Israelite Identity in the Early Second Temple Period (ed. Diana
Edelman and Ehud Ben Zvi; LHBOTS 456; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark
International, 2014), 20–40; idem, “Exploring the Memory of Moses ‘The Prophet’
in Late Persian/Early Hellenistic Yehud/Judah,” in Remembering Biblical Figures in
the Late Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods: Social Memory and Imagination
(ed. Diana Edelman and Ehud Ben Zvi; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013),
335–64, esp. 362–64; idem, “On Social Memory and Identity Formation in Late
Persian Yehud: A Historian’s Viewpoint with a Focus on Prophetic Literature,
Chronicles and the Dtr. Historical Collection,” in Texts, Contexts and Readings in
Postexilic Literature Explorations Into Historiography and Identity Negotiation in
Hebrew Bible and Related Texts (ed. Louis Jonker; FAT 2/53; Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2011), 95–148.
15. See Ezra 10:2–3; cf. Shaye J. D. Cohen, “The Origins of the Matrilineal
Principle in Rabbinic Law,” ASJ Review 10 (1985): 19–53; idem, The Beginning of
Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1999), esp. 265–69. As mentioned by Cohen, there existed, most likely, a
concept of matrilocal matrilinearity. For a different approach, see Paul Heger,
“Patrilineal or Matrilineal Genealogy in Israel After Ezra,” JSJ 43 (2012): 215–48.
16. See Olyan, “Purity Ideology,” 10–12. It is particularly worth stressing that
the conceptually key term <9! 3:$ appears in Ezra 9:2 and nowhere else in the
entire Hebrew Bible. To be sure, <9 3:$—and notice the absence of the article—
appears in Isa 6:13, but it does not carry there the meaning of the <9! 3:$ in Ezra
9:2.
17. See, e.g., Juha Pakkala, “Intermarriage and Group Identity in the Ezra
Tradition (Ezra 7–10 and Nehemiah 8),” in Mixed Marriages: Intermarriage and
Group Identity in the Second Temple Period (ed. Christian Frevel; LHBOTS 547;
London: T&T Clark International, 2011), 78–88. One cannot but note also that Ezra–
Nehemiah has been organized as a work in which two different sections not only
exist side by side, but are arranged literarily, more or less, according to a basic
parallel structure, which is hardly the product of coincidence. (See Lester L. Grabbe,
redaction raises in terms of the reliability of these texts for reconstructing

the historical Persian Yehud in general and that of the alleged periods of
Ezra and Nehemiah in particular.
In sum, the set of common approaches mentioned above, as sophisti-
cated as they are, rely on assuming the basic historicity of the narrative
communicated in Ezra–Nehemiah (and particularly Ezra) in its broad
strokes. This is their strength, to be sure, but also their weakness, because
such an assumption is far from certain. The previous considerations do
not “prove” that events somewhat similar to those described in Ezra–
Nehemiah did not occur, but certainly raise serious concerns.
Some would certainly argue that for the purpose of reconstructing
the historical Yehud of the Persian period, one may well be on far more
solid ground if one were to set aside Ezra–Nehemiah as a whole or the
“books” of Ezra and Nehemiah, for that matter, and instead, rely solely
on reports of Nehemiah’s policy and actions against “mixed” marriages
in Neh 13:23–29.18 This is not the place to address in detail the full set
of issues associated with such a proposal. It suf¿ces, however, for the
present purposes to notice that accepting this proposal carries important
implications for matters that underlie the approaches surveyed above.
For example, if one were to rely only on Neh 13:23–29 as an historical
source, one would very likely end up with a signi¿cantly different
Ezra–Nehemiah [New York: Routledge, 1998], 116–19 [esp. 117–18].) If there were
inÀuences not only between the texts but also, as likely given the end result, a
tendency towards a sense of (partial) convergence and above all interaction between
the ways in which Ezra and Nehemiah of memory were shaped, reshaped and
remembered, one may engage in questions such as whether, for instance, Ezra 9–10
might not have been dependent on Neh 9–10 (e.g., Grabbe, History, 1:314–15), or in
general to which extent the existing Ezra and Nehemiah narratives can be considered
truly independent sources, even if one were to accept that they began their long
textual history in the form of originally independent, though dif¿cult to reconstruct
with any precision, forerunners.
In any event and as much as there is a sense of partial convergence and memory
(and perhaps textual) interaction and as much as both Ezra and Nehemiah share a
general exclusionary position concerning membership in the community, it is
dif¿cult not to notice the differences between the events narrated in Neh 13:23–29
and Ezra 9–10 as a whole or, for that matter, the lack of any reference to a mass
forced divorce and the sending of mothers and children away in both Neh 13:23–29
and in Ezra’s prayer (9:6–15), even as they advance an anti-“mixed” marriages
agenda (cf. Dor, “Composition”).
18. The basic argument would be that Neh 13:23–29 belongs (in toto?) to the so-
called Nehemiah-Memoir or some (earlier, but relatively close) form of it and to
which one may reasonably ascribe more “historicity” than to the other (and likely,
later) texts.
1
reconstruction of the basic historical events. For instance, the nature and
scope of the actions of Nehemiah against foreign wives would be up for
discussion and would not necessarily or even likely include the rejection
of children of “mixed marriages.”
Moreover, once the focus is on Neh 13:23–29 (and the so-called
Nehemiah-Memoir; hereafter and for simplicity abbreviated NM), one
cannot but notice the prominent disappearance of the central motif of a
separate and exclusivistic community, the !+#! '1, and its necessary
counterpart, the counter-community, from the NM.19 This motif, its
centrality—along with, of course, its precondition, namely the long-term
historical existence of these two communities—underlie, at least, some
of the approaches surveyed above; and therefore, a challenge to the
former undermines the argument for the latter.
Furthermore, relying only on Neh 13:23–29 (or the NM) as an histo-
rical source cannot but lead historians to prioritize causal explanations
for the (differently narrated/reconstructed) events that differ substan-
tially from those advanced in the approaches surveyed above. Whoever
follows this path most likely would end up proposing an historical
understanding of Nehemiah’s actions in terms of, or in association with,
his consistent rejection of regional leaders such as Sanballat, Tobiah, and
Geshem (see 13:4–9; 28; cf. 2:10, 10; 3:33–35; 4:1; 6:1–19) and his
related strong policy in favor of regional “isolation.”20
In addition, once one focuses on Neh 13:23–29, substantial attention is
necessarily drawn to the linguistic reference in Neh 13:24. Here a shared
(“authentic”) language, “Judah’s language,” is presented as a major
identity marker for the people of Judah (i.e., the -'#!', who play such a
19. On this matter, see Gary Knoppers, “Nehemiah and Sanballat: The Enemy
Without or Within?,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century B.C.E. (ed.
Oded Lipschits, Gary N. Knoppers, and Rainer Albertz; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisen-
brauns, 2007), 305–31, and esp. his discussion on pp. 310–11.
20. See, for instance, Grabbe, History, 1:309–10 and passim. Of course, this
necessarily requires that these regional leaders and particularly Tobiah and Sanballat
be considered important historical agents at the time of Nehemiah and not, totally or
in the main, literary/mnemonic cyphers aimed at evoking known characters for
readers living later than the putative time of Nehemiah. But, on the latter issues, see
Sebastian Grätz, “The Adversaries in Ezra/Nehemiah—Fictitious or Real? A Case
Study in Creating Identity in Late Persian and Hellenistic Times,” in Between
Cooperation and Hostility: Multiple Identities in Ancient Judaism and the Interac-
tion with Foreign Powers (ed. Rainer Albertz and Jakob Wöhrle; Journal of Ancient
Judaism Supplements 11; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 73–87. See
also Diana Edelman, “Seeing Double: Tobiah the Ammonite as an Encrypted
Character,” RB 113 (2008): 570–84. See below.
crucial role in the NM21) and for the construction of the corresponding
“Other.” This approach is expressed in Herodotus’s Histories 8.144,
which refers to “the kinship of all Greeks in blood and speech,” and, of
course, in later rabbinic literature (Lev. Rab. 32.5), but signi¿cantly has
no clear parallels in other “biblical” books.
To be sure, one would still have to deal with the usual problems
associated with the historicity of the NM, such as that it deploys common
ancient Near Eastern patterns of constructing the new ruler,22 and, as
mentioned above, whether Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem shape, in the
main, literary/mnemonic cyphers aimed at evoking known characters for
readers living later than the putative time of Nehemiah. Moreover, there
is, of course, the question of the redactional history of the NM and the
impact that various reconstructions of this history may (or may not) have
on matters of historicity.23
In sum, the implied claims of historicity underlying the approaches
mentioned above is highly debatable; certainly not impossible, but at
least highly debatable. But this is not all: even if one were to assume that
there was a historical governor named Nehemiah who forcefully coerced
the local elite in Jerusalem and its temple by using the power of the
empire for a short while and effected the changes that the NM, in
whatever textual form, ascribes to him, this historical Nehemiah would
have been a minor “Àash” or one might say a minor footnote, from the
perspective of the history of the Persian period in Yehud. Speaking of
21. See Neh 1:2; 2:16; 3:33, 34; 4:6; 5:1; 6:6; 13:23. This is the core term of the
“inner” group in this text, not !+#! '1 or the like as in Ezra. See also n. 19.
22. There is no avoiding that Nehemiah’s portrayal and memory were shaped
according to the traditional Near Eastern pattern of the pious, reforming king who
shifts country and people away from the sinful behavior in which they engaged
before he came to power. (Nehemiah’s building of the walls also reÀects a memory
associating him with royal activities.) To be sure, the adoption of a common
mnemonic narrative frame does not mean that nothing of what is narrated happened
in some way or another, but again represents a call for caution, because it explains
why a narrative such as the one that exists would have been preferred by those
shaping a positive image of Nehemiah.
23. For one example of such reconstructions, see Jacob Wright, Rebuilding
Identity: The Nehemiah Memoir and Its Earliest Readers (BZAW 348; Berlin: de
Gruyter, 2004). For a discussion of his proposals, see Gary Knoppers, “Revisiting
the Composition of Ezra–Nehemiah: In Conversation with Jacob Wright’s,
Rebuilding Identity: The Nehemiah Memoir and Its Earliest Readers (BZAW 348;
Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004),” JHS 7, no. 12 (2007). Online: http://www.jhsonline.org,
and published also under the same title in Ehud Ben Zvi, ed., Perspectives in
Hebrew Scriptures IV: Comprising the Contents of Journal of Hebrew Scriptures,
vol. 7 (Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias, 2008), 323–67.
1
this (quite common in research literature) Nehemiah, Lester Grabbe

correctly writes, “Nehemiah was a failure, at least in the short term.”24
But the Nehemiah of memory was not a minor “Àash.”
Likewise, if one were to assume for the sake of the argument that
Ezra–Nehemiah, or at least the core of it, belongs to the Persian period
and that it truthfully represents the ideology and social mindscape of a
group at the period, the observations made above about “holy seed” and
about the impossibility of non-Israelites (mothers) and the children they
have with Israelites ever joining Israel would indicate that it stands
almost as an “out-of-the-grid” outlier within the main discourse and main
repertoire of core texts of the community in the Persian period (cf., inter
alia, Pentateuchal traditions, the “historical” books, Ruth and memories
they reÀect and evoke).25
This being so, I would like to argue that the far more important
historical Ezra and Nehemiah were those of social memory, that is, those
that existed in the minds of later generations. The very (lengthy and
complex) development that eventually led to the book of Ezra–Nehemiah
attests beyond any doubt to the high importance of these Ezra/s and
24. The entire quote reads: “Nehemiah was a failure, at least in the short term.
Granted he built the city wall and was able to accomplish his goals during the twelve
years or so that he was in Jerusalem, but even a temporary absence was suf¿cient for
some of his measures to be abandoned or reversed. Our ignorance of what was
happening in Judah in the next two centuries makes it dif¿cult to be precise about
the details of how Judaism developed. Yet when we ¿nally ¿nd a partial lifting
of the veil two centuries later, we ¿nd a Judaism which was certainly not in
Nehemiah’s image… Nehemiah’s attempts to isolate the Jewish community was no
more successful… Most important of all, many of those labelled ‘foreigners’ in
Ezra–Nehemiah seem to have been accepted as Jews by the Jerusalemite commu-
nity.” See Grabbe, History, 1:309–10. See also Lester L. Grabbe, “Triumph of the
Pious or Failure of the Xenophobes? The Ezra–Nehemiah Reforms and the
Nachgeschichte,” in Jewish Local Patriotism and Self-Identi¿cation in the Graeco-
Roman Period (ed. Siân Jones and Sarah Pearce; JSPSup 31; Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld
Academic, 1998), 50–65.
25. One may mention that the demographic increase among Judahites/Jews in the
late Hellenistic/Roman period could have hardly taken place without a rejection of
the concept of “holy seed” expressed above. Clearly, such a concept stands at odds
also with the later rabbinic concept of :#' (“conversion” to Judaism). To be sure, this
does not mean that proselytes were always welcome (or welcomed by all, for that
matter), but that the crucial concepts underlying the narrative of the expulsion of the
“foreign” wives and children were not accepted.
(Although it is widely acknowledged, it is still worth stressing in this particular
context that in this story neither the wives nor the children were accused of
worshiping “foreign” gods or leading the husbands/fathers into such a worship; the
crucial reason for which they are expelled is their “foreign” origin.)
Nehemiah/s of memory and that much was at stake in shaping and

reshaping them. Whereas their “real” counterparts’ actions were, at best,
a minor temporary Àash, it was for many generations in ancient Israel
that memories of Ezra and Nehemiah populated the minds of at least
ancient groups that identi¿ed with both their own Ezras and Nehemiahs
as they imagined, construed, and remembered them to be and with the
viewpoint and deeds they associated with them, including the expulsion
of women and children.26
But if this is so, and if the historical Ezras and Nehemiahs with the
largest impact were those of memory already in the late Second Temple
period, would it not make sense that approaches informed by social
memory studies be among the ¿rst to come to mind, among socio-
anthropological methods, for the study of these matters?27
I would like to conclude this section by stressing that I am not
claiming in any way or form that the socio-anthropological approaches
surveyed above should be disregarded. They are actually helpful and
have substantially furthered research in these areas. Instead, I am
proposing a complementary approach and a renegotiation of the focus of
the research. This renegotiation involves two related aspects: (a) focusing
26. It is to be stressed that memories of important characters are shaped time and
again and are very much historically and communally contingent. For instance, as
is widely known, when Ezra becomes remembered as a key founding ¿gure of
Judaism, the site of memory “Ezra” turns into a crucial site of memory, subject to
multiple mnemonic struggles, involving Jews, Christians and Muslims, over gen-
erations. Cf. David Glatt-Gilat, “'1:#/!# -#9! '#+#'=! %'< 0!)! !':< 0 :$3,”
in Or Le Mayer: Studies in Bible, Semitic Languages, Rabbinic Literature, and
Ancient Civilizations (ed. Shamir Yona; Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion University Press,
2010), 87–97. But that later Ezra of memory is not the one addressed here. As
anticipated, multiple Ezras of memory appear because he is constantly reshaped and
imagined within the particular world of each remembering community. For a less
known, in “biblical studies” circles, Ezra of memory, see, for instance, Ibn Khatir’s
characterization of the prophet Uzair. This said, none of these Ezras of memory were
present within the community/ies discussed here; they belong to later times and
communities.
27. It is worth noting also that the mentioned approaches may also be at least
heuristically helpful in discussing the world of memories of these events. This is so
because social-anthropological approaches may well work in worlds of memory and
¿ction. Even societies or social groups that exist only in literary works may reÀect,
directly or indirectly, in ways known or unbeknownst, to authors and readers
underlying social dynamics and governing grammars underlying actual societies.
After all, even imaginary worlds have to be based on known worlds. (This point is
widely accepted among those who study, e.g., science ¿ction and its utopian/
dystopian societies.)
1
at least for a while as much (or more?) on what was remembered rather
than what “actually” happened, which in any case is very dif¿cult to
assess and in itself had at best a marginal historical impact on Persian
period Yehud (see section 1 of this essay) and (b) focusing on an
approach that may help us to explore what was remembered, why and
related questions (part 2 of this essay is an example of what such an
approach may contribute to the discussion).
2. A Memory Approach to the Story of the Rejection

of the “Foreign” Women and Children in Ezra–Nehemiah
and Utopian Tendencies
The previous section drew attention to the role that studies informed by
“Memory Studies” may have for historical studies of stories of the
rejections of the “foreign” wives and their children in Ezra–Nehemiah,
even if not necessarily for the putative period of Ezra and Nehemiah in
Yehud. But, of course, methods are lenses and not important by them-
selves but because of what they may allow us to “see,” what we may
have missed or paid less attention to otherwise. To phrase it differently:
the central issue is what kind of new, central questions an approach
strongly informed by studies of social memory may either raise or draw
particular attention to. In this particular case, several come to mind
straight away, such as: Why were Ezra and Nehemiah remembered the
way they were? Why were the mentioned expulsions so worthy of being
remembered among those who identi¿ed with the relevant implied
authors? Which systems of grammar of mnemonic preferences were at
work in the shaping? What could the community gain by remembering
these events in the relatively complex way eventually evoked in Ezra–
Nehemiah?
Further, late Second Temple communities involved in construct-
ing and remembering their Ezra and Nehemiah—and by these means
in exploring the messages that these sites of memory communicated—
could, to be sure, have explored matters of opposition to “mixed mar-
riages” in other ways, but it is particularly signi¿cant that they did so
through memories of Ezra and Nehemiah as “encoded” in Ezra–
Nehemiah.28
28. One may notice that a strong stance against “mixed marriages” is present, for
instance, in Qumran material and Jubilees. See, e.g., Hannah Harrington, “Intermar-
riage in Qumran Texts: The Legacy of Ezra–Nehemiah,” in Frevel, ed., Mixed
Marriages, 251–79; Christian Frevel, “‘Separate Yourself from the Gentiles’
(Jubilees 22:16): Intermarriage in the Book of Jubilees,” in Frevel, ed., Mixed
Once one focuses on this book, it is clear that one of the most
memorable associations evoked by reading Ezra–Nehemiah was the
expulsion of “foreign” wives and children and related expulsions of
those whom the implied author of Ezra–Nehemiah has construed to be
considered “foreigners”29 by the remembering community. One is to take
into account, of course, that such an expulsion represents a memorable
story,30 partially because of the affective strength of the images it evokes.
But at the same time, this was a didactic story about the past of Israel.
That is, their past and any emotive appeal and ease of remembrance
stood at the service of the message that the story taught them, not the
other way around. What the story stood for, in ideological terms, was a
complete, unyielding acceptance of the putative logical implications of
an approach towards the community as YHWH’s holy seed within a social
mindscape in which profanation of what was considered holy was
construed as an ultimate threat.
This concept of a “holy seed” is certainly not a minor social matter.
Moreover, it is well- grounded in a generative, conceptual grammar at
work on a number of occasions. In a nutshell, it is likely that the com-
munity in Yehud thought that human reproduction involved either only
Marriages, 220–50. Some of this Qumran material may well be from the third
century B.C.E. See Armin Lange, “Your Daughters Do Not Give to Their Sons and
Their Daughters Do Not Take for Your Sons (Ezra 9,12): Intermarriage in Ezra 9–10
and in the Pre-Maccabean Dead Sea Scroll,” Part I, BN 137 (2008): 17–39; Part II,
BN 139 (2008): 79–98. Often these texts are associated with polemics against what
their implied authors (and likely many of their readers) construed as a threatening
process of “increased Hellenization” (e.g., Lange, “Your Daughters,” 89). All this
said, one cannot but notice that Ezra–Nehemiah was not a popular text in the
repertoire of the texts found in the Qumran caves and this raises again questions
about why the book of Ezra–Nehemiah would not be widely read within groups that
strongly rejected any form of exogamy. Of course, when Ezra comes to be
remembered as a key founding ¿gure of Judaism, the site of memory “Ezra” turns
into a crucial site of memory, subject to multiple mnemonic struggles. See above,
n. 26.
29. Cf. “As has long been noted, one of Ezra–Nehemiah’s most striking char-
acteristics is its narrative descriptions of expulsions from cult and community of a
group of persons of unparalleled size and range who are classed by the text as aliens.
These include YHWH-worshiping male foreigners, women of foreign origin who are
married to Judean males, and the children these wives have borne to their Judean
husbands” (Olyan, “Purity Ideology,” 2).
30. Even transculturally; in fact, one may say that it is still very much “mem-
orable” for many readers and scholars, given the very substantial amount of research
devoted to it.
1
one seed or only one main (formative) seed, namely the male seed.31 If
so, since women do not produce seeds—or their seeds are of “secondary”
importance—and since male seeds do not mix with other male seeds to
produce offspring, males within a lineage were imagined as physically
carrying and embodying the potential of the male seed of their crucial
ancestor. Thus, the seed of David was carried by his descendants and so
was the seed of Abraham, or the seed of Aaron. It is obvious that the
logic of such an approach to social/biological reproduction leads to the
characterization of differences as innate, essentialist, and essentializing.
No one could be a Davidide, unless born a Davidide; no one could be an
Aaronide except the children of Aaron, and the same would apply to
Israel, who were often construed as a “holy people.”32
31. Cf. Robert D. Biggs, “Conception, Contraception and Abortion in Ancient

Mesopotamia,” in Wisdom, Gods and Literature: Studies in Assyriology in Honour
of W. G. Lambert (ed. Wilfred G. Lambert, A. R. George, and Irving L. Finkel;
Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2000), 1–13; Gwendolyn Leick, Sex and Eroticism
in Mesopotamian Literature (New York: Routledge, 2003), 91. Note the antiquity of
this view, “Ningirsu rejoiced over Eanatum, semen implanted in the womb by
Ningirsu,” Jerrold S. Cooper, Presargonic Inscriptions (New Haven, Conn.:
American Oriental Society, 1986), 34. The only potential evidence for a notion of a
female seed in ancient Israel is in MT Lev 12:2—but not the ancient versions, and
even the MT does not have to be understood as a reference to the production of a
female seed. See, e.g., the discussion in Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16 (AB 3; New
York: Doubleday, 1991), 743–44, who nonetheless tends to accept the idea that “the
probability rests with the literal translation, ‘produces seed’” (743), though at least
partially on the basis of rabbinic era ideas about the female production of seed (cf.
Aristotle’s position on the matter). To be sure, Galen (130–200 C.E.) advanced the
idea of an important female seed and Galenic ideas may have, even if indirectly,
inÀuenced rabbinic literature. Real and assumed differences between Galenic and
Aristotelian approaches to the matter were at the center of Western European
medieval discussions on these issues. For the long history and construction of
Aristotelian and Galenic approaches to these matters, see Sophia M. Connell,
“Aristotle and Galen on Sex Difference and Reproduction: A New Approach to an
Ancient Rivalry,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 31 (2000): 405–27.
32. Of course, this explanatory model served well to construe and “account for”
continuity through time and multiple generations. But, at the same time, it always
had to face the issue of beginnings, which by necessity represent salient cases of
discontinuity. For example, how does the seed of Jesse or Boaz or Judah for that
matter suddenly transform itself into the seed of David which carries some newly
granted properties? Or how did the seed of Aaron become different from the seed of
Levi? In these cases, the problem was solved by assuming that the deity granted/
provided the new potential for the relevant male seed. Thus, the community con-
structed and remembered divine acts of genealogical branching. In other words,
YHWH shaped something “new” as it were and through this action legitimized the act
Within the parameters of this generative conceptual grammar, a

“holy” object, such as the male seed of the “priests” (or the “high priest”)
may be profaned if it is “inserted” and “incubated” in a womb that is not
“holy.”33 These considerations, along with conceptual trends towards the
construction of “Israel” as “holy” (passim) and “priestly” (e.g., Exod
19:6) explain well why the text in Ezra–Nehemiah focused on “foreign
wives” and not on “foreign husbands.”34 Within that discourse, the former
cannot but profane the “holy seed,” but the latter are less of a problem
since they do not carry a “holy seed” that can be profaned.
But such an approach, as internally coherent as it might be and thus as
“desired” among those who value “internal logical coherence,” chanced
upon much ambiguity and encountered substantial opposition. There is,
for one, the matter of potential adoption by a father (or father ¿gure).35
of branching (and the associated act of marginalizing, as well). It is worth noting that
the more mnemonically signi¿cant these cases of divinely shaped branching were
construed to be within a particular group, the more the same group would tend to
consider them foundational events and thus very rare events that belong to the past.
In fact, their foundational character required, to a large extent, that the community
constructed and remembered them as stable and stabilizing events and this involved
by necessity a strong tendency to bracket out the possibility of additional such acts,
which could not but undermine such a stability. On genealogical branching and
the correlated processes of marginalizing or exclusion from a socio-anthropological
and socio-mnemonic perspective, see Eviatar Zerubavel, Ancestors and Relatives:
Genealogy, Identity and Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012),
passim.
33. One may compare and contrast with Lev 21:13–15 and esp. v. 15, which
refers to the High Priest and whose scope is expanded to include other priests in
Ezek 44:22. It is worth noting that MMT (see MMT B 72–82 = 4Q396 iv: 1–11)
follows a logic similar to that underlying Ezra–Nehemiah to its logical conclusion,
namely that priests can marry only women from among the priestly families, for, one
would assume, only they can provide a “holy container” for the incubation of the
“holy seed.” One may compare the generative grammar at work here with the one
that eventually led to the construction of an elevated Mary in Christianity, who was
remembered as providing a “dwelling ¿t for Christ” (and the like—the cited
expression is from Maximus of Turin; she is also compared to the tabernacle) in
many Christian traditions.
34. Within this discourse, women were not accorded a direct ability to mark
social identity within this socio-biological, ideological construction of seed. They
were instead construed as able to uphold or ruin the “seed” through cultural means,
i.e., as wives or mothers (see even the case of daughters from the seed of “infamous”
Israelites, e.g., Athaliah) or through impurity (the case of the “foreign” wives here).
35. See the case of Samuel in the book of Samuel—though signi¿cantly,
Chronicles turns him into a Levite—and above all, Isa 56:1–6.
1
There were multiple sites of memory about non-Israelite women who

were emphatically not remembered as “profaners” (e.g., Zipporah—
daughter of a “foreign” priest, Asenath—also daughter of a “foreign”
priest—Ruth, Naamah—mother of Rehoboam and thus of all the kings
of Judah). There are also genealogies that stood in direct opposition to
the construction of the male seed as the only determinant for identity.
Chronicles, for instance, in two cases explicitly and emphatically assumes
the integration of “foreign male seed” in Israel. In 1 Chr 2:17 Amasa,
an important character associated with David’s time and family, is
unequivocally remembered as the son of Jether the Ishmaelite. In 1 Chr
2:34–41, moreover, it is certainly not due to blind chance that the
unnamed daughter of a marginal character such as Sheshan and her
husband, the Egyptian slave Jarha, are allocated one of the longest
genealogies in the Hebrew Bible.36
It is within this discursive context or conceptual mindscape37 that the
study of the rejection of the foreign wives and children in Ezra–
Nehemiah is to be studied. In what follows and in a nutshell, I argue that
later than the putative time of the stories and from the perspective of
readers who identi¿ed, at least to a large extent, with the characters of
Ezra and Nehemiah evoked by these books, the stories of the rejection of
the foreign wives in Ezra–Nehemiah contributed to the construction
not only of an image of a utopian “pure” Israel and a memory of a
“memorable” attempt to implement it, but also that the stories served as a
reminder that implementing “utopia” ran, unsurprisingly, into problems.
Thus, these stories served, at least for some ancient readers, as a ground
on which they could (safely) explore (perceived to be) utopian “purify-
ing” constructions and their unfeasibility (both basic and contingent) and
thus these constructions contributed to their ability to re-negotiate the
boundaries and even the character of their “utopia.”
36. See Gary N. Knoppers, “‘Married into Moab’: The Exogamy Practiced by
Judah and His Descendants in the Judahite Lineages,” in Frevel, ed., Mixed
Marriages, 170–91 (182). Lev 24:10 might be another case of mixed marriage and
matrilineal Israelite line, but the case is not as clear as the previous examples and
remains open for debate.
37. The considerations advanced above should suf¿ce for the present purposes.
This is not the place to expand on every related aspect or feature of this “universe”
of thought and memory, nor on the generative associations to which it may lead (at
least potentially), or to the plethora of social ambiguities it generated in the late
Second Temple period. See, e.g., the manifold issues that arose out of (forced or
voluntary) conversions to Judaism in Hasmonean and later times. A discussion of
these matters requires a lengthy and certainly separate discussion.
To be sure, any discussion of utopia or utopian features has to advance

a clear de¿nition of what is meant by them. For the present purposes I
will follow an appropriate version of a very pragmatic de¿nition that I
have advanced elsewhere, namely,
a set composed of (a) any (historically-contingent) socially construed
memory/image of a future or past “reality” substantially better than the
present as understood by the community and which, among others, allows
for an exploration of a “reality” different than the one it perceives; and…
the utopian “reality” is construed as substantially better than others and
implies and communicates a critical perspective on the latter, and points
to lacks in them. In other words, utopian representations are one of the
ways in which world-critiques can be formulated and “concretized” in the
form of socially shared sites of memory (be they texts, images, characters
in texts, reported events that are mentally re-enacted through readings or
which are integral part of the world of knowledge of a community) and,
accordingly, can become memorable and inÀuential in the discourse of
the community.38
There can be little doubt that Ezra and Nehemiah ¿t well with the
common ancient Near Eastern mnemonic plot characteristic of restora-
tion narratives (e.g., Cyrus’s defeat of Nabonidus). The circumstances
before their (i.e., Ezra’s and Nehemiah’s) “heroic” deeds have to be
portrayed and remembered as chaotic, abundant in sin and impurity, and
their appearance, accordingly, as a crucial turning point, away from
chaos, impiety, and rejection of the deity/ies towards order and piety.
These restorations often mention cultic and ritual matters and involve
constructing a kind of “reboot” of the society of the leader to a previous
utopian or quasi-utopian situation.
Several pillars of the remembered world of Ezra and Nehemiah—
principally memories of their deeds of expulsion—contributed in
particular to the construction of a utopian Àavor for these memories.39 To
begin with, they remembered a world in which their assumed “proper
understanding” of authoritative texts was made effective in the “real”
world, through acts of “proper” leadership.40
38. Ehud Ben Zvi, “Reading and Constructing Utopias: Utopia/s and/in the
Collection of Authoritative Texts/Textual Readings of Late Persian Period Yehud,”
SR 42 (2013): 463–76 (466, original italics).
39. Of course, “utopian” only from the perspective of those who identi¿ed with
the two main characters they shaped through their readings of the relevant texts. In
fact, often someone’s utopia may well be someone else’s dystopia.
40. This includes reading the prohibitions of Deut 7:1–6 and 23:4–9 in an expan-
sive way strongly informed by Lev 18:24–30 (see, e.g., Michael Fishbane, Biblical
Interpretation in Ancient Israel [Oxford: Clarendon, 1985], 114–29; Olyan, “Purity
Ideology”).
1
Second, from a transcultural social-anthropological perspective, theirs

is the kind of utopian world for groups that strongly prefer purity, order,
and clear-cut boundaries and thus, social segregation. These groups
detest potentially intermediate characters and above all ambiguity.41 It
is common for such groups to emphasize purity of lineage and the
constructed behavior associated with that lineage, for behaving like a
“foreigner” creates an ambiguous taxonomic item, partially internal and
partially external; such ambiguous items are detested by these groups,
because they shape porous boundaries, which is an anathema for such
groups. Within this world, the very existence of the “other,” the
“foreigner” within the boundaries of the community, is often perceived
as a dangerous impurity to be removed, because it also shapes a sense of
ambiguity and porous boundaries.
When lineage is construed as crucial for the construed impermeable,
taxonomic order, then intermarriage is conceived as a most dangerous
threat to order, and mixed children tend to be construed not as ambigu-
ous, but as unambiguous members of the “other”/ “foreigner” and thus
reaf¿rming the existence of impermeable boundaries.42 Such an approach
requires that lineages be construed retroactively and remembered as
originally pure and in need of restorative puri¿cation, from time to time.
The world of memory evoked by Ezra–Nehemiah includes the forceful
expulsion of “foreign” women and “mixed” children. It includes a
conceptualization of Israel as a whole, not just the priests, as “the holy
seed/lineage” (<9! 3:$) (see Ezra 9:2) which “is illicitly desacralized
by … marriages to aliens, which are in fact labeled ‘sacrilege’ (+3/) in
the text at several junctures.”43
Within this world the “foreigner” is, as such, not only “profane” and
an agent for the profanation of Israel, but also a non-contingent, intrinsic
source of ritual pollution that requires puri¿cation of holy spaces,
such as a temple.44 Remembering Ezra, Nehemiah, their exclusionary
positions, vicariously experiencing their implementation multiple times
in the (construed as) “real” world every time Ezra–Nehemiah was read,
and noticing and remembering the ideological underpinnings of these
41. See Eviatar Zerubavel, The Fine Line: Making Distinctions in Every Day Life
(New York: Free Press, 1991), 33–60.
42. See ibid.
43. See Ezra 9:4; 10:2, 6, 10; Neh 13:27. Citation from Olyan, “Purity Ideology,”
4. See also Milgrom, Leviticus 1–16, 359–61, and Christine E. Hayes, Gentile
Impurities and Jewish Identities: Intermarriage and Conversion from the Bible to
the Talmud (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
44. I follow Olyan here, “Purity Ideology,” 10–12. For a different position,
though still excluding the “foreigner” as profane, see Hayes, Gentile Impurities.
leaders of the past was imagining a utopian time for those who prefer the
type of cross-cultural rigid social mindset, with no room for ambiguity
and fuzziness, mentioned above.
But social memory, including (and perhaps particularly) in the case of
memories of utopian periods, serves often also as a playground for
exploring ideas and concepts. On the one hand, the main mnemonic
narrative in its big contours was about the heroes’ “purifying” actions in
the past. Remembering them and reading Ezra–Nehemiah was to a
signi¿cant extent an exercise in construing and remembering a glorious
past utopia of a community in which “proper,” clear and rigid boundaries
were established and from which ambiguity was driven out. But on the
other hand the very same text evoking all the above carried in itself (and
communicated) clear marks of ambiguity on these matters.
It is not so much that the heroes had to confront opposition from the
people or that the offenders were many—this was to be expected, as they
had to be imagined as heroes,45—but that, for instance, the story of Ezra
leads towards its anticipated climactic conclusion in 10:44 yet instead, at
least in the MT, concludes in an extremely ambiguous way (10:44b).
Even if, for the sake of argument, one were to argue that such ambigu-
ity was due to an existing ambiguity on these matters in communities
substantially later than the original composition of Ezra–Nehemiah, the
issue remains that Ezra does not call for an expulsion of mothers and
children in his memorable prayer in Ezra 9:5–15 or, for that matter, even
in Ezra 10:10 in which the children are not mentioned. The initiative for
the expulsion of mothers and children in the story is not an event
allocated to Ezra, but to an otherwise unknown character, Shecaniah son
of Jehiel, of the descendants of Elam,46 whose only narrative and
mnemonic role is to propose such an action and thus weakening Ezra’s
responsibility for it (Ezra 10:2–4).47
Remembering Ezra and reading the book that encodes his memory
also involved reading Ezra 6:21 and its reference to = / P / +G ^! +)
+ : g ' '!Y 'LE, which obviously stands in tension
!#!'+ f : + -! + 7: !¡
45. This also plays into the relatively common ancient Near Eastern char-
acterization of the “heroic” character as one facing the “many”; moreover, the one is
pious and the “many” are not.
46. Of course, the descendants of Elam are Israelites in the world of Ezra (see
2:7; 8:7), but given the rigid social mindscape mentioned above and its fear of
ambiguity, one cannot fail to notice the existence of a potential sense of ambiguity
evoked by his name or even the connotations hinted at in Ezra 10:26.
47. Some Karaite commentators claimed that Ezra did not want to expel the
children. See Cohen, “Origins of the Matrilineal Principle,” 25, 37.
1
with the positions, actions, underlying ideology and general social

mindset advanced by the main narratives about Ezra and Nehemiah.48
Fuzziness and balances of various positions are not really eradicated in
Ezra–Nehemiah. The book shapes and communicates the mentioned
utopia of lack of ambiguity but is in itself a bearer of ambiguity.
In addition, the book—as any book for that matter—was not read in a
vacuum, but was in a way informed by other books within the core
repertoire of the community. It is impossible to assume that the readers
were ignorant of common memories about an Israelite society in which a
broad space is allocated to -': living among and participating in the
Israelite “community” or, for that matter, of memories of legal texts
dealing with them (e.g., Exod 12:48–49). As mentioned above, their
memories included important women (e.g., Zipporah, Asenath, Ruth,
Naamah) who were explicitly and emphatically not born of Israelite
fathers (see the issue of the seed) or even Israelite mothers, but nonethe-
less not only were they and their children not rejected, but they and their
husbands (who did not expel them) became central to Israel (e.g.,
Moses—notice also his Cushite wife; Joseph).49
To be sure Pentateuchal texts and the memories they evoked were
polyphonic on these issues (see, e.g., the case of the killing of Zimri and
Cozbi by Phineas, according to Num 25, who was much rewarded for
that act). Ambiguity and polyvalence also played important roles in
Pentateuchal memories exploring “mixed” marriages. The desire for a
“clear cut” utopia underlying the narratives of the rejection of the
“foreign” wives and children in Ezra–Nehemiah, and implicit in the
construction of and in acts of remembering a past in which “heroic”
¿gures implement such “un-ambiguous” concepts such as the (male)
“holy seed,” was again confronted with some remembered situations
that, when seen from the relevant perspective, could only be understood
as at least seemingly dystopian. Thus, as anticipated, a generative
grammar aimed at reshaping, appropriating and “clarifying” these
48. In fact, one may say that Ezra 6:21 is much closer to Isa 56:1–8 than to
the rest of Ezra–Nehemiah. Cf. Joseph Blenkinsopp, Ezra–Nehemiah, 133; cf.
idem, Isaiah 56–66 (AB 19B; New York: Doubleday, 2003), 84. According to
Blenkinsopp, Ezra 6:21 probably comes from the school to which the author of
Chronicles belonged. Whether this is the case or not, the readers of Ezra–Nehemiah
read Ezra 6:21 as an integral part of the book of Ezra (and of Ezra–Nehemiah).
49. Much has been written on these matters and from various perspectives; see,
e.g., Karen Strand Winslow, “Ethnicity, Exogamy, and Zipporah,” Women in
Judaism 4, no. 1 (2006). N.p. Online: http://wjudaism.library.utoronto.ca/index.
php/wjudaism/article/view/225, and idem, “Mixed Marriage in Torah Narratives,” in
Frevel, ed., Mixed Marriages, 132–49.
situations emerged. This generative grammar underlies much of Ezra–

Nehemiah and much (but not all) of what it is about.
This said, and although Ezra–Nehemiah clearly evoked (and appropri-
ated as well as reshaped Pentateuchal traditions), the partial text overlap
of the ending of Chronicles and the beginning of Ezra–Nehemiah, along
with the communicative message of their shared linguistic pro¿le,
encouraged a reading of one in the light of the other. But if this is the
case, memories of the expulsion of mothers and children and the
accompanying ideology and social mindset evoked through readings of
Ezra–Nehemiah could not but be balanced by the clear and repeated
rejection of all of the above in Chronicles and thus raise questions about
the mentioned utopia.50
In sum, vicariously experiencing the “outlier utopia” evoked by
reading Ezra–Nehemiah went hand in hand with remembering that it ran,
unsurprisingly, into problems of feasibility, and with remembering that
its utopian character, which relied on conveying un-fuzziness, was
actually fuzzy at multiple levels, and in need of much negotiation. To
some extent, one may say that remembering that “utopia” served also as
an exercise in exploring the boundaries and even the character of
“utopia.”
50. As mentioned above, the cases of Amasa and Jarha explicitly and emphatic-
ally call into question the very core of the “biological” approach to “YHWH’s holy
seed.”
To be sure, one may raise the issue of readers of Chronicles strongly informed by
Ezra–Nehemiah. On the crucial, for the present purposes, matter of the rejection
of “foreigners” and (biological) “lineage purity,” the likely inÀuence going in this
direction would have been to notice or increase the mindscape of the fact that
although the Davidic line and the Judah line are abundant in cases of “mixed-
marriages,” the same is not true for the lineage of the priests. The story then
emerging would have been one stressing the eventual “priestization” of Israel. While
this is true when Chronicles was read in a way strongly informed by Ezra–
Nehemiah, it is worth noting that Chronicles on its own tends to “royalize” rather
than “priestize” Israel. But these matters deserve a separate discussion.
In addition, reading Chronicles in a way strongly inÀuenced by Ezra–Nehemiah
would lead to an association of the reforms/purges of Hezekiah and Josiah with
those of Ezra and Nehemiah and all of these to the motif of restoring temple and
community. Cf. Jan Clauss, “Understanding the Mixed Marriages of Ezra–Nehemiah
in the Light of Temple-Building and the Book’s Concept of Jerusalem,” in Frevel,
ed., Mixed Marriages, 109–31 (124–30).
This said, no matter whether Ezra–Nehemiah is read in the light of Chronicles or
vice versa, there is no room to settle in any substantial way the explicit and emphatic
construction and memory of Amasa’s or Jarha’s lineage with the underlying logic
governing the concept of (male) holy seed and its putative implementation, as
described in Ezra–Nehemiah.
1
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Ancient Israel in Honor of William G. Dever. Edited by Seymour Gitin, J. Edward
Wright, and J. P. Dessel. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2006.
Ben Zvi, Ehud. “Exploring the Memory of Moses ‘The Prophet’ in Late Persian/Early
Hellenistic Yehud/Judah.” Pages 335–64 in Remembering Biblical Figures in the
Late Persian and Early Hellenistic Periods: Social Memory and Imagination.
Edited by Diana Edelman and Ehud Ben Zvi. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2013.
———. “On Social Memory and Identity Formation in Late Persian Yehud: A Historian’s
Viewpoint with a Focus on Prophetic Literature, Chronicles and the Dtr. Historical
Collection.” Pages 95–148 in Texts, Contexts and Readings in Postexilic Literature:
Explorations into Historiography and Identity Negotiation in Hebrew Bible and
Related Texts. Edited by Louis Jonker. FAT 2/53. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011.
———. “Othering, Sel¿ng, ‘Boundarying’ and ‘Cross-Boundarying’ as Interwoven with
Socially Shared Memories: Some Observations.” Pages 20–40 in Imagining the
Other and Constructing Israelite Identity in the Early Second Temple Period. Edited
by Diana Edelman and Ehud Ben Zvi. LHBOTS 456. London: Bloomsbury T&T
Clark International, 2014.
———. “Reading and Constructing Utopias: Utopia/s and/in the Collection of Authorita-
tive Texts/Textual Readings of Late Persian Period Yehud.” SR 42 (2013): 463–76.
———. “Total Exile, Empty Land and the General Intellectual Discourse in Yehud.”
Pages 155–68 in The Concept of Exile in Ancient Israel and Its Historical Contexts.
Edited by Ehud Ben Zvi and Christoph Levin. BZAW 404. Berlin: de Gruyter,
2010.
Biggs, Robert D. “Conception, Contraception and Abortion in Ancient Mesopotamia.”
Pages 1–13 in Wisdom, Gods and Literature: Studies in Assyriology in Honour of
W. G. Lambert. Edited by Wilfred G. Lambert, A. R. George, and Irving L. Finkel.
Blenkinsopp, Joseph. Ezra–Nehemiah: A Commentary. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1988.
———. Isaiah 56–66. AB 19B. New York: Doubleday, 2003.
Cataldo, Jeremiah W. “Whispered Utopia: Dreams, Agendas, and Theocratic Aspirations
in Yehud.” SJOT 24 (2010): 53–70.
Clauss, Jan. “Understanding the Mixed Marriages of Ezra–Nehemiah in the Light of
Temple-Building and the Book’s Concept of Jerusalem.” Pages 109–31 in Mixed
Marriages: Intermarriage and Group Identity in the Second Temple Period. Edited
by Christian Frevel. LHBOTS 547. London: T&T Clark International, 2011.
Cohen, Shaye J. D. The Beginning of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
———. “The Origins of the Matrilineal Principle in Rabbinic Law.” AJSR 10 (1985): 19–
53.
Connell, Sophia M. “Aristotle and Galen on Sex Difference and Reproduction: A New
Approach to an Ancient Rivalry.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 31
(2000): 405–27.
Cooper, Jerrold S. Presargonic Inscriptions. New Haven, Conn.: American Oriental
Society, 1986.
Dor, Yonina. “The Composition of the Episode of the Foreign Women in Ezra IX–X.”
VT 53 (2003): 26–47.
———. Have the “Foreign Women” Really Been Expelled? Separation and Exclusion in
the Restoration Period. Jerusalem: Magnes, 2006 (in Hebrew).
Edelman, Diana. “Seeing Double: Tobiah the Ammonite as an Encrypted Character.”
RB 113 (2008): 570–84.
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JSOT 54 (1992): 25–43.
Eskenazi, Tamara C., and Eleanore P. Judd, “Marriage to a Stranger in Ezra 9–10.” Pages
266–85 in Second Temple Studies 2: Temple and Community in the Persian Period.
Edited by Tamara C. Eskenazi and Kent H. Richards. JSOTSup 175. Shef¿eld:
JSOT, 1994.
Fishbane, Michael. Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel. Oxford: Clarendon, 1985.
Frevel, Christian. “‘Separate Yourself from the Gentiles’ (Jubilees 22:16): Intermarriage
in the Book of Jubilees.” Pages 220–50 in Intermarriage and Group Identity in the
Second Temple Period. Edited by Christian Frevel. LHBOTS 547. London: T&T
Fried, Lisbeth S. “The Concept of ‘Impure Birth’ in 5th Century Athens and Judea.”
Pages 121–42 in In the Wake of Tikva Frymer-Kensky: Tikva Frymer-Kensky
Memorial Volume. Edited by Steven Holloway, JoAnn Scurlock, and Richard Beal.
Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias, 2009.
Glatt-Gilat, David. “'1:#/!# -#9! '#+#'=! %'< 0!)! !':< 0 :$3.” Pages 87–97 in
Or Le Mayer: Studies in Bible, Semitic Languages, Rabbinic Literature, and Ancient
Civilizations. Edited by Shamir Yona. Beer-Sheva: Ben-Gurion University Press,
2010.
Grabbe, Lester L. Ezra–Nehemiah. New York: Routledge, 1998.
———. A History of the Jews and Judaism in the Second Temple Period. Vol. 1, Yehud:
A History of the Persian Province of Judah. LSTS 47. London: T&T Clark
———. “Triumph of the Pious or Failure of the Xenophobes? The Ezra–Nehemiah
Reforms and the Nachgeschichte.” Pages 50–65 in Jewish Local Patriotism and
Self-Identi¿cation in the Graeco-Roman Period. Edited by Siân Jones and Sarah
Pearce. JSPSup 31. Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld Academic, 1998.
Grätz, Sebastian. “The Adversaries in Ezra/Nehemiah—Fictitious or Real? A Case Study
in Creating Identity in Late Persian and Hellenistic Times.” Pages 73–87 in Between
Cooperation and Hostility: Multiple Identities in Ancient Judaism and the Inter-
action with Foreign Powers. Edited by Rainer Albertz and Jakob Wöhrle. Journal of
Ancient Judaism Supplements 11. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013.
Harrington, Hannah K. “Intermarriage in Qumran Texts: The Legacy of Ezra–Nehemiah.”
Pages 251–79 in Mixed Marriages: Intermarriage and Group Identity in the Second
Temple Period. Edited by Christian Frevel. LHBOTS 547. London: T&T Clark
———. “The Use of Leviticus in Ezra–Nehemiah.” JHS 13, no. 3 (2013): 1–20. Online:
http:// www.jhsonline.org/Articles/article_183.pdf.
Hayes, Christine E. Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities: Intermarriage and
Conversion from the Bible to the Talmud. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Heger, Paul. “Patrilineal or Matrilineal Genealogy in Israel after Ezra.” JSJ 43 (2012):
215–48.
1
Janzen, David. Witch-hunts, Purity and Social Boundaries: The Expulsion of the Foreign
Women in Ezra 9–10. JSOTSup 350. London: Shef¿eld Academic, 2002.
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Descendants in the Judahite Lineages.” Pages 170–91 in Mixed Marriages:
Intermarriage and Group Identity in the Second Temple Period. Edited by Christian
Frevel. LHBOTS 547. London: T&T Clark International, 2011.
———. “Nehemiah and Sanballat: The Enemy Without or Within?” Pages 305–31 in
Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century B.C.E. Edited by Oded Lipschits,
Gary N. Knoppers, and Rainer Albertz. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2007.
———, ed. “Revisiting the Composition of Ezra–Nehemiah. In Conversation with Jacob
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1991.
1
WRITING AND THE CHRONICLER:
AUTHORSHIP, AMBIVALENCE, AND UTOPIA
Donald Polaski
The books of Chronicles swim in a sea of writing. Direct references to

written texts abound, while the books also freely borrow from and allude
to other writings.1 Scholars generally focus on the texts the Chronicler
may have excerpted or paraphrased, which of these texts may or may not
have existed, and how to relate the Chronicler to oral forms of literature.2
My investigation of the Chronicler’s relationship to writing will largely
evade these concerns. Instead, I will attempt to understand how the
Chronicler relates to writing as a social practice.3
The Chronicler may be taken as a colonial subject—he is a subject of
the empire, part of the elite in Yehud, and is thus caught in the dynamic
interplay between colonizer and colonized.4 Writing for the Chronicler
1. Regarding citations of written sources, see (among many others) Sara Japhet,
I and II Chronicles: A Commentary (OTL; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox,
1993), 14–23, Katherine M. Scott, Why Did They Write This Way? ReÀections on
References to Written Documents in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Literature
(LHBOTS 492; New York: T&T Clark International, 2008), 60–67, and Gary
Knoppers, I Chronicles 1–9: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary
(AB 12; New York: Doubleday, 2003), 66–71, 123–26. While the Chronicler’s
direct citations often receive a great deal of attention, he also uses written sources
allusively; see, for example, Steven Tuell’s passing mention (First and Second
Chronicles [IBC; Louisville: John Knox, 2001], 5) of Jeremiah and Zechariah.
2. For a recent treatment of some of these issues see Raymond F. Person, Jr., The
Deuteronomic History and the Book of Chronicles: Scribal Works in an Oral World
(SBLAIL 6; Atlanta: SBL, 2010), as well as Person’s critics.
3. I use the term “Chronicler” to indicate the “author position” of the books of
Chronicles. The actual process of authorship would have been a process more
complex than a combination of one scribe, an empty scroll and (apparently) a well-
stocked library.
4. Exactly which empire is not completely settled, given the uncertainty of the
date of the work. See the treatment in Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 23–28. She
concludes the work was written either late in the Persian period or early in the
Hellenistic.
would be a part of colonial discourse, an imperial practice that encodes

imperial power. Scribes expressed ambivalence regarding the colonial
project, both resisting the empire’s claims and being complicit with the
empire.5 I will examine the Chronicler’s own writing project in this
colonial context, investigating how the Chronicler’s own writing project,
enmeshed in this colonial context, discloses the Chronicler’s utopian
ideological approach to writing and empire.6
The Question of Sources: Authorship and Ambivalence

The Chronicler represents writing as a largely passive affair. The root
=) appears as an active ¿nite verb only four times in the entire corpus:
the scribe Shemaiah writes down the priestly courses (1 Chr 24:6), the
prophet Isaiah writes “the rest of the acts of Uzziah, from the ¿rst to the
last” (2 Chr 26:22), Hezekiah writes invitations to Passover (2 Chr 30:1),
and the Assyrian regime writes letters designed to defame God (2 Chr
32:17). Outside of these cases, the Chronicler treats writing as something
that happens but remains unnarrated.
The vast majority of the occurrences of =) in Chronicles are in the
Qal passive participle, usually in the plural. In many cases, there is no
clear agent doing the writing; the texts just “are written” (-'#=)).
Registration records and genealogies simply emerge (1 Chr 4:41, 9:1), as
does a book of laments (2 Chr 35:25). The varied books of the kings and
like sources cited by the Chronicler are also authorless (2 Chr 16:11;
24:27; 25:26; 27:7; 28:26; 35:27; 36:8).
In other cases, there are authors who may be presumed, but the
Chronicler, for whatever reason, does not wish to describe the author as
actively engaged in writing. The Chronicler ascribes many texts to
prophets or seers, though he fails to make their authorship (with the
exception of the Isaiah example above) quite clear. And, to add to the
diversity, these texts represent a wide variety of material (2 Chr 9:29;
12:15; 13:22; 20:34; 33:19). In some cases, the Chronicler multiplies
examples and ends up clouding the issue of authorship:
5. For a brief introduction to the concept of ambivalence in post-colonial

thought, see Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Grif¿ths, and Helen Tif¿n, Post-Colonial Studies:
The Key Concepts (3d ed.; New York: Routledge, 2013), 13–14.
6. On the Chronicler’s ideology, see Sara Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of
Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical Thought (BEATAJ 9; Frankfurt: Lang, 1989)
and Jonathan E. Dyck, The Theocratic Ideology of the Chronicler (BibInt 33;
Leiden: Brill, 1998). While our operating assumptions about ideology are different,
each of us is attempting in some way to locate the Chronicler’s worldview in its
historical context.
1
POLASKI Writing and the Chronicler 131
Now the acts of King David, from ¿rst to last, are written (-'#=)) in the
records of the seer Samuel, and in the records of the prophet Nathan, and
in the records of the seer Gad, with accounts of all his rule and his might
and of the events that befell him and Israel and all the kingdoms of the
earth. (1 Chr 29:29)7
Here are three texts, all with presumable authors, but their authorship is
reduced to a single passive verb. They are uni¿ed in their having been
written, but who authored what (and whether one source is a more
complete account) remains unclear. The Chronicler’s citation, far from
clarifying matters, obscures them.
Japhet claims that these citations in conclusion formulas parallel those
in the Deuteronomistic History and serve the same historiographic
purpose: “to support and substantiate the historical work by reference to
its sources.”8 While this conceit of using the passive voice may have
originated with Deuteronomistic History (DtrH), it is also the case that
the Chronicler has in mind a much larger archive and uses it in a much
more complicated way. Where the Deuteronomists “use” three sources
that “are written,” the Chronicler has at least eighteen.9 The Chronicler
adds purported authors to the citations, creating an ambiguous relation-
ship between the unlocated driver of the action of writing in the verb and
the name of some ¿gure, credited with the text, which follows. The
Chronicler’s extensive use of #=) in relation to sources is thus not a
kind of verbal tic; it is a clue to his stance regarding writing and author-
ship, a clue much more prevalent, complicated and obvious than the use
of #=) in other works, such as DtrH.10
The Chronicler tends to separate writing and authorship. Writing
happens in secret—we rarely see it. Authors appear, sometimes, but the
Chronicler refuses to have them actively display that role. In my view,
this shows that the Chronicler holds the notion of authoritative writing,
writing in some sense related to its author expressing authority, in a
7. See also 2 Chr 32:32, where the Chronicler seemingly combines the “vision of
the prophet Isaiah” with the “book of the kings of Judah and Israel.” Japhet (I and II
Chronicles, 996–97) claims the “vision” could be a reference to 2 Kgs 18–20, not
the book of Isaiah, which does style itself as a “vision.”
8. Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 20.
9. Ibid.
10. The Chronicler also repeatedly describes the law itself as written (#=)). But,
again, the treatments of authorship vary. At times the text is associated with YHWH
(!#!' =:#=, 1 Chr 16:40; 2 Chr 31:3; 35:26), or Moses (2 Chr 23:18; 35:12), or is
simply “this book” (2 Chr 34:21, 31 and cf. 30:5, 18). One wonders how the
Chronicler, who seems to have had quite a collection of books, catalogued the
Torah.
fundamentally ambivalent manner. Writing with authority is a classic

mark of the imperial administration with which the Chronicler as scribe
must interact, so he both accepts and resists writing with authority. He is
an intriguing and shifting subject of imperial discourse. He does not
simply cite authoritative sources, or use sources merely to buttress his
own authority, but negotiates his own role as writer while caught in a
web of writing.11
The Question of Sources: A Logic of Supplementarity

I believe the Chronicler’s explicit use of documents buttresses the case
for his ambivalence regarding writing, as it demonstrates the Chron-
icler’s participation in a logic of supplementarity. Jacques Derrida points
out that, in Western thought, the written has been seen as serving as a
supplement to the oral, as an aid to its expression, an external addition.12
Yet, it is also a supplement in a different sense of the term: it acts as a
compensation for some central lack or absence in oral expression, in
effect taking the place of the oral: “If supplementarity is a necessarily
inde¿nite process, writing is the supplement par excellence since it
marks the point where the supplement proposes itself as supplement of
supplement, sign of sign, taking the place of a speech already signi-
¿cant.”13
We can apply that insight to relations between texts as well. So a
supplementary text adds to a text as well as replaces that text. Texts that
display other texts, such as Chronicles, may exist as a supplement to
those texts, simultaneously adding to them and replacing them. And
those displayed texts themselves might also supplement Chronicles, both
adding to it and replacing it. In fact, it might be better to call putative
sources in Chronicles “supplements to Chronicles” or “texts supple-
mented by Chronicles.” What emerges is a much less certain economy of
11. For diverse approaches to this question, see E. Ben Zvi and D. Edelman, eds.,
What Was Authoritative for Chronicles? (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2011),
especially the essays by Steven Schweitzer, Louis Jonker, Amber K. Warhurst, Mark
Leuchter, and David Glatt-Gilad. In general, these authors see the Chronicler using
texts in order to help his rhetorical cause. But where Karel van der Toorn (Scribal
Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2007], 117) sees in Chronicles a “self-conscious parading of scholarship,”
I see a much more subconscious wrestling with scholarship.
12. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (trans. G. C. Spivak; Baltimore, Md.:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 144–52.
1
13. Derrida, Grammatology, 281 (original italics).
textual circulation and power than claimed in a source/interpretation kind

of model, which centers authority with the primal author.14
In the formulae he uses to conclude almost every king’s reign, the
Chronicler nicely displays this logic of supplementarity. At the end of his
account of the reign of Uzziah, the Chronicler actually names the active
author of the “source” text: “Now the rest of the acts of Uzziah, from
¿rst to last, the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz wrote” (2 Chr 26:22). What
exactly was Isaiah supposed to have written? One would assume it was a
full history of Uzziah’s reign, “from ¿rst to last.” But the Chronicler
mentions it as something of a supplementary nature: it is the place to go
for the rest of Uzziah’s acts. Isaiah’s writing is an external “addition” to
the Chronicler’s work. Yet it also points to a decided lack in the
Chronicler’s work. His writing lacks complete coverage of Uzziah, so the
existence of this alternative source raises the question of the necessity of
the Chronicler’s own account: is the Chronicler simply epitomizing
Isaiah? But if the Chronicler is epitomizing Isaiah, then perhaps the
Chronicler’s account of Uzziah functions as a destabilizing supplement
to Isaiah’s writing.15
In several instances the Chronicler more clearly appears as an
epitomizer, commenting that all of the information on a particular reign
is contained in his supposed sources. “All the acts” of David (1 Chr
29:29), Reheboam (2 Chr 12:15), and Asa (2 Chr 16:11) are available
elsewhere. Chronicles is both a supplementary summary of these texts
and is supplemented by these texts, whose very completeness points to
Chronicles’ lack of completeness. In this play of supplementarity, the
Chronicler obscures his own work as an author, striking an ambivalent
pose. If you have access to the sources that the Chronicler does, why
would you need Chronicles?
14. For an approach that favors the authority of previous texts in the Chronicler’s
work, see William M. Schniedewind, “The Chronicler as an Interpreter of Scripture,”
in The Chronicler as Author: Studies in Text and Texture (ed. M. Graham and
S. McKenzie; JSOTS 263; Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld Academic, 1999), 158–80. H. G. M.
Williamson (1 and 2 Chronicles [NCB; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982], 23) turns
the tables a bit, using an interesting socio-economic metaphor: “The Chronicler
shows himself as the master, not the servant, of his sources.”
15. The Chronicler’s typical clouding of authorship makes matters even less
stable. In those cases, the supplement is styled at some distance from an authorizing
voice, making its status even more mysterious, while the Chronicler may be sup-
plementing either anonymous works or those whose authorship he does not wish
fully to express.
Letters as Supplementary
The Chronicler has access not only to the books of the kings of Israel and
various works written by prophets, but also to letters. His treatment of
letters displays a similar ambivalence toward writing and authorship, as
the letters ¿nd themselves enmeshed with oral and other written authori-
ties. In short, we will ¿nd that many of these letters are not utterly
effective.
The Letter of Huram. The Chronicler reports an exchange of letters

between Solomon and King Huram of Tyre regarding the building of the
temple in Jerusalem. The message from Solomon, it should be noted, is
not explicitly mentioned as a written document; the Chronicler simply
uses the verb %+f. And the message Solomon sends is rather oral in
nature; Sara Japhet has pointed out that it is structured like an oration.16
Whatever one thinks of the possible orality of Solomon’s initial contact,
the Chronicler’s claim that Huram’s response is written has three
interesting outcomes.
First, the claim situates the Chronicler in an archive.17 He has access
to of¿cial records. This is not to say that he had actual access. That is
exceedingly unlikely, and it is more likely that this letter is largely
created by the Chronicler, based on the much shorter letter in 1 Kgs
5:22–23.18 But what matters here is the claim: the Chronicler projects that
he is able to read of¿cial documents, an exchange of letters between
kings.
Second, Huram’s letter largely replicates Solomon’s; it picks up
Solomon’s language and repeats it. Solomon requests “an artisan skilled
to work in gold, silver, bronze, and iron, and in purple, crimson, and blue
fabrics, trained also in engraving, to join the skilled workers who are
with me in Judah and Jerusalem, whom my father David provided”
(2 Chr 2:6[7]). Huram almost precisely repeats Solomon’s letter in reply:
“I have dispatched Huram-abi, a skilled artisan… He is trained to work
in gold, silver, bronze, iron, stone, and wood, and in purple, blue, and
crimson fabrics and ¿ne linen, and to do all sorts of engraving and exe-
cute any design that may be assigned him, with your artisans, the artisans
of my lord, your father David” (2 Chr 2:12–13[13–14]). Huram even
voices Solomon’s claims regarding YHWH’s powers: When Solomon

17. For an ancient claim that these letters were indeed archived in Jerusalem and
in Tyre, see Josephus, Ant. 8.55.
18. Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 543. Cf. Dennis Pardee, Handbook of Ancient
Hebrew Letters: A Study Edition (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1982), 180.
1
claims “our God is greater than other gods” (2 Chr 2:4[5]), Huram
(oddly) af¿rms that the “LORD God of Israel…made heaven and earth”
(2 Chr 2:11[12]).19
In other words, Solomon’s text governs Huram’s text. This ¿ts well
with Huram’s status as less powerful than Solomon. Yet, Huram’s letter
does not correspond perfectly with Solomon’s. As can be seen above,
Huram adds work in stone and wood to Solomon’s list of desiderata.
While that addition might seem logical enough, Huram also mentions
that Solomon intends to build a royal palace as well as a Temple
(2:11[12]), a fact not included in Solomon’s letter, but mentioned earlier
by the narrator (1:18[2:1]). Solomon’s letter is thus incomplete; it needs
to be supplemented by Huram’s response. But even Huram’s letter is a
bit of a problem. Huram’s added note about the palace ¿nds no echo in
the narration—the Chronicler fails to mention building a palace.
Third, the letters are not, in a sense, perfectly effective. The Chron-
icler mentions Huram-abi, the artisan Huram agrees to send in his letter,
only after presenting Solomon as the one making everything or (we
should assume) directing its manufacture. Only after this narration are
we provided with a list of what Huram-Abi accomplished, learning that
he was there all along (2 Chr 4:11–16). We may assume the building
supplies arrive as well, though the Chronicler does not bother to tell us.
It is also odd that Chronicler situates the exchange of letters between
two accounts of the same activity. Immediately before sending word to
Huram, Solomon counts the workers for the Temple project: “Solomon
conscripted (:62'#) seventy thousand laborers and eighty thousand
stonecutters in the hill country, with three thousand six hundred to
oversee them” (2 Chr 2:1[2]). Immediately after receiving Huram’s
letter, he counts aliens, before assigning them to the Temple project:
Then Solomon took a census (:62'#) of all the aliens who were residing in
the land of Israel, after the census that his father David had taken; and
there were found to be one hundred ¿fty-three thousand six hundred.
Seventy thousand of them he assigned as laborers, eighty thousand as
stonecutters in the hill country, and three thousand six hundred as
overseers to make the people work. (2 Chr 2:16[17])
The numbers are identical. It is almost as if the exchange of letters has

gotten us nowhere.20
19. Ehud Ben Zvi notes (History, Literature and Theology in the Book of
Chronicles [London: Equinox, 2006], 275) that Huram’s “theological viewpoint,
thoughts and language are characteristics of pious Israelites in the world of
Chronicles.”
Letters of Hezekiah. Much later in the Chronicler’s narrative, Hezekiah

sends letters. Again, there is question as to how well they actually work:
Hezekiah sent word (%+f'#) to all Israel and Judah, and wrote letters
(=) =#:) also to Ephraim and Manasseh, that they should come to the
house of the LORD at Jerusalem, to keep the passover to the LORD the God
of Israel… So couriers went throughout all Israel and Judah with letters
(=#:) from the king and his of¿cials, as the king had commanded,
saying, ‘O people of Israel, return to the LORD, the God of Abraham, Isaac,
and Israel, so that he may turn again to the remnant of you who have
escaped from the hand of the kings of Assyria. (2 Chr 30:1, 6)
The text at ¿rst appears to have Hezekiah address his own subjects
through speech, while also writing letters to the remnants of the northern
kingdom outside his direct control. It is more likely that the text
presumes that Hezekiah used a blend of oral and written messages by his
couriers, almost identical to the actions of Darius in 2 Chr 36:23 and
Ezra 1:1, so the Chronicler relates Hezekiah to what was, at least in his
view, standard Persian practice.21
The Chronicler’s Hezekiah not only apes the practice of the Persian
Empire, he also apes imperial ideology.22 Hezekiah uses writing to bring
more subjects into a relationship with the Temple and, thus, his own
kingdom. Hezekiah’s letter invites the northern tribes to de¿ne them-
selves as subjects of Hezekiah’s writing, interpellating them and assign-
ing them an identity.23 The current Israelites’ only chance to exist is in the
discourse of the Judean king and the Judean temple. In short, Hezekiah is
attempting to play colonizer to the potential colonized of the north.
20. Japhet (I and II Chronicles, 538) and Williamson (1 and 2 Chronicles, 198)
understand the ¿rst account as a gloss. Ralph Klein (2 Chronicles [ed. P. Hanson;
Hermeneia; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Fortress, 2012], 32) claims the ¿rst account
“provides a background for the reference to Solomon’s servants in 2 Chron. 2:7 (8).”
21. Elias Bickerman (“The Edict of Cyrus in Ezra 1,” JBL 65 [1946]: 271–73)
claimed that the practice here was indeed Persian imperial practice. Japhet (I and II
Chronicles, 938) is inclined to agree.
22. Contra Williamson (Israel in the Books of Chronicles [Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1977], 135), who claims the Chronicler’s “glowing”
presentation of parts of Israel’s history “could only have been intended to awaken
fresh hopes and aspirations in the minds of his readers.”
23. Interpellation, according to Louis Althusser, is the process by which
ideological state apparatuses work to “call people forth” as subjects. When subjects
respond to this “hailing” they become a particular kind of subject. This passage in
particular, with its emphasis on the Israelites “turning” to Hezekiah, sounds very
much like Hezekiah “hailing” potential subjects of his royal discourse. For more on
interpellation, see Dyck, Ideology, 59–60.
1
But Hezekiah’s letter is met with scornful laughter and mockery from
Ephraim, Manasseh, and Zebulun (2 Chr 30:10). The greater part of the
people of the north refuse to be made subject by Hezekiah’s procla-
mation. Some from the tribes of Asher, Manasseh and Zebulun do come
(the Ephraimites seem to be total refuseniks at this point, 2 Chr 30:11).24
And it takes “the hand of God” even to persuade Judah to “do what the
king and the of¿cials commanded by the word of the Lord” (30:12).25
This is hardly a high moment of effectiveness for the royal writing
apparatus, even if we include the somewhat larger crowd estimates later
in the narrative (2 Chr 30:13, 18) and the belated inclusion of some
formerly stubborn Ephraimites (2 Chr 30:18).
Writing also enters into the rationale for the proclamation in the ¿rst
place:
And they [i.e., the king and the assembly] decreed the transmission of a
proclamation to all Israel, from Beer-sheba to Dan, to come and keep the
passover to the LORD the God of Israel in Jerusalem; for they had not kept
it as often as written (#=))). (2 Chr 30:5, auth. trans.)
For some reason, “all Israel” has failed to follow some written instruc-
tions. It is not entirely clear what Israel has ignored.26 It is reasonable to
conclude that the writing here refers to the Torah: Israel is ignoring its
written instructions regarding Passover.27 Yet there are no allusions to the
24. Scholars dispute the sense of ( in 30:11, leading to differing crowd

estimates. Williamson (1 and 2 Chronicles, 369) claims the NRSV’s “only a few” is
“an unnecessary addition” as it contradicts the Chronicler’s later opinion in 30:18.
The JPS reading, “Some of the people of Asher and Manasseh and Zebulun, however,
were contrite,” nicely captures the various functions of (, disclosing only “partial
acceptance” of the king’s letters in the north (Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 946).
25. The stakes would be somewhat different if the “word of the Lord” here were
Torah. But it is best to see Hezekiah’s invitation as a “commandment…identi¿ed
with the word of Yahweh” (Klein, 2 Chronicles, 436), cf. 2 Chr 29:15. James
Newsome (“Toward a New Understanding of the Chronicler and His Purposes,” JBL
94 [1975]: 204) claims that in Chronicles “the human regent over God’s kingdom is
capable, on certain occasions, of receiving that word, directing and sharing it with
the king’s subjects.”
26. Here, once more, the Chronicler’s passion for the passive participle spreads
ambiguity.
27. In his thorough survey of the #=)) formula in Chronicles, Armin Lange
(“Authoritative Literature and Scripture in the Chronistic Corpus: The Use of Katuv-
Formulas in Ezra–Nehemiah and 1–2 Chronicles,” in The Words of a Wise Man’s
Mouth Are Gracious (Qoh 10,12): Festschrift for Günter Stemberger on the
Occasion of His 65th Birthday [ed. M. Parani; SJ 32; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005], 32–
39) relates the uses in 30:5 and 30:18 to 31:5, where Hezekiah’s actions are
text in Deut 16, which claims the Passover should be celebrated at a

central location. And it may be that, as in 2 Chr 30:12, they are not
keeping some prior royal command, issued with divine backing. So (at
best) we have an intriguing but uncertain instance of the Torah’s own
authority as text being challenged.28 In either case, writing has once again
failed to do the trick. It needs something more; it is lacking something. 29
And this inability of writing to demonstrate its power recurs in the
text, for the pilgrims from the north “ate the Passover not as written
(#=)) +)” (2 Chr 30:18).30 So while Hezekiah wanted the Passover
kept as written, it turned out that it was not kept as written. The people
from the north have once again, at some level, evaded being made
subject to southern writing, even as they humble themselves, come to
Jerusalem, and eat the prescribed meal.
Letters from Assyria. There are yet more letters sent during the reign of
Hezekiah, writings that also turn out to need supplementing. When the
Assyrians attack Judah, Sennacherib sends his servants to Jerusalem to
address the people with the message that their God cannot save them
(2 Chr 32:10–15). That speech is followed by a passage Japhet calls
“superÀuous,” but which I will call “supplementary”:31
His servants said still more against the Lord GOD and against his servant
Hezekiah. He also wrote letters (=) -':62#) to throw contempt on the
LORD the God of Israel and to speak against him, saying, “Just as the gods
of the nations in other lands did not rescue their people from my hands, so
the God of Hezekiah will not rescue his people from my hand.” (2 Chr
32:16–17)
explicitly related to the Torah. Japhet (Ideology, 235) also claims that #=)) in 30:5
and 18 (though “inde¿nite”) refers to the Torah in keeping with later rabbinic usage.
Klein (2 Chronicles, 434) supports a “reference to the Pentateuch” here.
28. Japhet, I and II Chronicles, 941. Steven Schweitzer (Reading Utopia in
Chronicles [LHBOTS 442; London: T&T Clark International, 2009], 106) is also
uncomfortable identifying the writing here as the “Mosaic Torah.”
29. “The actions taken in 2 Chr 30 repeatedly violate the written commands,
as the Chronicler points out multiple times, almost seeming to revel in this moment
in which the condition of the heart takes precedence over following ritual or even
authoritative texts” (Steven Schweitzer, “Judging a Book by Its Citations: Sources
and Authority in Chronicles,” in Ben Zvi and Edelman, eds., What Was Authorita-
tive in Chronicles?, 52–53).
30. Both Japhet (I and II Chronicles, 942) and Klein (2 Chronicles, 434) note the
irony.
1
After they deliver the king’s speech in vv. 10 to 15, the couriers feel the
need to say yet more. And then Sennacherib feels the need to write letters
summarizing the main point of his speech. Here writing serves as a
supplement to an oral performance. It shows the oral performance was
somehow lacking or ineffective. The empire’s attempt to subject Judah
as a colony, to make Judah realize it must de¿ne itself in relation to
Assyria, like all other nations, must now resort to writing.
Yet writing is not enough. The account immediately moves back to the
oral register. The servants shout loudly in the language of Judah (2 Chr
32:18). So now the imperial writing itself needs supplementing; it cannot
work without being voiced. And, indeed, it will not work no matter
what—YHWH quickly comes to the rescue (2 Chr 32:21–22).
Resisting Supplementarity: The Chronicler’s Dance

So far, writing has needed supplementing, disclosing the Chronicler’s
ambivalence toward writing, especially writing that claims authority.
But is there any way to stop supplementarity? There are other texts in
Chronicles that resist supplementarity, and show how the Chronicler may
be open to utopian possibilities in and around writing.
Letter of Elijah. The Chronicler claims access to one more letter, a

supposed letter (literally a =)/, a written thing) penned by the prophet
Elijah to King Jehoram of Judah (2 Chr 21:12–15).32 It is no real surprise
that the Chronicler, vitally interested in writing, would make Elijah into a
writer. But it should be noted that the Chronicler’s recasting of Elijah as
author is total: it is all we will learn about Elijah from the Chronicler.
And the Chronicler is so anxious to invent Elijah’s writing that he modi-
¿es the Deuteronomists’ chronology as well as creating Elijah’s interest
in Judah, lacking in the Deuteronomists’ lengthy account of Elijah.33
I take this interesting invention as an example of the Chronicler
evading the logic of supplementarity. First, Elijah is not so much an
author as God’s amanuensis (the letter begins “thus says the Lord,” after
all). Here we have a combination of divine voice and prophetic trans-
cription, a very different power dynamic than in the “written but not
authored” prophetic texts often cited by the Chronicler.
32. This letter again conjures up the Chronicler’s placing himself in the archive,
as well as his invention of letters, seen above in the Solomon/Huram correspond-
ence.
33. On the various problems with this letter, see Japhet (I and II Chronicles,
812–13) and Klein (2 Chronicles, 306–7).
Second, the letter, which predicts Jehoram’s loss of his family and
his death from a bowel disease, is ful¿lled almost immediately. The
succeeding narrative underlines the letter; it does not nuance it in some
direction. And, most signi¿cant, the Chronicler does not provide his
typical reign summary for Jehoram.34 If there are other sources in which
one may ¿nd the rest of the acts of Jehoram, the Chronicler does not
mention them, while the Deuteronomist does (2 Kgs 8:23–24). The letter
from Elijah is all the Chronicler feels the need to cite. It requires no
supplement.
Temple Plans. Writing that pertains to the Temple also appears to be

more stable. One of the few examples of =) as an active ¿nite verb in
Chronicles occurs when Shemaiah, a Levite scribe, records the divisions
of the priests. This act of writing is a public performance: “The scribe
Shemaiah son of Nethanel, a Levite, recorded them (-=)'#) in
the presence of the king, and the of¿cers, and Zadok the priest, and
Ahimelech son of Abiathar, and the heads of ancestral houses of the
priests and of the Levites” (1 Chr 24:6). This record, obviously, is
intended to end all discussion, determining events which will occur later,
after the Temple is built. The record here combines the power of God
(who determines the cast of the lots), the king (present at the writing),
and the Temple (the place de¿ned by this writing). This particular
constellation of forces puts a stop to supplementing and thus produces a
particularly effective form of writing.
The Temple, it seems, is structured by writing, writing that will not
change and that is still available after centuries.35 The Chronicler under-
lines this with his claim that the plans for the Temple are indeed written.
David gives Solomon the plan (='1=) for the Temple (1 Chr 28:11).
While the term ='1= echoes God’s providing a visual model for the
tabernacle to Moses (Exod 25:9), here the Chronicler clearly has a
written record in mind (1 Chr 28:19).36 While the Deuteronomists simply
34. The only other king lacking a reign summary is Amon (2 Chr 33:21–25),
whose reign was quite short and whose reign summary may have been lost through
scribal error (Wilhelm Rudolph, Chronikbücher [HAT; Tübingen: Mohr, 1955], 316;
Immanuel Benzinger, Die Bücher der Chronik erklärt [HKAT; Tübingen: Mohr,
1901], 129) or an intentional exclusion to express disapproval of Amon (Japhet,
I and II Chronicles, 1014).
35. Note also that when Josiah keeps Passover, he instructs the Levites to follow
the divisions “in the writing of David the king of Israel and in the writing of
Solomon his son” (2 Chr 35:4). There is no supplement.
36. 1 Chronicles 28:19 is obscure in many ways, and it remains unclear whether
David or God authored/wrote the plan. Some sense of divine inspiration of the
1
have Solomon build the Temple (1 Kgs 6:1), the Chronicler introduces
written instructions.
Cyrus’s Writing. The constellation of writing, divine involvement, the

Temple, and imperial authority reaches a climax at the end of Chronicles
with Cyrus’s writing:
In the ¿rst year of King Cyrus of Persia, in ful¿llment of the word of the
LORD spoken by Jeremiah, the LORD stirred up the spirit of King Cyrus of
Persia so that he sent a herald throughout all his kingdom and also
declared in a written edict: “Thus says King Cyrus of Persia: The LORD,
the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has
charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.
Whoever is among you of all his people, may the LORD his God be with
him! Let him go up.” (2 Chr 36:22–23)
Here the emperor is moved by God, under the guise of the voice of a
prophet, to supplement that voice with a particular written work (a
=)/).37 Here is imperial writing, writing that subjects Judah, that
interpellates Judah, but its origin is with both God and king. And this
imperial writing will replicate (or, perhaps, copy) the instructions for the
Temple given in writing (1 Chr 28:19). The promise of a renewed
Temple ends supplementation—nothing else will be needed.
The Chronicler and the Utopia of Non-negotiable Writing

Steven Schweitzer has claimed that “the ability of the Chronicler to
convince his audience that the utopia presented in the text is indeed a
better alternative reality (a utopia) rests heavily on the authoritative
status of Chronicles itself.”38 In my view, the Chronicler masks his
authority to an extent, showing ambivalence regarding his status as a
writing colonial subject by treating writing as subject to supplemen-
tarity.39 But once he introduces this instability, the Chronicler contains
writing is almost certainly intended (Williamson, 1 and 2 Chronicles, 183;

Schweitzer, Reading Utopia, 151). Japhet (I and II Chronicles, 498) renders the key
phrase “All this in writing, from God,” while Klein (1 Chronicles [ed. P. Hanson;
Hermeneia; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Fortress, 2006], 527) suggests “all this was in a
document, since the hand of the Yahweh was upon him.” The NEB and ESV have God
writing the document.
37. As with the letters of Hezekiah. See above, p. 136.
38. Schweitzer, “Judging,” 57.
39. Schweitzer takes a different approach, claiming that the Chronicler argues for
his utopian project by appeal to authority: “The probability of acceptance of this
utopian vision by the Chronicler’s audience is bolstered by the repeated and varie-
gated claims to authority made throughout the work, including source citations,
this supplementarity when empire and Temple align. The “better

alternative reality” here is a world of stable writing, a world that (at some
level) would erase the traces of the dance of the colonial scribal subject.
Bibliography
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Grif¿ths, and Helen Tif¿n. Post-Colonial Studies: The Key
Concepts. 3d ed. New York: Routledge, 2013.
Ben Zvi, Ehud. History, Literature and Theology in the Book of Chronicles. London:
Equinox, 2006.
Ben Zvi, Ehud, and Diana Edelman, eds. What Was Authoritative for Chronicles? Winona
Benzinger, Immanuel. Die Bücher der Chronik erklärt. HKAT. Tübingen: Mohr, 1901.
Bickerman, Elias. “The Edict of Cyrus in Ezra 1.” JBL 65 (1946): 249–75.
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.
Dyck, Jonathan E. The Theocratic Ideology of the Chronicler. BibInt 33. Leiden: Brill,
1998.
Japhet, Sara. I and II Chronicles: A Commentary. OTL. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster
John Knox, 1993.
———. The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical Thought.
BEATAJ 9. Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 1989.
Klein, Ralph. 1 Chronicles. Edited by Paul Hanson. Hermeneia. Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Fortress, 2006.
———. 2 Chronicles. Edited by Paul Hanson. Hermeneia. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Fortress,
2012.
Knoppers, Gary N. I Chronicles 1–9: A New Translation with Introduction and
Commentary. AB 12. New York: Doubleday, 2003.
Lange, Armin. “Authoritative Literature and Scripture in the Chronistic Corpus: The Use
of Katuv-Formulas in Ezra–Nehemiah and 1–2 Chronicles.” Pages 29–52 in The
Words of a Wise Man’s Mouth Are Gracious (Qoh 10,12): Festschrift for Günter
Stemberger on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday. Edited by Mauro Parani. Studia
Judaica 32. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005.
Newsome, James. “Toward a New Understanding of the Chronicler and His Purposes.”
JBL 94 (1975): 201–17.
Pardee, Dennis. Handbook of Ancient Hebrew Letters: A Study Edition. Chico, Calif..:
Scholars Press, 1982.
Person, Jr., Raymond F. The Deuteronomic History and the Book of Chronicles: Scribal
Works in an Oral World. SBLAIL 6. Atlanta, Ga.: Society of Biblical Literature,
2010.
references to other ancient records, prophecies, and royal speeches, among others”
(Reading Utopia, 46). Schweitzer carefully notes that the Chronicler’s use of sources
does not mean he totally submits to their authority, feeling free to contradict them.
So we both, at the least, claim that the Chronicler negotiates a tense position regard-
ing textual authority, a position I relate to ambivalence.
1
Rudolph, Wilhelm. Chronikbücher. HAT. Tübingen: Mohr, 1955.

Schniedewind, William M. “The Chronicler as an Interpreter of Scripture.” Pages 158–80
in The Chronicler as Author: Studies in Text and Texture. Edited by M. Patrick
Graham and Steven L. McKenzie. JSOTSup 263. Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld Academic,
1999.
Schweitzer, Steven. “Judging a Book by Its Citations: Sources and Authority in
Chronicles.” Pages 37–65 in What Was Authoritative in Chronicles? Edited by Ehud
Ben Zvi and Diana Edelman. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2011.
———. Reading Utopia in Chronicles. LHBOTS 442. London: T&T Clark International,
2009.
Scott, Katherine M. Why Did They Write This Way? ReÀections on References to Written
Documents in the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Literature. LHBOTS 492. New York:
T&T Clark International, 2008.
Toorn, Karel van der. Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Tuell, Steven. First and Second Chronicles. IBC. Louisville: John Knox, 2001.
Williamson, H. G. M. 1 and 2 Chronicles. NCB. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1982.
———. Israel in the Books of Chronicles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
UTOPIA IN AGONY:
THE ROLE OF PREJUDICE
IN EZRA–NEHEMIAH’S IDEAL FOR RESTORATION
Jeremiah Cataldo
A century and a half or, more precisely, the 139 years from deportation of
the eighteen-year-old Jehoiachin (597) to the arrival of Ezra in Judah
(458) was time enough for the Jewish community in and around Nippur
to have settled down and developed its own modus vivendi, institutions,
traditions, and no doubt parties and factions.1
Biblical scholarship has been wrestling with the question of the

historicity of Ezra–Nehemiah for much of the past century. Driving
questions have included, is it a single authored text? Does its authorship
belong to the Persian, Hellenistic, or Hasmonean periods? And relatedly,
are the historical events that it describes real or accurate in their
descriptions? Was Ezra a veritable ¿gure? What was his real relation to
the law he is attributed with bringing to Yehud? How relevant was the
so-called Mosaic Law to the provincial context? And so on. These
questions continue to be asked.2 They should be; no convincing answer
1. Joseph Blenkinsopp, Judaism, the First Phase: The Place of Ezra and
Nehemiah in the Origins of Judaism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2009), 122
(emphasis mine).
2. Cf. J. Blenkinsopp’s discussion of the issue in ibid., 87–90. See also Wilhelm
Rudolph, Esra und Nehemia Samt 3. Esra (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1949), xxiv–
xxv, who argues for an early fourth-century date which would remove the text from
the events it describes by possibly a hundred years. Blenkinsopp (Judaism: The First
Phase, 89 n. 7) states that such a date is the generally held consensus in scholarship.
L. Fried argues that the reference to Darius in Neh 12:22 is to Darius III, and that
consequently Ezra 7–Nehemiah 13 was written in the Hellenistic period. She claims
that Ezra 1–6 was also written in the Hellenistic period but under Alexander or the
Ptolemies at the end of the fourth century (“Ezra’s Use of Documents in the Context
of Hellenistic Rules of Rhetoric,” in New Perspectives on Ezra–Nehemiah: History
and Historiography, Text, Literature, and Interpretation [ed. Isaac Kalimi; Winona
Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2012], 15–16). J. VanderKam also argues for a Hellenistic
dating (cf. From Joshua to Caiaphas: High Priests After the Exile [Minneapolis:
Fortress, 2004], 85–99). M. Liverani dates the activities of Ezra to 398 B.C.E., with
the text somewhat later (cf. Israel’s History and the History of Israel (trans. Chiara
CATALDO Utopia in Agony 145
has yet been offered. My purpose is not to put that debate to rest but to
give it an enhanced dynamic by introducing into it a new line of inquiry.
What if, for example, we approached the text as one written under
utopian agenda largely shaped by prejudice–a prejudice manifest as
ideological antagonism against an “other”? In that regard, this chapter is
a methodological experiment the intent of which is to clarify some of the
values, attitudes, and ideologies unique to the golah community as they
are understood and expressed in Ezra–Nehemiah. It will focus primarily
upon the role of prejudice within utopian thinking, which is manifest in
intergroup attitudes marked by antagonism. Prejudice in the Bible,
especially in relation to studies of utopian thinking and attitudes, has
been an insuf¿ciently explored area. What would it mean, for instance, to
view the Bible as legitimating prejudice for the sake of a puri¿ed or
restored world? Would we be hesitant to be so positivistic about its
interpretation? Would we be more so?
Using Christian Crandall and Amy Eshleman’s Justi¿cation–
Suppression Theory, this chapter seeks understanding of how the utopian
tendency in Ezra–Nehemiah was a response to antagonized intergroup
relations between the golah community and the am haarets. Our focus
on Utopia will be restricted to restoration as a utopian ideal. The bene¿t
of this is a better awareness of the ideological concerns that shaped Ezra–
Nehemiah and the original development of golah monotheistic identity.
Identifying the origin of Jewish (and Christian, relatedly) monotheism
there does not ignore the formation of Jewish monotheistic identity in
later periods. What it does do is recognize that the bases for the forma-
tion of this identity were ¿rst established through group conÀict in
the Persian period and continued developing in subsequent periods
as they were shaped by the ever-present disappointment in unful¿lled
restoration—a disappointment that generated increasing feelings of
anxiety and a corresponding antagonism. There is a strong correlation
between ideologies of restoration and prejudice in that such ideologies
are nearly always focused on the social dominance of a single group or
community. Along that line, Sarah Japhet exposed a possible area of
connection between prejudice and restoration when she wrote, “The
Book of Ezra–Nehemiah describes the period of the Restoration from a
historical distance and after a period of time during which those hopes
Peri and Philip R. Davies; London: Equinox, 2005], 363). L. Grabbe asserts that
while the Hebrew combined book of Ezra–Nehemiah is later than the Persian period,
parts of it, such as the so-called Nehemiah Memorial, seemed to have circulated
during that period (“Pinholes or Pinheads in the Camera Obscura? The Task of
Writing a History of Persian Period Yehud,” paper presented at the International
Society of Biblical Literature, 2003).
and ferments Àickered and were suppressed.”3 The anxieties or frustra-

tions that resulted from repressed (or suppressed in response to external
affectations) desires, which were interpreted as road blocks to any ful¿ll-
ment of Utopia, offered grounds for internal, group justi¿cation for
expressions of prejudice, a point that this chapter will explore in more
detail.
Concepts of restoration that de¿ned the contours of monotheistic
identity, which were fundamental to golah collective identity and which
were further developed during the Hellenistic and Hasmonean periods,
took their initial shape during this period. What scholarly discourse
needs is a better understanding of the sociological development of those
concepts, especially how group conÀict shaped utopian attitudes founda-
tional for restoration. In that regard, Joseph Blenkinsopp rightly empha-
sized, “any inquiry into the origins of Judaism entails inquiry into the
origins of the golah group and its distinctive ideology.”4 What is more,
reconstructing the distinctiveness of the monotheistic identity of the
golah community and those communities that were later branch develop-
ments from it, identities for which the utopian hope in restoration was an
essential attitude, does not necessitate drawing parallels or trajectories to
the pre-exilic period. The distinctiveness of this identity was a product
precisely of the sociological processes and prejudices that characterized
the Persian period. It began not with the exile but with the immigration
of a minority community into Yehud. We are saying then that while
Ezra–Nehemiah was most probably redacted in later periods, the group
conÀict over social-political authority between the immigrants and people
already in the land that it describes, whether based on ¿rst-person account
or collective memory, was a probable event of the Persian period.5
We approach the text, for that reason, not with any expectation that
the text holds any water as a veritable objective historiography in the
way that we expect our modern doctorate-holding historians to behave.
Neither do we approach it with the unfounded expectation that it archives
without emendation primary documentation going back to the kings of
the Persian Empire.6 Instead, we consider Ezra–Nehemiah to be a text
inspired by utopian aspirations with some historical merit in that as a
3. Sara Japhet, “Sheshbazzar and Zerubbabel Against the Background of the

Historical and Religious Tendencies of Ezra–Nehemiah: Part 1,” in From the Rivers
of Babylon to the Highlands of Judah (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2006),
65–66.
4. Blenkinsopp, Judaism: The First Phase, 37 (my emphasis).
5. Again, see ibid.
6. See also Niels Peter Lemche, The Israelites in History and Tradition (London:
SPCK; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1998), 29.
1
literary text the types of sociological forces (e.g., group conÀict and
motivations for restoration) that it describes shaped it.7 In particular, the
primary conÀict—the typology of which, resident versus immigrant, is
common to most societies and is frequently found among the legitimated
reasons for expressions of collective prejudice—between the golah and
the am haarets that Ezra–Nehemiah describes, and which provides the
narrative frame for the text, is indeed plausible. That bears repeating:
conÀict between an immigrant group and a “native” one is expected. By
admitting that the biblical text conveys aspects of social-political realities
from the historical context it relates (the Persian period for Ezra–
Nehemiah), we need only accept that the text in its development was
inÀuenced by social and political forces at work in the province during
the sixth–fourth centuries B.C.E.8 Bickering over whether this word or
that one belongs to this period or that—taking such a myopic position
before the text—loses sight of the reality that cultural ideas and moments
are processes that span a much longer time than the punctiliear moment
in which a solitary author chose a possibly hasty word.
There is something pro¿table, then, to the argument offered by a small
number of scholars that much of the historical events that are described
within the biblical text are products of cultural memory.9 Yet it also
makes our task more challenging. While cultural memories may recall
historical events, they are also inÀuenced by selective memory, chang-
ing desires and actions taken to ful¿ll those desires, and ideological
aspirations.10 My concerns of today shape my memories of the past.
7. As N. Frye points out (see Words With Power: Being a Second Study of the
Bible and Literature [New York: Harvest/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990], 18),
the biblical texts are products of ideology that are conditioned by the surrounding
social and historical environment. It is mistaken to assume, as scholars sometimes
seem to do, that social-political processes that shaped Persian-period Yehud, an
imposed chronological category, did not also affect, directly or by degree, the
Hellenistic and later periods.
8. Blenkinsopp makes a similar observation in Judaism: The First Phase, 37.
9. Cf. Philip R. Davies, Memories of Ancient Israel: An Introduction to Biblical
History—Ancient and Modern (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 2008), 146;
Liverani, Israel’s History, 6–7.
10. O. Lipschits observes similarly that for Neh 11, “The combination of the
actual with the utopian, of reality with aspirations for the future, appears as a salient
feature of the editing of this chapter, and its tendency is to substantiate the author/
editor’s perception regarding the speedy realization of the vision” (“Literary and
Ideological Aspects of Nehemiah 11,” JBL 121 [2002]: 431). T. Dozeman posits that
Ezra–Nehemiah presents a utopian picture of the Persians ruling over eber naharah
as culturally inclusive monarchs constrained by law (see “Geography and History in
Herodotus and in Ezra–Nehemiah,” JBL 122 [2003]: 457).
Ezra–Nehemiah in its self-centeredness grossly hindered our under-

standing of Yehud’s social-political context; it narrates events from the
perspective of the golah community, including what the text claims was
the group’s primary agenda, the restoration of “Israel”—a designation
privatized by the community.11 Temptation, and many have fallen victim
to this siren’s seductive, sweet velvety call, to take the text at face value
has resulted in problematic emphases within scholarship upon religion as
the central core of the social-political normative in Yehud. Manfred
Oeming’s reconstruction of Yehud, for example, relies heavily upon the
theological importance of the architecture of Jerusalem. For example:
In the heads and hearts of those who built the wall, there existed a multi-
faceted complex of theological ideas: for them, the wall was a highly sym-
bolic sign of the activity and the presence of God in history, for the end of
God’s judgment, for the return of God’s name to his chosen dwelling place,
for the beginning of the return of the Diaspora, for the holy space where
Torah was reigning. Israel regained its identity only within this wall.12
The interpretive problem here is not in architectural elements in
Jerusalem having theological value, or more generally “symbolic value.”
Sociology has long concluded that symbolic values, which include
religious ideologies, shape a culture. We can take that point as self-
evident. The problem, the pervasiveness of which extends well beyond
any single scholar, is in making the conversation about Yehud a theo-
logical one, which forces historical interpretations to approach Yehud
through the framework of theology. Explaining the social-political
situation in Yehud as a theological issue is no more effective than
explaining the ever-present conÀict within Israel/Palestine as a conÀict
of religion. Such shifts in academic discourse tend to overlook the
complexities of the social, political, and economic affectations upon
group identity in favor of a cohesive theological narrative. Yet the golah
community was not a theological group. And this point must be
trumpeted with every shofar in the ancient Hill Country: it was a social-
political group out of which different theological expressions emanated.
Some of those expressions were recorded in the biblical texts.
11. Blenkinsopp makes a similar observation: “The book of Ezra–Nehemiah was

put together to promote a particular understanding of Israel, the agenda for a parti-
cular party, and an ideology imported from the Babylonian diaspora…” (Judaism:
The First Phase, 160).
12. Manfred Oeming, “The Theological Ideas Behind Nehemiah’s Wall,” in
Kalimi, ed., New Perspectives on Ezra–Nehemiah, 149 (my emphasis).
1
Justi¿cation–Suppression Theory and the Role of Prejudice

in Yehud
In making our argument, we employ Christian Crandall and Amy
Eshleman’s Justi¿cation–Suppression Theory for interpreting the
expression and experience of prejudice.13 In prejudice studies, this is a
relatively newer theory that has been making signi¿cant inroads with
its emphasis upon social aspects of suppression and justi¿cation as
fundamental to a group’s collective identity and the prejudices it holds.
Justi¿cation–Suppression Theory takes as a given that all individuals and
collectives hold prejudice. Whether victims, victimizers, young, old,
small group, large group, and so on makes little difference. To highlight
that point, Crandall and Eshleman write, “In our de¿nition of prejudice,
no group receives special exemption from prejudice. Prejudice is com-
mon across cultures, time, national boundaries, and languages; no culture,
race, ethnic group, or gender has a monopoly on prejudice.”14 Their
working de¿nition of prejudice identi¿es the concept as “a negative
evaluation of a social group or a negative evaluation of an individual that
is signi¿cantly based on the individual’s group membership.”15
What individuals or communities express, they emphasize, is not
genuine prejudice.16 Rather, genuine prejudices are restrained by beliefs,
values, and culturally legitimated norms.17 What individuals and com-
munities express are internally justi¿ed prejudices.18 And yet beliefs,
values, and norms can function simultaneously as suppressors of genuine
prejudice.19 Cultural and political contexts often determine the types of
expression, their intensities, and their objects. Attitudes of justi¿cation
and suppression are simultaneously possible because beliefs, values, and
norms are expressions of the “intentional coherence” of the cultured
13. As it is detailed in Christian S. Crandall and Amy Eshleman, “A Justi¿cation–

Suppression Model of the Expression and Experience of Prejudice,” Psychological
Bulletin 129, no. 3 (2003): 414–46.
14. Ibid., 415.
15. Ibid., 414.
16. As a de¿nition of “genuine prejudice” note, “The JSM states that several
social, cultural, cognitive, and developmental factors create within people a variety
of prejudices—racial, ethnic, religious, sexual, patriotic, and so on. These forces
create a ‘genuine’ prejudice. This genuine prejudice is an authentically negative
reaction that is usually not directly accessible but that is primary and powerful. The
genuine prejudice is an affective reaction that has motivational force” (ibid., 416–17).
17. Ibid., 414.
18. Ibid., 416, see also p. 427, including supporting sources.
19. Ibid., 414, 417.
group.20 The need to preserve the direct link between belief and value
systems and the internal coherence of a group justi¿es prejudicial acts as
forms of boundary maintenance. It justi¿es them also as a method for
preserving the group’s internal order.21 Justi¿cation, as well as its counter-
part suppression,22 operates as a type of ¿lter for genuine prejudices—a
¿lter that is typically shaped by the dominant value system as well as the
self-preservationist minded concerns of the group. Or as Crandall and
Eshleman put it, “Prejudice itself is usually not directly expressed but
rather is modi¿ed and manipulated to meet social and personal goals.”23
What that means is that individuals and groups orient themselves around
a goal—a shared ideal that facilitates the “stabilized” production of
identity and which forms the basis of a group’s dominant value system.
They protect that orientation through justi¿ed and suppressed prejudices.
Expressing prejudice, in other words, is not a meaningless exercise.
I hate because I have a reason to hate. For the collective, a shared goal,
which is typically a shared ideal or symbol, symbolizes the necessary
collective response that becomes essential to the identity of the group—
we are of this ideal quality in relation to the “other,” who is not. Yet
because this orientation is subjective to the individual or to the group, it
is not possible to determine the rationality or irrationality of prejudice.24
20. A concept that I am borrowing from Pierre Bourdieu, “Genesis and Structure
of the Religious Field,” Comparative Social Research 13 (1991): 8.
21. Crandall and Eshleman, “A Justi¿cation–Suppression Model,” 416. Daniel
Smith(-Christopher) was not far from the point we are making when he describes
Ezra’s emphasis upon the bet ’abot as a survival mechanism (cf. “The Politics of
Ezra: Sociological Indicators of Postexilic Judaean Society,” in Second Temple
Studies, 1: Persian Period [ed. Philip R. Davies; Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld Academic,
1991], 72–97). His inclination that this supports priestly authority in the fashion that
Joel Weinberg once proposed, however, is incorrect (cf. 84–85). It places too much
emphasis upon the exiles and by extension on J. Weinberg’s argument of Yehud as a
shining example of Persian imperial benevolence (The Citizen-Temple Community
[trans. Daniel L. Smith-Christopher; Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld Academic, 1992], 106).
22. Regarding suppression, they write, “We hypothesize that the suppression of
prejudice is often motivated by an attempt to conform to perceived social norms
regarding the appropriateness of expressing prejudice… We argue that when people
report the motivation to suppress prejudice, whether internal or external, what they
are primarily reporting is their awareness of pressures to change their attitudes to ¿t
a prevailing group norm” (Christian S. Crandall, Amy Eshleman, and Laurie
O’Brien, “Social Norms and the Expression and Suppression of Prejudice: The
Struggle for Internalization,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 82, no. 3
[2002]: 367).
23. Crandall and Eshleman, “A Justi¿cation–Suppression Model,” 416.
1
24. See ibid., 414.
What can be determined is the cultural process of rationalizing prejudice,

or the articulation of strategies of behavior, which Gordon Allport
describes as the “accommodation of beliefs to attitudes.”25
Crandall and Eshleman posit that the expression of prejudice tends to
be “marked by a deep desire to express an emotion and, at the same time,
to maintain values and self-concepts that conÀict with prejudice.”26 In
other words, the quiddities of the outward expression of any prejudice
are the product of an internal tension over whether the possible expres-
sion, or action, of prejudice against an “other” is justi¿ed or must be
suppressed. Actions in response typically convey externally culturally
presumed categories of a social agent’s social-political identity. Movie
fans may have appreciated the approachable and inspiring characters
Mel Gibson portrayed on the big screen, for example, but in the minds
of many now he is little more than an anti-Semite, due to the hateful slurs
he made in a drunken state in which his inhibitions (suppression
mechanisms) were lowered giving freedom to his relatively un¿ltered
prejudices.27 Prejudice not only reveals something about ourselves when
we express it, it also shapes the externally legitimated identity of an
“other” group by grossly reducing the positive qualities and complexities
that de¿ne the objecti¿ed group. We see this latter result in Ezra–
Nehemiah’s use of the term am haarets as a categorical label under
which everyone “not a member of the golah community” was cast, a
point to which we will return with some enthusiasm. Ezra’s ambitious
description of the golah community, for example, emphasizes the
priority of the community, “[T]he holy seed has mixed itself with the
peoples of the lands, and in this faithlessness the of¿cials and leaders
have led the way” (9:2, emphasis mine). Ezra pointedly describes the
community as “Israel” and <9! 3:$, terms used precisely for their
positive evaluation of the community and, by implication, their negative
evaluation of those outside the community. <9, which is often trans-
lated as “holy” in a theological sense, ful¿lls also a much larger socio-
logical nuance denoting “separateness, apartness, distinctness” (cf. Lev
10:10; 20:3; Exod 12:16; Isa 35:8; Ezek 22:6; implied in the accusation
in Mal 2:11) between two identi¿able groups or objects. In short, it is a
sociological category emphasizing a positive distinction of the subject
25. Gordon W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday,
1958), 14.
27. Cf. Tmz.com, “Gibson’s anti-Semitic tirade alleged cover up,” July 28, 2006.
N.p. [cited 6 April 2015]. Online. http://www.tmz.com/2006/07/28/gibsons-anti-
semitic-tirade-alleged-cover-up/.
group from the “profane other.”28 The intensity that “holy” is meant to
convey (cf. Exod 15:11; Pss 68:18; 77:14; Isa 52:10) is not lost with its
more “mundane” sociological nuance. In fact, that intensity, which Ezra–
Nehemiah links with restoration, is the very one that seems to underlie
Ezra–Nehemiah’s passionate desire for the distinction of the golah
community. On the heels of Ezra 9:2, vv. 10–11 emphasize this point
through the passage’s stress upon religious law as the mechanism for
preserving the community as the foundation upon which the “restored
Israel” would be built through divine action.29 This is further con¿rmed
in the people’s response given in 10:1–5, which connects “those who
tremble at the commandment” with “law” (see v. 3), while connecting
the response of obedience with the possibility of future restoration.30
Prejudice in Light of Utopian Thinking

What Justi¿cation–Suppression Theory helps reveal is the presence of a
defensive and paranoid position behind prejudice and the antagonistic
relationship with an “other” that de¿nes the distinction between justi¿ed
or suppressed expressions of prejudice. External acts of antagonism
validate, and we can see this in Ezra–Nehemiah, the legitimacy of a
subject group as one that has the capability of effecting change in the
dominant social-political normative. How Ezra–Nehemiah displays this
antagonism is as something directed at the golah community. Nehemiah
2:19–20 (and see also 4:1–3, 7–8; 6:1–9), for example, sets up the
context by describing the antagonistic position that Sanballat, Tobiah,
and Geshem had against what the text describes as the productive
activities of the golah community. The account is a bit far-fetched in that
it seems to assume (1) that these individuals felt strongly enough to
create a type of confederacy against Nehemiah, and (2) that a destroyed
city and its god held much relevance in the grand scheme of things. It is
better that we read this story not as historiography but as a golah attempt
28. Note that we are not arguing for any rede¿nition of the term qdsh but
reaf¿rming that the meaning of the term contains nuance toward social distinction;
or that the meaning of the term allows for its use as terminology designating the
distinction between social groups.
29. While !:= is not used, the text uses %#8/, which means “commandment.” It
is sometimes used to refer to a “code of law,” as, for example, in 2 Chr 8:13; Ezra
10:3; Ps 19:19; Deut 8:1–2.
30. Blenkinsopp argues that the phrase “those who tremble” (-':%) denotes a
group, possibly af¿liated with that mentioned in Isa 66:5, that espoused a rigorist
interpretation of the law (cf. Judaism: The First Phase, 62–67, esp. 84).
1
to use external threat in validation of its agenda of (utopian) restoration.

In other words, the account is not concerned with describing accurately
the actions of Sanballat and his companions but with validating the
social-political legitimacy of the golah community. Nehemiah 13:23–27
provides a related but inverse example in Nehemiah’s emphatic con-
demnation of intermarriage. There, individuals outside the community
are a source of antagonism, but it is not they who actively strive against
the community. Instead, the community takes action by ostracizing them
to assert its own collective boundaries. This act is consistent with
Crandall and Eshleman’s theory. As they point out, negative evaluations
of others reÀexively reinforce the positive evaluations we have for
ourselves.31 This reinforcement may be especially true when the expres-
sion of prejudice produces conÀict.32 Noting the effect of positive
evaluations in expressions of prejudice is not a new trend in social-
scienti¿c studies. Scott Plous, for instance, states that “research since the
1970s has found that many group biases are more a function of favorit-
ism toward one’s group than negative feelings toward others.”33 A central
emphasis upon the expression of negative feelings is still there, but as
Plous, and Crandall and Eshleman are in agreement here, points out
expressions of prejudice are also about reinforcing the positive evalua-
tions (which may be described as favoritism) of oneself. We may refer
again to Ezra 9:1–2 for a biblical example of this. In that passage, the
author emphasizes the near loss of the community’s collective identity in
that by mixing with the peoples of the land the community neither
reinforces the negative evaluations of individuals or groups external to
the community or the positive evaluations it maintains of itself. Such
evaluations are critical for the preservation of group boundaries in that
they reinforce the limits of what or who can constitute the group. In other
words, they help establish and maintain the internal cohesion of the
group.
David Lovell offers a point of connection between prejudice and a
utopian propensity in social groups, both of which we argue are identi-
¿able aspects of Ezra–Nehemiah. He argues that the propensity of
groups toward utopianism, which is generated out of circumstances

32. Cf. Lewis A. Coser, The Functions of Social ConÀict (Glencoe, Ill.: Free
Press, 1956), 71; Sharon Erickson Nepstad, “The Continuing Relevance of Coser’s
Theory of ConÀict: The Social Functions of ConÀict by Lewis Coser,” Sociological
Forum 20, no. 2 (2005): 336.
33. Scott Plous, Understanding Prejudice and Discrimination (Boston, Mass.:
McGraw-Hill, 2003), 11–12.
producing a desire for deep structural change, accommodates a siege

mentality that may result in the exclusion of “the damaged, disabled, and
demanding.”34 In other words, when utopian propensities dramatically
shape actions, there may be a strong focus on establishing a society
consistent with the values and ideals of the utopian-minded group—a
focus that creates a new set of legitimated prejudices against an outgroup
labeled “foreign,” “profane,” “damaged,” etc. For our case, we can see
this in Ezra–Nehemiah’s passionate concern over preserving group
distinction. When it is relevant, this type of internal–external antagonism
shapes the foundation of utopian thinking, especially against the foil of
the “other” as the symbolic representative of that which exists outside the
boundaries of the prioritized community.35 It starts by “Àeshing out” a
normative position and using that position to arrive at prescriptions of a
desired world.36 A utopian-oriented group de¿nes its idealized normative
primarily through the positive evaluations it has for itself, and it does so
based on what it perceives to be a world in which those evaluations are
unthreatened. To achieve such a stabilized normative order, when the
group in question resides on the margins of authority, this new world as
it is perceived inverts the hierarchy of social-political power in favor
of the community. Its intergroup relations are affected in this way: the
“other,” against whom or which the group de¿nes itself, represents the
consequence of a set of interdependent processes of interpersonal or
intergroup engagement that are marked by an irresolvable difference in
identity.37 Put differently, the “other” is the other side of an active rela-
tion in which the subject expresses his own identity as distinct, stable,
34. David W. Lovell, “Socialism, Utopianism, and the ‘Utopian Socialists’,”

History of European Ideas 14, no. 2 (1992): 187.
35. In saying this, we are drawing from Crandall et al.’s assertion that “when
perceivers experience speci¿c affective states, there are predictably speci¿c conse-
quences on intergroup cognitions and intergroup behaviors” (“Stereotypes as
Justi¿cations of Prejudice,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 37, no. 11
[2011]: 1494). Such is often the basis for the dichotomized social distinction
between self and “other.” Anxieties internal to a group aggravate a focus on
objectionable qualities of an external individual or group, both of which are usually
conÀated. See also Allport, The Nature of Prejudice, 83.
36. I am drawing from D. Karp’s description of the utopian mode of thought in
“The Utopia and Reality of Sovereignty: Social Reality, Normative IR and
‘Organized Hypocrisy’,” Review of International Studies 34 (2008): 316.
37. I am drawing in part from A. Touraine’s de¿nition of society and the
relationship between actors within it (see “Sociology After Sociology,” European
Journal of Social Theory 10, no. 2 [2007]: 184).
1
and productive.38 In that sense, the “other” as a category of identity exists

only for the bene¿t of the subject. In Ezra–Nehemiah, people already in
the land, and who were not members of the community, are not so much
unique groups of individuals in the author’s perspective as they are
collectively the am haarets, or even “foreign,” categories that mean in a
most basic sense, “not members of the golah community” and possibly
“lawless” and “disorderly.” There is really no social distinction between
these two terms for Ezra–Nehemiah. Nehemiah 13:23–31, which uses the
term “foreign” (':)1) and Ezra 9:1–4, which uses “the peoples of the
land” (7:! -3), for all intents and purposes are the same account, or at
least similar to a large and suspicious degree. For both, the social-
political intent seems not to be any identi¿cation of the social or political
diversity within Yehud but a radical separation between members of the
golah community as productive citizens, in the sense of a social-political
category, and non-members as the source that erodes the foundation for a
“restored” society (thus, the damaged, disabled, foreign, etc.). Ezra–
Nehemiah’s prejudice against the am haarets, as far as we can tell from
the text, is expressed primarily for the sake of af¿rming golah collective
identity. It is not, to be clear, prejudice for the sake of prejudice.39
The utopian aspirations behind the text of Ezra–Nehemiah should
remind us that the serves a constructive purpose, namely, to clear the
way for its vision of divine restoration. The desperation that seems to be
present in the text (as one can see, for example, in the so-called National
Confession in Neh 9:1–37) reaf¿rms for the text’s readers that there was
a very real concern over the possibility of restoration.40 According
38. This understanding of the “other” is similarly expressed by E. Fuchs, who

discusses the “other” in poststructural feminism (see “Reclaiming the Hebrew Bible
for Women: The Neoliberal Turn in Contemporary Feminist Scholarship,” JFSR 24,
no. 2 [2008]: 48).
39. In fact, Allport argues that all prejudice is self-referential; pure open-
mindedness is impossible. To note, “The human mind must think with the aid of
categories (the term is equivalent here to generalizations). Once formed, categories
are the basis for normal prejudgment. We cannot possibly avoid this process.
Orderly living depends upon it.” And further, “The most important categories a man
has are his own personal set of values. He lives by and for his values. Seldom does
he think about them or weigh them; rather he feels, af¿rms, and defends them… It is
obvious, then, that the very act of af¿rming our way of life often leads us to the
brink of prejudice” (The Nature of Prejudice, 19, 24).
40. This dogged perseverance reÀects a “weak socialization” on the part of the
golah community, where “weakly socialized actors…confront the standard of
legitimacy as an external institutional resource and constraint” (Frank Schimmel-
fennig, “The Community Trap: Liberal Norms, Rhetorical Action, and the Eastern
Enlargement of the European Union,” International Organization 55 [2001]: 63 [my
to Justi¿cation–Suppression Theory, this type of uncertainty, when it

directly impacts identity, and when it correlates with a perceived,
seemingly rational danger deriving from intergroup conÀict, offers
justi¿cation for the expression of prejudice through acts that immediately
reaf¿rm social boundaries.41 For Ezra–Nehemiah, assimilation with the
am haarets represented a direct threat to the viability of a future
restoration, which as G. Ahlström rightly concluded included control
over property rights.42 Ezra–Nehemiah asserts that interaction with
the am haarets should not occur on mutually productive grounds but
as a constant foil for active resistance, or antagonism, as a consistent
reaf¿rmation of the distinctiveness of the community’s identity.
Rejection for the sake of self-af¿rmation. This characterization can be
seen, for example, in Nehemiah’s Sabbath reforms (Neh 13:15–22).
Foreign elements had inÀuenced the people’s attitudes toward the
Sabbath so that people were producing goods and selling them (cf. v. 15).
This situation was problematic enough for Nehemiah that he “contended
against” (':; in the cohortative) the Judean nobles for de¿ling the
Sabbath day (v. 17). It is very likely that business on the Sabbath was the
norm in Yehud. Nehemiah’s emphasis upon Sabbath observance must be
read with the same understanding one takes from Ezra’s Passover
celebration: these are attempts to incorporate golah-Yahwistic rituals
emphasis]). Socialization creates cultural parameters for the legitimation of ideas

and individuals within the collective body. Feelings of desperation are common
among weakly socialized actors and groups. Desperation generates fears of internal
(i.e., to the group) instability, an event that tends to result in the projection of
heightened prejudicial attitudes as a way of reaf¿rming identity boundaries and
insuring cognitive consistency within identity. See also the discussion of Crandall
and Eshleman on the emergence of stereotypes in conjunction with prejudice (in
“Stereotypes as Justi¿cations,” 1489; see also the works of Leon Festinger, A Theory
of Cognitive Dissonance [Evanston, Ill.: Row, Peterson, 1957]; Fritz Heider, The
Psychology of Interpersonal Relations [New York: Wiley, 1958]). For further note,
P. Berger argues that human beings are innately characterized by an internal
instability: “Man does not have a given relationship to the world. He must ongoingly
establish a relationship with it” (The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological
Theory of Religion [New York: Anchor, 1990], 5). Prejudice is an “affective state”
that has motivational force behind group cohesion (cf. Crandall and Eshleman, “A
Justi¿cation–Suppression Model,” 415). See also R. Botwinick, who discusses the
more aggressive consequences of the same search for cohesion (in A History of the
Holocaust: From Ideology to Annihilation [Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson
Education, 2004], 3).
41. Crandall and Eshleman, “A Justi¿cation–Suppression Model,” 418–19.
42. Gösta W. Ahlström, The History of Ancient Palestine (Minneapolis: Fortress,
1993), 846.
1
into the social-political normative of the province.43 It is but one step in

what we should presume to be a series of steps toward restoration. Ezra–
Nehemiah’s prohibitions on intermarriage, which emphasize the
impermeability in the distinction between member and non-member,
must be read in the same light. As Blenkinsopp also observes,
It is clear that the complaint [in Ezra 9:1–5] was about marriages with any
women resident in the province, and perhaps also contiguous regions, who
did not belong to the golah. There were no doubt foreigners among them,
including the four ethnic groups excluded from the assembly of Israel
(Deut 23:4–8), but most would have been Judean descendants of those who
had never left the land or Yahweh-worshippers from neighboring lands.44
The Anxiety of Irrelevance As It Relates to Prejudice

Passages such as Neh 4:1–20 imply that anxiety (over the death or
dissolution of the group) was very much a factor in the intergroup
relations between the golah community and surrounding groups. Verse 9,
for example, describes Nehemiah and his companions appealing to the
Divine for protection as well as taking their own initiative in setting up
guards. There was a real threat, according to the text, of not only inter-
group violence but also conÀict over control of Jerusalem, the latter of
which can be read in the text’s constructivist emphasis. This type of
conÀict between groups creates stereotypes as, for comparative example,
Sherif et al. found in their Robbers Cave experiments. This experiment
included four basic stages of experimentation with boys in a camping
situation: spontaneous friendship choices, formation of in-groups, inter-
group relations (conÀict), and intergroup cooperation (reduction of con-
Àict).45 According to Michael Billing, the essence of Sherif’s theory is
that “competitive goals cause intergroup conÀict and superordinate goals
give rise to intergroup cooperation.”46 In the case of Ezra–Nehemiah,
43. Blenkinsopp suggests that these attempts were strongly motivated by

theological ideology and reÀected on a real level a conÀict over theological meaning
and interpretation (cf. Judaism: The First Phase, 37, 114–16).
44. Ibid., 64.
45. These points are helpfully summarized in A. Tyerman and C. Spencer, “A
Critical Test of the Sherifs’ Robber’s Cave Experiments: Intergroup Competition
and Cooperation Between Groups of Well-Acquainted Individuals,” Small Group
Research 14, no. 4 (1983): 517. But see the study in Muzafer Sherif, O. J. Harvey,
and B. Jack White, Intergroup ConÀict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave
Experiment (Norman, Okla.: The University of Oklahoma Press, 1961).
46. Michael Billig, Social Psychology and Intergroup Relations (London:
Published in cooperation with the European Association of Experimental Social
Psychology by Academic Press, 1976).
there was no real superordinate goal since interpersonal and intergroup

cooperation seems to have been the operational norm for the people
already in the land. For Ezra–Nehemiah, and for the golah community,
the “goal,” which was restoration, was very much a competitive one
since its realization depended upon the rejection of those outside the
group.47 Toward that end, by hyping the fear of death represented by
Sanballat and others, the text emphasizes the necessity for clear and
dogged boundary maintenance; if the appropriate boundaries are not
preserved, so the idea goes, the community will fall into divine dissatis-
faction and consequently will cease to be recognizable as a distinct
community, which Ezra–Nehemiah’s incorporation of the exilic events is
meant to emphasize (cf. Neh 9:1–37, which also be read with 13:23–27).
And we also see the use of stereotypes in the text’s use of “Ammonites”
and “Ashdodites” as a whole being hostile to a minority community in
Yehud (Neh 4:7–8).48 In this sense, the physical walls are just as effective
as ideologically driven attitudes, such as might legitimate prejudice, at
establishing boundaries between groups. Rebuilding the architecture of
Jerusalem, for Ezra–Nehemiah, corresponds with the sociological rebuild-
ing of the community as a parallel mechanism for creating boundaries.
What is not said explicitly, but what can be understood based on identi-
¿cation of the golah community as an immigrant group and the am
haarets as Ezra–Nehemiah’s catch-all category for resident groups, is
that the golah community’s minority status exaggerates the anxieties
behind this conÀict—as a minority with a tenuous position in the prov-
ince’s hierarchy of power, its vision of restoration remains impermanent.
Utopian. These anxieties, as we’ve been discussing them, are over the
47. Read this way, the antagonism between the golah community and the am
haarets was not primarily for the sake of hostility but for security. As Allport
writes, “Now there is no denying that the presence of a threatening common enemy
will cement the in-group sense of any organized aggregate of people. A family (if it
is not already badly disrupted) will grow cohesive in the face of adversity, and a
nation is never so uni¿ed as in time of war. But the psychological emphasis must be
placed primarily upon the desire for security, not on hostility itself” (The Nature of
Prejudice, 40).
48. Several of the ethnicities mentioned by Ezra–Nehemiah, such as “Ashdod-
ite,” were meant to emphasize the foreign composition of the am haarets. See, for
example, Ahlström, The History of Ancient Palestine, 822–23; Gary N. Knoppers,
“Intermarriage, Social Complexity, and Ethnic Diversity in the Genealogy of Judah,”
JBL 120 (2001): 29; Mary J. W. Leith, “Israel Among the Nations: The Persian
Period,” in The Oxford History of the Biblical World (ed. Michael D. Coogan;
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 381; Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its
Life and Institutions (trans. John McHugh; New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961), 72;
Liverani, Israel’s History, 266, 274.
1
fear of the “death” of the group—and by that we mean the loss of those
things that make the group externally recognizable as a group. In gross
analogy, it would be like someone today proclaiming membership within
the Heaven’s Gate cult, a group that the broader U.S. society no longer
recognizes as existing or relevant. That group is dead—oddly enough,
both literally and ¿guratively.
Perhaps the more telling indication can be seen in 4:1: “When the
adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were
building a temple to the LORD, the God of Israel…” The correlation
between the returned exiles and “Israel”49 is con¿rmed again a few verses
later: “But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of the families in
Israel said to them, ‘You shall have no part with us in building a house to
our God; but we alone will build to the LORD, the God of Israel, as King
Cyrus of Persia has commanded us’” (4:3). Social-religious legitimation
for prejudice is offered in that statement: clear lines of distinction
between insider and outsider must be enforced so that the temple may
hold value as the shared object of both golah collective identity, includ-
ing the possibility of external recognition of that identity, and the symbol
of a utopian restoration.
Ezra–Nehemiah as a Utopian Text and

Related Matters of Prejudice
Utopian studies have accepted that utopias are ideological and attitudinal
attempts to preserve the status quo, whether it be from an idealized past
or from a “corrected,” or stabilized future. Thus, this status quo is really
an idealized normative position that presents the basis for prescriptions
or conclusions about the world. And as David Karp put it, “When one
translates this mode of thought into political action, one uses one’s
agency to (re)design political institutions, or to foster political events,
such that the world is brought more closely into line with a normative
idea about the way the world ought to be.”50 In short, when utopian
thinking takes on ideological force it shapes the behaviors and actions of
its adherents. It emphasizes constructivist actions directed toward creat-
ing a “new” idealized status quo or normative. According to Crandall and
49. A biblical “Israel” is used to denote a variety of things in the Bible, but the
more typical is a theological designation of an idealized State (cf. Philip R. Davies,
“The Intellectual, the Archaeologist and the Bible,” in The Land That I Will Show
You: Essays on the History and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East in Honour of
J. Maxwell Miller [ed. J. Andrew Dearman and M. Patrick Graham; Shef¿eld:
Shef¿eld Academic, 2001], 244).
50. Karp, “The Utopia and Reality of Sovereignty,” 316.
Eshleman, this drive on collective attitudes becomes exaggerated under

authoritarian thinking, which erupts under the pressure of fears stemming
from social-political anxieties.51 That authoritarian thinking is charac-
teristic of Ezra–Nehemiah is con¿rmed in the least by academic studies
¿nding in Nehemiah a tyrant or an authoritative hand behind constructive
processes of synoecism in Yehud.52 We need not accept the conclusions
of those studies in order to accept that Ezra–Nehemiah does emphasize
authoritative action as a mechanism for group distinction and conÀict
resolution. And with such acceptance, the sociological rami¿cations of
the despotic claim of Ezra–Nehemiah, “but you have no share or claim or
historic right in Jerusalem” (Neh 2:20), are more clearly understood.
No possibility exists there for intergroup cooperation. The logical
rami¿cations for the rejected are the loss of participation within the arena
of economic production, the social-political hierarchy, and the bene¿ts
that would be characteristic to the citizen. This rejection is not sim-
ply that of a loss of material connection to the physical objects, wall
and temple, characteristic of the city but to the institutions, symbolized
by the wall and the temple, that support the productive activities of the
city and its hierarchy of social-political authority—the very forces that
shape the collective identities of resident groups and the normative order
in which they abide. Ezra–Nehemiah’s obsession with group distinction,
we’ve said it before, betrays the “perilous” position of the golah com-
munity. The text’s bitter lament, “We are slaves!” (stated in Neh 9:36
and Ezra 9:9), clearly supports a position under heightened anxiety. The
economic and social hierarchies were all wrong for a restored society;
social-economic authority was not in the hands of members of the golah
community.
More telling is the text’s absolute rejection of intermarriage (cf. Neh
13:23–27; Ezra 9:1–4). While this position on foreigners can be explained
in various ways, from religious ideology to economic challenge, it also
51. Crandall and Eshleman, “A Justi¿cation–Suppression Model,” 426. Crandall

and Eshleman refer to the work of R. Altemeyer, Enemies of Freedom (New York:
Free Press, 1988).
52. Scholarly focus on Nehemiah as a tyrant was suggested in Alt’s work but on
prominent display in the work of Morton Smith, Palestinian Parties and Politics
That Shaped the Old Testament (London: SCM, 1987), 108–9, 138–39. K. Hoglund
(Kenneth G. Hoglund, Achaemenid Imperial Administration in Syria-Palestine and
the Missions of Ezra and Nehemiah [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992], 223) criticizes
Smith’s proposal by pointing out that none of the tyrants compared employed the
full range of reforms of Nehemiah. Regarding possible synoecism under Nehemiah,
see David J. A. Clines, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerd-
mans, 1984), 211; Rudolph, Esra und Nehemia, 181; Liverani, Israel’s History, 332.
1
supports what Crandall and Eshleman observe about groups de¿ned

around authoritarian ideologies, which also play a role in shaping
religious ideology or economic attitudes. Such groups “may feel justi¿ed
in their prejudices because of the direct threat to them and the status quo
they perceive from groups attempting to improve their lot through social
change.”53 Crandall and Eshleman’s theory offers a plausible explanation
for some of the motivations behind Ezra—Nehemiah’s prejudice—can
we ¿nally be comfortable with using that term for Ezra–Nehemiah
now?—against foreign women. The utopian thinking that permeates the
text is a product of the very authoritarian ideologies that characterized
the conÀict between the golah community and the am haarets. The very
categories used to mark the distinction between social groups within
Yehud were of Ezra–Nehemiah’s design. Based on our discussion to this
point, the overly reductive categorization of peoples outside the remnant
community can be little else than the inÀuence of prejudice in the
formation of collective identity. And as Crandall and Eshleman argue,
identity, which is expressed through group membership, and prejudice
are directly linked. “We de¿ne prejudice,” offer Crandall and Eshleman,
“as a negative evaluation of a social group or a negative evaluation of an
individual that is signi¿cantly based on the individual’s group mem-
bership.”54
As a consequence of the social-political “dislocation” caused by
the exiles and the trauma of the group’s marginal position in Yehud,
Ezra–Nehemiah offers to the golah community restoration as a utopian
response to its decentralized situation. It was a strategy the intent of which
was to prevent the loss of the golah collective identity. As Crandall and
Eshleman remind us, threats to a group’s identity tend to legitimate
actions of prejudice, especially if they are perceived as directed toward
the group’s attempt to encourage or prevent social change.55 And Gordon
Allport posits, “A prejudice, unlike a simple misconception, is actively
resistant to all evidence that would unseat it.”56 Yet it is important to
point out that these actions are justi¿ed according to their purpose: they
are actions, conducted within the bounds of “sanity,” for the purpose of

54. Ibid., 414. Compare their de¿nition of “prejudice” with that of Allport, to
which their de¿nition seems obliged: “an aversive or hostile attitude toward a person
who belongs to a group, simply because he belongs to that group, and is therefore
presumed to have the objectionable qualities ascribed to the group” (The Nature of
Prejudice, 8).
56. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice, 9.
preserving the “reality” of the social world in its utopian purpose.57 Thus,
the “gracious hand of God” was upon Ezra “For Ezra had set his heart to
study the law of the LORD, and to do it, and to teach the statutes and
ordinances in Israel” (Ezra 7:10, see also v. 9).
When Ezra–Nehemiah is read as a utopian text, ¿gures such as
Sanballat and Tobiah become the stereotypical “other” against which
behavioral and attitudinal prejudices can be justi¿ed. And just to
reinforce this point, Allport de¿nes “stereotype” as “an exaggerated
belief associated with a category. Its function is to justify (rationalize)
our conduct in relation to that category.”58 And Jost and Banaji argue that
stereotypes result from the group’s or individual’s experience with the
current social arrangement and serve three functions: ego justi¿cation,
group justi¿cation, and system justi¿cation.59 In Ezra–Nehemiah, the
stereotype directed against the am haarets (and so also Sanballat et al.)
seems to serve a clear ideological function, especially along the lines of
group justi¿cation, in that it justi¿es or explains the supposed power-
lessness of the am haarets in contrast to the idealized (and highly
utopian) success of the golah community in rebuilding Jerusalem.60
This tension between the golah community and the am haarets is
exaggerated by the community’s focus on de¿ning Jerusalem as a
“sacred” space suitable for restoration (cf. Neh 2:17–20; 4:10–20; 6:1–9;
7:1–73; 11:1–2).61 In other words, Jerusalem—and this compares with
Haggai’s understanding of the Jerusalem temple—symbolizes the shared
object or ideal, a “restored” society, upon which the collective identity of
the community is based.62 According to Haggai, the “returnee” commu-
nity was faced with two primary options: (1) assimilation into preexist-
ing social-political institutions and systems, which Haggai implies was
happening (cf. Hag 1:3–4), or (2) expressing the boundaries of its
identity as externally recognizable in a new cultural context. The
“puri¿cation” of Joshua in Zech 3:1–10, for further example, emphasizes
57. I am drawing in part from Berger, Sacred Canopy, 44–45.

58. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice, 187.
59. J. T. Jost and M. R. Banaji, “The Role of Stereotyping in System-Justi¿ca-
tion and the Production of False Consciousness,” British Journal of Social
Psychology 33 (1994): 10.
60. On the ideological function of stereotypes, see ibid.
61. One could also see intergroup conÀict over resources as leading to prejudice
in Yehud as well. Regarding this general type of conÀict and its consequence, see,
for example, Crandall and Eshleman, “A Justi¿cation–Suppression Model,” 419.
62. Regarding Haggai’s emphasis upon the temple as a shared object, see
Jeremiah W. Cataldo, “Yahweh’s Breast: Klein’s Projective Identi¿cation Theory as
an Understanding for Monotheistic Identity in Haggai,” JHS 13 (2013). Online:
http://www.jhsonline.org/Articles/article_181.pdf.
1
the latter strategy in that puri¿cation reinforces the boundary between

clean/pure/sacred and profane. But where assimilation into preexisting
social-political institutions would result in the dissolution, or “irrelev-
ance,” of the remnant community’s collective identity, since assimilation
begins the process of deconstructing critical points of distinction, expres-
sion the uniqueness of the group’s identity in a new cultural context and
legitimating that identity as dominant was a utopian revision of the
social-political normative, which the possible coronation of Joshua as a
cultic and political authority in Zech 6:9–14 would require.63
The coronation described in Zechariah, the utopian intent of which
shares ideological similarities with Ezra–Nehemiah, was not one to ¿ll
the vacuum of absent social-political authority. Its emphasis was upon
replacing an already existing one. We know this because the land was
not empty.64 This is con¿rmed by archaeological remains65 and by a
63. For further discussion regarding possible interpretations of Zech 6:9–14, cf.
Peter R. Ackroyd, Exile and Restoration: A Study of Hebrew Thought of the Sixth
Century B.C. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1968), 198; Carol L. Meyers and Eric M.
Meyers, Haggai, Zechariah 1–8 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1987), 336–37,
349–64; Robert P. Carroll, “Ancient Israelite Prophecy and Dissonance Theory,”
Numen 24 (1977): 146; David L. Petersen, Haggai and Zechariah 1–8: A
Commentary (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984), 275.
64. Cf. the larger discussion in the works of Robert P. Carroll, “Exile! What
Exile? Deportation and the Discourse of Diaspora,” in Leading Captivity Captive:
“The Exile” as History and Ideology (ed. Lester L. Grabbe; Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld
Academic, 1998), 62–79; B. Oded, “Where Is the ‘Myth of the Empty Land’ to be
Found? History Versus Myth,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian
Period (ed. Oded Lipschits and Joseph Blenkinsopp; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisen-
brauns, 2003), 55–74; Bob Becking, “‘We All Returned as One!’: Critical Notes on
the Myth of the Mass Return,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period (ed.
Oded Lipschits and Manfred Oeming; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 3–18;
Hans M. Barstad, “After the ‘Myth of the Empty Land’: Major Challenges in the
Study of Neo-Babylonian Judah,” in Lipschits and Blenkinsopp, eds., Judah and the
Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period, 3–20; Philip R. Davies, “Exile! What Exile?
Whose Exile?,” in Grabbe, ed., Leading Captivity Captive, 128–38.
65. While their views on population density differ, see Charles E. Carter, The
Emergence of Yehud in the Persian Period: A Social and Demographic Study
(Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld Academic, 1999), 195–205, and Oded Lipschits, “Demographic
Changes in Judah Between the Seventh and the Fifth Centuries B.C.E.,” in Lipschits
and Blenkinsopp, eds., Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period, 364.
For further example, D. Ussishkin (“The Borders and De Facto Size of Jerusalem,”
in Lipschits and Oeming, eds., Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, 159–60)
argued that the walls described in Nehemiah refer to their maximum length, with the
size of Jerusalem constrained by them. Ussishkin’s position was articulated earlier
by E. Stern in Archaeology of the Land of the Bible. Vol. 2, The Assyrian, Babylon-
ian, and Persian Periods (732–332 B.C.E.) (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 434–35.
reconstructed list of governors con¿rming that a social-political institu-

tion based on such authority existed and that the inhabitants of the
province were suf¿ciently aware of it.66 While this list is still heavily
debated, we can be relatively certain of enough individuals on either
historical side of Nehemiah’s tenure as governor to con¿rm (1) that
Nehemiah was not the ¿rst governor of a newly minted province,67 and
(2) that governors continued to exist after him. In short, the political
institution did not live or die with Nehemiah. And that fact is a signi-
¿cant problem for any argument proposing that Yehud became a
theocracy—a biblical utopianism par excellence!—under the authority of
the priests. There were no preexisting conditions upon which a theocratic
system could be based prior to the arrival of the golah community;
neither did a vacuum exist in which a theocracy could be created.68
Nehemiah’s self-aggrandizing claims, which were meant to emphasize
his “benevolent” actions related to provisions for the governor’s table, in
Neh 5:14–17, after all, only make sense if Nehemiah’s position in Yehud
was part of a preexisting system for which a pattern of gubernatorial
behavior had already been set. Requiring provisions for the table of the
local political authority was modeled after the imperial policy, which
was copied on subsequent levels of authority (satrap, regional governor,
local governor).69 And there is no evidence that Yehud partook in any
rebellion or other means of action that would be necessary for a radical
institutional change from secular political authority to priestly one.70 In
other words, we can be fairly con¿dent that the traditional model of
imperial authority and its imitation continued.
66. On the list of possible governors, see Nahman Avigad, Bullae and Seals
From a Post-Exilic Judean Archive (Qedem 4; Jerusalem: Hebrew University,
1976), 35; Meyers and Meyers, Haggai, Zechariah 1–8, 14. See also the larger
contextualizing discussion in Jeremiah W. Cataldo, A Theocratic Yehud? Issues of
Government in Yehud (London: T&T Clark International, 2009), 90–92.
67. Contra Albrecht Alt, “Die Rolle Samarias Bei der Entstehung des Judentums,”
in Festschrift Otto Procksch zum Sechzigsten Geburtstag (Leipzig: A. Deichert & J.
C. Hinrichs, 1934), 5–28; idem, “Die Landnahme der Israeliten in Palästina,” in
Kleine Schriften zur Geschichte des Volkes Israel (Munich: Beck, 1953), 89–125.
68. See the larger argument in Cataldo, A Theocratic Yehud.
69. Cf. Plutarch (Art. 4.1) and Xenophon (Hel. 4.1.33).
70. Even the possible, but unlikely, participation of Yehud in the revolt of
Tachos or the Tennes Rebellion during the mid-fourth century B.C.E. places the
events near the end of the Persian reign. For further discussion on these, cf. Julian
Morgenstern, “Jerusalem—485 BC (Concluded),” HUCA 31 (1960): 4–5; Carter,
Emergence of Yehud, 277–79; Frank Moore Cross, Jr., “Judean Stamps,” Eretz
Israel 9 (1969): 143; Dan P. Barag, “The Effects of the Tennes Rebellion on
Palestine,” BASOR 18, no. 3 (1966): 6–12.
1
It seems clear that Ezra–Nehemiah’s utopian emphasis upon the

restoration of the fortunes of “Israel” through the body of the remnant is
shared by a number of Persian and later period biblical texts. It should
also be clear that the utopian emphasis of the text was a direct product of
the social-political antagonism with the am haarets that the golah
community generated for itself through its authoritarian ideology of a
new social-political normative. And it is also clear that this antagonism
provided clear justi¿cation for attitudes of prejudice directed toward
those who were members of the so-called am haarets. While this
application of Justi¿cation–Suppression Theory to the text of Ezra–
Nehemiah has been experimental, it has, I believe, emphasized the need
for a better understanding of the fuller impact of group relations within
the biblical texts. In particular, we need to understand better the role that
prejudice played in shaping the biblical texts and the qualities of their
utopian aspirations. Perhaps we too often read Ezra–Nehemiah from the
perspective of the golah community—a positivistic read taking the
community simply as one trying to survive in the face of imminent
annihilation—a scrapper! But what if the world that Ezra–Nehemiah
describes was an elaborate justi¿cation for prejudice against those its
authoring communities saw as wholly distinct, external, and inferior?
Justi¿cation for a puri¿ed, utopian world? What an important change it
would bring to our understanding of the biblical texts!
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Contemporary Feminist Scholarship.” JFSR 24, no. 2 (2008): 45–65.
Grabbe, Lester L. “Pinholes or Pinheads in the Camera Obscura? The Task of Writing a
History of Persian Period Yehud.” Society of Biblical Literature International
Meeting, 2003.
Heider, Fritz. The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. New York: Wiley, 1958.
Hoglund, Kenneth G. Achaemenid Imperial Administration in Syria-Palestine and the
Missions of Ezra and Nehemiah. Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1992.
Japhet, Sara. “Sheshbazzar and Zerubbabel Against the Background of the Historical and
Religious Tendencies of Ezra–Nehemiah: Part 1.” Pages 53–84 in From the Rivers
of Babylon to the Highlands of Judah. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2006.
Jost, J. T., and M. R. Banaji. “The Role of Stereotyping in System-Justi¿cation and the
Production of False Consciousness.” British Journal of Social Psychology 33
(1994): 1–27.
Karp, David Jason. “The Utopia and Reality of Sovereignty: Social Reality, Normative Ir
and ‘Organized Hypocrisy’.” Review of International Studies 34 (2008): 313–34.
Knoppers, Gary N. “Intermarriage, Social Complexity, and Ethnic Diversity in the
Genealogy of Judah.” JBL 120 (2001): 15–30.
Leith, Mary J. W. “Israel Among the Nations: The Persian Period.” Pages 367–419 in The
Oxford History of the Biblical World. Edited by Michael D. Coogan. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998.
Lemche, Niels Peter. The Israelites in History and Tradition. London: SPCK. Louisville,
Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1998.
Lipschits, Oded. “Demographic Changes in Judah Between the Seventh and the Fifth
Centuries B.C.E.” Pages 323–76 in Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian
Perio. Edited by Oded Lipschits and Joseph Blenkinsopp. Winona Lake, Ind.:
Eisenbrauns, 2003.
———. “Literary and Ideological Aspects of Nehemiah 11.” JBL 121 (2002): 423–40.
Liverani, Mario. Israel’s History and the History of Israel. Translated by Chiara Peri and
Philip R. Davies. London: Equinox, 2005.
Lovell, David W. “Socialism, Utopianism, and the ‘Utopian Socialists’.” History of
European Ideas 14, no. 2 (1992): 185–201.
Meyers, Carol L., and Eric M. Meyers. Haggai, Zechariah 1–8. Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday, 1987.
Morgenstern, Julian. “Jerusalem—485 BC (Concluded).” HUCS 31 (1960): 1–29.
Nepstad, Sharon Erickson. “The Continuing Relevance of Coser’s Theory of ConÀict:

The Social Functions of ConÀict By Lewis Coser.” Sociological Forum 20, no. 2
(2005): 335–37.
Oded, B. “Where Is the ‘Myth of the Empty Land’ to Be Found? History Versus Myth.”
Pages 55–74 in Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period. Edited by
Oded Lipschits and Joseph Blenkinsopp. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2003.
Oeming, Manfred. “The Theological Ideas Behind Nehemiah’s Wall.” Pages 131–49 in
New Perspectives on Ezra–Nehemiah: History and Historiography, Text, Literature,
and Interpretation. Edited by Isaac Kalimi. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2012.
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minster, 1984.
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Smith, Morton. Palestinian Parties and Politics That Shaped the Old Testament. London:
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Oeming. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2006.
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Christopher. Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld Academic, 1992.
1
Part III
SEARCHING FOR THE PLACE:

THEOLOGIES OF UTOPIA
1
TAKING THE READER INTO UTOPIA
Matthias Jendrek
Introduction
One feature of utopian texts is “discontinuity,” as Steven J. Schweitzer
puts it in his dissertation thesis on “Reading Utopia in Chronicles,”
namely, discontinuity between author and text.1 If there is (deliberate)
discontinuity already between author and text, the gap between text and
later recipients increases over time. Thus, discontinuity could grow into
estrangement. Nevertheless, the feature marking utopia is a break
between author and text.
Contrary to that, Donald F. Murray has shown that within Chronicles
“the envisaged readers are encouraged to anticipate a happy future that
will replicate a utopian past.”2 To him, utopia is constituted by what he
calls “revival motif”: the fact that God cares for Israel and “revives” it.
The “envisaged reader” of Chronicles is not able to experience this care
within his or her current situation.3 Obviously Murray centers his de¿ni-
tion of utopia on (intentional) estrangement between reader and text.
These two de¿nitions of “utopia” are incompatible in the ¿rst place.
While Murray de¿nes “utopia” in Chronicles as a political term4 that
consists basically of the idea of a re-installation of a utopian past, Steven
Schweitzer de¿nes utopia as a deliberate difference between the struc-
tures the text describes and the author’s (present) situation.5 However,
both ideas are right in their argument that the element of “estrangement”
1. Steven J. Schweitzer, “Reading Utopia in Chronicles” (Ph.d. diss., University

of Notre Dame, 2005), 55. Cited 31 December 2014. Online: http://etd.nd.edu/ETD-
db/theses/available/etd-03192005-220714/unrestricted/SchweitzerSJ032005.pdf.
2. Donald F. Murray, “Retribution and Revival: Theological Theory, Religious
Praxis, and the Future in Chronicles,” JSOT 88 (2000): 88. Murray refers to 1 Chr 16
there, but from the rest of his paper it is clear that one could extend this statement to
the whole of Chronicles.
3. Cf. ibid., 88 n. 27.
4. Cf. ibid.
5. Cf. Schweitzer, “Reading Utopia,” 55.
or “discontinuity” is a constitutive part of utopia. On the other hand,

there must be an element of identi¿cation between author, text, and
reader, in order to enable understanding.6 In terms of reader-response
criticism, the reader needs an “encyclopedia” whereby he or she can look
up meanings.7
It is the task of the prayer texts of Chronicles to activate the model
reader’s encyclopedia, to bridge the boundaries between Israel’s past and
a model reader’s present, and hence to identify the “revival” as a
reader’s revival. The prayers ful¿l a double function: To begin with,
they are a device to create discontinuity as they neutralize the time
frame. Secondly, they convey the message of revival. In order to con-
tinue, it is necessary to clarify some terms, including “prayer,” “reader,”
and “revival motif.” Thereafter it is possible to demonstrate the bridging
function of the various types of prayer and their role in taking the reader
into utopia.
Terminology
“Prayer” in this context simply refers to any address to God. There are
different types of prayer within Chronicles. The ¿rst distinction separates
textual (or oral) prayers from gestures and implicit ones, while the
second distinction could be viewed as a graduation of expressiveness.
These distinctions result in six types:
1. Proper prayer texts or recorded prayers are fully formulated
texts. They are clearly marked as directed to God by express
address, keyword, or similar signs.
2. The abbreviation is a shortened repetition of source texts, which
presupposes that the ideal reader knows these sources.8 The
abbreviations do not necessarily repeat the exact wording of the
source, but stay close to it and assume a certain verbal form.
They can be prayers if either the source text or the abbreviation
itself or both are marked as directed to God.
6. Wolfgang Iser, Der Akt des Lesens: Theorie ästhetischer Wirkung (2d ed.;
Uni-Taschenbücher 636; Munich: Fink, 1984), 44–46, calls this “pre-stabilized
harmony” between text and reader.
7. Cf. Tobias Nicklas, “Leitfragen leserorientierter Exegese: Methodische
Gedanken zu einer ‘Biblischen Auslegung,’” in Der Bibelkanon in der Bibelaus-
legung. MethodenreÀexionen und Beispielexegesen (ed. E. Ballhorn and G. Steins;
Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2007), 45–61.
8. Cf. Thomas Hieke, “Neue Horizonte: Biblische Auslegung als Weg zu
ungewöhnlichen Perspektiven,” ZNT 6 (2003): 69, 71.
1
JENDREK Taking the Reader Into Utopia 173
3. Unrecorded prayer refers to any situation describing prayer in

Chronicles, where no text is handed down;9 but where the situa-
tion suggests at the same time that the reader should supply a
prayer text mentally.10 Unrecorded prayers are always signaled
by a keyword.
4. Gestures are prayers if they address God; for instance, in 2 Chr
20:18 Juda and the Judeans “worship the Lord” (NRSV).
“Worship” is expressed by !#% in the Hebrew text, which
literally means “to bow down (low).”
5. If gestures are not expressly directed to God, but the situation
suggests that the human action nonetheless addresses God—as,
for instance, in ritual contexts—gestures form a kind of implicit
prayers (Sara Japhet suggests such an implicit praying gesture
for the people “standing” next to or behind Jehoshaphat in 2 Chr
20:12.11)
6. Formulas can contain prayer; the most obvious is the bƗrûk-
formula (!#!' (#:).12
The textual prayers, especially abbreviations and unrecorded prayers
are intertextual links (“hypertexts”) between themselves, their context,
and some source texts (“hypotexts”). This intertextual function forms
the main element of the bridging between the past and the reader’s
present.
Further, by saying “envisaged reader” Murray refers to “the audience
to which a text is pragmatically addressed… On this convention, every
text has an envisaged reader, notionally constantly present but outside
the text…”13 He de¿nes this “envisaged reader” as the counterpart of
the “implied reader.” This “implied reader” is “a ¿gure explicitly or
implicitly addressed by written text, but notionally standing outside the
9. Samuel E. Balentine, “You Can’t Pray a Lie: Truth and Fiction in the Prayers
of Chronicles,” in The Chronicler as Historian (ed. M. P. Graham, K. G. Hoglund,
and S. L. McKenzie; JSOTSup 238; Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld Academic, 1997), 251.
10. Cf. Stefan Royar, “Denn der HERR, euer Gott, ist gnädig und barmherzig”:
Die Gebete in den Chronikbüchern und ihre Bedeutung für die chronistische
Theologie (Beiträge zum Verstehen der Bibel 10; Münster: Lit, 2005), 168. For a
more detailed de¿nition of unrecorded prayer, cf. Royar, “Denn der HERR”, 14,
168.
11. Sara Japhet, 2 Chronik (HTKAT; Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2003), 252.
12. The term bƗrûk-formula has been introduced by Josef Scharbert, “Die
Geschichte der barûk-Formel,” BZ 17 (1973): 1–28.
13. Murray, “Retribution,” 86 n. 21; italics his.
immediate world it [i.e., the text—M.J.] creates.”14 To avoid confusion, it

is possible to point out the commonalities between these two terms: They
are both pragmatic terms, hence the term “reader” in this context never
refers to a real person; both readers are notions reconstructed by the
exegete using features of the text. (This is why the “envisaged reader”
and the “implied reader” are both “model readers.”) For both “readers”
Murray implicitly assumes that textual features guide the respective
reader. In the case of the “envisaged reader,” the “envisaged author”
guides the reader intentionally;15 in the case of the “implied reader,” the
text’s pragmatics—or poetics, as Murray states—do so. This latter
distinction is not important for the question of this investigation. On the
other hand, the method used does not aim at results concerning the
“envisaged author” or the “envisaged reader”; thus, the term “implied
reader” is more ¿tting. This is all the more true as Murray’s “implied
reader” comes close to Wolfgang Iser’s “ideal reader”—the notion also
reconstructed by the exegete (a “model,” still) who can resolve all
intertextual links a text contains.16
Finally, the “revival motif” is exemplarily termed in 1 Chr 28:9: “if
you devotedly seek him [namely, YHWH—M.J.] he will make himself
found by you.”17 The motif acts as counterpart to the pervasive theme of
retribution. Its ¿rst occurrence is in 1 Chr 16:11–13:18 “Seek the LORD
and his strength, seek his presence continually. Remember the wonderful
works he has done, his miracles, and the judgments he uttered, O
offspring of his servant Israel, children of Jacob, his chosen ones”
(NRSV). This passage is part of a “psalm” or “psalm medley”19 which
David commanded the Levite Asaph to sing in 1 Chr 16:8–36. It con-
cludes the narrative arc of the Ark of the Covenant: David orders Asaph
to lead the celebrations after the Ark ¿nally reached Jerusalem.
14. Donald F. Murray, Divine Prerogative and Royal Pretension: Pragmatics,

Poetics and Polemics in a Narrative Sequence About David (2 Samuel 5.17–7.29)
(JSOTSup 264; Shef¿eld: Shef¿eld Academic, 1998), 22 n. 9.
15. For this term, cf. again ibid.
16. Cf. Iser, Akt, 52–54.
17. Murray, “Retribution,” 79.
18. Cf. ibid., 84.
19. James W. Watts, Psalm and Story: Inset Hymns in Hebrew Narrative
(JSOTSup 139; Shef¿eld: JSOT, 1992), 155.
1
Bridges Between “Past” and “Present”:

Prayers as Intertextual Links
This “psalm” already reveals a part of the pragmatics of prayer texts in
Chronicles. Most signi¿cant are the imperative forms found in the text:
In v. 11, one of the key terms of Chronistic theology appears in an
imperative form: <9, “to seek (God)” (“Seek the Lord…”). Next, 1 Chr
16:15 alters the perfect form of :)$ (“to remember”) from its source,
Ps 105:8, to an imperative, too. Additionally, all the imperatives in the
¿rst part of the “psalm” connect it to the text’s introduction; namely, to
the introductory verse 1 Chr 16:4:20 “He appointed certain of the Levites
as ministers before the ark of the Lord, to invoke, to thank, and to praise
the Lord, the God of Israel” (NRSV, my italics).
These imperatives address not only the textual “listeners” of the
psalms, but they “encourage” the (ideal) reader. This is how 1 Chr 16
“encourages [the reader] to anticipate a happy future”:21 It actively calls
on its reader to “reproduce the same joyful communion with their
powerful and engaged God” as the psalm remembers it. Murray says the
text “summons” the reader “to rejoice” and recalls the reason why all
“seekers” of God should worship: It is YHWH’s divine presence—once in
the ark and the tent, now in Jerusalem and the temple.22
Concerning the motif, a second important text for its establishment is
the divine answer to Solomon’s prayer for the dedication of the temple,
2 Chr 7:12–22; especially vv. 13–15. The NRSV translates them as
follows:
When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the
locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my
people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my
face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and
will forgive their sin and heal their land. Now my eyes will be open and
my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place. (my italics)
Verse 14 clearly describes the behavior Chronicles expects of the model

reader:23 humble themselves, pray, seek God (<9 again), turn from sin.
At the same time, these verses bind YHWH’s answer to the actual text of
20. Cf. Mark A. Throntveit, “Songs in a New Key: The Psalmic Structure of the
Chronicler’s Hymn (I Chr 16:8–36),” in A God So Near: Essays on Old Testament
Theology in Honor of Patrick D. Miller (ed. B. A. Strawn; Winona Lake, Ind.:
Eisenbrauns, 2003), 167–68.
21. Murray, “Retribution,” 88.
22. Cf. ibid.
23. Cf. ibid., 93.
Solomon’s prayer for the dedication of the temple (2 Chr 6:1–2, 14–42)
by taking up the most important keywords.
Second Chronicles 20 is another good example of the pragmatics of
the prayers in Chronicles, as the story contains various types of prayer.
The narrative describes a military campaign of Moabites and Ammonites
against the southern kingdom under the rule of Jehoshaphat. The chapter
embeds a prayer, an abbreviation and two unrecorded prayers.24
Jehoshaphat’s prayer (2 Chr 20:6–12) shows some obvious inter-
textual links to the story of the dedication of the temple, hence to the
second text of the “revival motif’s” establishment:
9a &#6< :% !3: #1'+3 #=¡- If evil comes upon us, the sword of
3:# :# judgment and pestilence and famine,
9b ('16+# !$! ='! '16+ !/31 we are going to stand in front of this
house and in front of you,
9c !$! =' (/< ') because your name is in this house.
9d #1=:8/ ('+ 93$1# We are going to cry to you out of our
need,
9e 3/<=# and you’re going to hear
9f 3'<#=# and save us.25
1. Verse 9a is a rather direct quotation from 2 Chr 6:28, and an

allusion to 2 Chr 7:13. There is a discussion centering on the
textual evidence for 2 Chr 20:9. Nonetheless, the interpretation
Pancratius Beentjes gives is valid: v. 9a is a deliberate variation
of 2 Chr 6:28.26 Beentjes puts it this way: “The king is doing no
less than applying Solomon’s conditional sayings to the present
situation of the community which has gathered in the temple in
prayer.”27 And one may add: The text of 2 Chr 20 ful¿lls the
requirements of 2 Chr 7, the divine answer to Solomon’s dedi-
catory prayer. By altering the “sword” of 2 Chr 6:28 to the
24. It also includes a prophecy. Prophecies most probably act analogous to

prayers in Chronicles, but as I do not investigate them in my dissertation thesis, I
cannot elaborate on that. I have been reassured in my belief lately by a lecture of
Jürgen Kegler at a workshop by the simple title of “Current Research in Chronicles,”
convened in 2014 by Manfred Oeming in Heidelberg. Kegler investigates the
Chronistic “Sondergut.” Concerning the prophecies among this “Sondergut,” his
¿ndings prove my belief. To date, the results have unfortunately not been published.
25. The arrangement of the verse parts follows Wolfgang Richter, ed., Biblia
Hebraica transcripta. Vol. 15, 1 und 2 Chronik (Arbeiten zu Text und Sprache im
Alten Testament 33/15; St. Ottilien: EOS, 1993).
26. Cf. Pancratius C. Beentjes, “Tradition and Transformation: Aspects of Inner-
biblical Interpretation in 2 Chronicles 20,” Bib 74 (1993): 260–61.
1
27. Ibid., 261.
“sword of judgment” in 2 Chr 20:9 and thus changing the picture

from war to (heavenly) court, the text broadens the addressed
audience. “Judgment” concerns everyone and does not need to
be connected to war.
2. 2 Chronicles 20:9b–f exactly describe the behavior expected by
2 Chr 6:8–12 (and 2 Chr 7:14): praying in the direction of the
temple (v. 9b), orientation towards the “name” of YHWH (v. 9c)
and actively crying to God (v. 9d).
3. Both texts contain assurance that God will listen to the prayers.
The key term used in both cases is 3/< (“to hear”; 2 Chr 6:23
and more frequently; 7:14; 20:9e).
This intertextual connection adds a sense of preaching to Jeho-
shaphat’s story. The links enable a reader to understand the story as
paradigmatic, as Beentjes states. At the same time, the links transport the
“revival motif”—“Seek the Lord, and he will make himself found by
you”—from the temple dedication story to the Jehoshaphat text, adding
the element of encouragement to act like Jehoshaphat.
However, the Jehoshaphat story incorporates more prayers: at the
turning point of the narration, the abbreviation comes into play.
According to 2 Chr 20:21, YHWH started to help Jehoshaphat and Judah
precisely at the same moment (!+!=# !1: #+%! =3#), as ‘singers’
started to sing #2% -+#3+ ') !#!'+ ##!; “O give thanks to the Lord, for
his steadfast love endures forever,” as the NRSV translates the words.
This is one of the verses counting among the abbreviations. Even though
2 Chr 20 does not clearly state that the song caused YHWH to act, there is
undoubtedly a connection between the abbreviation and God’s action.28
It is impossible to leave out the thanks and praise from the story.
Only ¿ve texts present themselves as hypotexts to this abbreviation
#2% -+#3+ ') !#!'+ ##!: Pss 106, 107, 118 and 136—and 1 Chr 16. The
latter is the ¿rst text expressing the “revival motif.” -+#3+ ') !#!'+ ##!
#2% in 2 Chr 20:21 could well be a quotation of 1 Chr 16:34, 41. It
would then integrate the meaning of the “psalm medley” into Jeho-
shaphat’s story. The idea of a “revival”—or, to put it in other terms—the
capability of 1 Chr 16 to proclaim YHWH’s powerful presence and his
ability to save Israel are exactly the qualities needed in the course of the
narrative of 2 Chr 20.29 This ¿ts with the picture drawn by the recorded
prayer in 2 Chr 20:6–12.
28. Cf. John W. Kleinig, The Lord’s Song: The Basis, Function and Signi¿cance
of Choral Music in Chronicles (JSOTSup 156; Shef¿eld: JSOT, 1993), 178.
29. Ibid., 147.
The said abbreviation occurs also in the vicinity of Solomon’s prayer

for the dedication of the temple (2 Chr 6:1–2, 14–42), namely, before-
hand (2 Chr 5:3) and afterwards (2 Chr 7:3–6) in the description of the
celebrations. The words and especially their embedding make it perfectly
clear that the people attending the dedication ceremony are not merely
spectators, but get involved by acclaiming the Lord’s presence. The text
insists that all Israel is involved (7:3: +:<' '1 +)#; 7:4–5: -3!¡+); 7:6:
+:<'¡+)).
The participation of the entire people is an analogy to the ¿rst offer-
ings of Israel in front of the tent sanctuary. These are described in
Lev 9:24. Murray is mistaken when he claims that the people is not
involved there.30 To the contrary, the response of the people in Leviticus
shows that there is a way of communication between humankind and
God.31 The counterexample would be the theophany at Mount Sinai
(Exod 20:18), where Israel backs away from YHWH’s ¿re.32
The abbreviation “his steadfast love…,” presented as an outcry of the
public in 2 Chr 7 and repeated in 2 Chr 20, transfers this perspective of
communication from the temple dedication to the stories in the latter part
of Chronicles, where it adds a perspective of hope for the reader—or, to
put it in Murray’s words, of “revival.” The request Solomon’s prayer
makes, that is, to turn to YHWH or, respectively, to his temple, is ful¿lled
immediately by the crowd attending the dedication ceremony, and later
by some of the kings of Israel.
The feature of adding a hopeful perspective holds true at last for the
unrecorded prayers as well. Second Chronicles 20 contains two of these
signals. The ¿rst unrecorded prayer, in v. 19, is indicated by ++!, the
other in v. 26 by (:. To determine the functions, it is worth taking a
look at the actors: the subjects of ++! are the Levites, in 2 Chr 20 as well
as in 1 Chr 16:4. With the Levites and the signal word ++!, a possible
connection to 1 Chr 16 (and to Psalms) is still visible.
The subjects of (: in 2 Chr 20:26 are most probably “Jehoshaphat
and his people” of v. 25. Thus, at least the king is included in the praise,
if not all the people. This inclusion of the king (and his people) in the
praise resembles the circumstances of the temple dedication once again.
The abbreviation marks the participation of the people of Israel in the
proceedings, especially in the request to God. 2 Chronicles 7:3–6 gave
30. Against Murray, “Retribution,” 92, cf. Thomas Hieke, Levitikus (HTKAT;
Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2014), 372–73.
31. Cf. Hieke, Levitikus, 327–73.
1
32. Japhet, 2 Chronik, 99.
the abbreviation as content of the people’s acclamations, as said earlier.

(: also concludes 1 Chr 16:8–36 (v. 36), and occurs in the vicinity of
this text, vv. 16:2, 43. This suggests a pattern in the use of (: alone.
Moreover, all prayers together reveal a narrative pattern. Sara Japhet
describes its basic outline.33 Adding Stefan Royar’s discovery that
unrecorded prayers are always answered, this pattern consists of ¿ve
parts:
1. Human cause for an action or human idea;
2. search of or question to YHWH (that is prayer; Japhet does not
mention this step);
3. divine help;
4. successful conclusion of the action or endeavor;
5. praise of God.
Second Chronicles 20 ful¿lls this pattern, if one takes all prayers (the
unrecorded prayers as well as abbreviation and the recorded prayer of
Jehoshaphat) into account. Jehoshaphat and his people have to face
Moab and Ammon (human action; v. 1). Jehoshaphat “seeks the Lord”
(vv. 6–12; basically a prayer of petition). Jahaziel gives the prophetic
answer (vv. 15–17), and Jehoshaphat orders “singers” to praise God
(vv. 19, 21; the ¿rst unrecorded prayer and the abbreviation—prayer,
prophecy, and praise form the “seeking” or “questioning” step of the
pattern). At this moment Israel’s fate changes out of divine intervention
(v. 22), and the campaign is successful. Jehoshaphat and his people just
have to watch (vv. 22–25). The praise of God in the “Valley of Beracah”
(NRSV) concludes the narration (v. 26; the second unrecorded prayer).
Music accompanies this ¿nal praise: “They came to Jerusalem, with
harps and lyres and trumpets, to the house of the LORD” (v. 28, NRSV).
This is a parallel to the end of the Ark narrative, when the Ark of the
Covenant reaches Jerusalem in similar company (cf. 1 Chr 15:28).
Frank Crüsemann has been one of the ¿rst to recognize a relationship
between the verses 2 Chr 20:19, 21, and 26.34 Crüsemann is right in his
conclusion that there is a functional connection between the unrecorded
prayers and the abbreviation. They form a threefold hint to 1 Chr 16 and
2 Chr 6–7 and hence integrate the “proclamatory” power of 1 Chr 16 and
the appellative notion of 2 Chr 6–7 in 2 Chr 20. Additionally, an
33. Cf. Sara Japhet, 1 Chronik (HTKAT; Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2002),
303.
34. Cf. Frank Crüsemann, Studien zur Formgeschichte von Hymnus und
Danklied in Israel (WMANT 32; Neukirchen–Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1969), 205 n. 1.
intertextual link to 1 Chr 29 (David’s ¿nal prayer as he hands the throne

to Solomon) is probable. (None of these connections are in any way
necessary, of course.) At last, the psalms may add the soundtrack to the
scenography of the movie in the model reader’s head. Thus, the prayers
start to bridge the time of Solomon and the time of Jehoshaphat, and the
intertextual links they form add potential meanings to the narrative
which could not be perceived without the hypotexts.
Conclusion: Taking the Reader Into Utopia

The prayers do their “bridging of time(s)” within a text that is—written
however late or early—clearly compiled within a time where there was
no “King of Israel” anymore. Nonetheless, the prayers in 2 Chr 20 render
the story of Jehoshaphat and the Moabites and Ammonites as an example
for remembering and confessing God at the right moment. In addition to
the proclamation, they actively call on their (model) reader, and they call
on him or her to act according to the example given in the narration:
Trust in God, let him quash the enemies. This coincides with the “revival
motif” of 1 Chr 16 and 2 Chr 6–7: “Seek the Lord,” that is, pray; “and he
will make himself found by you,” that is, he will help in times of danger.
Murray now states that the accounts of David and Solomon, 1 Chr 11–
2 Chr 9, “establish” the “revival motif.” First Chronicles 16 is part of this
section. The ¿nal chapters of Chronicles, 2 Chr 10–36, use the motif as a
means directly to encourage those whom Murray calls “envisaged
readers.”35 The prayers show that Murray is right here, even if it is not
possible to identify the envisaged reader, and if it is necessary to use the
term “ideal reader” instead.
Murray tried to establish a connection between reader and text by the
idea of a “utopian past” to be “replicated”;36 and he further claims that
the “revival motif” constitutes the utopian part of Chronicles. Schweitzer
contradicts him directly: The identity of Israel within Chronicles is
constructed in an “atemporal” way, so there can be no talking of “reviv-
ing” a certain “stage” of society within an historical development.37
The “atemporality” Schweitzer discovered is the means by which a
reader could identify with the text. It forms the counterpart to the discon-
tinuity. In other words, prayers, abbreviations, and unrecorded prayers,
seen as hypotexts, enable the identi¿cation of the present of the texts
35. Cf. Murray, “Retribution,” 85–86.

36. Cf. ibid., 96.
1
37. Cf. Schweitzer, “Reading Utopia,” 124.
with the future the texts describe—which in turn forms the present of the
reader. This is more than what direct speech, used as a stylistic device,
usually achieves, because the prayers transport theological meaning in
addition to any direct address. It is possible to perpetuate Schweitzer’s
de¿nition: A text may be working as utopia for a model reader, if this
model reader uses an “encyclopedia” which does not entirely ¿t with the
described situation. Taking Murray’s ¿ndings into account, the “revival
motif” does not constitute utopia, but forms its message, as there is the
promise of “revival” which is neither part of the “present situation” of
the text nor of its reader’s.
This atemporality is featured by the prayers interspersed in the narra-
tive: They bridge the times the texts tell about and any reader’s present
by transporting the motifs and the summons to worship YHWH to any
time a reader reads them. They appeal directly to a reader and generalize
the stories, creating the possibility for readers to identify with the events
being related. They facilitate identi¿cation of the ideal reader with the
utopian message presented in the text, or else: They take the reader into
utopia.
Bibliography
Balentine, Samuel E. “You Can’t Pray a Lie: Truth and Fiction in the Prayers of
Chronicles.” Pages 246–67 in The Chronicler as Historian. Edited by M. Patrick
Graham, Kenneth G. Hoglund and Steven L. McKenzie. JSOTSup 238. Shef¿eld:
Beentjes, Pancratius C. “Tradition and Transformation: Aspects of Innerbiblical
Interpretation in 2 Chronicles 20.” Biblica 74 (1993): 258–68.
Crüsemann, Frank. Studien zur Formgeschichte von Hymnus und Danklied in Israel.
WMANT 32. Neukirchen–Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1969.
Hieke, Thomas. Levitikus. Erster Teilband: 1-15. HTKAT. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder,
2014.
———. “Neue Horizonte. Biblische Auslegung als Weg zu ungewöhnlichen
Perspektiven.” ZNT 6 (2003): 65–76.
Iser, Wolfgang. Der Akt des Lesens. Theorie ästhetischer Wirkung. Uni-Taschenbücher
636. 2d ed. Munich: Fink, 1984.
Japhet, Sara. 1 Chronik. HTKAT. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2002.
———. 2 Chronik. HTKAT. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2003.
Kleinig, John W. The Lord’s Song: The Basis, Function and Signi¿cance of Choral Music
in Chronicles. JSOTSup 156. Shef¿eld: JSOT, 1993.
Murray, Donald F. “Retribution and Revival. Theological Theory, Religious Praxis, and
the Future in Chronicles.” JSOT 88 (2000): 77–99.
———. Divine Prerogative and Royal Pretension: Pragmatics, Poetics and Polemics in a
Narrative Sequence About David (2 Samuel 5.17–7.29). JSOTSup 264. Shef¿eld:
Nicklas, Tobias. “Leitfragen leserorientierter Exegese. Methodische Gedanken zu einer

‘Biblischen Auslegung’.” Pages 45–61 in Der Bibelkanon in der Bibelauslegung.
MethodenreÀexionen und Beispielexegesen. Edited by Egbert Ballhorn and Georg
Steins. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2007.
Richter, Wolfgang, ed. Biblia Hebraica transcripta. Vol. 15, 1 und 2 Chronik. Arbeiten
zu Text und Sprache im Alten Testament 33/15. St. Ottilien: EOS, 1993.
Royar, Stefan. “Denn der HERR, euer Gott, ist gnädig und barmherzig.” Die Gebete in
den Chronikbüchern und ihre Bedeutung für die chronistische Theologie. Beiträge
zum Verstehen der Bibel 10. Münster: Lit, 2005.
Scharbert, Josef. “Die Geschichte der barûk-Formel.” BZ 17 (1973): 1–28.
Schweitzer, Steven J. “Reading Utopia in Chronicles.” Ph.D. Diss., University of Notre
Dame, 2005. Cited 31 December 2014. Online: http://etd.nd.edu/ETD-db/theses/
available/etd-03192005-220714/unrestricted/SchweitzerSJ032005.pdf.
Throntveit, Mark A. “Songs in a New Key: The Psalmic Structure of the Chronicler’s
Hymn (I Chr 16:8–36).” Pages 153–70 in A God So Near: Essays on Old Testament
Theology in Honor of Patrick D. Miller. Edited by Brent A. Strawn. Winona Lake,
Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2003.
Watts, James W. Psalm and Story: Inset Hymns in Hebrew Narrative. JSOTSup 139.
Shef¿eld: JSOT, 1992.
1
DIE SUCHE NACH DEM ORT IN DER CHRONIK:
EINE U-TOPIE?
Thomas Willi
Abstract
In Chronicles’ re-narration of David’s path towards ¿nding the “place”
for the temple of Jerusalem, we ¿nd the afterlife of an ancient Israelite
tradition about searching and ¿nding the “place,” or rather, the slow bit-
by-bit unveiling “place” of a divine presence. The aim of the trajectory
of the unit 1 Chr 11, 13–17—read as foreshadowing 1 Chr 21—is the
mƗqǀm, the “place.” We are confronted with the question: Is Jerusalem
that place already or will it only become the place in the future, at God’s
entry into his holy site (2 Chr 6:40–7:3)? The search for the “place,”
initiated in Chronicles, oscillates between utopia and topology, creates an
unexpected reception history and gains a prominent position in Jewish
prayer liturgy.
Introduction
It is more than likely that the Chronicler would share sceptic views about
Utopia like the statement of Herta Müller’s, the Rumanian Literature
Nobel-prize laureate: “Utopian—meaning: Something does not work.
Socialism for instance… I need no other utopia. The people’s welfare is
not programmable.”
And as Martin Noth stated: “It is inexact and misleading…to deny the
Chronicler’s intention to write history.”1
On the Way to the Place

From the very beginning, Jerusalem and its development have provoked
different explanations, among them Chronicles. According to them,
Jerusalem’s differentia speci¿ca is not its population, religion or ritual,
not even its tradition, but God being present in this place. To demonstrate
1. Martin Noth, Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien I. [Halle a.d. Saale:

1943 =] Ausg. (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1957 = Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buch-
gesellschaft, 1963), 172.
this the chronistic history, starting with 1 Chr 13–16, balances the House
(='C ! ) and the Place (-L9] ! ). The Place, neglected by Saul, turns out to
be the object of a restless search by David.
The Chronicler, retelling Israel’s history, gives older traditions about
numinous “places” another value. Passages like Gen 12:6; 13:3 (Abra-
ham); 22:3, 4, 9, 14 (Isaac on Morija); 28:11, 17, 19; 32:3, 31; 35:7, 15
(Jacob in Betel, Mahanajim and Penuel) indicate human encounters with
the divine sphere prove to be fundamental for the unit 1 Chr 13–16,
followed by chs. 17 and 21. In these chapters David is looking unceas-
ingly for a or, to put it precisely, for the place, -L9/, chosen to hold the
ark (cf. Ps 132:1–5). So the forming era of Israel’s history culminates in
¿nding and marking the ultimate place where God had to be evocated and
adored (1 Chr 21 and 28–29).
Topo-logia Versus U-topia

Chronicles is historiography at its best, which means not “utopia” in the
sense of a critical counter-portrait of historical reality. As a crosscheck
one may refer to the classical U-topia of Thomas More that is by no
means recurrent in biblical concepts and citations. The Chronicler in his
turn, by tracing the lines of his sources and older traditions, has caused a
very deep and important reception, last but not least in the liturgy of the
Synagogue (viz. the Qedushsha, based on Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliҵezer 4).
***
1. Einführung
“Nirgendwo liegen blanker Hohn und grosse Hoffnung so dicht
beieinander wie auf dem Feld der Utopie. Es ist ein Schlachtfeld. Das 20.
Jahrhundert gleicht einer Utopievernichtungsmaschine. Sozialismus und
Kommunismus haben sich blutig desavouiert…”2 So äussert sich Herta
Müller, die Literatur-Nobelpreisträgerin aus Rumänien, im April 2014
auf dem Monte Verità. In der Diskussion mit Péter Nádas und Klaus
Wagenbach lässt sie überhaupt nur das Adjektiv gelten: “Utopisch—
also: Etwas funktioniert nicht. Der Sozialismus zum Beispiel… Ich
brauche auch keine andere Utopie. Man kann das Glück des Volkes nicht
programmieren.”3
2. Rüdiger Schaper, Einführung zu dem 10.–13. April 2014 abgehaltenen Lit-

eraturfestival auf dem Monte Verità bei Ascona TI (zitiert nach: Der Tagesspiegel,
Kultur vom 14.04.2014).
1
3. Ibid.
WILLI Die Suche nach dem Ort in der Chronik 185
Einiges spricht dafür, dass sich der Chronist auf dem Monte Verità
wohlgefühlt hätte. In der modernen Rezeption wird ihm immer wieder
eine theologische, systematisierende Sicht unterstellt. Dahinter steht
die Enttäuschung und VerzweiÀung, dass er für heutige historische
Fragestellungen so unergiebig ist. Dafür sei nur an die vernichtenden
Voten Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wettes oder Julius Wellhausens
erinnert.4 Aber Geschichte und Geschichtswahrnehmung sind keines-
wegs unwandelbar und unveränderlich. Martin Noth hat es darum zu
Recht als “ungenau und mißverständlich” und als “untauglichen
Versuch” bezeichnet, “die Entstellung des überlieferten Geschichtsbildes
durch Chr zu ‘entschuldigen’, wenn man ihm die Absicht bestreitet,
Geschichte zu schreiben.”5 Die Chr ist eine reife Frucht, nicht ein
Auswuchs am Stamm israelitischer Geschichtsschreibung. Ihr eignet die
genetische Betrachtungsweise, das heuristische Prinzip der Analogie, die
Reduktion der unendlichen Vielfalt an Erscheinungen und Prozessen auf
einzelne Triebkräfte und, last but not least, die Benutzung von Quellen.6
Das soll heute—angeregt und herausgefordert durch das Stichwort der
“U-Topie”—am Beispiel der Bedeutung des “Ortes” im Aufriss von Chr
skizziert werden.
2. Unterwegs zu dem Ort

Jerusalem und seine Entwicklung muten nicht erst uns Heutige als ein
purer Zufall an. Weder geographische, klimatische, infrastruktur-
elle, noch strategische, politische, geschichtliche Gesichtspunkte hätten
einen kühlen Beobachter darauf kommen lassen, dass die Stadt etwas
Besonderes sei. Nur zu begreiÀich, dass auch der Chronist solche
Kontingenz hinterfragt. Er tut es von seiner in den Genealogien oder
4. Wilhelm M. L. de Wette, Beiträge zur Einleitung in das Alte Testament. Bd. 1

(Halle a.d. Saale: Schimmelpfennig, 1806), 4: “Die Relation der BB. Samuels und
der Könige und die der Chronik stehen miteinander in Widerspruch; und zwar nicht
bloß in einzelnen Nachrichten…, sondern im Ganzen der Geschichte.” Und Julius
Wellhausen doppelt in seinen Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels (6th ed.; Berlin:
de Gruyter, 1927), vgl. auch die engl. Ausg. Prolegomena to the History of Israel
(trans. J. Sutherland Black and Allan Enzies, with preface by W. Robertson Smith;
Edinburgh: A. & C. Black, 1885; trans. of Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels.
2d ed; Berlin: G. Reimer, 1883), 176–77, nach: “Dass es vergeblich ist, die grund-
verschiedenen Bilder stereoskopisch zusammenzuschauen, leuchtet ein; historischen
Wert hat nur die Tradition der älteren Quelle.”
5. Noth, Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien I, 172.
6. Dazu ausführlich Thomas Willi, Die Chronik als Auslegung (FRLANT 136;
Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972), 207.
Bürgerrechtslisten (1 Chr 1–9) breit entfalteten inklusiven Sicht Israels

her, und zwar auf der gemeinsamen religiösen-kultischen Basis der so
unterschiedlichen Bevölkerungsteile7 des, wie er es nennen würde,
“Israellandes”8. Sein Werk ist keine Attacke auf den Garizim und seine
ihm verbundenen Bevölkerungsteile im Gebiet des ehemaligen Nord-
reichs. Wohl aber will er die differentia speci¿ca des gesamtisraelitisch,
ja mehr als das: global gesehenen Heiligtums in Jerusalem herausar-
beiten.
Für den Chronisten sind es nicht primär der Trägerkreis, die Religion
und Ritualpraxis, auch nicht die Überlieferung, die das Jerusalemer
Heiligtum de¿nieren. Identi¿ziert wird es ihm vielmehr durch seinen
Ort. Dieser ist nach Chr regelrecht gesucht und dann “entdeckt” worden,
nämlich durch David. Das ¿ligran verästelte, umfassende Israel der
zwölf Stämme und ihrer Familien, wie es 1 Chr 1–9 entworfen wird,
schwebte noch sozusagen frei im Raum. Saul dann verfehlte seine
Berufung und löste dadurch nach 1 Chr 10:7 die Flucht, Zerstreuung und
Orientierungslosigkeit Israels aus, weil er “nicht nach JHWH suchte”
(1 Chr 10:14a).
Dass er nicht gefunden hat, wird ihm nicht vorgeworfen, wohl aber,
dass er nicht “nachgefragt” und “nachgesucht” (f:) hatte. Von solchem
“Nachforschen” handelt nun die chronistische Neuerzählung der alten,
zur Hauptsache in 2 Sam schriftlich vorliegenden Überlieferung. Eine
Übersicht über die vom Chronisten in 1 Chr 13:1–16:439 verwendeten
Elemente zeigt, dass die chronistische Komposition auf einer Balance
zwischen Haus (=') und Stätte (-L9/) beruht.
Der Chronist verleiht dabei alten Überlieferungen ein ganz neues
Gewicht. Schon in der Väterfamiliengeschichte der Genesis werden
Gottesbegegnungen charakteristischerweise an bestimmten “Orten”
7. Bob Becking, “Do the Earliest Samaritan Inscriptions Already Indicate a

Parting of the Ways?,” in Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century B.C.E.
(ed. O. Lipschits, G. N. Knoppers, and R. Albertz; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns,
2007), 220, stellt fest, dass schon der epigraphische Befund “does not allow the
conclusion that…the religion of the Samari(t)ans differed from the religions of the
Yehudites.”
8. Die cs.-Verbindung +:g' 7: “Israelland” ¿ndet sich 11 mal im AT: 1 Sam
13:19; 2 Kgs 5:2, 4; 6:23; Ezra 27:17; 40:2; 47:18 und daneben, auffällig genug, in
1 Chr 22:2; 2 Chr 2:16; 30:25; 34:7. Zur Auswertung dieses Sachverhalts vgl.
Thomas Willi, “Die alttestamentliche Prägung des Begriffs +:g' 7:,” in Israel
und die Völker (ed. M. Pietsch; SBS 55; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2012),
10–20.
9. Genaueres dazu Thomas Willi, Chronik (BKAT 24/2,1; Neukirchen–Vluyn:
Neukirchener Verlag, 2013), 71–72.
1
lokalisiert. Sie liefern dann als Ätiologien den Anlass zur Gründung von
Kultstätten oder Heiligtümern.10 So gilt, dass Gott bei den “Eichen von
Mamre” (Gen 18:1), in Gerar (Gen 26:2), in Beerscheba (Gen 26:23–25)
und in Betel (Gen 35:9–15) “sichtbar wird” bzw. (Nif.!) “sich sehen
lässt.” Aber noch genauer stimmen die Stellen, die ausdrücklich den
hebräischen Begriff -#9/ “Ort” verwenden, mit dem Erzählfaden von 1
Chr 13–16 überein, der seinerseits vorausblickend auf 1 Chr 21 gelesen
werden muss. Das beginnt mit der “Orakeleiche,” an der Abram das
Land verheissen wird (Gen 12:6; 13:3), kulminiert in der Geschichte von
Isaaks Bindung auf Morija (Gen 22:3, 4, 9, 14), um sich dann in der
Geschichte Jakobs mit Betel (Gen 28:11, 17, 19), Machanajim im
Ostjordanland (Gen 32:3) und Penuel am Jabbok (Gen 32:31) und wieder
Betel (Gen 35:7, 15) fortzusetzen. Schliesst man sich der Analyse von
Ina Willi-Plein11 an, so ist mit einer im Laufe der Zeit noch stärker
konkretisierten Vorstellung über den “Ort Gottes” zu rechnen. Das
beginnt in der Pentateuchgrundschicht mit einer Stationenliste von
numinosen Plätzen, wird dann aber in Abschnitten, die in der tradition-
ellen Quellenscheidung als “elohistisch” galten, zu einer Spannungslinie
je einzelner Kultorte (hebr. -#9/) aufgebaut. Wenn man diese Abschnitte
mit Ina Willi-Plein12 zu einer “jerusalemzentrierten Ergänzungslinie”
verbindet, die Sichem (Gen 12:6) und Salem (Gen 14:18–20) und Morija
(Gen 22:14) und Betel (Gen 35:15) zusammenhält, so schält sich schon
in dieser ursprünglich gewiss im Norden verankerten Konzeption eine
zwar noch verhüllte, aber doch leise angedeutete Ausrichtung auf
Jerusalem als den “Ort” heraus. Die Stadt wird zwar nicht namentlich
erwähnt, aber “Salem” in Gen 14:18 scheint auf den zweiten ihres
Namens, “Morija” in Gen 22 vielleicht auf den ersten anzuspielen.
Wichtig ist, dass es nur in diesen Partien um Brandopfer geht:
So legt sich eine zusammenfassende zugleich literargeschichtliche und
religionsgeschichtliche Deutung des Befundes nahe. Der in Juda lebende
und erzählende Verfasser der Grunderzählung verbindet die Kenntnis von
in der Landschaft vorgefundenen Baumheiligtümern mit der Väter-
familiengeschichte. Der…Erzähler der Jerusalemer Ergänzungsschicht…
lässt demgegenüber das Suchen nach dem «Ort»…einerseits zur Offen-
barung in Betel und Etablierung des dortigen Kultes führen, andererseits
10. Dazu vgl. vor allem, nach früheren Beobachtungen, Ina Willi-Plein, Das
Buch Genesis (NSKAT 1/2; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2011), 130–36
anhand von Gen 22.
11. Ibid., 132.
12. Ibid., 79.
aber mit der Lokalisierung des Abrahamsopfers in der Landschaft Morija,

an der sich immerhin das deuteronomische Anliegen des ‘Sehens und
Gesehenwerdens Gottes’ im Brandopfer realisiert, verhüllt bleiben…13
Wie 1 Chr 21 zeigt, sind dieses Überlieferungskonzept und vor allem

Gen 22 für die chronistische Sicht Jerusalems ausschlaggebend und
leitend. Sie stehen daher auch bereits hinter 1 Chr 13–16.
Das Haus je des Obed-Edom und dasjenige Davids sind bereits
vorhanden. Bei Obed-Edom wird es zum Gefäss des Segens, und bei
David ist es der erste Schritt zum Neubau. In der Vorlage 2 Sam 6:17 ist
bereits der Begriff -L9/ verankert. In Chr wird er aber erst tastend
gesucht. Im Zuge dieser Suche scheitert nach 1 Chr 13:11 die erste
Ladeüberführung, während 14:11 mit der “Stätte des Durchbruchs”
schon einen Hoffnungsschimmer aufkeimen lässt, bevor dann in 15:1, 3
an der “Stätte” für die Lade immerhin ein “Zelt” (15:1), wenn auch noch
nicht das feste Haus, aufgeschlagen wird. Was sich an Bedeutung hinter
dem -L9/ verbirgt, nämlich nichts weniger als Gottes persönliche, durch
sein “Angesicht” verkörperte Gegenwart,14 lässt die chronistische
Ersetzung des “Heiligtums” von Ps 96:6 in 1 Chr 16:27 erstmals klar
erkennen, bis dann nach 17:9 und 21:22, 25 die recht eigentlich
entdeckte “Stätte,” Moria, zur Baustelle für das Haus wird.
1 Chr 13–16 mit Davids Suche nach dem “Ort” für die Lade haben
eine exakte Parallele in Ps 132 (besonders V.1–5) und sind insofern ein
erzählerischer Kommentar zu Ps 132:5, wo das “Auf¿nden (8/) des
13. Ibid., 133–34.

14. Angesichts des Gesamtzusammenhangs von 1 Chr 13–2 Chr 8 ist es auch
nicht nebensächlich, dass das Wort -L9/ rein etymologisch zur Wurzel -K9
“aufstehen” gehört und daher im Gegensatz zu anderen Bezeichnungen für “Stätte”
wie etwa 0L)/ (zu 0KV “festgegründet sein”) oder fL/
(zu f' “sitzen, sesshaft sein”)
die Konnotation des “Aufstehens” im Blick auf ein aktives Eingreifen enthält. Man
denkt unwillkürlich an den Ladespruch von Num 10:35 (f.), der oft als “sehr
altertümlich” gilt und in dem vielleicht sogar “eine versprengte Tradition aus
der Zeit Davids” vorliegt, vgl. Horst Seebass, Numeri (BKAT 4/1; Neukirchen–
Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1993), 10–11. Behält man den markanten Anruf des
Ladespruchs an Gott !#!' !/#9 “Steh auf, JHWH!” im Ohr, so gewinnt der -L9/ als
Ziel des Wegs der Lade in Chr nicht nur äusserlich, sondern auch innerlich eine
besondere Bedeutung. Das wird im chronistische Geschichtswerk durch 2 Chr 6:41
dadurch bestätigt und besiegelt, dass das Tempelweihgebet, das Salomo nach
vollzogenem Tempelbau darbringt, in Chr über die Vorlage hinaus erweitert und
abgeschlossen wird durch eine Auswahl aus Ps 132, nämlich dessen vv. 8–10, die
mit dem an Gott gerichteten Imp. !/K9 “Steh auf!” beginnen—durchaus paradox für
eine Situation, in der doch soeben die Lade an ihren Platz und zu ihrer Ruhe
gebracht worden ist!
1
Ortes” durch David poetisch besungen wird. Das tastende Suchen und
das gewissermassen noch blinde Umhertappen ist daher nicht zufällig
Thema und Stichwort für die Zeit und Epoche vor David in Ps 95:13–
15//1 Chr 16:20–22, die in Chr ja nicht erzählt wird. Es zeigt sich aber
dort schon eine göttliche Bewahrung und Führung, die dann erneut die
individuelle (Vor-) Geschichte Davids mit der zuerst misslungenen, dann
gelungenen Überführung der Lade prägt (1 Chr 14, dann 15–16).
Auch das poetische Kapitel 1 Chr 16 ist mehrfach mit dem chron-
istischen Erzählduktus verwoben, und zwar nicht zuletzt über die Rolle
des -L9/. Er wird in 16:27 nach rückwärts mit (13:11; 14:11) 15:1, 3,
sodann voraus mit dem Zielvers 2 Chr 3:1 verknüpft. Das Ziel des
“Heraufbringens” der Lade ist die Anrufung Gottes an dem Ort seiner
durch die Lade markierten Präsenz, letztlich der Tempel, “denn dein
Name—in diesem Haus ist er,” wie 2 Chr 20,9 prägnant formulieren
wird. Kurz: “The idea that God is present in the Temple through His
name”15 blitzt hier ein erstes Mal auf.
Aber schon in der aus der Vorlage übernommenen Einleitung zu 1 Chr
16 ¿ndet sich in 1 Chr 15:1, 3 die Bezeichnung -L9/, der “Stätte.” Sie ist
nicht zufällig oder beliebig. Sondern Israels Gott selber hat sich die
Örtlichkeit für seinen Kult vorbehalten, bis schliesslich sein Haus den in
der Erzählung 1 Chr 21 durch höhere Einwirkung de¿nierten Platz
markiert. Nach der chronistischen Lesart des alten Berichts von der
Ladeeinholung geht es also um das Auf¿nden “des Ortes” durch David
und um die Massnahmen, mit denen er dieses Unterfangen ausführt und
zum vorläu¿gen Ende bringt.
Auch die Situationsbezogenheit des Hymnus 1 Chr 16 könnte hier
mitspielen: der Ort ist zwar schon da, aber das Heiligtum noch nicht
erbaut: Das Hauptstück als Begründung des anzustimmenden Hymnus
wird ganz regelhaft in V. 25 mit ') “denn” eingeleitet. Dann folgt Ps
96:4–10, eine Beschreibung von Wesen und Wirken Gottes. In Chr
kulminiert der Hymnus in den VV. (23f.) 25–27. Dabei ersetzt Chr den
Ausdruck #f9/ der Vorlage Ps 96:6 durch “an seinem Ort,” #/#9/
ganz im Sinne des chronistische Erzählfadens.
Die Einheit 1 Chr 13–16 läuft also darauf hinaus, das bis dahin
unbekannte und unbedeutende Bergstädtchen Jerusalem als den Ort
künftigen Einzugs und endgültiger Einwohnung Gottes zu identi¿zieren.
Nicht die moderne Frage, ob und wie man Gott begegnen könne, steht im
Vordergrund, sondern die, wo er sich aufsuchen (f:) sowie erreichen,
anrufen und preisen (++!+# =##!+# :')$!+# 16:4) lasse.
15. Sara Japhet, The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical
Thought (BEATAJ 9; Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 1989), 72.
Nach Chr läuft also die Israel prägende Vorgeschichte auf den Ort zu,
den David gesucht hat. Israel ist es dann aufgetragen, die schliesslich
aufgefundene Stätte in Form musikalischer und liedhafter Evokation
Gottes zu markieren (1 Chr 16). Die letzte Bestätigung steht allerdings
noch aus. Insofern bleibt ein Element des Utopischen noch bestehen. Die
“Utopie auf Zeit” wird nach dem in 1 Chr 17 gefassten Plan zum Bau des
Hauses und der Offenbarung des Bau-Platzes in 1 Chr 21 realisiert und
damit aufgehoben werden. In der göttlichen Wahl des Ortes, die an sich
menschlichem Wollen entzogen ist, ist also auch menschliches
Mitwirken angelegt. Das Element des Bekenntnisses (hebr. !') in der
Evokation Gottes nimmt Gottes Entscheidung gewissermassen vorweg
und bestätigt sie. Und so könnte man beinahe fragen: Ist denn Jerusalem
schon, oder wird es erst durch den—im Hymnus vorweggenommenen—
künftigen Einzug Gottes in sein Heiligtum (2 Chr 6:40–7:3) zu dem Ort?
Wenn sich die Gesichtspunkte überhaupt unterscheiden lassen, so darf
man vielleicht sagen, dass die Virtualität des erwählten Jerusalem durch
das menschliche Loben und Bekennen in die Aktualität überführt wird.
3. Topo-Logie versus U-topie

Diese Beobachtungen erhärten die These, dass Chr als Geschichtswerk
konzipiert ist, wenn auch zweifellos als ein Geschichtswerk sui generis.
Grundlage dafür sind Quellen unterschiedlichster Natur, schriftliche wie
die immerhin 36 der insgesamt 160 Kapitel des heute sog. Deuterono-
mistischen Geschichtswerks, aber auch ausgewählte Psalmen, ganz
wenig prophetisches Material, daneben sicher auch mündlich umlaufende
Traditionen. All das wird aufmerksam ergründet und zu dem Bild eines
Zeiten wie Räume umfassenden, in mancher Hinsicht daher auch ideal
anmutenden, Israel vor Gott komponiert. Was in 1 Chr 1–9 gesamthaft
entworfen ist, wird im Verlauf der folgenden Geschichtsdarstellung
manchmal mehr, manchmal weniger, realisiert werden. Das ist aber
meines Erachtens etwas anderes als das von vornherein als kritischer
Spiegel entworfene Gegenbild einer Utopie mit ihrer “impliziten Auf-
forderung zur Umgestaltung der Welt.”16 Wichtig ist in diesem Zusam-
menhang die Beobachtung, dass für das prominenteste und die Gattung
geradezu prägende moderne Werk, für “Morus’ Utopia” nämlich, “der
Rekurs auf Bibel-Zitate peripher, wenn nicht bedeutungslos” ist.17 Und
wenn “‘Utopien’…als exemplarische Bezeichnung aller denkbaren Orte
16. Friederike Kuster, “Utopie I, Philosophisch,” TRE 34:465.

1
17. Richard Saage, “Utopie II, Kirchengeschichtlich,” TRE 34:475.
einer ¿ktiven Geographie…”18 zu gelten haben, so ist der Ort in Chr

keineswegs ¿ktiv, sondern der historisch-geographische Angelpunkt des
Geschehens und Fixpunkt in der Realität in Vergangenheit, Gegenwart
und Zukunft.
Die Wirkungsgeschichte unterstreicht die Bedeutung des Themas.
Weder Ps 132 noch Chr schildern Davids Bemühungen als eine
inzwischen längst erledigte und zu den Akten gelegte historische
Reminiszenz. Die Suche nach dem Ort von Gottes Gegenwart ist mit
dem Erreichen Jerusalems keineswegs abgeschlossen. Tatsächlich
gewinnt die Suche nach dem “Ort” in der späteren jüdischen Gebets-
liturgie einen ganz neuen Stellenwert, ganz in der Linie von Chr In der
für Sabbate und Festtage vorgesehenen ausführlichen Fassung der auf Jes
6:3 und Ezek 3:12b—hier spielt “der Ort,” -#9/ ebenfalls eine Rolle—
basierenden 3. Bitte der Amida bzw. des Achtzehngebets, der sog-
enannten Qeduscha, wird sie als bange Frage des himmlischen Hofstaats
der Engel nach dem “Wo?” der göttlichen Gegenwart laut:
Seine Herrlichkeit erfüllt die Welt (Jes 6:3): Seine Diener fragen
einander: Wo ist die Stätte Seiner Herrlichkeit? Die ihnen gegenüber
(stehen), sprechen: Gesegnet (ist Er). Gesegnet ist die Herrlichkeit des
HERRn von Seiner Stätte (L/L9] /)
aus (Ez 3:12b).19
Die Grundlage für dieses in deutscher Tradition mit (f'91# (8':31

“Wir wollen dich verehren und heiligen…” beginnenden Stücks im
Zusatz- (Musaf-) Gebet für Schabbat ist das wohl im 8. oder 9. Jhd. n.
Chr. in Palästina entstandene Werk PirqƝ deRabbi Eliezer. Hier heisst es
Kap. 4 in der Nacherzählung von Gen 1:14–19 zum vierten Schöp-
fungstag:
Und die [himmlischen] Wesen stehen an der Seite des Throns seiner
Herrlichkeit, aber sie kennen den Ort [-#9/] seiner Herrlichkeit nicht.
Sie stehen in Furcht und Zittern, in Angst und Schrecken… Und sie
verehren und heiligen seinen [sc. Gottes] grossen Namen: der hebt an,
und der ruft, und sie sagen: “Heilig, heilig, heilig ist der HERR Zebaot;
die ganze Erde ist voll seiner Herrlichkeit (Jes 6:3).” Und die Wesen
stehen an der Seite seiner Herrlichkeit, aber sie kennen den Ort seiner
Herrlichkeit nicht. Sie geben überall dort Antwort, wo seine Herrlichkeit
ist, und sprechen: “Gesegnet ist die Herrlichkeit des HERRn von seiner
aus (Ezek. 3:12b).” Und Israel—als einziges Volk auf
Stätte (L/L9] /)
Erden, das beständig die Einheit seines Namens bekennt—antwortet und
18. Kuster, “Utopie I,” TRE 34:469.

19. Siddur Schma Kolenu (Ins Deutsche übersetzt von Raw Josef Scheuer; Basel:
Morascha, 1996), 409.
spricht an jedem Tag: “Höre, Israel, der HERR, dein Gott, ist einzig (Dtn
6:4).” Und er antwortet seinem Volk Israel: “Ich bin der HERR, euer
Gott, der euch aus der Bedrängnis befreit hat.”20
Auch wenn sich Jerusalem als “der Ort” enthüllt hat und nach Jesu Wort
in der matthäischen Bergpredigt (Matth 5:35 mit Ps 48:3b) zur “Stadt des
grossen Königs” geworden ist, so bleibt die Stätte Gottes dennoch
Gegenstand steter Suche. Ist das ein Stück Utopie, eingewoben in die
Geschichtsschreibung von Chr?
Bibliography
Becking, Bob. “Do the Earliest Samaritan Inscriptions Already Indicate a Parting of the
Ways?” Pages 213–22 in Judah and the Judeans in the Fourth Century B.C.E.
Edited by O. Lipschits, G. N. Knoppers, and R. Albertz. Winona Lake, Ind.:
Eisenbrauns, 2007.
Japhet, Sara. The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical Thought.
BEATAJ 9. Frankfurt a.M: Lang, 1989.
Kuster, Friederike. “Utopie I, Philosophisch.” Pages 464–73 in vol. 34 of Theologische
Realenzyklopädie. Edited by G. Müller. 36 vols. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002.
Noth, Martin. Überlieferungsgeschichtliche Studien I. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1963.
Pirqe de-Rabbi Elieser. Translated by D. Börner-Klein. SJ 26. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004.
Saage, Richard. “Utopie II, Kirchengeschichtlich.” Pages 473–79 in vol. 34 of Theo-
logische Realenzyklopädie. Edited by G. Müller. 36 vols. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002.
Schaper, Rüdiger. Einführung zu dem 10.–13. April 2014 abgehaltenen Literaturfestival
auf dem Monte Verità bei Ascona TI. Der Tagesspiegel, Kultur, April 14, 2014.
Seebass, Horst. Numeri. BKAT 4/1; Neukirchen–Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1993.
Siddur Schma Kolenu. Translated by R. Josef Scheuer. Basel: Morascha, 1996.
Wellhausen, Julius. Prolegomena zur Geschichte Israels. 6th ed. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1927.
de Wette, Wilhelm, M. L. Beiträge zur Einleitung in das Alte Testament. Halle a.d. Saale:
Schimmelpfennig, 1806.
Willi, Thomas. “Die alttestamentliche Prägung des Begriffs +:g' 7:. Pages 10–20 in
Israel und die Völker. Edited by M. Pietsch. SBS 55. Stuttgart: Katholisches
Bibelwerk, 2012.
———. Die Chronik als Auslegung. FRLANT 136. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1972.
———. Chronik. BKAT 24/2,1. Neukirchen–Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2013.
Willi-Plein, Ina. Das Buch Genesis. NSKAT 1/2: Stuttgart, Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2011.
20. Pirqe de Rabbi Eliezer, Ausg. Warschau 1874, hier übers. nach D. Börner-
Klein, Pirqe de-Rabbi Elieser (SJ 26; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004), 34–36.
1
RESPONSE
Vincent Geoghegan
Introduction
Frauke Uhlenbruch approached me to contribute a chapter to this
collection. The brief was to draw upon my own research on utopianism
to comment on, and engage with, the other contributions to a book which
sought to use the concept of utopia to explore aspects of Chronicles, Ezra
and Nehemiah. I readily agreed, for the whole project sounded fasci-
nating and in tune with recent developments in contemporary utopian
theory. When the chapters arrived I realized just what I had taken on!
The contributions were all highly erudite pieces that drew on specialist
biblical scholarship, an intimate familiarity with ancient Hebrew, and
knowledge of a whole range of debates within biblical studies. As a
political theorist with no such knowledge or facility I was therefore
somewhat limited in what I could offer. My approach has therefore been
one of deploying what I do know something about—utopias and
utopianism—to explore the use made of the concept of utopia by the
contributing scholars; on much of the substantive material in the chapters
I must necessarily remain silent. The other signposting point I would
make is that I make fairly frequent use of the theoretical work on utopia
produced by Ernst Bloch. Bloch speaks to many of the themes discussed
in this volume, and I thought that presenting some of his ideas here
might stimulate dialogue in the future.1
Utopia: Conceptual Innovation and Re¿nement

The chapters in the ¿rst section (“Testing Utopia as a Contemporary
Method in Biblical Studies”), written by Stordalen, Snyman, and
Uhlenbruch, and Schweitzer’s contribution in the second section, draw
attention to the growth in the quantity, scope, and sophistication of
scholarly work on the concept of utopia since the 1970s. The discussion,
references, and bibliographies register the important conceptual work
1. Stordalen’s chapter refers to Bloch’s work.

produced by ¿gures such as Lyman Tower Sargent, Tom Moylan, Darko

Suvin, Fredric Jameson, and Ruth Levitas, which raised the status of
utopia from quaint historical curiosity to a Àexible and sophisticated
analytical device. An important theoretical inÀuence in this period of
work was Ernst Bloch, whose work in the English-speaking scholarly
community became increasingly pervasive after the English translation
of his three volume The Principle of Hope was published in 1986. The
establishment of utopian studies societies in North America and Europe,
and the founding of the journal Utopian Studies (of which Snyman
makes effective use), provided an infrastructure for this burgeoning ¿eld
of study.
A signi¿cant fruit of this labour was a growing portfolio of concepts
created to facilitate understanding of the complexities of desire, anticipa-
tion, the forward and backward glance, and the forms of the dark or bad
place, so alongside utopia and dystopia there emerged new creations: the
critical utopia, the critical dystopia, the anti-utopia, the heterotopia, and
so on and so forth. There was also an expansion in the reach of utopian
analysis. Onward from Sargent’s “Three Faces of Utopianism” (literary
utopias, intentional communities, and utopian social theory) a huge
variety of cultural forms, artefacts, texts, and social and political move-
ments were subjected to utopian interrogation; again one can detect the
inÀuence of Bloch here, whose The Principle of Hope is a huge encyclo-
pedia of utopian phenomena, from childhood daydreams to the workings
of the Cosmos. Thus the discussion of the building of the Temple, and
the project of creating the architecture of a utopian Jerusalem by Cataldo
parallels work in the rapidly growing ¿eld of utopian architecture.2
A signi¿cant aspect of this period of theoretical innovation was a
reaction against what was seen as a prevalent one-dimensionality in
much historical utopian literature—utopia as an authorial blueprint for
the good society—a dull, preachy didacticism lacking any theoretical
depth. There was also an element here of responding to conservative and
Cold War liberal criticisms (by thinkers such as Popper) that utopias
were authoritarian dreams of impossible perfection. Snyman’s distinction
between the idea of “perfectibility” in Suvin’s de¿nition of utopia and
“better” in Sargent’s de¿nition can be seen , to an extent, as a by-product
of this climate of criticism—“better” was a considerably less threatening
concept than perfection. Moylan deployed the concept of the critical
utopia to characterise the more adventurous multi-dimensional works by
Joanna Russ, Ursula LeGuin, Marge Piercy, and Samuel R. Delaney,
2. See, for example, Nathaniel Coleman, Imagining and Making the World:
Reconsidering Architecture and Utopia (Oxford: Lang, 2011).
1
GEOGHEGAN Response 195
where there was tension, conÀict, and contestation in the land of utopia
with appropriately complex characterisation.3 This threw Thomas More’s
Utopia into a new light, with the recognition that More’s text, which had
given its name to subsequent utopian works, was so unlike the later one-
dimensional utopias. Here was a text abounding in highly ambiguous
material where the intentions of the author could not be accurately
ascertained, and the work seemed to be continually subverting itself.
Stordalen, in his very insightful reading of Utopia, brings out the
profound instability of More’s text, and suggests that a fruitful utopian
reading of Chronicles should be sensitive to the pregnant instabilities in
the biblical text (and both Polaski and Ben Zvi likewise bring out the
tensions and ambiguities in the purported stability of, respectively,
Chronicles and Ezra and Nehemiah).
Fluidity and Intertextuality

A further aspect of contemporary utopian theory’s approach to the
reading and production of utopian texts was a desire to open up the
utopian possibilities of a much wider range of texts, including the Bible.
The immense textual complexities of the Bible, its internal inter-
textuality, and its relationship with external texts, facilitated the opening
up of utopian vistas. In the case of internal intertextuality Polaski uses a
striking image: “the books of Chronicles swim in a sea of writing”; and
he speaks of the Chronicler as one who “negotiates his own role as a
writer while caught in a sea of writing.” Ernst Bloch had also sought to
differentiate texts, with different ideological purposes in the Bible,
notably in his chapter “Growing Human Commitment to Religious
Mystery, to Astral Myth, Exodus, Kingdom; Atheism and the Utopia of
the Kingdom,” in the third volume of The Principle of Hope and in his
book Atheism in Christianity: The Religion of the Exodus and the
Kingdom.4 Bloch portrays the Bible as a multi-layered and contradiction-
riddled text, notably the contrary principles of creation and Apocalypse,
creation and salvation, creation and Exodus, the ¿rst term grounded in a
backward-looking and closed creation myth in Genesis (which Bloch
speculates is of Egyptian origin and was a relatively late addition from a
3. Tom Moylan, Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian
Imagination (London: Methuen, 1986).
4. Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope, vol. 3 (trans. N. Plaice, S. Plaice, and P.
Knight; Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 1183–11; and Atheism in Christianity: The
Religion of the Exodus and the Kingdom (trans. J. T. Swann; London: Verso, 2009),
with a very useful introduction by Peter Thompson.
priestly code) whilst the second is derived from a far earlier account of
the God who delivered Israel out of Egypt, which is forward looking and
open (interestingly Schweitzer argues that the Chronicler downplays
Exodus [and the Exile] “to move people beyond…exilic theology
towards a better alternative reality that they should embrace” [p. 92,
author’s emphasis]).
There is also a good deal of external intertextuality in Bloch’s analysis
as he reads the Bible using apocryphal texts, gnostic writings, heretical
works, and Judaic devotional and theological works.5 A more playful
form of utopian intertextuality can be found in the collection of essays
edited by George Aichele and Tina Pippin, Violence, Utopia and the
Kingdom of God: Fantasy and Ideology in The Bible. Here Pippin plays
with the story in Gen 6:1–4, where the “sons of God” come down to
earth to mate with the “daughters of men” to produce a race of “mighty
men.” Pippin recounts traditional misogynistic and patriarchal interpre-
tations of the tale before retelling it in a number of voices: Disney,
Stephen King, and the Brothers Grimm, concluding with a utopian
feminist version in which the daughters of men preferred the super-
natural beings to their oppressive terrestrial men (“the sex was incred-
ible!”), and gave birth to amazon women, as well as mighty men. The
women ¿nally storm heaven and lead eternal lives as “wise women of
renown.”6 Uhlenbruch’s contribution in the current volume likewise
seeks to “open…up” Chronicles by exploring ways of seeing the text as
in some sense utopian. She explores possible interfaces between con-
temporary readers (in all their groundedness) and this ancient unstable
text, and deploys the fascinating concept of the cyborg to get some
purchase on the phenomenon: “By ¿rst disconnecting the biblical text
from a linear chronology, then re-connecting it with contemporary theory
and unexpected intertextualities we are creating an astonishing and very
lively cyborg text—an ancient text supplemented with modern associ-
ations, questions, and techniques” (p. 76). Snyman also helps to open up
Chronicles with a bravura reading of an episode from Doctor Who
(entitled “Utopia”) which he combines with a detailed discussion of con-
temporary utopian theory to bring out the complex relationship between
utopia and dystopia.
5. I discuss these matters in Ernst Bloch (London: Routledge, 1996), 83–90.

6. Tina Pippin, “They Might Be Giants: Genesis 6:1 and Women’s Encounter
with the Supernatural,” in Violence, Utopia, and the Kingdom of God: Fantasy and
Ideology in the Bible (ed. G. Aichele and T. Pippin; London: Routledge, 1998), 59.
1
Remembering the Future

Contemporary utopian theory has moved beyond the one-dimensional
characterization of utopia as an exclusively future-oriented phenomenon
to a conception that embraces a much more sophisticated temporal
register where, in terms of the focus of this section, the forward and the
backward glance have complex modes of interaction in any given
present. Thus memories (both real and fabricated) can inform hopes and
speculations about the future whilst the latter can in turn be an element in
the construction of memory.7 This adds further levels of meaning to the
concept of the utopian for it now allows that one can in a sense look
forward to the past and look backward to the future. In terms of memory
itself there is a recognition of its creative dimension, necessary if utopian
novelty is to emerge from its processes. These are the sorts of assump-
tion that inform many of the contributors’ analyses of the extent of
utopianism in Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Thus Schweitzer, in a
discussion of prophecy in Chronicles, argues that “as part of the
Chronicler’s utopian construct, prophecy functions to connect the past
with the present by the interpretation of events. Prophecy and prophets
function in a very speci¿c way in Chronicles: they are one of the means
for promoting innovation in the tradition while at the same time
af¿rming continuity with it” (p. 98) and furthermore “in his own authori-
tative composition, the Chronicler has retrojected his utopian vision into
the past in order to actualize it in his present and into the future” (p. 98).
Ben Zvi explores utopianism in Ezra–Nehemiah by uncovering the
modalities of social memory in the text, stressing the creative dimension
in the construction of these memories. He argues that the real historical
importance of Ezra and Nehemiah lies in the effect their created memory
had on subsequent generations, and therefore “much was at stake in
shaping and reshaping” (p. 114) these memories. In the same vein he
stresses “that memories of important characters are shaped time and
again and are very much historically and communally contingent…
[M]ultiple Ezras of memory appear because he is constantly reshaped
and imagined within the particular world of each remembering com-
munity” (p. 114 n. 26). In a felicitous phrase which links us back to the
previous section Ben Zvi argues that “social memory, including and
perhaps particularly in the case of memories of utopian periods, serves
often also as a playground for exploring ideas and concepts” (p. 122, my
emphasis). Jendrek explores the literary mechanics involved in the
7. I say more about these processes in “Remembering the Future,” in Not Yet:
Reconsidering Ernst Bloch (ed. J. O. Daniel and T. Moylan; London: Verso, 1997),
15–32.
temporal shifts in Chronicles’ “revival” project, arguing that the prayer

texts in the book activate an “encyclopedia” in the reader to help them
manage the temporal leaps; these texts “bridge the boundaries between
Israel’s past and a model reader’s present” and thus “identify the
‘revival’ as a reader’s revival” (p. 172, author’s emphasis) and thereby
“take the reader into utopia.”
Another dimension of contemporary utopian thinking is a desire to
identify the utopian elements in ideological thought across the political
spectrum, eschewing the old rightist claim that only left wing ideologies
were utopian (in the bad sense of unrealistic, totalitarian, etc.) and a
leftist claim that right wing ideologies were simply reactionary, con-
servative phenomena. The assumption/intuition is that all ideologies
contain a utopian dimension. Karl Mannheim in Ideology and Utopia had
drawn out the visionary element in conservatism, arguing that contrary to
the conservative self-image it was not only an ideology but a utopia as
well. Under attack from social radicalism towards the end of the 18th
century, the conservative mentality, which Mannheim argues is non-
utopian, was forced to develop a counter-utopia to maintain its social
dominance.8 Mannheim recognizes here the fact that a genuinely
conservative society would not have, and would not need, conservatism.
Furthermore one could also argue that even the most complacent of
conservatives selectively considers the present in the imagination and
invest it with the sceptre of the ideal—the best of all possible worlds (in
Voltaire’s satirical usage). Ernst Bloch, in his analysis of the socially
varied dream world of Weimar Germany, Heritage of Our Times, traced
the range of hopes and fears that animated political activity and
inactivity, and underlay the terrain of ideological struggle. The temporal
aspect of this was what Bloch termed “non-contemporaneity,”9 the fact
that “not all people exist in the same Now”:10 “Despite the radio and
newspapers, couples live in the village for whom Egypt is still the land
where the princess dragged the boy Moses out of the river, not the land
of the pyramids or the Suez Canal.”11 Cataldo’s chapter likewise deals
with the interaction between utopianism, cultural memory, and group
ideological/political struggle—in this case the political/ideological
struggle of the golah community and its psychological underpinning as it
8. Karl Mannheim, “The Third Form of the Utopian Mentality: The Conservative
Idea,” in Ideology and Utopia (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), 206–15.
9. Bloch’s word “Ungleichzeitigkeit” is sometimes translated as “non-
synchronicity.”
10. Ernst Bloch, Heritage of Our Times (trans. N. Plaice and S. Plaice; Oxford:
Polity, 1991), 97.
1
11. Ibid., 100.
appears in an historical text which is itself shaped by ideology; given

this, Cataldo refers to his chapter as “a methodological experiment”
(p. 145) (itself an increasingly inÀuential range of ways of thinking, and
thinking about, utopia). Like Bloch he believes that utopianism can be
driven by dark, divisive motivations, and he posits a golah “utopian
agenda largely shaped by prejudice” (p. 145). The backward glance in
the utopia, as a number of the other authors in this volume also argue, is
concerned with “restoration,” and the failure of the latter to occur drives
the ideological and political struggle against the Am Ha’arets. In terms
of the memory dimension in this process Cataldo acknowledges the
creative element in memory which, whilst “challenging” in historio-
graphical terms, points to an ideologically activist recall: “While cultural
memories may recall historical events, they are also inÀuenced by
selective memory, changing desires and actions taken to ful¿l those
desires, and ideological aspirations. My concerns of today shape my
memories of the past” (p. 147, author’s emphasis). This in turn prompts
the question, one might argue, of whether there is a degree of Blochian
non-contemporaneity in the golah characterization and critique of Am
Ha’arets.
Talk of “revival” raises the issue of whether the word denotes a simple
repetition or restoration of a lost past or a reanimating of a past in which
the subsequent creation is the past at a higher level. Schweitzer rightly
points to the strongly negative feelings towards the concept of utopia
within Marxism (though there are some Marxists who have had a
positive view, e.g., Bloch, Marcuse, William Morris [if the latter is
deemed to be a Marxist]). However, it does seem to have been the case
that some Marxists were so unable to dispense with the utopian that they
covertly reimported it in various ways, one of which was to speak about
the future by talking about the past. An example of this would be
Engels’s use of Morgan’s studies of Iroquois society in his analysis of
“primitive communism” in The Origin of the Family, Private Property
and the State, which he ends with a quote from Morgan suggesting that
future society would “be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty,
equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes.”12 The road from com-
munism to communism would thus be an ascent, but one masked/
legitimated by a focus on the “scienti¿cally grounded” past, but where
future aspiration is driving the process. The notion of a “higher level”
thus suggests an enrichment of the past under discussion, richer in terms
of the notion of social development posited within the vision and,
12. Quoted in my Utopianism and Marxism (London: Methuen, 1987), 59 (my

emphasis). I discuss Golden Ages and utopia on pp. 56–67.
implicitly, an enrichment of the vision of the future society within the

mind of its creator. Bloch addresses this issue in terms of the relation-
ship between memory and novelty. He distinguishes between two forms
of memory, anamnesis (recollection) and anagnorisis (recognition).
Anamnesis is epistemologically conservative, locating all knowledge in
the memory of the past, where there is nothing shockingly innovative in
current consciousness: “the doctrine of anamnesis claims that we have
knowledge only because we formerly knew… Anamnesis provides the
reassuring evidence of complete similarity… It makes everything a
gigantic déjà vu.”13 Anagnorisis on the other hand involves recognition,
as in re-cognition. Memory traces are reactivated in the present, but there
is never simple correspondence between past and present, because of all
the intervening newness. The power of the past resides in its complicated
relationship of similarity/dissimilarity to the present. The experience is
therefore creatively shocking:
The new is never completely new for us because we bring with us some-
thing to measure it by. We always relate what we ¿nd to earlier experience
or to an image we have of it. As a result it often happens that we misjudge
it upward or downward, but still it becomes richer for us, and is coloured
with history. It approaches us from our own past and must prove that it is
genuine…; anagnorisis…is linked with reality by only a thin thread; it is
therefore alarming.14
Bloch illustrates this with the Genesis story of how Joseph’s brothers
eventually realize that the brother they had cast into a pit was now before
them, alive and socially exalted:
Anagnorisis is a shock: he whom they cast into a pit suddenly stands
there, powerful and handsome… [H]is brothers have not seen [Joseph] for
20 years. First he has changed, and second, they can no longer remember
exactly after so long a time—as often happens with witnesses in court—
and thirdly, they are not expecting to meet him as Pharaoh’s deputy… In
anagnorisis there must always be a distance between the former and
present reality, otherwise it would not be so dif¿cult and astonishing.15
We will return to the concept of astonishment in the next section. But
for now let us consider revival as repetition or restoration. Willi is the
most sceptical of the contributions when it comes to the issue of
utopianism in the texts. He suggests that the Chronicler would probably
have been critical of utopianism in general, and that his intention was to
13. Michael Landmann, “Talking with Ernst Bloch: Korþula, 1968,” Telos 25
(Fall 1975), 178.
14. Ibid.
1
15. Ibid., 178–79.
write a history of past events focussing on the sacred space—topology

not utopia. Snyman introduces an interesting line of discussion about the
backward glance through the use of a potentially fruitful term—the
“nostalgic utopia.” This concept helps one focus on the psychological
function of nostalgia. The word “nostalgia” etymologically refers to
place, literally the illness of desire for one’s homeland (homesickness),
but carries the now dominant temporal dimension of remembering one’s
home—“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept,
when we remembered Zion.” It is utopian because it is not, to quote
Goodwin and Taylor, “a lament for the irreversibility of time” as in
certain forms of the Golden Age tradition,16 rather, and here Snyman
quotes Schweitzer, Chronicles “presents its utopian future as an idealized
portrayal set in Israel’s historical past” which “anchors the desired
changes solidly in the hallowed past” (p. 49).
The Better and the Best

Let us return to an issue raised earlier: the distinction between “better”
and “perfect.” There has clearly been a move in contemporary utopian
theory towards the notion of the utopian as “better,” with de¿nitions
of utopia frequently prioritizing this term. One can obviously see the
bene¿ts of doing this, not least the political advantage of detoxifying the
concept of utopia from associations with the “unrealistic” and the
“unattainable”; “better” or even “considerably better” are genuinely
fruitful in a utopian grounded politics, suggesting a reasonable ambition.
But there is a real problem in making these terms a stipulative de¿nition
of utopia, namely that it excludes concepts which have always given
great energy to utopian thought and action, the quest for the best or the
perfect. It is as if one has become ashamed of the dimension that looked
up to the stars. To do this is to forget that utopianism can provide a space
for the creative use of astonishment. In pursuit of this theme let us look
at the concept of the sublime, particularly as conceived by Edmund
Burke in his A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful.
Burke argues that “the passion caused by the great and sublime in
nature…is Astonishment; and Astonishment is that state of the soul,
in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror.”17
The reference to nature can speak to an anti-humanist utopianism which
16. Barbara Goodwin and Keith Taylor, The Politics of Utopia: A Study in
Theory and Practice (London: Hutchinson, 1982), 23.
17. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful
(London: Routledge, 2008), 57.
seeks to explore new ways of relating to nature by imagining a nature

in which we humans are either absent, irrelevant, or have gone (as part of
a self-critical, but not self-loathing exercise).18 Burke points to the
independence of those objects experienced as sublime, in particular their
independence from humanity. What is interesting, given the concerns of
this volume, is that Burke draws many of his examples of the sublime
from the Hebrew Bible, notably from Job, using (and sometimes mis-
quoting) the KJV. Thus he quotes from Job on the wild ass: “Who hath
loosed…the bands of the wild ass? Whose house I have made the
wilderness and the barren land his dwellings. He scorneth the multitude
of the city, neither regardeth he the voice of the driver. The range of the
mountains is his pasture.”19 Likewise Burke includes “the magni¿cent
description of the unicorn and of leviathan in the same book”: “Will the
unicorn be willing to serve thee? Canst thou bind the unicorn with his
band in the furrow? Wilt thou trust him because his threat is great?—
Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook? Will he make a covenant
with thee? Wilt thou take him for a servant forever? Shall not one be cast
down even at the sight of him?”20 Now whilst Ernst Bloch’s interest in
the character of Job lies in a radical humanist attempt to portray him as
morally superior to his God, one who has “overtaken” the creator,21 the
passages from God’s admonishment to Job out of the whirlwind, from
where Burke’s examples are taken, can also be read as a salutatory
humbling reÀection on the relative insigni¿cance of the human compared
with cosmic immensities: “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations
of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the
measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon
it? Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the
corner stone thereof; When the morning stars sang together, and all the
sons of God shouted for joy?”22 In the case of Bloch religious
consciousness is deemed to contain the most sublime of utopian material,
and “the growing humanization of religion is not paralleled by any
reduction in its sense of awe.”23 Citing 1 Kgs 8: 12—“The Lord said that
he would dwell in the thick darkness,” he notes that this “obscurum…is
18. I talk about the concept of anti-humanist utopianism in “An Anti-humanist

Utopia?,” in The Privatization of Hope: Ernst Bloch and the Future of Utopia (ed. P.
Thompson and S. Žižek; Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2013), 37–60.
19. Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry, 66.
20. Ibid.
21. Bloch, Atheism in Christianity, 96.
22. Job 38:4–7, KJV.
1
23. Bloch, The Principle of Hope, 3:1196.
not that of superstition which has applied too little knowledge to fate, but
one of knowledge-conscience that sees itself permanently surrounded by
the uncanny in the depths and hopes that this will not be resolved into or
mediated with anything but the—miraculous,”24 and he speaks of the
religious hope-content of humanity, i.e., that which explodes itself into
the Utterly Different.25 One of his favourite biblical passages to express
this is drawn from Corinthians (1 Cor 2:9) in the New Testament, “Eye
hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man,
the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”26 In short, to
narrowly de¿ne utopia simply in terms of the better is to exclude vitally
rich levels of meaning from the de¿nition. The utopian can have varying
levels of ambition and scope.
Conclusion
Uhlenbruch refers to a contemporary “environment in which academic
disciplines like Biblical Studies are struggling for survival” (p. 75). And
it is undoubtedly the case that a neo-liberal agenda in higher education
threatens a curiosity-driven scholarly project, be it in Biblical Studies or
Political Theory. The mantras of relevance, impact, immediate economic
and social utility and the like threaten both the biblical scholar and the
political theorist interested in utopianism. However, there are signs of
(good utopian word) hope in recent post-secular developments. Certainly
in philosophy and political theory there has been a palpable religious
turn as attempts are made to renegotiate the Enlightenment settlement
between the religious and the secular. Some of this is plain reactionary,
but there are also currents that seek to preserve both the real social and
political gains of liberal modernity and the rich resources of religious
tradition. The current volume shows what can be achieved when biblical
scholarship engages with currents of contemporary thought that at ¿rst
glance may not appear to be promising territory. Likewise a number of
contemporary utopian scholars have become increasingly drawn to the
potent utopian dimensions of religious thinking and religious texts.27 This
is a happy conjuncture, and one that bodes well for the future.
24. Ibid., 3:1197.

25. Ibid., 3:1196.
26. Ibid., 3:1195.
27. For my own ¿rst stab at theorizing this see “Religious Narrative, Post-
Secularism and Utopia,” in The Philosophy of Utopia (ed. Barbara Goodwin; Ilford:
Cass, 2001), 205–24.
Bibliography
Bloch, Ernst. Atheism in Christianity: The Religion of the Exodus and the Kingdom.
Translated by J. T. Swann. London: Verso, 2009.
———. Heritage of Our Times. Translated by Neville Plaice and Stephen Plaice. Oxford:
Polity, 1991.
———. The Principle of Hope, vol. 3. Translated by Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, and
Paul Knight. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986.
Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful. London:
Routledge, 2008.
Coleman, Nathaniel. Imagining and Making the World: Reconsidering Architecture and
Utopia. Oxford: Lang, 2011.
Geoghegan, Vincent. “An Anti-humanist Utopia?” Pages 37–60 in The Privatization of
Hope: Ernst Bloch and the Future of Utopia. Edited by Peter Thompson and Slavoj
Žižek. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2013.
———. Ernst Bloch. London: Routledge, 1996.
———. “Religious Narrative, Post-Secularism and Utopia.” Pages 205–24 in The
Philosophy of Utopia. Edited by Barbara Goodwin. Ilford: Cass, 2001.
———. “Remembering the Future.” Pages 15–32 in Not Yet: Reconsidering Ernst Bloch.
Edited by Jamie Owen Daniel and Tom Moylan. London: Verso, 1997.
———. Utopianism and Marxism. London: Methuen, 1987.
Goodwin, Barbara, and Keith Taylor. The Politics of Utopia: A Study in Theory and
Practice. London: Hutchinson, 1982.
Landmann, Michael. “Talking with Ernst Bloch: Korþula, 1968.” Telos 25 (Fall 1975):
165–85.
Mannheim, Karl. “The Third Form of the Utopian Mentality: The Conservative Idea.”
Pages 206–15 in Ideology and Utopia. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979.
Moylan, Tom. Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination.
London: Methuen, 1986.
Pippin, Tina “They Might Be Giants: Genesis 6:1 and Women’s Encounter with the
Supernatural.” Pages 47–59 in Violence, Utopia, and the Kingdom of God: Fantasy
and Ideology in the Bible. Edited by George Aichele and Tina Pippin. London:
Routledge, 1998.
1
INDEXES
INDEX OF REFERENCES
HEBREW BIBLE/ Exodus 1 Kings

OLD TESTAMENT 12:16 151 1 30
Genesis 12:48–49 123 2 95
1:14–19 191 15:11 152 2:2 95
2–3 27, 30, 31 19:6 118 3:5 71
2 30, 83 20:18 178 3:15 71
2:8 21, 26 20:26 30 3:16–27 63
2:10–14 21, 25, 26, 25:9 140 4–10 75
29 5:22–23 134
2:10 22, 23 Leviticus 6:1 91, 141
3:5 28 9:24 178 8:9 91
3:7 28 10:10 151 8:12 202
3:22 28 12:2 MT 117 8:16 91
4:1 31 18:7–16 30 9:9 91
6:1–4 196 18:24–30 120 11:1–8 63
9:22–23 30 20:3 151 11:31–33 63
12:6 184, 187 21:13–15 118 8:50b–51 94
13:3 184, 187 21:15 118
14:18–20 187 24:10 119 2 Kings
14:18 187 5:2 186
18:1 187 Numbers 5:4 186
22 187, 188 10:35 188 6:23 186
22:3 184, 187 25 123 8:23–24 140
22:4 184, 187 18–20 131
22:9 184, 187 Deuteronomy
22:14 184, 187 6:4 192 1 Chronicles
26:2 187 7:1–6 120 1–9 90, 186,
26:23–25 187 8:1–2 152 190
28:11 184, 187 16 138 2 90
28:17 184, 187 17:14–20 27 2:17 119
28:19 184, 187 23:4–9 120 2:34–41 119
32:3 184, 187 3:17–24 92
32:31 184, 187 1 Samuel 3:17–21 88
35:7 184, 187 13:19 186 4:41 130
35:9–15 187 5:26 88
35:15 184, 187 2 Samuel 9:1 130
6:17 188 10:7 186
7:23 91 10:14 95, 186
206 Index of References
1 Chronicles (cont.) 28:9 174 7:13 176

11 180, 183 28:11 140 7:14 175, 177
13–17 183 28:19 140, 141 7:22 91
13–16 184, 187– 29 180 8 188
89 29:23 95 8:13 152
13 188 29:29–30 98 9 180
13:1–16:43 186 29:29 131, 133 9:3–4 68
13:11 188, 189 9:29 98, 130
14 189 2 Chronicles 10–36 180
14:11 188, 189 1–9 59, 62, 63, 12:7–12 93
15–16 189 66, 74 12:8 93
15:1 188, 189 1:7 71 12:12 93
15:3 188, 189 1:18 135 12:15 98, 130,
15:15 90 2:1 135 133
15:28 179 2:1 ET 135 13:8 95
16 91, 171, 2:2 ET 135 13:22 98, 130
175, 177, 2:4 135 15:1–19 100
178, 180, 2:5 ET 135 16:11 130, 133
189, 190 2:6 134 20 176–80
16:2 179 2:7 136 20:6–12 176, 177,
16:4 178 2:7 ET 134 179
16:8–36 174, 179 2:8 136 20:9 176, 177,
16:11–13 173 2:11 135 189
16:11 175 2:12 ET 135 20:10–11 90
16:15 175 2:12–13 134 20:12 173
16:20–22 189 2:13–14 ET 134 20:13–19 100
16:23 189 2:16 135, 186 20:13–17 91
16:25–27 189 2:17 ET 135 20:15–17 179
16:25 189 3:1 189 20:18 173
16:27 188, 189 4:11–16 135 20:19 178, 179
16:34 177 5:3 178 20:20 91
16:36 179 5:10 91 20:21 177, 179
16:40 131 6–7 179, 180 20:22–25 179
16:41 177 6:1–2 176, 178 20:22 179
16:43 179 6:5 91 20:25 178
17 88, 184, 6:8–12 177 20:26 178, 179
190 6:14–42 176, 178 20:28 179
17:9 188 6:23 177 20:34 98, 130
17:21 891 6:28 176 21:12–15 98, 139
21 183, 184, 6:36–40 93, 94 23:18 131
187–90 6:40–7:3 183, 190 24:17–22 100
21:22 188 6:41 188 24:27 98, 130
21:25 188 7 176, 178 25:15–16 100
21:29 90 7:3–6 178 25:26 130
22:2 186 7:4–5 178 26:22 98, 130,
24:6 130, 140 7:6 178 133
28–29 88, 184 7:12–22 175 27:7 130
28:5 95 7:13–15 175 28:26 130
Index of References 207
29:15 137 7:10 162 6:6 112

30 138 8:7 122 7:1–73 162
30:1 130, 136 9–10 109, 110 9–10 110
30:5 131, 137, 9:1–10:44 105 9 108
138 9:1–5 157 9:1–37 155, 158
30:6–9 88 9:1–4 155, 160 9:2 105
30:6 136 9:1–2 153 9:36–37 93
30:10 137 9:2 109, 121, 9:36 160
30:11 137 151, 151 11 147
30:12 137, 138 9:4 121 11:1–2 162
30:13 137 9:5–15 122 12:22 144
30:18 131, 137, 9:6–15 110 13 144
138 9:9 160 13:3 105
30:25 186 9:10–11 152 13:4–9 109, 111
31:3 131 10:1–5 152 13:15–22 156
31:5 137 10:2–4 122 13:15 156
32:10–15 138, 139 10:2–3 109 13:17 156
32:16–17 138 10:2 121 13:23–31 155
32:17 130 10:3 152 13:23–29 105, 110,
32:18 139 10:6 121 111
32:21–22 139 10:10 121, 122 13:23–27 153, 158,
32:32 98, 131 10:26 122 160
33:18 98 10:44 122 13:23 112
33:19 98, 130 27:17 186 13:24 111
33:21–25 140 40:2 186 13:27 121
34:7 186 47:18 186 28 111
34:21 131
34:31 131 Nehemiah Job
35:4 140 1:2 112 38:4–7 202
35:12 131 2:10 111
35:20–22 96 2:16 112 Psalms
35:25 98, 130 2:17–20 162 19:19 152
35:26 131 2:19–20 152 35 Vulg. 29
35:27 130 2:20 160 36:9 29
36:8 130 3:33–35 111 48:3 192
36:15–16 101 3:33 112 68:18 152
36:21 88 3:34 112 77:14 152
36:22–23 141 4:1–20 157 95:13–15 189
36:23 136 4:1–3 152 96 91
4:1 111, 159 96:4–10 189
Ezra 4:3 159 96:6 188, 189
1–6 144 4:6 112 105 91
1:1 136 4:7–8 152, 158 105:8 175
2 108 4:10–20 162 106 91, 177
2:7 122 5:1 112 107 177
6:21 122, 123 5:14–17 164 118 175
7 144 6:1–19 111 132 188, 191
7:9 162 6:1–9 152, 162 132:1–5 184, 188
208 Index of References
Psalms (cont.) Luke 5.42.5 89

132:5 188 11:31 70 5.46.2–3 89
132:8–10 188
136 177 John Eusebius
5 29 Praeparatio evangelica
Ecclesiastes 8.6,1–7 84
2:1–11 26 Romans 8.11,1–8 84
5:12–21 28
Song of Songs Herodotus
4:12–16 31 1 Corinthians Historiae
2:9 203 8.144 112
Isaiah
6:3 191 Revelation Hesiod
6:13 109 21:1–22:5 84 Opera et dies
8:5–8 29 109–180 83
35:8 151 DEAD SEA SCROLLS 822–824 83
52:10 152 4Q396 iv:
56:1–8 123 1–11 118 Homer
56:1–6 118 Iliad
66:5 152 PHILO 1.423 83
Hypothetica 23.205 83
Ezekiel 11.1–11.18 84
3:12 191 Odyssey
22:6 151 Quod omnis probus 1.22 83
28:11–19 26 liber sit 6–8 83
28:12 28 75–91 84
31 26 Plato
40–48 84 JOSEPHUS Crito
44:22 118 Antiquities 108e–115d 83
47 28 8.55 134
47:1–12 29 11.326–339 93 Leges
47:12 28 13.171–173 84 3.702a-b 83
18.18–22 84
Haggai Timaeus
1:3–4 162 War 23d–25d 83
2.119–161 84
Zechariah Plutarch
3:1–10 162 MIDRASH Artaxerxes
6:9–14 163 Leviticus Rabbah 4.1 164
32.5 112
Malachi Strabo
2:11 151 CLASSICAL AND ANCIENT Geographica
CHRISTIAN LITERATURE 7.3.6 83
NEW TESTAMENT Diodorus Siculus
Matthew 2.47.1–6 83 Xenophon
5 28 2.55.1–60.3 83 Hellenica
5:35 192 5.41.1–46.7 83 4.1.33 164
12:42 70 5.42.3b 89
INDEX OF AUTHORS
Ackroyd, P. R. 163, 165 Botwinick, R. S. 156, 166

Ahlström, G. W. 156, 158, 165 Bourdieu, P. 150, 166
Albertz, R. 106, 125 Braun, R. L. 65, 77
Alexander, P. S. 23, 35 Brodsky, H. 17, 35
Allport, G. W. 151, 154, 155, 158, 161, 162, Bruce, S. 14, 15, 35
165 Burgess, G. 22, 35
Alt, A. 164, 165 Burke, E. 201, 202, 204
Altemeyer, R. 160, 165
Amit, Y. 16, 35, 55, 57 Carroll, R. P. 163, 166
Ashcroft, B. 130, 142 Carter, C. E. 163, 164, 166
Atwood, M. 45, 57 Cataldo, J. W. 16, 17, 35, 40, 107, 125, 162,
Avigad, N. 164, 165 164, 166
Cave, T. 18, 35
Baccolini, R. 43, 57, 84 Clanton, D. 75, 77
Bahns, A. J. 154, 166 Clarke, A. C. 4, 9
Bakhtin, M. 31, 35 Clauss, J. 124, 125
Balentine, S. E. 173, 181 Clines, D. J. A. 160, 166
Banaji, M. R. 162, 167 Coggins, R. J. 93, 102
Barag, D. P. 164, 165 Cohen, S. J. D. 109, 122, 125
Barstad, H. M. 163, 165 Coleman, N. 194, 204
Becking, B. 163, 166, 186, 192 Collins, J. J. 16, 17, 26, 35, 82, 102
Beentjes, P. C. 176, 181 Connell, S. M. 117, 125
Bellamy, E. 65, 76 Cooper, J. S. 117, 125
Bellis, A. O. 70, 76 Coser, L. A. 153, 166
Ben Zvi, E. 16, 17, 35, 39, 40, 48, 51–53, Crandall, C. S. 149–51, 153, 154, 156, 160–
57, 59, 64, 71, 74, 77, 108, 109, 112, 118, 62, 166
125, 132, 135, 142 Crenshaw, L. J. 18, 35
Benzinger, I. 140, 142 Crome, A. 39, 45, 57
Berge, K. 16, 17, 35 Cross, F. M. 164, 166
Berger, P. L. 156, 162, 166 Crüsemann, F. 179, 181
Berlin, I. 3, 9
Berquist, J. 48, 57 Davies, P. R. 48, 49, 57, 147, 159, 163, 166
Bickerman, E. 136, 142 de Vaux, R. de 158, 167
Biggs, R. D. 117, 125 De Vries, S. J. 96, 102
Billig, M. 157, 166 Derrida, J. 132, 142
Blenkinsopp, J. 98, 101, 106, 123, 125, 144, Dietz, F. 85, 102
146–48, 152, 157, 166 Disch, T. M. 45, 57
Bloch, E. 7–9, 195, 198, 202–204 Dor, Y. 105, 110, 126
Boas, A. J. 30, 35 Dozeman, T. B. 147, 167
Boer, R. T. 16, 17, 35, 40, 44, 57, 84, 102 Dyck, J. E. 93, 102, 130, 136, 142
Bogard, W. 63, 81
Booker, M. K. 84, 102
210 Index of Authors
Edelman, D. 111, 126, 132, 142 Jost, J. T. 162, 167

Eshleman, A. 149–51, 153, 156, 160–62, Judd, E. P. 107, 126
166
Eskenazi, T. C. 106, 126 Karp, D. J. 154, 159, 167
Keel, O. 23, 25, 35
Festinger, L. 156, 167 Klein, R. 136–39, 141, 142
Fishbane, M. 120, 126 Kleinig, J. W. 177, 181
Flint, V. I. J. 20, 35 Knoppers, G. 53, 54, 58, 89, 92, 99, 102,
Fornara, C. W. 96, 102 111, 112, 119, 127, 129, 142, 158, 167
Foucault, M. 85, 102 Kubrik, S. 4
Frevel, C. 115, 116, 126 Kuster, F. 190–92
Fried, L. S. 106, 126, 144, 167
Frye, N. 64, 77, 85, 86, 102, 147, 167 Labahn, A. 98, 102
Fuchs, E. 155, 167 Landmann, M. 200, 204
Lange, A. 116, 125, 137, 142
Gardiner, M. 43, 44, 57 Lasine, S. 63, 66, 73–75, 77
Garsten, C. 14, 35 Leick, G. 117, 127
Geohegan, V. 196, 197, 199, 202–204 Leith, M. J. W. 158, 167
Giamatti, A. B. 22, 35 Lemche, N. P. 146, 167
Glatt-Gilat, D. 114, 126 Levitas, R. 42, 58
Goodwin, B. 201, 204 Lipschits, O. 54, 58, 108, 127, 147, 148,
Grabbe, L. L. 106, 109–111, 113, 126, 145, 163, 167
167 Liverani, M. 144, 145, 147, 158, 160, 167
Grätz, S. 111, 126 Lovell, D. W. 154, 167
Grey, C. 14, 35 Lupton, J. H. 27–29, 31, 35
Grif¿ths, G. 130, 142
Gruen, E. S. 94, 102 Mac Cana, P. 22, 36
Macdonald, M. 75, 77
Hanson, P. D. 82, 102 Mannheim, K. 198, 204
Haraway, D. J. 76, 77 Marin, L. 85, 103
Harrington, H. K. 106, 115, 126 Mason, R. 96, 103
Harvey, O. J. 157, 168 Mazor, L. 17, 36
Hayes, C. E. 121, 126 McGrath, J. 39, 57
Heger, P. 109, 126 McMillan, G. 47, 58
Heider, F. 156, 167 Meyers, C. L. 163, 164, 167
Hieke, T. 172, 178, 181 Meyers, E. L. 163, 164, 167
Hill, E. D. 82, 102 Milgrom, J. 117, 131, 127
Hoglund, K. G. 160, 167 Moffat, D. P. 106, 127
Horowitz, W. 23, 35 More, T. 1, 5, 6, 9
Morgenstern, J. 164, 167
Iser, W. 172, 174, 181 Moylan, T. 43, 57, 84, 103, 195, 204
Ishiguro, K. 3, 9 Mumford, L. 14, 15, 36
Murray, D. F. 171, 173–75, 178, 180, 181
Jameson, F. 5, 9, 60, 67, 75, 77, 85, 102
Janzen, D. 106, 127 Najman, H. 96, 99, 103
Japhet, S. 64, 68, 72, 75–77, 129–31, 134, Naveh, E. 15, 36
136–40, 142, 146, 167, 173, 178, 179, 181, Nepstad, S. E. 153, 168
189, 192 Newsome, J. 137, 142
Jones, S. R 87, 102 Nicklas, T. 172, 182
Jonker, L. 50, 55, 57, 97, 99, 102 Noth, M. 183, 192
Index of Authors 211
O’Brien, J. 61, 77 Smith-Christopher, D. L. 107, 128

O’Brien, L. 150, 166 Southwood, K. E. 106, 128
O’Neill, L. 3, 9, 65, 77 Spencer, C. 157, 168
Oded, B. 163, 168 Stern, E. 163, 168
Oeming, M. 148, 168 Stolz, F. 32, 36
Olyan, S. M. 106, 109, 116, 120, 121, 127 Stordalen, T. 16, 21, 23, 25, 28, 30, 36
Orwell, G. 4, 9 Stosch, K. von 13, 36
Oswald, W. 106, 125 Suvin, D. 8, 9, 41, 42, 58, 61, 71, 77, 84, 86,
104
Pakkala, J. 109, 127
Pardee, D. 134, 142 Taylor, C. 14, 36
Person, Jr., R. F. 131, 142 Taylor, K. 201, 204
Petersen, D. L. 163, 168 Thesleff, H. 25, 37
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[the Library of Hebrew Bible_Old Testament Studies] Steven J. Schweitzer_ Frauke Uhlenbruch - Worlds That Could Not Be_ Utopia in Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah (2016, Bloomsbury T&amp;T Clark) [10.5040_9780567664068]

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LIBRARY OF HEBREW BIBLE/

OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES

Utopia in Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah

Steven J. Schweitzer and Frauke Uhlenbruch

BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the T&T Clark logo are

First published in Great Britain 2016

Copyright © Steven J. Schweitzer, Frauke Uhlenbruch and Contributors, 2016

For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. vii constitute

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN: HB: 978-0-56766-405-1

Series: Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies, volume 620

Typeset by Forthcoming Publications Ltd (www.forthpub.com)

To ﬁnd out more about our authors and books visit

Preface and Acknowledgments vii

WORLDS THAT COULD NOT BE:

“UTOPIA WHERE IT IS TO BE HOPED THAT THE COFFEE

WORLD-BUILDING AND TEMPLE-BUILDING:

EXILE, EMPIRE, AND PROPHECY:

RE-NEGOTIATING A PUTATIVE UTOPIA AND THE STORIES

WRITING AND THE CHRONICLER:

UTOPIA IN AGONY: THE ROLE OF PREJUDICE

TAKING THE READER INTO UTOPIA

DIE SUCHE NACH DEM ORT IN DER CHRONIK:

Index of References 205

Ehud Ben Zvi, University of Alberta

Jeremiah Cataldo, Grand Valley State University

Vincent Geoghegan, Queen’s University, Belfast

Matthias Jendrek, Theological Faculty Paderborn

Donal Polaski, Randolph-Macon College

Steven J. Schweitzer, Bethany Theological Seminary

Gerrie Snyman, University of South Africa

Terje Stordalen, Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo, Centre for

Frauke Uhlenbruch, Independent Scholar

Thomas Willi, University of Greifswald

SJOT Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament

1. Lyman Tower Sargent, “The Three Faces of Utopianism Revisited,” Utopian

carnival, and more than ritual sanctioned mocking of authority—it is

4. Isaiah Berlin discusses this in The Crooked Timber of Humanity (London:

The aspect of utopia which is often discussed with some internal

a. Utopia and History

culturally important artifacts. They are not usually condemned because

open to interpretation. When speaking of history and utopia, this is one

b. Utopia and Reality

A literary utopia is not an ideal candidate for a New Critical read-

c. Utopia and Theology

Between the contributions presented here, different de¿nitions of utopia

6. Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (New Haven, Conn.: Yale

TESTING UTOPIA AS A CONTEMPORARY METHOD

Modern Concepts of Utopia

One dominant line of interpretation has claimed Sir Thomas’s novel as

philosophers. (The picture seems more nuanced for literary scholarship.7)

Utopia in Recent Biblical Studies

7. Vieira, “The Concept of Utopia,” 15–18.

twentieth-century paradigms of Biblical Studies tended to link the

An interesting middle position was taken by Erin Runions, who com-

The Island of Utopia and the World of the Novel’s Audience

symbolic. To Nathanael Warren (“Tenure and Grant in Ezekiel’s Paradise [73:13–

and it kept changing and growing in posthumous English translations

b) Importantly for our purpose, the parts of this collective authorial

27. See extensive discussion in ibid.

Figure 1. Ideal Reconstruction of Medieval World Maps

31. In contemporaneous philosophy one made a distinction between the terrestrial

[the Library of Hebrew Bible_Old Testament Studies] Steven J. Schweitzer_ Frauke Uhlenbruch - Worlds That Could Not Be_ Utopia in Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah (2016, Bloomsbury T&T Clark) [10.5040_9780567664068]

[the Library of Hebrew Bible_Old Testament Studies] Steven J. Schweitzer_ Frauke Uhlenbruch - Worlds That Could Not Be_ Utopia in Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah (2016, Bloomsbury T&T Clark) [10.5040_9780567664068]