Sunday, January 21, 2018

Review of Bar-Asher Siegal et al., Perceiving the Other

REVIEWS OF BIBLICAL AND EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES: Perceiving the Other.
2017.12.29 | Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, Wolfgang Grünstäudl, and Matthew Thiessen, eds. Perceiving the Other in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity. WUNT 394. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017.

Reviewed by Max Botner, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main.


Scholars of religion are becoming increasingly attuned to the ways in which groups represent and conceive of the “other.”

As Johnathan Z. Smith notes, “While the ‘other’ may be perceived as being LIKE-US or NOT-LIKE-US, he is in fact most problematic when he is TOO-MUCH-LIKE-US, or when he claims to BE-US”.[1] The task of the present volume—which grew out of a colloquium at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev—is to explore this “problematic” space in the literary production of ancient Judaism and early Christianity.

[...]
I noted the publication of the book here and here.

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