"Remember Amalek!" : vengeance, zealotry, and group destruction in the Bible according to Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Josephus
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
"Remember Amalek!" : vengeance, zealotry, and group destruction in the Bible according to Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Josephus
(Monographs of the Hebrew Union College, no. 31)
Hebrew Union College Press, c2004
- Other Title
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Remember Amalek!
Available at 2 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 226-237) and indexes
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The divine commandment to exterminate all the Amalekites - men, women, children, and even animals who have no free will - is in contemporary terms no less than genocide. Louis Feldman helps us to understand how three ancient Jewish commentators on the Bible - Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Josephus - wrestled with the issues involved in this divine command, especially its provisions that an entire people must be punished for all time for the misdeeds of their ancestors. Feldman broadens the issue by examining several biblical parallels where God commands the destruction of whole groups of people - namely, in the Great Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the plague of the first-born Egyptians, and the seven Canaanite nations. In addition, he examines several instances of mass destruction of entire groups of people where there was no specific divine commandment - the annihilation of the nations of Sihon and Og, the complete destruction of the inhabitants of Jericho, and the extermination of the priests of Nob. Finally, he considers the issue of the justification of God's reward to Phineas for his zealotry in bypassing the law when he put to death a Jew and a non-Jew for their immorality.
All of these biblical passages raise difficult questions, to which, Feldman demonstrates, there are no simple answers.
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