A Stranger in My Own Land: Can a Sojourner Belong to the Household?

Clifton, Bruno

A Stranger in My Own Land: Can a Sojourner Belong to the Household?

dc.contributor.author	Clifton, Bruno
dc.date.accessioned	2023-09-26T13:17:25Z
dc.date.available	2023-09-26T13:17:25Z
dc.date.issued	2023
dc.description.abstract	Occasionally, the biblical term גר has been taken to refer to a “dependent worker” or “client” based on the thought that household membership can be gained through work provided to the household. Mention of household membership tests the identity of the sojourner in the ancient world as stranger or foreigner; a social category listed with widows and orphans - whose status is also defined by the household - as deserving of protection. Given its centrality as a basic social unit in the ancient Near East, we might expect that purchase in a household would grant a status that dissolves the social distance and attendant consequences (fragility of income, lack of patrimony, object of suspicion) thought to be borne by גרים. In what sense, then, is a “dependent worker” who secures membership in the household a גר ? This article reconsiders how distant a person must be from the society within which he resides to make him a ,גר shifting the semantic emphasis of this term away from origin and towards social integration.
dc.identifier.citation	"The Biblical Annals" 2023, T. 13, nr 3, s. 367-383
dc.identifier.doi	10.31743/biban.14712
dc.identifier.issn	2083-2222
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12153/5799
dc.language.iso	en
dc.publisher	Wydawnictwo KUL
dc.rights	Attribution 4.0 International	en
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.subject	stranger
dc.subject	ger
dc.subject	client
dc.subject	dependent worker
dc.subject	household
dc.subject	social structures
dc.subject	biblical law
dc.subject	foreigner
dc.subject	sojourner
dc.title	A Stranger in My Own Land: Can a Sojourner Belong to the Household?
dc.type	info:eu-repo/semantics/article