Towards a “repertoire interaction” model of ethnicity: “Becoming ‘Israel’” and available cultural repertoires

Abstract

This article addresses lingering “groupist” challenges in the characterization of ethnic constructions through the lens of an unusual ethnogenetic phenomenon, the presence of multiple different claimants to an “Israelite” identity in many different places all around the world. It suggests that as this phenomenon has a somewhat obvious explanation – the corresponding popularity of biblical traditions themselves all around the world – it can help us think more clearly about what can be available for ethnic construction in a given context and why. It also suggests the need to shift focus from how peer-to-peer interactions lead to the articulation of ethnic visions to the role of interactions with available repertoires themselves, which it refers to as a “repertoire interaction” model of ethnic construction.

Keywords

ethnicity tradition Israelite identity primordialism groupism

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abbink

(1990) The enigma of Beta Esra’el Ethnogenesis: an ethno-historical study. Cahiers d’Études Africaines 30(4): 120, 397–450.

Apes

(1831) The Increase of the Kingdom of Christ, A Sermon. G. F. Bunce.

Asad

(1993) Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Johns Hopkins University Press.

Barth

(1994) Enduring and emerging issues in the analysis of ethnicity. In: Vermeulen

Govers

(eds) The Anthropology of Ethnicity: Beyond Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. Het Spinhuis, 11–32.

Bates

(1993) Patriarchal blessings and the routinization of charisma. Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 26: 1–29.

Baumann

(1999) The Multicultural Riddle: Rethinking National, Ethnic, and Religious Identities. Routledge.

Benite

ZB-D

(2009) The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History. Oxford University Press.

Brubaker

(2004) Ethnicity Without Groups. Harvard University Press.

Brubaker

(2006) Nationalist Politics and Everyday Ethnicity in a Transylvanian Town. Princeton University Press.

10.

Brubaker

Cooper

(2005) Identity. In: Colonialism in Question. Theory, Knowledge, History. University of California Press, 59–90.

11.

Bruce

(1790) Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile in the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773. J. Ruthven.

12.

Buell

(2005) Why This New Race: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity. Columbia University Press.

13.

Chapoutot

(2016) Greeks, Romans, Germans: How the Nazis Usurped Europe’s Classical past. University of California Press. trans. RR Nybakken.

14.

Chireau

(1999) African American religious encounters with Judaism, 1790-1930, an overview. In: Deutsch

(ed) Black Zion: African American Religious Encounters with Judaism. Oxford University Press, 15–32.

15.

Corinaldi

(1998) Jewish Identity: The Case of Ethiopian Jewry. Magness Press.

16.

Cornell

(2000) That’s the story of our life. In: Spickard

Burroughs

(eds) We are a People: Narrative and Multiplicity in Constructing Ethnic Identity. Temple University Press, 41–53.

17.

Demetriou

(2012) Negotiating Identity in the Ancient Mediterranean: The Archaic and Classical Greek Multiethnic Emporia. Cambridge University Press.

18.

Dorman

(2013) Chosen People: The Rise of American Black Israelite Religions. Oxford University Press.

19.

Dougherty

(2021) Lost Tribes Found: Israelite Indians and Religious Nationalism in Early America. University of Oklahoma Press.

20.

Eriksen

(1991) The cultural contexts of ethnic differences. Man 26(1): 127–144.

21.

Fenton

(2020) Old Canaan in a New World: Native Americans and the Lost Tribes of Israel. New York University Press. North American Religions.

22.

Fleming

(2012) The Legacy of Israel in Judah’s Bible. Cambridge University Press.

23.

Fredriksen

(2008) Augustine and the Jews. Doubleday.

24.

Fredriksen

(2017) Paul: The Pagans’ Apostle. Yale University Press.

25.

Gary

Gordon

(2012) Binding Earth and Heaven: Patriarchal Blessings in the Prophetic Development of Early Mormonism. The Pennsylvania State University Press.

26.

Geary

(2002) The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe. Princeton University Press.

27.

Glaude

JES

(2000) Exodus!: Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America. University of Chicago Press.

28.

Gruen

(2011) Rethinking the Other in Antiquity. Princeton University Press.

29.

Guk-Pyoung

(2024) Judah’s Desire and the Making of the Abrahamic Israel: A Contextual and Functional Approach. de Gruyter.

30.

Handler

(2002) Reinventing the invention of culture. Social Analysis 46(1): 26–34.

31.

Heberer

(2007) Entrepreneurs and ethnic identity. In: Doing Business in Rural China. Liangshan’s New Ethnic Entrepreneurs. University of Washington Press, 186–205.

32.

Heydemann

(2016) People(s) of God? biblical exegesis and the language of community in late Antique and early medieval Europe. In: Hovden

Lutter

Pohl

(eds) Meanings of Community Across Medieval Eurasia. Comparative Approaches. Brill, 27–60.

33.

Hobsbawm

(1983) Introduction: inventing traditions. In: Hobsbawm

Ranger

(eds) The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge University Press, 1–14.

34.

Jiménez

(2004) Negotiating ethnic boundaries: multiethnic Mexican Americans and ethnic identity in the United States. Ethnicities 4(1): 75–97.

35.

Jochmann

(1980) Adolf Hitler: Monologe Im Führerhauptquartier. Albrecht Knaus, 1941–1944.

36.

Jones

(2022) A necessary book for dark-skinned people: Nineteenth-century missions, race, and scripture. In: Choudhury

Altman

Persaud

(eds) American Examples, Vol 2: New Conversations About Religion. University of Alabama Press, 123–150.

37.

Kaplan

(1992) The Beta Israel: Falasha in Ethiopia: From Earliest Times to the Twentieth Century. NYU Press.

38.

Lieu

(2003) Image and Reality: The Jews in the World of the Christians in the Second Century. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

39.

Lieu

(2017) Marcion’s gospel and the new testament: Catalyst or consequence? New Testament Studies 63(2): 329–334.

40.

Maffly-Kipp

(2010) Setting down the Sacred Past: African-American Race Histories. Harvard University Press.

41.

Martyr

(2003) Dialogue with Trypho (Selections from the Fathers of the Church, Volume 3) (ed. M Slusser; trans. TB Falls). Catholic University of America Press.

42.

Masuzawa

(2007) Theory without method: situating a discourse analysis on religion. In: Religion and Society: An Agenda for the 21st Century. International Studies in Religion and Society 5. Brill, 173–204.

43.

Masuzawa

(2012) The Invention of World Religions. University of Chicago Press.

44.

Mauss

(2010) All Abraham’s Children: Changing Mormon Concepts of Race and Lineage. University of Illinois Press.

45.

Merino

M-E

Becerra

De Fina

(2017) Narrative discourse in the construction of Mapuche ethnic identity in context of displacement. Discourse & Society 28(1): 60–80.

46.

Mueller

(2017) Race and the Making of the Mormon People. UNC Press Books.

47.

Munro-Hay

(2001) A sixth century kebra Nagast? Annales d'Ethiopie 17(1): 43–58.

48.

Neilson

(2015) Mormon Mission work. In: Givens

Barlow

(eds) The Oxford Handbook of Mormonism. Oxford University Press, 182–195.

49.

Parfitt

(2003) The lost tribes of Israel: the history of a myth. Phoenix.

50.

Parker

(2017) Greek Gods Abroad: Names, Natures, and Transformations. University of California Press.

51.

Patterson

(2010) Kinship Myth in Ancient Greece. University of Texas Press.

52.

Quirin

(1992) The Evolution of the Ethiopian Jews: A History of the Beta Israel (Falasha) to 1920. University of Pennsylvania Press.

53.

Roche

(2013) “Sparta fühlte ich mich wie in einer deutschen Stadt” (Goebbels): the leaders of the Third Reich and the Spartan nationalist paradigm. In: Rash

Horan

Wildmann

(eds). English and German Nationalist and Anti-semitic Discourse, 1871-1945, 91–115.

54.

Roche

(2018) The peculiarities of German philhellenism. The Historical Journal 61(2): 541–560.

55.

Rovelli

(2022) Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution. Penguin.

56.

Rubenson

(1995) The Letters of St. Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint. Fortress Press.

57.

Said

(1986) Michael Walzer’s’ exodus and revolution’: a Canaanite reading. Grand Street 5: 86–106.

58.

Simon

(2009) Verus Israel: A Study of the Relations Between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire, AD 135-425. The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization.

59.

Simon

(2013) Greek myth in Etruscan culture. In: The Etruscan World. Routledge.

60.

Smith

(1986) The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Basil Blackwell.

61.

Solmsen

(1986) Aeneas founded Rome with Odysseus. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 90: 93–110.

62.

Spickard

Burroughs

(2000) We are a People: Narrative and Multiplicity in Constructing Ethnic Identity. Temple University Press.

63.

Staples

(2023) Paul and the Resurrection of Israel: Jews, Former Gentiles, Israelites. Cambridge University Press.

64.

Stoler

(1997) Racial histories and their regimes of truth. Political Power and Social Theory 11(1): 183–206.

65.

Syed

Azmitia

(2008) A narrative approach to ethnic identity in emerging adulthood: bringing life to the identity status model. Developmental Psychology 44(4): 1012–1027.

66.

Tanyeri-Erdemir

(2006) Archaeology as a source of national pride in the early years of the Turkish republic. Journal of Field Archaeology 31(4): 381–393.

67.

Theodossopoulos

(2013) Laying claim to authenticity: five anthropological dilemmas. Anthropological Quarterly 86(2): 337–360.

68.

Thiessen

(2023) A Jewish Paul: The Messiah’s Herald to the Gentiles. Baker Books.

69.

Tobolowsky

(2017) The Sons of Jacob and the Sons of Herakles: The History of the Tribal System and the Organization of Biblical Identity. Forschungen zum Alten Testament 2. Mohr Siebeck.

70.

Tobolowsky

(2022) The Myth of the Twelve Tribes of Israel: New Identities Across Time and Space. Cambridge University Press.

71.

Tobolowsky

(2025) Israel and its Heirs in Late Antiquity. Cambridge Elements. Cambridge University Press.

72.

Walzer

Said

(1986) An exchange: ‘exodus and revolution. Grand Street 5: 246–259.

73.

Wimmer

(2002) Nationalist Exclusion and Ethnic Conflicts: Shadows of Modernity. Cambridge University Press.

74.

Wimmer

(2008a) Elementary strategies of ethnic boundary making. Ethnic and Racial Studies 31(6): 1025–1055.

75.

Wimmer

(2008b) The making and unmaking of ethnic boundaries: a multilevel process theory. American Journal of Sociology 113(4): 970–1022.

76.

Wimmer

(2009) Herder’s heritage and the boundary-making approach: studying ethnicity in immigrant societies. Sociological Theory 27(3): 244–270.

77.

Zerubavel

(2003) Time Maps. University of Chicago Press.

78.

Zion

(2023) After decades of struggle in Israel, dozens of African Hebrew Israelites face deportation. Available at: https://apnews.com/article/israel-black-hebrew-israelites-dimona-religion-e4166ab562495d56fc05e892f460630c (accessed 25 October 2025).