Anthropology and the Bible

Programme

The aim of this unit is to foster ethnographic readings of biblical stories, both Old and New Testaments, and anthropological perspectives on the archaeology, the history and the literature of ancient Palestine in its Near Eastern context. Relevant topics for discussion are:

  • Political and historical anthropology of ancient Palestine (city-states, urbanization, state-formation processes, ethnogenesis).
  • Mediterranean anthropology in biblical narrative (patronage, hospitality, feud, honour and shame, food).
  • Sociology and anthropology of religion and ancient Palestinian cultic and ritual data (aniconism, iconography, burial, cultic places, etc.).
  • Sociology and anthropology of biblical studies (the production of academic knowledge and its impact on society).
  • Comparative analysis of Biblical and Eastern Mediterranean literature from an anthropological perspective.

Keywords:

Social and Cultural Anthropology, Ethnographic method, Old Testament, New Testament, East Mediterranean

Chairs

Anne Katrine Gudme

University of Oslo

Emanuel Pfoh

CONICET and University of Helsinki


Member Area

Sofia 2024 Call for Papers

For the 2024 EABS meeting in Sofia, the Anthropology and the Bible group is planning two sessions. One themed session on the Anthropology of Journeys, Travelling and Migration in the Biblical World and one open session on Anthropology and the Bible more broadly. For the themed session on the Anthropology of Journeys, Travelling and Migration, we invite papers that apply a distinctly anthropological approach to texts or material from the ‘Biblical world’ (the ancient Mediterranean and ancient West Asia in the long 1st Millennium BCE) that relate to people moving from one place to another for a longer or a shorter space of time.

For this year’s theme, the concept ‘The Biblical world’ points to two things. One is stories about or material traces of travelling from the historical Biblical world (as defined above), the other is the conceptualization of the Biblical world as a destination for explorers, scholars and pilgrims, a place to (re)discover the ‘world of the Bible’. We invite papers that address either version of the Biblical world or a combination of the two.

The topic journeys, travelling and migration touches upon classic anthropological tropes such as intercultural encounters, commensality and taboos, and liminality, but it also invites reflections on interactions with space and place, ‘travelling time’ as a time set apart and on the socio-anthropological aspects of outings, excursions, explorations and journeys.

We encourage presenters to submit proposals that clearly state the material presented and analyzed in the paper, the method(s) applied to this material, and the anthropological perspective(s) of the paper. For the open session addressing topics related in general to anthropology and the Bible, we also invite proposals that clearly state the material presented and analyzed in the paper, the method(s) applied to this material, and the anthropological perspective(s) of the paper. Please see the description of the research unit above for topics.