The Lost and Longed-For Homeland in the Exilic Literature of the Hebrew Bible

The subproject aims to explore concepts of homeland in the exilic literature of the Hebrew Bible—an aspect that has been largely neglected in research to date. The Hebrew Bible contains no term that corresponds to the German word Heimat in all its semantic nuances. Nevertheless, it reflects and models ideas of homeland avant la lettre in ways that—so the project’s initial thesis—constitute formative yet largely overlooked pre-histories of contemporary notions of homeland(s).

The exilic texts of the Hebrew Bible should be expected to exhibit a sustained engagement with the theme of “homeland,” as the experience of the Babylonian exile in the sixth century BCE was what first prompted intensive theological reflection on the “land of Israel” as the habitat of the “people of Israel.” The subproject therefore examines four major examples of exilic and post-exilic literature—first the Book of Ezekiel and the Priestly Source, and second the so-called Deuteronomistic History and the exilic and early postexilic texts of the Book of Isaiah (Deutero-Isaiah). It investigates how these corpora model the “land of Israel” as the homeland of the “people of Israel” and what role these models played in shaping ancient Israel’s literary self-understanding. 

Building on this, the project inquires concerning the extent to which biblical models of homeland became effective in their own right, the extent to which they detached themselves from historical realities, and how they simultaneously served as resources for establishing a sense of belonging and orientation in the world.