This dissertation investigates how ancient Jewish communities restructured the Mosaic Law to redress the physical and emotional trauma that they endured under occupation. A systematic analysis of the Seleucid and Roman Empire’s governing strategies in ancient Judea reveals that military occupation was a system of colonial governance whereby military and judicial structures converged to monopolize regional politics. The Mosaic Law or Torah played a decisive role in reproducing this monopoly of legislative and military power with Seleucid and Roman rulers representing themselves as protectors and patrons of the Mosaic Law. By representing themselves as benevolent protectors of the Torah, they simultaneously reproduced the assumption that the Mosaic Law made Jewish men weak, effeminate, and unable to protect themselves. This discursive practice enabled Seleucid and Roman rulers to legitimate and justify their extraction of material resources from the region and exploitation of local labor. However, analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls suggests that locals developed a discursive practice of their own to counteract this dominant discourse. This discursive practice has often been identified by scholarship as sectarian in nature, since the texts urge the readers to separate from local institutions. I argue that this discursive practice represented mimicry of Seleucid and Roman military discipline. Mimicry consisted of a strategic process of negotiation, contestation, and adaption to the defining features of professional military life and discipline. These included the idea that professional soldiers must separate themselves from civilian institutions, specfically family, wealth, and marriage. By doing so, soldiers could embody the highest levels of integrity, competency, and virtue. The scrolls seem to parallel this practice by staking covenantal membership in a rigorous program of training that occurs outside of the context of home and family. This strategic process of restructuring the Mosaic Law reproduced a configuration of masculinity that shared apparent affinities to the masculine ideology that promulgated Seleucid and Roman hegemony. Locals in effect transformed the Mosaic Law into a manual of masculine discipline and in the process represented themselves as more disciplined, skilled, and masculine than soldiers in occupying armies. By repudiating the assumption that the Mosaic Law made them weak, effeminate, and unable to protect themselves from military subjugation, the scrolls’ authors undermined the central rationale that structured and legitimated the Seleucid and Roman Empires’ occupation of ancient Judea. I conclude that the scrolls, often read as the work of a Dead Sea sect, restructure the Mosaic Law to dismantle colonial governance and become masters of their own stories. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Religion in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2018. / April 13, 2018. / Includes bibliographical references. / Matthew Goff, Professor Directing Dissertation; William Hanley, University Representative; Adam Gaiser, Committee Member; Nicole Kelley, Committee Member; David Levenson, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_653419 |
| Contributors | Furiasse, Amanda (author), Goff, Matthew J. (professor directing dissertation), Hanley, Will, 1974- (university representative), Gaiser, Adam R., 1971- (committee member), Kelley, Nicole, 1975- (committee member), Levenson, David B (committee member), Florida State University (degree granting institution), College of Arts and Sciences (degree granting college), Department of Religion (degree granting departmentdgg) |
| Publisher | Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text, doctoral thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (315 pages), computer, application/pdf |
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