Exceptionalism in the Bible
There Is Less than Is Thought, and What There Is, Is Biblically Problematic
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26443/arc.v50i.1110Keywords:
exceptionalism, creation, Israelite, personhood, God's breath of life, Oneness, chosennessAbstract
Three exceptionalisms divide up the bulk of the Torah: the position that the created world (created by God) is special among (possible) worlds; the position that men and women (inspired by God with his breath of life) are special among creatures; the position that the nation of Israel (chosen by God) is special among nations. It’s an a‑theological version of the second of these that is in fact the Bible’s core doctrine. Israelite exceptionalism (“chosenness”), vital though it is to Judaism, is incompatible with the unique status of persons in the creation, and hence has to be downgraded.
References
Alter, Robert. Genesis: Translation and Commentary. New York: W. W. Norton, 1996.
Bible [NRSV]. New Oxford Annotated Bible. Edited by Bruce M. Metzger and Roland E. Murphy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Cohen Jonathan. “Strauss, Soloveitchik and the Genesis Narrative: Conceptions of the Ideal Jew as Derived from Philosophical and Theological Readings of the Bible.” The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 5, no. 1 (1995): 99–143. https://doi.org/10.1163/147728596794761791.
Friedman, Richard Elliott. Commentary on the Torah. San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 2012. Kindle Edition.
Glouberman, Mark. “Artificial Respiration: What does God Really Do in the Beginning?” New Blackfriars 99, no. 1083 (2018): 578–600. https://doi.org/10.1111/nbfr.1440.
———. “Deities and Categories.” Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society 8 (2023): 1–16. https://doi.org/10.30965/23642807-bja10068.
———. “The First Professor of Biblical Philosophy.” Sophia 52, no. 3 (2013): 503–519. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-012-0349-6.
———. “‘Where Were You?’ God, Job, and the Quinizer.” The Heythrop Journal 56, no. 1 (2014): 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.12074.
Hess, Richard H. “Splitting the Adam: The Usage of ʾĀadām In Genesis I-V.” Studies in the Pentateuch, Series: Vetus Testamentum, Supplements, Volume 41 (1990): 1–15.
Kirk, G. S. and J. E. Raven. The Presocratic Philosophers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957.
Kreisel, Howard. Judaism as Philosophy: Studies in Maimonides and the Medieval Jewish Philosophers of Provence. Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2015.
Lasker, Daniel J. “The Impact of the Crusades on the Jewish-Christian Debate.” Jewish History 13, no. 2 (1999): 23–36.
Rashi. Pentateuch with Rashi’s Commentary. Translated and annotated by M. Rosenbaum and A. M. Silbermann in collaboration with A. Blashki and L. Joseph. London: Shapiro, Vallentine and Co., 1929–1934. https://www.sefaria.org/Rashi_on_Genesis.1.1?lang=bi&with=About&lang2=en.
Sacks, Robert. The Lion and the Ass: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis. N.P., 1970. https://archive.org/details/RobertSacksACommentaryOnTheBookOfGenesis.
Speiser, E. A. Anchor Bible Genesis. Garden City: Doubleday, 1964.
White, Lynn, Jr. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.” Science 155 (1967): 1203–1207.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Mark Glouberman
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a 
