Week 4: Comment on Terry Mak’s Blog

In his blog Terry comments that in Berquist’s piece on Postcolonialism and Imperial Motives for Canonization, the main reasoning behind Jewish support for imperial friendly canonized texts is their desire to make sense of and place their current situation within a larger framework of the movement of God. I would strongly agree with this idea, I think that Berquist’s ideas on the role of Canon as continued subjugation is probably reading far too much into the writers of Jewish canon. I think a stronger and more consistent reading of Ancient Near-Eastern texts within Jewish canon is to place them in the larger framework of their beliefs in God, his covenant with them, and their position in society. To assume that Jewish writers were influenced mostly by the current Empire they were under is ignoring the fact that as the chosen people of Yahweh there is going to be a necessity to make sense of their current position, outside the influence of Empire. It is of the utmost importance to place any rule with which the Jews find themselves as God-allowed (ordained is too strong of a word) because for them to believe that things can ocurr outside the sphere of God’s control is to contradict thousands of years of Jewish history.