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125-454: In the Book of Genesis , Dinah ( / ˈ d aɪ n ə / ; Hebrew : דִּינָה , Modern :   Dīna , Tiberian :   Dīnā , 'judged'; 'vindicated') was the seventh child and only daughter of Leah and Jacob . The episode of her violation by Shechem, son of a Canaanite or Hivite prince, and the subsequent vengeance of her brothers Simeon and Levi , commonly referred to as

250-460: A great flood to wipe out the rest of the world. When the waters recede, God promises he will never destroy the world with water again, making a rainbow as a symbol of his promise . God sees humankind cooperating to build a great tower city, the Tower of Babel , and divides humanity with many languages and sets them apart with confusion. Then, a generation line from Shem to Abram is described. Abram,

375-444: A Jewish property should be excommunicated . The violation of Jewish women by gentile men was so frequent that the rabbis declared that a woman raped by a gentile should not be divorced from her husband, as Torah says: "The Torah outlawed the issue of a gentile as that of a beast." A gentile midwife was not to be employed for fear of the poisoning of the baby. The gentiles should be dealt with caution in cases of using them as witness in

500-456: A beneficial influence upon her husband". Her brother Simeon promised to find a husband for her, but she did not wish to leave Shechem, fearing that, after her disgrace, no one would take her to wife. However, she was later married to Job . When she died, Simeon buried her in the land of Canaan . She is therefore referred to as "the Canaanitish woman" (Genesis 46:10). Joseph's wife Asenath (ib.)

625-461: A bowl of stew. His mother, Rebekah, ensures Jacob rightly gains his father's blessing as the firstborn son and inheritor. At 77 years of age, Jacob leaves his parents and later seeks a wife and meets Rachel at a well. He goes to her father, his uncle , where he works for a total of 14 years to earn his wives, Rachel and Leah . Jacob's name is changed to Israel after his wrestle with an angel , and by his wives and their handmaidens he has twelve sons,

750-458: A convention where sex and color are mingled together in the common rights of humanity, Dinah, and Burleigh , and Lucretia , and Frederick Douglas [sic], are all spiritually of one color and one sex, and all on a perfect footing of reciprocity. Most assuredly, Dinah was well posted up on the rights of woman, and with something of the ardor and the odor of her native Africa, she contended for her right to vote, to hold office, to practice medicine and

875-635: A criminal or civil suit. The gentile does not honor his promises like that of a Jew. The laws of the Torah were not to be revealed to the gentiles, for the knowledge of these laws might give gentiles an advantage in dealing with Jews. Shimon ben Lakish wrote that "A gentile who observes Sabbath deserves death". Under rabbinic law , a modern-day gentile is only required to observe the Seven Laws of Noah , but Jews are required to observe Mosaic law . During periods of decreased animosity between Jews and gentiles, some of

1000-480: A description reflected a "late, post-exilic notion that the idolatrous gentiles are impure [and supports] the prohibition of intermarriage and intercourse with them." Such a supposed preoccupation with ethnic purity must therefore indicate a late date for Genesis in the 5th or 4th centuries BC, when the restored Jewish community in Jerusalem was similarly preoccupied with anti- Samaritan polemics. In Rofé's analysis,

1125-534: A female, lest the maid-servants ( Bilhah and Zilpah ) be associated with more of the Israelite tribes than Rachel . Another midrash implicates Jacob in Dinah's misfortune: when he went to meet Esau , he locked Dinah in a box, for fear that Esau would wish to marry her, but God rebuked him in these words: "If thou hadst married off thy daughter in time she would not have been tempted to sin, and might, moreover, have exerted

1250-472: A gentile court are not valid for Jews. Rabbi Akiva believed that Israel's monotheism is far superior to the ever-changing beliefs of the gentiles. Jose the Galilean criticizes Israel for inconsistency compared to the faithfulness of the gentiles to their ancestral beliefs. He believed the good deeds of the gentiles will be rewarded as well. Rav Ashi believed that a Jew who sells a gentile property adjacent to

1375-460: A harlot? ' " (Genesis 34:31). When Jacob's family prepares to descend to Egypt, Genesis lists the 70 family members who went down together (Genesis 46:8–27). Dinah is specifically listed, in verse 15 ("These are the sons of Leah, that she bore to Jacob in Padan Aram, and Dinah his daughter."). Dovid Rosenfeld states that "That is it. The Torah does not tell us anything about what happened to her for

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1500-551: A long period of time. The involvement of multiple authors is suggested by internal contradictions within the text. For example, Genesis includes two creation narratives . By the early 1860s, the leading theory for the Pentateuch's composition was the old supplementary hypothesis. This theory held that the earliest portions, the so-called Book of Origins (containing Genesis 1 and most of the priestly laws in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers),

1625-493: A male heir, and the story is constantly complicated by the fact that each prospective mother— Sarah , Rebekah and Rachel —is barren. The ancestors, however, retain their faith in God and God in each case gives a son—in Jacob's case, twelve sons, the foundation of the chosen Israelites . Each succeeding generation of the three promises attains a more rich fulfilment, until through Joseph "all

1750-473: A man descended from Noah, is instructed by God to travel from his home in Mesopotamia to the land of Canaan . There, God makes a promise to Abram, promising that his descendants shall be as numerous as the stars, but that people will suffer oppression in a foreign land for four hundred years, after which they will inherit the land "from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates ". Abram's name

1875-514: A number of variations and revisions of the documentary hypothesis have been proposed. The new supplementary hypothesis posits three main sources for the Pentateuch: J, D, and P. The E source is considered no more than a variation of J, and P is considered a body of revisions and expansions to the J (or "non-Priestly") material. The Deuteronomistic source does not appear in Genesis. More recent thinking

2000-513: A people or nation." The development of the word to principally mean "non-Jew" in English is entwined with the history of Bible translations from Hebrew and Greek into Latin and English. Its meaning has also been shaped by Rabbinical Jewish thought and Christian theology . "Gentile" derives from Latin gentilis , which itself derives from the Latin gens , meaning clan or tribe. Gens derives from

2125-549: A pillar of salt for going against his word. Lot's daughters, concerned that they are fugitives who will never find husbands, get Lot drunk so they can become pregnant by him, and give birth to the ancestors of the Moabites and Ammonites . Abraham and Sarah go to the Philistine town of Gerar , pretending to be brother and sister (they are half-siblings). The King of Gerar takes Sarah for his wife, but God warns him to return her (as she

2250-505: A relationship with Israel and moving up to those closest to a relationship with Israel, seem to be: (1) the Amalekites; (2) the seven Canaanite nations; (3) the nations of the world; (4) the Samaritans; (5) slaves; (6) resident aliens; (7) proselytes." The Hebrew Bible does not show much concern for non-Israelites except insofar as they interact with the people of Israel. Nonetheless, because

2375-502: A single law code accepted by the entire community. The two powerful groups making up the community—the priestly families who controlled the Second Temple and who traced their origin to Moses and the wilderness wanderings, and the major landowning families who made up the "elders" and who traced their own origins to Abraham, who had "given" them the land—were in conflict over many issues, and each had its own "history of origins". However,

2500-594: A special relationship with one people alone (Abraham and his descendants through Isaac and Jacob). In Judaism , the theological importance of Genesis centres on the covenants linking God to his chosen people and the people to the Promised Land . The name Genesis is from the Latin Vulgate , in turn borrowed or transliterated from Greek Γένεσις , meaning 'origin'; Biblical Hebrew : בְּרֵאשִׁית , romanized:  Bərēʾšīṯ , 'In [the] beginning'. Genesis

2625-406: A theoretical level, gentiles are discussed because, in order to define the people of Israel and its symbols and institutions, it was necessary to define who lay outside that group. Some Tannaim show a positive attitude towards the gentiles. Joshua ben Hananiah believed that there are righteous men amongst the gentiles who will enter the world to come. He believed that except for the descendants of

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2750-533: Is circumcision ; and the last, which does not appear until the Book of Exodus, is with Israel alone, and its sign is Sabbath . A great leader mediates each covenant ( Noah , Abraham, Moses), and at each stage God progressively reveals himself by his name ( Elohim with Noah, El Shaddai with Abraham, Yahweh with Moses). Throughout Genesis, various figures engage in deception or trickery to survive or prosper. Biblical scholar David M. Carr notes that such stories reflect

2875-503: Is a fictional autobiography of the biblical Dinah. In Diamant's version, Dinah falls in love with Shalem, the Canaanite prince, and goes to bed with him in preparation for marriage. Simeon and Levi, Jacob's sons, instigate the discord between Jacob and the men of the King of Shechem out of fear for their own prosperity, even though Dinah tells them the truth. A fictionalized account of Dinah's life

3000-503: Is a word that today usually means someone who is not Jewish. Other groups that claim Israelite heritage , notably Mormons , have historically used the term gentile to describe outsiders. More rarely, the term is used as a synonym for heathen , pagan . As a term used to describe non-members of a religious/ethnic group, gentile is sometimes compared to other words used to describe the "outgroup" in other cultures (see List of terms for ethnic out-groups ). In some translations of

3125-553: Is about to lay the knife upon his son, "the Angel of the Lord" restrains him, promising him again innumerable descendants. On the death of Sarah, Abraham purchases Machpelah (believed to be modern Hebron ) for a family tomb and sends his servant to Mesopotamia to find among his relations a wife for Isaac; after proving herself worthy, Rebekah becomes Isaac's betrothed. Keturah , Abraham's other wife, births more children, among whose descendants are

3250-591: Is also known as a Sidra (or Sedra / s ɛ d r ə / ). The parashah is a section of the Torah (Five Books of Moses) used in Jewish liturgy during a particular week. There are 54 weekly parshas, or parashiyot in Hebrew, and the full cycle is read over the course of one Jewish year. The first 12 of the 54 come from the Book of Genesis, and they are: Gentile Gentile ( / ˈ dʒ ɛ n t aɪ l / )

3375-536: Is changed to "Israel", and through the agency of his son Joseph , the children of Israel descend into Egypt, 70 people in all with their households, and God promises them a future of greatness. Genesis ends with Israel in Egypt, ready for the coming of Moses and the Exodus (departure). The narrative is punctuated by a series of covenants with God, successively narrowing in scope from all humankind (the covenant with Noah ) to

3500-399: Is changed to 'Abraham' and that of his wife Sarai to Sarah (meaning 'princess'), and God says that all males should be circumcised as a sign of his promise to Abraham. Due to her old age, Sarah tells Abraham to take her Egyptian handmaiden, Hagar , as a second wife (to bear a child). Through Hagar, Abraham fathers Ishmael . God then plans to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for

3625-432: Is divisible into two parts, the primeval history (chapters 1–11) and the ancestral history (chapters 12–50). The primeval history sets out the author's concepts of the nature of the deity and of humankind's relationship with its maker: God creates a world which is good and fit for humans, but when man corrupts it with sin, God decides to destroy his creation, sparing only the righteous Noah and his family to re-establish

3750-562: Is eliminated. This antiquity was needed to prove the worth of Israel's traditions to the nations (the neighbours of the Jews in the early Persian province of Judea), and to reconcile and unite the various factions within Israel itself. Describing the work of the biblical authors, John Van Seters wrote that lacking many historical traditions and none from the distant past, "They had to use myths and legends for earlier periods. In order to make sense out of

3875-417: Is included as one of the stories in the short story collection Sarah and After by Lynne Reid Banks . [REDACTED]  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain :  Singer, Isidore ; et al., eds. (1901–1906). "Dinah". The Jewish Encyclopedia . New York: Funk & Wagnalls. Book of Genesis Genesis is part of the Torah or Pentateuch,

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4000-416: Is interpreted by Christians as the " fall of man " into sin . Eve bears two sons, Cain and Abel . Cain works in the garden, and Abel works with meat; they both offer offerings to God one day, and God does not accept Cain's offering but does accept Abel's. This causes Cain to resent Abel, and Cain ends up murdering him. God then curses Cain . Eve bears another son, Seth , to take Abel's place in accordance to

4125-471: Is normally excluded). Since the name YHWH had not been revealed to them, they worshipped El in his various manifestations. (It is, however, worth noting that in the Jahwist source, the patriarchs refer to deity by the name YHWH, for example in Genesis 15.) Through the patriarchs, God announces the election of Israel, that is, he chooses Israel to be his special people and commits himself to their future. God tells

4250-441: Is really Abraham's wife) and he obeys. God sends Sarah a son and tells her she should name him Isaac ; through him will be the establishment of the covenant (promise). Sarah then drives Ishmael and his mother Hagar out into the wilderness (because Ishmael is not her real son and Hagar is a slave), but God saves them and promises to make Ishmael a great nation. Then, God tests Abraham by demanding that he sacrifice Isaac . As Abraham

4375-630: Is that J dates from either just before or during the Babylonian Exile, and the Priestly final edition was made late in the Exilic period or soon after. The almost complete absence of all the characters and incidents mentioned in primeval history from the rest of the Hebrew Bible has led a sizeable minority of scholars to conclude that these chapters were composed much later than those that follow, possibly in

4500-402: Is the good and evil inclination. The soul of the gentiles comes from the three shells: wind, cloud and fire, all of them evil. Moses de León , presumed author of the main kabbalistic work Sefer Ha-Zohar , agrees with this assumption: You know that all of the gentiles (goyim) and all of their matters are in the category of the impure... you must know and discern that the gentiles come from

4625-565: Is to be exactly translated and understood is the subject of scholarly controversy. Shechem asked his father to obtain Dinah for him, to be his wife. Hamor came to Jacob and asked for Dinah for his son: "Make marriages with us; give your daughters to us, and take our daughters for yourselves. You shall dwell with us; and the land shall be open to you." Shechem offered Jacob and his sons any bride-price they named. But "the sons of Jacob answered Shechem and his father Hamor deceitfully, because he had defiled their sister Dinah"; they said they would accept

4750-736: Is why Gentiles were created. These remarks by Yosef were sharply criticized by many Jewish organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and American Jewish Committee . Those who hold these views do not necessarily support any sort of harm to non-Jews. Rav Ovadia Yosef, himself, condemned those who vandalized Arab property, as did the vast majority of Orthodox leaders. Many Orthodox schools have expressed more humanistic views. Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, Rosh Yeshivah of Gush, for example, strongly opposed what he saw as racist attitudes among certain segments of Religious Zionism. Jewish philosopher and professor Menachem Kellner criticizes

4875-476: The Amaleks , the rest of the gentiles will adopt monotheism and the righteous among them will escape Gehenna . Other rabbinical writings show more hostility towards gentiles which needs to be understood in the context of frequent persecution of the Jews in this period. The most famous and extreme of the anti-gentile teachers is Simeon bar Yochai . He is often quoted by antisemites in his sayings: "The best among

5000-665: The Babylonian Exile ( c.  598 BC  – c.   538 BC ). At the end of the 19th century, most scholars adopted the documentary hypothesis . This theory held that the five books of the Pentateuch came from four sources: the Yahwist (abbreviated as J), the Elohist (E), the Deuteronomist (D) and the Priestly source (P). Each source was held to tell the same basic story, with

5125-546: The Garden of Eden . In the second chapter, God commanded the man that he is free to eat from any tree, including the tree of life, except from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil . Later, in chapter 3, a serpent , portrayed as a deceptive creature or trickster , convinces Eve to eat the fruit. She then convinces Adam to eat it, whereupon God throws them out and punishes them—Adam was punished with getting what he needs only by sweat and work, and Eve to giving birth in pain. This

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5250-587: The Midianites . Abraham dies at a prosperous old age and his family lays him to rest in Hebron (Machpelah). Isaac's wife Rebekah gives birth to the twins Esau (meaning 'velvet'), father of the Edomites , and Jacob (meaning 'supplanter' or 'follower'). Esau was a couple of seconds older as he had come out of the womb first, and was going to become the heir; however, through carelessness, he sold his birthright to Jacob for

5375-632: The Proto-Indo-European *ǵénh₁tis , meaning birth or production. The original meaning of "clan" or "family" was extended in post-Augustan Latin to acquire the wider meaning of belonging to a distinct nation or ethnicity. Later still, the word came to refer to other nations, 'not a Roman citizen'. In Saint Jerome 's Latin version of the Bible, the Vulgate , gentilis was used along with gentes , to translate Greek and Hebrew words with similar meanings when

5500-571: The Quran , gentile is used to translate an Arabic word that refers to non-Jews and/or people not versed in or not able to read scripture. The English word gentile derives from the Latin word gentilis , meaning "of or belonging to the same people or nation" (from Latin gēns  'clan, tribe, people, family'). Archaic and specialist uses of the word gentile in English (particularly in linguistics) still carry this meaning of "relating to

5625-584: The Victorian crisis of faith as evidence mounted that the Earth was far older than six thousand years. It is a custom among religious Jewish communities for a weekly Torah portion , popularly referred to as a parashah , to be read during Jewish prayer services on Saturdays, Mondays and Thursdays. The full name, פָּרָשַׁת הַשָּׁבוּעַ , Parashat ha-Shavua , is popularly abbreviated to parashah (also parshah / p ɑː r ʃ ə / or parsha ), and

5750-512: The kabbalists on whether gentiles access the mystical knowledge ( Daat ). Isaac Luria , prominent kabbalist, wrote: Israel possesses the three levels of soul, nefesh, ruah, neshamah,—from holiness... the gentiles possess only the level of nefesh from the feminine side of the shells... for the souls of the nations (gentiles), come from the Qlippoth , are called evil and not good' since they are created without knowledge (Daat). The animal soul of man

5875-420: The land of Goshen . Jacob calls his sons to his bedside and reveals their future before he dies. Joseph lives to old age and tells his brothers before his death that if God leads them out of the country, then they should take his bones with them. In 1978, David Clines published The Theme of the Pentateuch . Considered influential as one of the first authors to take up the question of the overarching theme of

6000-554: The land of Israel are dispersed so that they would not be able to regroup and fight arbitrarily. According to the Midrash, Simeon and Levi were only 14 and 13 years old, respectively, at the time of the rape of Dinah. They possessed great moral zealousness (later, in the episode of the Golden Calf , the Tribe of Levi would demonstrate their absolute commitment to Moses' leadership by killing all

6125-519: The pharaoh of Egypt asks him to interpret a dream he had about an upcoming famine, which Joseph does through God. He is then made second in command of Egypt by the grateful pharaoh, and later on, he is reunited with his father and brothers, who fail to recognize him and plead for food as the famine had reached Canaan as well. After much manipulation to see if they still hate him, Joseph reveals himself, forgives them for their actions, and lets them and their households into Egypt, where Pharaoh assigns to them

6250-485: The "defilement" refers to interracial sex rather than rape. Midrashic literature contains a series of proposed explanations of the Bible by rabbis . It provides further hypotheses of the story of Dinah, suggesting answers to questions such as her offspring: Osnat a daughter from Shechem, and links to later incidents and characters. One midrash states that Dinah was conceived as a male in Leah's womb but miraculously changed to

6375-448: The 16th to the 19th century treated the book of Genesis as factual. As evidence in the fields of paleontology , geology and other sciences was uncovered, scholars tried to fit these discoveries into the Genesis creation account. For example, Johann Jakob Scheuchzer in the 18th century believed that fossils were the remains of creatures killed during the flood. This literal understanding of Genesis fell out of favor with scholars during

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6500-520: The 3rd century BC. As for why the book was created, a theory which has gained considerable interest, although still controversial, is that of Persian imperial authorisation. This proposes that the Persians of the Achaemenid Empire , after their conquest of Babylon in 539 BC, agreed to grant Jerusalem a large measure of local autonomy within the empire, but required the local authorities to produce

6625-499: The Gentiles deserves to be killed", "The most pious woman is addicted to sorcery" and "The best of snakes ought to have its head crushed". Such extreme views can be explained by the sage's life experience: he witnessed his teacher being tortured to death, and became a fugitive after speaking out against Roman oppression. Later commentators have limited this teaching to idolators and only at times of war. Eliezer ben Hurcanus writes that

6750-408: The God of Israel is a universal God, there must be some relationship between gentiles and God. Accordingly, Novak observes, gentiles as well as Israelites are enjoined in the book of Psalms to "ascribe to the Lord glory and strength" ( Psalms 96:7 ). Christine E. Hayes states that gentiles in the Hebrew Bible were generally gerim (resident aliens). They were not necessarily converts, whether in

6875-586: The Greek word ethnos is used for peoples or nations in general, and is typically translated by the word "people", as in John 11:50. ("Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.") The translation "gentiles" is used in some instances, as in Matthew 10:5–6 to indicate non-Israelite peoples: These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into

7000-512: The Hebrews a written history of their ancestors. This view—which has been held for the past several thousand years, although it is not explicitly mentioned in either the Hebrew or the Christian Bible —holds that Moses included this story primarily because it happened and he viewed it as significant. It foreshadows later happenings and prophecies further along in Genesis and the Torah dealing with

7125-516: The KJV restricts the translation to "gentile" when the text is specifically referring to non-Jewish people. For example, the only use of the word in Genesis is in chapter 10, verse 5, referring to the peopling of the world by descendants of Japheth , "By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations." In the New Testament ,

7250-549: The LDS Church, since members regard themselves as regathered Israelites. The LDS Church's website states this about the meaning of gentile in Scripture (including the Book of Mormon), "As used in the scriptures, gentiles has several meanings. Sometimes it designates people of non-Israelite lineage, sometimes people of non-Jewish lineage, and sometimes nations that are without the gospel, even though there may be some Israelite blood among

7375-485: The Pentateuch, Clines' conclusion was that the overall theme is "the partial fulfilment—which implies also the partial nonfulfillment—of the promise to or blessing of the Patriarchs". (By calling the fulfilment "partial", Clines was drawing attention to the fact that at the end of Deuteronomy the people of Israel are still outside Canaan.) The patriarchs , or ancestors, are Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, with their wives (Joseph

7500-518: The Persian promise of greatly increased local autonomy for all provided a powerful incentive to cooperate in producing a single text. Genesis is an example of a work in the "antiquities" genre, as the Romans knew it, a popular genre telling of the appearance of humans and their ancestors and heroes, with elaborate genealogies and chronologies fleshed out with stories and anecdotes. Notable examples are found in

7625-481: The academic David Novak wrote, with limited exceptions, "The Bible can be seen as one long discussion of what differentiates Israel from all the other peoples of the world." The Hebrew Bible does not have a word which directly corresponds to the modern concept of a gentile (see etymology above). Instead, the Bible views different groups of gentiles in different ways. Novak states that, "The biblical categories of Gentiles, beginning with those farthest removed from

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7750-660: The age of the world since creation. This Anno Mundi system of counting years is the basis of the Hebrew calendar and Byzantine calendar . Counts differ somewhat, but they generally place the age of the Earth at about six thousand years. During the Protestant Reformation , rivalry between Catholic and Protestant Christians led to a closer study of the Bible and a competition to take its words more seriously. Thus, scholars in Europe from

7875-565: The analysis of the Abraham cycle, the Jacob cycle, and the Joseph cycle, and the Yahwist and Priestly sources . The problem lies in finding a way to unite the patriarchal theme of the divine promise to the stories of Genesis 1–11 (the primeval history ) with their theme of God's forgiveness in the face of man's evil nature. One solution is to see the patriarchal stories as resulting from God's decision not to remain alienated from humankind: God creates

8000-485: The ancestors of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel, and a daughter, Dinah . Shechem, son of Hamor the Hivite, rapes Dinah and asks his father to get Dinah for him as his wife, according to Chapter 34. Jacob agrees to the marriage but requires that all the males of Hamor's tribe be circumcised, including Hamor and Shechem. After this was performed and all the men were still weak, Jacob's sons Simeon and Levi murdered all

8125-565: The apocryphal book Testament of Job , Dinah is said to have been Job's second wife after the death of his first wife , who is referred to as "Sitidos". In 19th-century America, "Dinah" became a generic name for an enslaved African woman. At the 1850 Woman's Rights Convention in New York, a speech by Sojourner Truth was reported on in the New York Herald , which used the name "Dinah" to symbolize black womanhood as represented by Truth: In

8250-446: The assumption of some Orthodox Jews that there is an "ontological divide between Jews and Gentiles", which he believes is contrary to what the Torah teaches. Some Kabbalistic writings suggest a distinction between the souls of the gentiles and the souls of the Jews. These writings describe three levels, elements, or qualities of soul: Other descriptions of the soul add two more levels Chaya and Yechida. There has been debate among

8375-400: The book into the following sections: It is not clear, however, what this meant to the original authors, and most modern commentators divide it into two parts based on the subject matter, a primeval history (chapters 1–11) and a patriarchal history (chapters 12–50). While the first is far shorter than the second, it sets out the basic themes and provides an interpretive key for understanding

8500-448: The centuries after the Old and New Testament were written – created an increasingly clear binary opposition between "Jew" and "non-Jew". The Hebrew word "goy" went through a change in meaning which parallels the journey of "gentilis/gentile" – both words moving from meaning "nation" to "non-Jew" today. The word "Goy" is now also used in English, principally by Jewish people – see goy . In 2006,

8625-509: The circumcision which believed were astonished, as many as came with Peter, because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost. For they heard them speak with tongues, and magnify God. Then answered Peter, Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we? Within a few centuries, some Christians used the word "gentiles" to mean non-Christians. The alternative pagani

8750-417: The difference in the first case is one of essential quality. Similar anti-gentile remarks have been expressed by the late chief Sephardi Rabbi Ovadia Yosef , in which he stated in a sermon in 2010 that "The sole purpose of Gentiles is to serve Jews". He said that gentiles served a divine purpose: "Why are Gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat. That

8875-444: The end of the war in 1865 The New York Times exhorted the newly liberated slaves to demonstrate that they had the moral values to use their freedom effectively, using the names " Sambo " and "Dinah" to represent male and female former slaves: "You are free Sambo, but you must work. Be virtuous too, oh Dinah!" The name Dinah was subsequently used for dolls and other images of black women. The novel The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

9000-472: The entire book. The primeval history has a symmetrical structure hinging on the flood story (chapters 6–9) with the events before the flood mirrored by the events after. The ancestral history is structured around the three patriarchs Abraham, Jacob and Joseph. The stories of Isaac arguably do not make up a coherent cycle of stories and function as a bridge between the cycles of Abraham and Jacob. The Genesis creation narrative comprises two different stories;

9125-625: The fifth century, after being rejected by both orthodox Judaism and orthodox Christianity. With the ministry of Paul the Apostle the gospel began to be spread among the non-Jewish subjects of the Roman empire. A question existed among the disciples whether receiving the Holy Spirit through proselytization would be restricted to Israelites or whether it would include the gentiles as in Acts 10:34–47 : And they of

9250-477: The first five books of the Bible. Tradition credits Moses as the Torah's author . It was probably composed around the 5th century BC , although some scholars believe that primeval history (chapters 1–11), may have been composed and added as late as the 3rd century BC. Based on scientific interpretation of archaeological , genetic , and linguistic evidence, some mainstream Bible scholars consider Genesis to be primarily mythological rather than historical . It

9375-406: The first two chapters roughly correspond to these. In the first, Elohim , the generic Hebrew word for God, creates the heavens and the earth including humankind, in six days, and rests on the seventh . In the second, God, now referred to as " Yahweh Elohim" (rendered as "the L ORD God" in English translations), creates two individuals, Adam and Eve , as the first man and woman, and places them in

9500-426: The generations", with the first use of the phrase referring to the "generations of heaven and earth" and the remainder marking individuals. The toledot formula, occurring eleven times in the book of Genesis, serves as a heading which marks a transition to a new subject. The creation account of Genesis 1 functions as a prologue for the whole book and is not introduced with a toledot . The toledot divide

9625-504: The inclusion of non-Jews and the applicability of the Law of Moses , including circumcision . Over a few centuries, this led to a split between Jewish Christians , who followed Jesus but also Mosaic Law, and Pauline Christianity (also known as Gentile Christianity) which abandoned Mosaic Law and eventually became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Jewish Christian beliefs died out around

9750-466: The land of Canaan. (According to another tradition, her child from her rape by Shechem was Asenath , the wife of Joseph , and she herself later married the prophet Job.) The Tribe of Simeon received land within the territory of Judah and served as itinerant teachers in Israel, traveling from place to place to earn a living. In the Hebrew Bible, the tribe of Levi received a few Cities of Refuge spread out over Israel, and relied for their sustenance on

9875-672: The law, and to wear the breeches with the best white man that walks upon God's earth. Lizzie McCloud, a slave on a Tennessee plantation during the American Civil War , recalled that Union soldiers called all enslaved women "Dinah". Describing her fear when the Union army arrived, she said: "We was so scared we run under the house and the Yankees called 'Come out Dinah' (didn't call none of us anything but Dinah). They said 'Dinah, we're fightin' to free you and get you out from under bondage'." After

10000-508: The laws of the Temple, capital laws or others. Even one who is not an erudite Torah scholar is obligated to recognize this simple fact; it cannot be erased or obscured ... One who carefully studies the sources cited previously will realize the abysmal difference between the concepts "Jew" and "Gentile" -- and consequently, he will understand why Halacha differentiates between them. Bar-Chayim further quotes Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935), founder of

10125-411: The level of holiness, their soul remains trapped in the unholy world of the impure Qlippoth. However, other Kabbalists like Abraham Abulafia believed that higher levels of soul are to some extent accessible to gentiles. The Greek ethnos where translated as "gentile" in the context of early Christianity implies non-Israelite. In the years after the ministry of Jesus , there were questions over

10250-655: The like are classified merely as gentiles, goyim or nokrim " "The rabbis... had one term for all non-Israelites, whether idolaters or farmers, liars or trustworthy, Greek or Roman." However, the attitudes of the Rabbis to gentiles were not simple or uniform. Porton argues that the Mishnah-Tosefta discusses gentiles for two quite different reasons: firstly, practically, to guide the relations between Israelites and gentiles who were living alongside each other in Palestine. Secondly, at

10375-580: The main kabbalistic text of hasidic movement, the Tanya (or Likkutei Amarim). Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi , the founder of the Chabad hasidic dynasty, claims that Jews like gentiles possess a vital animal soul, but the animal soul of the Jew comes from the fourth husk (Qlippoth nogah), while the animal soul of the gentiles comes from the three lower impure husks (Qlippoth Tumaot). Thus nothing gentiles do can elevate them to

10500-677: The males. Jacob complained that their act would mean retribution by others, namely the Canaanites and Perizzites. Jacob and his tribe took all the Hivite women and children as well as livestock and other property for themselves. Joseph , Jacob's favourite son of the twelve, makes his brothers jealous (especially because of special gifts Jacob gave him) and because of that jealousy they sell Joseph into slavery in Egypt . Joseph endures many trials including being innocently sentenced to jail but he stays faithful to God. After several years, he prospers there after

10625-413: The mind of every gentile is always intent upon idolatry . He believed that gentiles only perform animal sacrifice to make a name for themselves. He further believed that gentiles have no share in the world to come . Eleazar of Modi'im wrote that Jews, when guilty of the same sin as gentiles, will not enter hell whereas the gentiles will. Eleazar ben Azariah believed that the rulings performed by

10750-491: The modern or rabbinic sense, but were still given many rights and privileges. They were also allowed to keep their distinct ethnic identities. But after Ezra-Nehemiah , many Israelites believed there was an impermeable ritual and genealogical boundary between themselves and gentiles. However, other scholars argue that the boundary is rooted in religious factors. Saul Oylan argues that gentiles automatically became Israelite when they lived in one of their tribal territories, which

10875-732: The modern sense were the Biblical Hebrew word nokhri ( נכרי ‎ – often otherwise translated as 'stranger') and for the New Testament Greek word éthnē ( ἔθνη ). The first English translators followed this approach, using the word "gentile" to refer to the non-Israelite nations (and principally using the word "nation(s)" to translate goy/goyim in other contexts). See the "Christianity" section . These developments in Bible translation practice were related to developments in Jewish Rabbinical and Christian thinking which – in

11000-423: The offer if the men of the city agreed to be circumcised . So the men of Shechem were deceived, and were circumcised; and "on the third day, when they were sore, two of the sons of Jacob and Leah, Simeon and Levi, Dinah's brothers, took their swords and came upon the city unawares, and killed all the males. They slew Hamor and his son Shechem with the sword, and took Dinah out of Shechem's house, and went away." And

11125-429: The palace unless Simeon agreed to marry her and remove her shame (according to Nachmanides , she only lived in his house and did not have sex with him). Therefore, Shaul is counted among Simeon's progeny, and he received a portion of land in Israel in the time of Joshua . The list of the names of the families of Israel in Egypt is repeated in Exodus 6:14–25 (including "Shaul the son of a Canaanitish woman", verse 15). In

11250-409: The patriarchs that he will be faithful to their descendants (i.e. to Israel), and Israel is expected to have faith in God and his promise. ("Faith" in the context of Genesis and the Hebrew Bible means an agreement to the promissory relationship, not a body of a belief.) The promise itself has three parts: offspring, blessings, and land. The fulfilment of the promise to each patriarch depends on having

11375-509: The people involved in idol worship), but their anger was misdirected here. One midrash told how Jacob later tried to restrain their hot tempers by dividing their portions in the land of Israel, and neither had lands of their own. Therefore, Dinah's son by Shechem was counted among Simeon's progeny and received a portion of land in Israel, Dinah herself being "the Canaanite woman" mentioned among those who went down into Egypt with Jacob and his sons (Genesis 46:10). When she died, Simeon buried her in

11500-413: The people. This latter usage is especially characteristic of the word as used in the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants." Thus, in such usage, Jewish people may be gentiles because they are not members of the LDS Church. Beyond this Scriptural usage, gentile was widely used by Mormons in day-to-day life in the nineteenth century, with such usage declining through the twentieth century. As with

11625-481: The priestly gifts that the Children of Israel gave them. In medieval rabbinic literature, there were efforts to justify the killing, not merely of Shechem and Hamor, but of all the townsmen. Maimonides argued that the killing was understandable because the townsmen had failed to uphold the seventh Noachide law ( denim ) to establish a criminal justice system. However, Nachmanides disagreed, partly because he viewed

11750-493: The promises given at 3:15, 20. After many generations of Adam have passed from the lines of Cain and Seth, the world becomes corrupted by human sin and Nephilim , and God wants to wipe out humanity for their wickedness. However, Noah is righteous and blameless. So first, he instructs the Noah to build an ark and put examples of all the animals on it, seven pairs of every clean animal and one pair of every unclean. Then God sends

11875-530: The rabbinic laws against fellowship and fraternization were relaxed; for example, Maimonides was the personal physician of Saladin . Even though most contemporary rabbinic schools are not as hostile to Gentiles as Medieval rabbinic schools were , some Orthodox rabbinic schools hold extremely xenophobic views. For example, scholars from the Zionist HaRav Kook yeshiva are schooled in the doctrine that Jews and gentiles have different kinds of souls. One of

12000-508: The rabbinic sages whose views are recorded in the Mishnah , from approximately 10–220 CE. It was this rabbinic literature of the first centuries CE that developed the concept of the gentile as we understand it today - as "any individual who is not a Jew, erasing all ethnic and social differences among different others". "Mishnah-Tosefta makes no clear distinction among the various types of non-Israelites. Romans, Greeks, Syrians, Egyptians, and

12125-488: The rape of Dinah , is told in Genesis 34. Dinah is first mentioned in Genesis 30:21 as the daughter of Leah and Jacob, born to Leah after she bore six sons to Jacob. In Genesis 34, Dinah went out to visit the women of Shechem , where her people had made camp and where her father Jacob had purchased the land where he had pitched his tent. Shechem (son of Hamor, the prince of the land) then took her and raped her, but how this text

12250-415: The rape of Dinah. The Torah lists the 70 members of Jacob's family who went down together into Egypt (Genesis 46:8–27). Simeon's children include "Shaul the son of a Canaanitish woman" (verse 10). The medieval French rabbi Rashi hypothesized that this Shaul was Dinah's son by Shechem. He suggests that after the brothers killed all the men in the city, including Shechem and his father, Dinah refused to leave

12375-569: The relationship between man and God. The ancestral history (chapters 12–50) tells of the prehistory of Israel , God's chosen people . At God's command, Noah's descendant Abraham journeys from his birthplace (described as Ur of the Chaldeans and whose identification with Sumerian Ur is tentative in modern scholarship ) into the God-given land of Canaan , where he dwells as a sojourner , as does his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob . Jacob's name

12500-406: The remainder of her life, nor if she ever married and raised a family". Chapter 34 of the Book of Genesis deals primarily with the family of Abraham and his descendants, including Dinah, her father Jacob, and her brothers. The traditional view is that Moses wrote Genesis as well as almost all the rest of the Torah , doubtlessly using varied sources but synthesizing all of them together to give

12625-469: The seventh law as a positive commandment that was not punishable by death. Instead, Nachmanides said that the townsmen presumably violated other Noachide laws, such as idolatry or sexual immorality. Later, the Maharal reframed the issue—not as sin, but rather as a war. That is, he argued that Simeon and Levi acted lawfully insofar as they carried out a military operation as an act of vengeance or retribution for

12750-515: The side of impurity, for the souls of the gentiles derive from the side of impurity The following passage in the Zohar reaffirms this idea: Said Rabbi Hiyya: If this is true (that neshamah is acquired through following the Torah) is it so that gentiles have no neshamah, only the living nefesh? Rabbi Yohannan said: That is correct. The view that gentiles only possess bestial souls was more popularized by

12875-415: The sins of their people. Abraham protests, but fails to get God to agree not to destroy the cities (reasoning with Abraham that not even ten righteous persons were found there; and among the righteous was Abraham's nephew Lot ). Angels save Abraham's nephew Lot (who was living there at the same time) and his family, but his wife looks back on the destruction, (even though God commanded not to) and turns into

13000-593: The sons of Jacob plundered whatever was in the city and in the field, "all their wealth, all their little ones and their wives, all that was in the houses". "Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, 'You have brought trouble on me by making me odious to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites ; my numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household.' But they said, 'Should he treat our sister as

13125-489: The sons of Jacob. Kirsch argues that the narrative combines a Yahwist narrator describing a rape, and an Elohist speaker describing a seduction. On the other hand, another critical scholar, Alexander Rofé, assumes that the earlier authors would not have considered rape to be defilement in and of itself, and posits that the verb describing Dinah as "defiled" was added later (elsewhere in the Bible, only married or betrothed women are "defiled" by rape). He instead says that such

13250-502: The sources later combined by various editors. Scholars were able to distinguish sources based on the designations for God. For example, the Yahwist source uses Yahweh, while the Elohistic and Priestly sources use Elohim. Scholars also use repeated and duplicate stories to identify separate sources. In Genesis, these include the two creation stories, three different wife–sister narratives , and

13375-726: The text of surviving copies varies. There are four major groupings of surviving manuscripts: the Masoretic Text , the Samaritan Pentateuch (in Samaritan script ), the Septuagint (a Greek translation), and fragments of Genesis found in the Dead Sea Scrolls . The Dead Sea Scrolls are oldest but cover only a small proportion of the book. Genesis appears to be structured around the recurring phrase elleh toledot , meaning "these are

13500-404: The text referred to the non-Israelite peoples. The most important of such Hebrew words was goy ( גוי ‎, plural, goyim ), a term with the broad meaning of "people" or "nation" which was sometimes used to refer to Israelites, but with the plural form goyim tending to be used in the Bible to refer to non-Israelite nations. Other words translated in some contexts to mean "gentile/s" in

13625-511: The two versions of Abraham sending Hagar and Ishmael into the desert. According to the documentary hypothesis, J was produced during the 9th century BC in the southern Kingdom of Judah and was believed to be the earliest source. E was written in the northern Kingdom of Israel during the 8th century BC. D was written in Judah in the 7th century BC and associated with the religious reforms of King Josiah c.  625 BC . The latest source

13750-408: The two violent brothers. Source-critical scholars speculate that Genesis combines separate literary strands, with different values and concerns, and does not pre-date the 1st millennium BC as a unified account. Within Genesis 34 itself, they suggest two layers of narrative: an older account ascribing the killing of Shechem to Simeon and Levi alone, and a later addition (verses 27 to 29) involving all

13875-463: The variety of different and often conflicting versions of stories, and to relate the stories to each other, they fitted them into a genealogical chronology." Tremper Longman describes Genesis as theological history: "the fact that these events took place is assumed, and not argued. The concern of the text is not to prove the history but rather to impress the reader with the theological significance of these acts". The original manuscripts are lost, and

14000-497: The vulnerability felt by ancient Israelites and that "such stories can be a major way of gaining hope and resisting domination". Examples include: In both Judaism and Christianity , a genre of literature emerged dedicated to interpreting and commenting on the Genesis creation narrative, known as the Hexaemeron . By totaling the spans of time in the genealogies of Genesis, religious authorities have calculated what they consider to be

14125-606: The way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Altogether, the word is used 123 times in the King James Version of the Bible, and 168 times in the New Revised Standard Version. In the terminology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), the word "gentile" can be used to refer to people who are not members of

14250-473: The work of Greek historians of the 6th century BC: their intention was to connect notable families of their own day to a distant and heroic past, and in doing so they did not distinguish between myth , legend , and facts. Professor Jean-Louis Ska of the Pontifical Biblical Institute calls the basic rule of the antiquarian historian the "law of conservation": everything old is valuable, nothing

14375-510: The world and humans, humans rebel, and God "elects" (chooses) Abraham. To this basic plot (which comes from the Yahwist), the Priestly source has added a series of covenants dividing history into stages, each with its own distinctive "sign". The first covenant is between God and all living creatures, and is marked by the sign of the rainbow; the second is with the descendants of Abraham ( Ishmaelites and others as well as Israelites), and its sign

14500-401: The world" attains salvation from famine, and by bringing the children of Israel down to Egypt he becomes the means through which the promise can be fulfilled. Scholars generally agree that the theme of divine promise unites the patriarchal cycles, but many would dispute the efficacy of trying to examine Genesis' theology by pursuing a single overarching theme, instead citing as more productive

14625-416: The yeshiva and the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine : The difference between the Jewish soul, in all its independence, inner desires, longings, character and standing, and the soul of all the Gentiles, on all of their levels, is greater and deeper than the difference between the soul of a man and the soul of an animal, for the difference in the latter case is one of quantity, while

14750-419: The yeshiva's scholars, David Bar-Hayim , published a paper in 1989 in which he explained the doctrine, entitled "Yisrael Nikraim Adam" (Israel Gentiles Man). In his conclusion, Bar-Hayim writes: There is no escaping the facts: the Torah of Israel makes a clear distinction between a Jew, who is defined as "Man," and a Gentile. This distinction is expressed in a long list of Halachic laws, be they monetary laws,

14875-462: Was P, which was written during the 5th century in Babylon . Based on these dates, Genesis and the rest of the Pentateuch did not reach its final, present-day form until after the Babylonian Exile. Julius Wellhausen argued that the Pentateuch was finalized in the time of Ezra . Ezra 7 :14 records that Ezra traveled from Babylon to Jerusalem in 458 BC with God's law in his hand. Wellhausen argued that this

15000-485: Was believed to reflect 'early practices' ( Ezekiel 47:21–23 ). Troy W. Martin believes Jewishness is defined by adherence to covenantal circumcision, regardless of ancestry ( Genesis 17:9–14 ). Thus, even an uncircumcised Jew could be a gentile despite his biological descent from Abraham. He believes this view was extended to the New Testament , where membership in God's chosen people was based on religious adherence rather than ancestry ( Galatians 3:28 ). Tannaim were

15125-425: Was composed in the time of King Solomon by a priest or Levite . This author used the Hebrew word elohim for God. This original work was expanded in the 8th century BC, with the name Yahweh used for God. In the 7th century BC, during the time of Jeremiah , the final parts of the Pentateuch were added, specifically the main parts of Deuteronomy. This would mean the Pentateuch achieved its final form before

15250-591: Was felt to be less elegant. In the King James Version , "gentile" is only one of several words used to translate goy or goyim . It is translated as "nation" 374 times, "heathen" 143 times, "gentiles" 30 times, and "people" 11 times. Some of these verses, such as Genesis 12:2 ("I will make of thee a great nation") and Genesis 25:23 ("Two nations are in thy womb") refer to Israelites or descendants of Abraham . Other verses, such as Isaiah 2:4 and Deuteronomy 11:23 are generic references to any nation. Typically,

15375-429: Was her daughter by Shechem. Early Christian commentators such as Jerome likewise assign some of the responsibility to Dinah, in venturing out to visit the women of Shechem. This story was used to demonstrate the danger to women in the public sphere as contrasted with the relative security of remaining in private. On his deathbed, their father Jacob curses Simeon and Levi's "anger" (Genesis 49). Their tribal portions in

15500-403: Was the newly compiled Pentateuch. Nehemiah 8 – 10 , according to Wellhausen, describes the publication and public acceptance of this new law code c.  444 BC . There was now a large gap between the earliest sources of the Pentateuch and the period they claimed to describe, which ended c.  1200 BC . Most scholars held to the documentary hypothesis until the 1980s. Since then,

15625-455: Was written anonymously, but both Jewish and Christian religious tradition attributes the entire Pentateuch —Genesis, Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy —to Moses . During the Enlightenment , the philosophers Benedict Spinoza and Thomas Hobbes questioned Mosaic authorship . In the 17th century, Richard Simon proposed that the Pentateuch was written by multiple authors over

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