A Research On The Issue Of Gentiles In Jewish Classics

As the chosen people by God,Jewish People is an ethnic minority group from its formation,this disadvantage affects the ideology and theology of Judaism in many aspects.Jewish identity means the opposite from gentiles,which puts gentile identity as the other from the Jewish self-identification.This dissertation tries to explore the different attitudes of Jews toward gentiles in the Jewish Classics,especially the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud from a gentile perspective.The Chinese Nation is a modern concept,while in ancient Chinese classics represented by Confucianism the earliest concept is Hua or Xia nation,which is more likely a cultural concept than an ethnic term based on ancestry.Due to the political unification and national amalgamation,Hua Xia nation is mainly an agriculture civilization in contrast with the surrounding minority ethnic groups,such as Yi,Di,Rong,Man.After several waves of national integration,the Han nation becomes dominate in politics,culture and population most of the time except Yuan and Qing Dynasty.Han nation has the superiority complex in culture toward minority ethnic groups and inclusive attitudes in general.On the contrary Jewish people is minority in number and constantly feels the threat from the surrounding cultures and religions.The land of Canaan was conquered multi-times by the nations and empires around,for example,the Egyptians,the Ayssrians,the Babylonians,the Persians,the Greeks and Romans and etc.The influence from different civilizations forms the uniqueness of Jewish civilization and its rejection of assimilation tenaciously.Meanwhile Judaism as the oldest monotheistic religion surviving from history faced challenges not only from polytheism or idol worship but also the disadvantage of population all the time.Especially after the destruction of the Second Temple by Romans in 70C.E.,Jewish People started the diaspora all over the world losing both independent political power and land of Israel.Judaism had to meet more complexed challenges including the rise of Christianity and Islam,during this period Judaism canonized the Hebrew Scripture and compiled the oral Torah as Babylonian Talmud and Jerusalem Talmud to reinterpreting the Hebrew Bible and religious traditions.The two classics basically formed the Rabbinic Judaism tradition centered with the Written Torah and Oral Torah instead of the Temple in Biblical Judaism.There are several Hebrew words used to refer to gentiles in the Hebrew Scripture as follows(?)and(?),which are translated as foreigner,stranger,gentile,sojourner and etc.These words are all used to refer to non-Israelites or non-Jews,of which(?)was originally used as all nations including Jewish People but gradually changed its meaning specifically as gentiles only during the late period of the Second Temple Period,(?)was the original word referring to gentile in the Hebrew Scripture,whose meaning relates to foreign country,foreign land and foreign people and in many contexts had the same meaning as(?),which means stranger,foreigner,outsider.(?)refers to sojourner or traveler from other places which is similar with(?)just(?)is more close with Israelites and probably more depending on Israelites.All these different groups of gentiles showed Israelites have clear boundaries with gentiles and treated different groups with differences.In order to cope with the hostility of Polytheism and the weakness in population.Judaism is quite tolerant with the conversion of gentiles,the boundary of blood is not an issue for joining Judaism although the tendency of idol worship brought by intermarriage is constantly bothering the purity of Judaism.The fight against idolatry is just after the worship of God in the ten commandments,forbidding any activities related with idol making or worshiping,thus built the unique Jewish aniconism tradition,which is distinctive from Canaanite Religions around Jewish people.Under different social contexts after Babylonian exile,Judaism had to compromise with reality and gradually changed its attitude toward conversion from positive missionary to rejecting gentile convertors in principle.We can see the tolerant attitudes not only in the Hebrew Scripture but also in the Talmud,as a monotheism belief,the essence of Judaism is universalism and the salvation of the world is inclusive for gentiles though the Jewish people as the chosen people is special and different.The separation from gentiles is one of the boundaries for the Jewish identification.There are two representative attitudes toward proselytes,one is Shammaite and the other is Hillelite,the former is stricter on the Jewish law and rejects gentiles in general and the latter is more tolerant with Jewish law and friendly with gentiles.The two schools had hundreds of arguments in the Talmud recorded by the Hillel School.Since the destruction of the Second Temple,the Hillelite became the dominant school and most of the records were lost,those we read today in the Talmud were written by Hillelite.The intermarriage with gentile woman is a complex issue through the whole Hebrew Scripture from the Patriarch Abraham,Isaac and Jacob to the King of Solomon,they all took foreign women and even had children with them.Not to mention the gentile prostitutes and foreign woman became a member of Israelites.Foreign women occupied quite significant role in the Hebrew scripture,from Hagar to Ruth,one gave birth the first son of Abraham,who is the ancestor of Edomite;and the other became the great grandmother of King David.Hagar and Ruth represent different images of gentile women and their role in the Hebrew Scripture,Ruth obviously is the model for a gentile woman in Israelite society.Ezra-Nehemiah strictly forbids intermarriage with gentile woman for many reasons,which is quite different from the five books of Torah,and it becomes the standard attitude toward inter-marriage in Rabbinic Judaism.Endogamy becomes the principle of Jewish marriage,which is good to maintain the stability of religion and society.On the other hand,exogamy is forbidden as religious ban,as a matter of fact it is not realistic for a nation in diaspora to ban intermarriage.The intermarriage with gentile women has good and bad sides,it increases the Jewish population to keep the existence of the nation,but the gentiles from outside would probably bring the influence of gentile religions namely idol worship back into Israelites.So that so the forbidden of intermarriage is repeatedly mentioned in the Hebrew Scripture in different texts and even more so in the rabbinic laws.The purpose of Prohibition of Intermarriage is actually to prevent Jewish people assimilating by other nations and religions,especially the Canaanites.It is not realistic for a nation in diaspora to ban intermarriage,the lack of population leads to intermarriage with gentiles no matter how the Jewish law forbids it.The real goal is against idolatry not intermarriage itself,so those marriages in terms of conversion has always been allowed and there are tons of precedents in the Hebrew Scripture from Abraham to Isaac to the period of the twelve tribes.It was a very common practice for different parties to unite by marriage,that probably is the best explanation for the Patriarchs and Jewish leaders marrying gentile wives despite the preference of endogamy.The most famous and successful conversion and intermarriage example is Ruth the Moabite woman,who marries the Boaz and becomes the great-grandmother of King David.As a member of Moabites which is rejected by the congregation of Israel,Ruth through her marriage becomes a wonderful example for Jewish Woman.The diaspora changed the Judaism in lots of ways,due to the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem,Rabbis did not have other choices but the Holy Book and Holy Commandments given by God.Thus,the Halachic tradition became the center of Rabbinic Judaism,which separated Jews from gentiles in systematic ways,such as daily diets,holidays and festivals,social interactions,economic business and religious activities and so on.The boundaries marked by the Jewish law limited the contacts between Jews and gentiles in every hand.We must acknowledge that this measure does protect Jewish lives and property in hostile society nevertheless the separation cannot avoid hatred and hostility.As far as we know the result is Jews survived the exile and rebuilt the state of Israel in modern times,at the same time,anti-Semitism accompanied Jews through history and didn’t disappear until today.Judaism accepted multi-ethnic believers and merited them into a new ethnic group centered with monotheistic belief.From the Chinese perspective,Jewish nation is a rare case of ethnic fusion by minority,while Chinese people walked on the opposite way to merit minority ethnic groups into the majority nation.Starting from the blood ties but not limited by ancestry but choosing cultural or religious identity as the common ground to unite into one nation.In contrast with Chinese traditional treatment with minority ethnic groups,both nations based on blood but not limited to it,but to use culture or religion as the ties to unite the nation instead.For better or worse both nations survived in history,but there is no room for complacency if we want to keep surviving.Any nation that looks forward to develop shall continue to balance between universalism and nationalism,keeping tradition and reformation working together is indispensable.