The Spirit Within Me: Self and Agency in Ancient Israel and Second Temple Judaism (2021 Newsom), book

Carol A. Newsom, The Spirit Within Me: Self and Agency in Ancient Israel and Second Temple Judaism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021).

Abstract

Conceptions of "the self" have received significant recent attention in philosophy, anthropology, and cultural history. Scholars argue that the introspective self of the modern West is a distinctive phenomenon that cannot be projected back onto the cultures of antiquity. While acknowledging such difference is vital, it can lead to an inaccurate flattening of the ancient self. 00In this study, Carol A. Newsom explores the assumptions that govern ancient Israelite views of the self and its moral agency before the fall of Judah, as well as striking developments during the Second Temple period. She demonstrates how the collective trauma of the destruction of the Temple catalyzed changes in the experience of the self in Israelite literature, including first-person-singular prayers, notions of self-alienation, and emerging understandings of a defective heart and will. Examining novel forms of spirituality as well as sectarian texts, Newsom chronicles the evolving inward gaze in ancient Israelite literature, unveiling how introspection in Second Temple Judaism both parallels and differs from forms of introspective selfhood in Greco-Roman cultures.

Contents

Preface -- 1. The Self in Israelite Culture: A Preliminary Overview -- 2. Agency in Biblical Narrative -- 3. Moral Agency in Israelite Perspective: Three Case Studies -- 4. Sin-Consciousness, Self-Alienation, and the Construction of Interiority -- 5. Rational Agency and the Birth of the Human: Genesis 2-3 and Its Early Interpretation -- 6. The Hodayot of the Maskil and the Subjectivity of the Masochistic Sublime -- Conclusion