Living in a Land of Epithets: Anonymity in Judges 19-21

Abstract

Recently, scholars such as Cheryl Exum and Mieke Bal have utilized a literary method for understanding the peculiar narrative technique of the Judges corpus. Exum explains that the narrator is utilizing the disintegration of his own plot to exhibit the dissolution of Israel's society, and Mieke Bal emphasizes the 'incoherence' of chronology as a means rather than an obstacle to understanding Judges. Moreover, I am suggesting that the narrator is applying disintegrating characterization to reflect a macabre society in which individuals dehumanize. This dehumanizing propelled the entire nation toward internal, self-imposed exile. Furthermore and more importantly, the narrator employs the concept of anonymity as a major literary technique to display both the universality of 'every one doing right in his own eyes' and the annihilation of the identity of the powerless individual which leads to the dismemberment of familial, tribal and national wholeness. Anonymity in Judg. 19-21 as a literary technique symbolizes and epitomizes the gradual, downward spiraling disintegration that is occurring increasingly throughout the narrative until the community faces radical anarchy in chs. 17-21.