David Goodblatt, Elements of Ancient Jewish Nationalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 15. Goodblatt discusses the frequent use of goy and goyim, in which goy is used in reference to Israel and Judah, and goyim is used in reference to “[members of] nations [other than Israel]” from “Genesis through Second Chronicles.” My focus condenses Goodblatt’s range in order to focus on the Deuteronomistic History, from Deuteronomy to 2 Kings.

David Goodblatt, Elements of Ancient Jewish Nationalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 15. Goodblatt discusses the frequent use of goy and goyim, in which goy is used in reference to Israel and Judah, and goyim is used in reference to “[members of] nations [other than Israel]” from “Genesis through Second Chronicles.” My focus condenses Goodblatt’s range in order to focus on the Deuteronomistic History, from Deuteronomy to 2 Kings.)| false
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W.B. Gallie, Philosophy and the Historical Understanding (London: Chatto & Windus, 1964), p. 157. Gallie applies the phrase “essentially contested concept” to terms in which “we soon see that there is no one use of any of them which can be set up as its generally accepted and therefore correct or standard use.”

W.B. Gallie, Philosophy and the Historical Understanding (London: Chatto & Windus, 1964), p. 157. Gallie applies the phrase “essentially contested concept” to terms in which “we soon see that there is no one use of any of them which can be set up as its generally accepted and therefore correct or standard use.”)| false
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Goodblatt, p. 13.

Goodblatt, p. 27.

Goodblatt, p. 110.

Goodblatt, p. 20.

Goodblatt, pp. 2–3. Cf. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (New York: Verso, 1991).

Goodblatt, p. 3. Goodblatt references Armstrong’s Nations Before Nationalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982). Armstrong, along with theorists like Anthony Smith and Walker Connor, lead the charge in couching pre-nationalist nations in primordialist terms, which is a marginalized position within the academy. By “pre-nationalist nation,” it is understood that identity precedes ideology, and not the other way around. Consider, for example, how Michael Mann contextualizes his own “politically driven history of nationalism” in a volume in which his chapter directly follows from a chapter by John Armstrong and even borrows Armstrong’s “proto-nationalist” lexicon: “A nation is a community affirming a distinct ethnic identity, history and destiny, and claiming its own state. Nationalism is an ideology whereby a nation believes it possesses distinct claims to virtue - claims which may be used to legitimate aggressive action against other nations. Like most writers, I adhere more to a ‘modernist’ than to a ‘perennialist’ or ‘primordialist’ view of nations. They are not old. They arose only from the eighteenth century (one or two writers prefer the seventeenth century), first in Europe and America, then elsewhere (Kohn, 1967; Anderson, 1983; Gellner, 1983; Hroch, 1985; Chatterjee, 1986; Hobsbawm, 1990; Calhoun, 1993; the main ‘perennialist’ dissidents are Armstrong, 1982; and Smith, 1986)” (Michael Mann, “A Political Theory of Nationalism and Its Excesses” in Sukumar Periwal (ed.), Notions of Nationalism [Budapest: Central European University Press, 1995], pp. 44–45). I clearly count myself as a “dissident” within the predominant discourse; however, as will be shown below, Goodblatt and I share another affinity, uncommon among even primordialists like Armstrong whose nations precede their respective nationalisms, in that for us nationalisms can and often do precede nations. The affinity I share with Goodblatt, then, reveals itself as especially unique, since we not only carve space for nations in antiquity, but we also reverse the identity-ideology sequence by allowing for ideology to shape identity. This, too, becomes tricky, and a discussion concerning ideology and identity formation, in conversation with Etienne Balibar (following Althusser), will be leveraged to deconstruct the modernist Benedict Anderson, but in an unexpected way: whereas Althusserians believe that identity is so much collateral damage by an oppositional and hegemonic ideology, Goodblatt and I are allowing for the possibility that, in nations, identity can be the lovechild of a technically-engendering, ethnicity-driven ideology enacted through language and texts.

Doron Mendels, The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism: Jewish and Christian Ethnicity in Ancient Palestine (New York: Doubleday, 1992), p. 13.

Doron Mendels, The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism: Jewish and Christian Ethnicity in Ancient Palestine (New York: Doubleday, 1992), p. 13.)| false
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Goodblatt, p. 9.

Goodblatt, p. 9.

Goodblatt, p. 26.

Goodblatt, p. 10.

Goodblatt, pp. 10–11.

Goodblatt, p. 11.

Goodblatt, p. 12.

Goodblatt, p. 210.

Baruch Halpern, The Emergence of Israel in Canaan (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983), p. 241.

Baruch Halpern, The Emergence of Israel in Canaan (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983), p. 241. )| false
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Gösta W. Ahlström, Who Were the Israelites? (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1986), p. vii.

Gösta W. Ahlström, Who Were the Israelites? (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1986), p. vii.)| false
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E. Theodore Mullen, Jr., Narrative History and Ethnic Boundaries: The Deuteronomistic Historian and the Creation of Israelite Identity (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), p. 57.

E. Theodore Mullen, Jr., Narrative History and Ethnic Boundaries: The Deuteronomistic Historian and the Creation of Israelite Identity (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), p. 57.)| false
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Halpern, p. 162.

Mullen, p. 58; emphasis original.

László Németh, “Small Nation, Great Soul. On Reading the Old Testament, 1954,” in Mosaic 1 (1967), pp. 39–51 (46). While conventional practice would here call for a use of sic, calling attention to the lack of plural noun/single verb agreement inherent in “their soul,” I prefer to let the grammar speak to the notion of national solidarity implied by a single essential soul that is shared by the group.

László Németh, “Small Nation, Great Soul. On Reading the Old Testament, 1954,” in Mosaic 1 (1967), pp. 39–51 (46). While conventional practice would here call for a use of sic, calling attention to the lack of plural noun/single verb agreement inherent in “their soul,” I prefer to let the grammar speak to the notion of national solidarity implied by a single essential soul that is shared by the group.)| false
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Halpern, p. 239.

Mullen, Jr., p. 57.

Halpern, p. 261, and Mullen, Jr., p. 57, respectively.

Victor H. Matthews, Old Testament Turning Points: The Narratives that Shaped a Nation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), p. 8.

Victor H. Matthews, Old Testament Turning Points: The Narratives that Shaped a Nation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), p. 8.)| false
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Haraway, p. 2205.

N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 29.

N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 29.)| false
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Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). De Certeau’s chapter x, entitled “The Scriptural Economy” (pp. 131–53), provides a “metallic vocabulary” (p. 145) to argue that bodies can be “intextuated” (p. 149) and read as easily as the markings on “blank parchments” (pp. 134–35).

Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). De Certeau’s chapter x, entitled “The Scriptural Economy” (pp. 131–53), provides a “metallic vocabulary” (p. 145) to argue that bodies can be “intextuated” (p. 149) and read as easily as the markings on “blank parchments” (pp. 134–35).)| false
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Goodblatt, p. 23.

Goodblatt, p. 8.

Philip R. Davies, In Search of Ancient Israel (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992), p. 87, as discussed in Goodblatt, p. 111.

Philip R. Davies, In Search of Ancient Israel (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992), p. 87, as discussed in Goodblatt, p. 111.)| false
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Niels Peter Lemche, The Israelites in History and Tradition (London: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), as discussed in Goodblatt, p. 112.

Niels Peter Lemche, The Israelites in History and Tradition (London: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), as discussed in Goodblatt, p. 112.)| false
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Thomas L. Thompson, The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel (London: Basic Books, 1999), as discussed in Goodblatt, p. 113.

Thomas L. Thompson, The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel (London: Basic Books, 1999), as discussed in Goodblatt, p. 113.)| false
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Anderson, p. 205.

Anderson, p. 205.

Anderson, p. 204. For Anderson’s in-depth treatment of the ways in which newspapers and “the old-fashioned novel … are so important for the birth of the imagined community of the nation,” see Anderson, pp. 24–26.

Anderson, p. 26; emphasis added. Anderson footnotes this sentence with the following: “Nothing better shows the immersion of the novel in homogenous, empty time than the absence of those prefatory analogies, often ascending to the origin of man, which are so characteristic a feature of the ancient chronicles, legends, and holy books.” That may well be, but I intend to demonstrate that for someone whose theory hangs on narrative, his narratological considerations of “the ancient chronicles, legends, and holy books” derogatorily fail to account for narrative forms and techniques much more advanced and, to use his own term, “technical” (Anderson, p. 25) than either newspapers or novels of a certain period. I note, too, that “myth” is conspicuously absent from his associations with antiquity.

Anderson, p. 25; emphasis added.

Etienne Balibar, “The Nation Form: History and Ideology” in Race, Nation, Class with Immanuel Wallerstein (New York: Verso, 1991), pp. 96, 105.

Etienne Balibar, “The Nation Form: History and Ideology” in Race, Nation, Class with Immanuel Wallerstein (New York: Verso, 1991), pp. 96, 105.)| false
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Balibar, p. 100.

Balibar, p. 96.

Balibar, pp. 96, 99 (emphasis original), 97.

Balibar, p. 99.

Anderson, p. 205.

Anderson, pp. 204–205.

Lincoln, pp. xii, 208–211.

Bernard M. Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 55. In explaining “the programmatic origins of Deut. 16:1–8,” Levinson asserts that “the authors of Deuteronomy were merely playing catch-up,” a slightly different argument than the one I make, since authorial catch-up differs from textual catch-up both temporally and ideologically.

Bernard M. Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 55. In explaining “the programmatic origins of Deut. 16:1–8,” Levinson asserts that “the authors of Deuteronomy were merely playing catch-up,” a slightly different argument than the one I make, since authorial catch-up differs from textual catch-up both temporally and ideologically. )| false
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Cf. Nadav Na’aman, “The ‘Discovered Book’ and the Legitimation of Josiah’s Reform,” JBL 130 (2011), pp. 47–62.

Cf. Nadav Na’aman, “The ‘Discovered Book’ and the Legitimation of Josiah’s Reform,” JBL 130 (2011), pp. 47–62.)| false
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Bernard M. Levinson, “Deuteronomy,” in The New Oxford Annotated Bible (New York: Oxford University Press), p. 247.

Bernard M. Levinson, “Deuteronomy,” in The New Oxford Annotated Bible (New York: Oxford University Press), p. 247.)| false
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Lincoln, p. 147; emphasis original.

Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press, 2003), pp. 17–37.

Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press, 2003), pp. 17–37.)| false
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Cf. Christian Vandendorpe, From Papyrus to Hypertext: Toward the Universal Digital Library (Urbana: University of Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 123–25. Vandendorpe cryptically suggests a “nostalgia for the papyrus scroll” when comparing this medium of antiquity to ultra-modern digital interfaces (in this case the CD-ROM) and provocatively asks, “Is the future of text to be found in the past?” (p. 124).

Cf. Christian Vandendorpe, From Papyrus to Hypertext: Toward the Universal Digital Library (Urbana: University of Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 123–25. Vandendorpe cryptically suggests a “nostalgia for the papyrus scroll” when comparing this medium of antiquity to ultra-modern digital interfaces (in this case the CD-ROM) and provocatively asks, “Is the future of text to be found in the past?” (p. 124).)| false
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Thomas Römer, “1 Kings,” in The New Oxford Annotated Bible (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 486–87.

Thomas Römer, “1 Kings,” in The New Oxford Annotated Bible (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 486–87.)| false
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Na’am, p. 53.

Levinson, “Deuteronomy,” pp. 248–49; emphasis added.

Levinson, “Deuteronomy,” pp. 248–49; emphasis added.)| false
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Lincoln, p. 216.

Levinson, “Deuteronomy,” p. 247; emphasis added.

Levinson, “Deuteronomy,” p. 247; emphasis added.)| false
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Lincoln, pp. 19–43, 45–137. Lincoln traces the status of myth from antiquity to modernity: the early Second Temple Period was a time of privilege for mythic narrative; Plato and Aristotle denigrated the form in favor of logoi; by modernity, myth as ideology in narrative form had been sufficiently recuperated to put it into the service of nationalism.

Ezek. 1:16. Cited by Levinson, “Deuteronomy,” p. 248.

Ezek. 1:16. Cited by Levinson, “Deuteronomy,” p. 248.)| false
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Goodblatt, p. 208.