This study focuses on biblical Manasseh as a tribal entity, a territorial region, and a literary construct to explore facets of ancient Israels history and the ways in which it (re)constructed this history in the biblical narratives. Many biblical texts describe Manasseh as the only tribe having territory both west and east of the Jordan River in the central hills region of the west and in northern Gilead in the east. This is a striking characterization because the biblical writers generally cast the Jordan River as a boundary between the eastern and western tribes, and while these two Manassite regions do not necessarily represent a contiguous area of land, they are nonetheless viewed as a single tribal unit. Since the Hebrew Bible presents conflicting views of the legitimacy of the east Jordan region and those Israelites that inhabit it, Manasseh operates, at least conceptually, in both the eastern and western worlds. Given that the Bible was in the view of most scholars ultimately written and compiled in a southern Judahite context several hundred years after Israels tribal period, however, this study considers the degree to which the Bibles depiction of the northern tribe of Manasseh represents an ideological picture of the nations past. By examining Manasseh through the lenses of literary analysis, anthropology, archaeology, and historiography, I argue that 1) the biblical portrait of Manasseh has been shaped by two distinct layers of tradition: one tradition knows Manasseh solely, or at least predominately, as a western entity while a second tradition conceives of Manasseh as a rather obliquely defined eastern entity; 2) although the idea of Manasseh as a tribe that spans both sides of the Jordan is a plausible model of tribal organization, ultimately the concept of east Manasseh only makes sense within the framework of the twelve-tribe system which scholars widely recognize as a later ideological construct; and 3) insofar as Manasseh is cast as an east-west entity, the tribe ultimately stands as a complex, ambiguous object that simultaneously subverts and reinforces the biblical distinctions between the areas east and west of the Jordan River.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-07162014-103702 |
| Date | 17 July 2014 |
| Creators | Lerner, Ellen Renee |
| Contributors | Douglas A. Knight, Tom D. Dillehay, Herbert Marbury, Annalisa Azzoni, Jack M. Sasson |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-07162014-103702/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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