“You too were once aliens...” (Lev 19:34): ‘Aliens,’ as seen in the Religious, Social and Cultural Contexts depicted in the Hebrew Bible

Ks. Dariusz DZIADOSZ

Chair of the Exegesis of Historical, Prophetic and Didactic Books of the Old Testament, Institute of the Biblical Studies, Faculty of Theology, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Al. Racławickie 14, 20-950 Lublin, Poland , Poland

Abstract

Regardless of their origin, cultural and social identity, as well as their social status, strangers have always epitomized the alien and puzzling reality of the unknown and the impenetrable. The ‘otherness’ of strangers and their difference contribute to twofold attitudes on the part of members of their host communities. On the one hand, the presence of strangers among us is often perceived as a threat to what we have so far believed to be certain and imponderable, which may release our defense mechanisms, deepen the distance between strangers and us, and provoke mutual aggression. On the other hand, it also happens that strangers awaken in us the feeling of superiority, which in turn makes us want to divest them of their identities and incorporate them into the structures of our society, culture and religion. The present article reconstructs both kinds of attitudes on the examples drawn from the Hebrew Bible.

Translated by Dorota Chabrajska

Keywords:

stranger, alien, refugee, Deuteronomic Code, Old Testament literature