Jul 16th, 2016 - Athalya Brenner-Idan, “Hagar and Sarah: Endogamy and Exogamy in Genesis and the Rest of the Hebrew Bible” (Si-mian Lectures on Humanities No. 310)

Title: Hagar and Sarah: Endogamy and Exogamy in Genesis and the Rest of the Hebrew Bible

Lecturer: Athalya Brenner-Idan (Professor in Biblical Studies, Department of Hebrew Culture, Tel Aviv University, Israel; Research Fellow, University of Amsterdam)

Chairperson: ZHANG Ying (Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, East China Normal University)

Respondent: HUANG Wei (Lecturer, Department of History, Shanghai University)

Date: 10 am, July 16th, 2016 (Saturday)

Venue: Room A204, Building of Science, North Zhongshan Road Campus, ECNU

Sponsor: Si-mian Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities, ECNU

Abstract of the Lecture:

Within Genesis and beyond it the ‘correct mother’ motif appears to be tied up with another, recurrent motif -- the inheritance of the non-first born -- and to support it. Thus Sarah is Isaac's mother, who is the second paternal son but his father’s true inheritor. Hagar is a foreigner and her son is in fact disinherited. In the case of Rebekah, one mother only, her preference for her second son Jacob, and the action motivated by this preference, overrides the first-born right of his brother. The in-marriage of Jacob to Leah and her sister Rachel produces, or reflects, a strife for dominance among their siblings: each sister has her superior and inferior points of personal and class status, to justify that their sons strive for leadership inside their maternal group (Reuben and Judah; see what happens to Simeon and Levi) and outside it (Judah with the Joseph and Benjamin tribes). Even when the wife is of out-ethnicity, as in the case of Assenat, Joseph’s wife, her sons’ inheritance is reversed. In this presentation we shall survey attitudes to endogamy and exogamy in the Hebrew Bible and try to understand them against the backgrounds of different times, places and politico-economic interests.

Brief Introduction of the Lecturer:

2015, President of the Society of Biblical Literature (2014 Vice President of the Society of Biblical Literature).

2013-15, Honorary Professor of Biblical Studies, Stellenbosch University, South Africa.

2007-, Professor in Biblical Studies, Department of Hebrew Culture, Tel Aviv University, Israel.

2008-, Research Fellow, University of Amsterdam.

2008, Retirement from Amsterdam Chair; Emeriat, UvA.

1997-2008, Professor of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Chair, Department of Theology and Religious Studies (later Department of Art, Religion and Culture), Faculty of Humanities, University of Amsterdam.

2002, Honorary PhD, University of Bonn, Germany.

Publication:

The Israelite Woman: Social Role and Literary Type in Biblical Narrative (2014).

I Am: Biblical Women Tell their own Stories (2004).

General editor, A Feminist Companion to the Bible, 10 volumes, 1993-1997.