memory & identity

The Bible suggests that the people of Israel and its God, whose proper name is YHWH, usually designated by the word "Lord" in English Bibles, have entered into a specific agreement called a "covenant" (Hebrew: Berîth). The agreement says that YHWH will look after the people if they keep His laws, which include worshiping Him, Him alone, and observing a variety of laws for the religious, social, and moral benefit of the people, at least as those values were understood at that time. This covenant has a history; recounting the history of the covenant, in fact, is what creates the historical narrative of the Hebrew Bible…

… It also means that fortune and misfortune depend on controllable variables - the behavior of the people. Not only does this make people responsible for their own fortunes in nature, it also has consequences for the conception of the self. In place of locating themselves geographically in the great forces of nature, the Israelites locate themselves in the unique history of Israel and, later, in the history of the dispersed Jewish people. That necessarily makes each individual more aware of the unique aspects of public and private moral experience. The Bible demythologizes nature and mythologizes history. (Segal)

υιοθεσια

Genealogy is a written or oral expression of the descent of a person or persons from an ancestor or ancestors. As an expression of a person's descent, a genealogy must express or imply a kinship relationship between the persons named in it. These kinship relationships are especially important in tribal and most nonurban societies. Status, rights and obligations can be defined by such relationships

Genealogies characterised by: 1. Segmentation

2. Depth

3. Fluidity

Genealogies are frequently reliable statements of the domestic, political, and religious relationships recognized by the people who use the genealogies. They can therefore provide the modern historian with helpful insights into the social perspectives of these people. In addition, although genealogies may be highly fluid, they do not change capriciously. They are not usually invented by their users, but changes are made in existing genealogies on the basis of contemporary information or disputed and poorly remembered historical information.

In the same manner that individuals become part of a new lineage group, entire lineages may be grafted into a foreign lineage structure. This grafting is expressed genealogically by placing the founder of the grafted lineage in the proper position on the host lineage's genealogy. Once again, the kinship relation expressed in the genealogy is an index to the incoming group's status within the total lineage, although groups that are attached in this way are seldom fully assimilated. (Wilson)