Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Naegle, Dustin Michael

Titel

"Go Up (Again) to Jerusalem In Judah": The Settler-Colonial Mythology of "Return" and "Restoration" in Ezra 1-6

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Erscheinungsjahr

2017

Link zum Volltext

• ProQuest

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This thesis analyzes the narrative of return in Ezra 1–6 through the lens of settler colonial theory in order to help explain the ideological discourse embedded within it. In undertaking this endeavor, this study first offers a brief sketch of relevant contributions within biblical studies; particularly, how scholarly views have shifted from considering Ezra-Nehemiah to be reliable history to viewing it more as ideology. Section two provides a brief introduction to settler colonial studies by defining settler colonialism within the context of postcolonial studies, describing the key distinguishing markers between colonialism and settler colonialism, and discussing the settler concept of transfer. Section two concludes by describing how return functions in colonial contexts, as opposed to its more mythic function in settler colonial contexts. Section three examines Ezra 1–6 with a particular focus on the motifs of return and restoration. Section four provides a similar analysis using the modern examples of Zionist settlement in Israel/Palestine and the nineteenth- and twentieth-century French settlement of Algeria. Section five concludes this study by discussing the similarities and differences between Ezra 1–6 and the two modern settler endeavors, as well as offers up several observations related to examining Ezra 1–6 as ideology, including how the ideological myth of return is contributing to the on-going rhetorical power of this sort of historicizing discourse, which infuses the narrative with the cultural identity-shaping capacity of myth.