Whitewashing Athena: Gaining Perspective On Bernal and the Bible

Martin Bernal points to the Eurocentric construction of the West via the obliterating or 'writing out' of the East (and Africa) in his two-volume work, Black Athena. Ordinarily a book as riddled with errors involving basic philology and reading of myth as history would not have caused more...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Bach, Alice 1942- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Sage 1998
In: Journal for the study of the Old Testament
Year: 1998, Volume: 23, Issue: 77, Pages: 3-19
IxTheo Classification:HB Old Testament
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
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Summary:Martin Bernal points to the Eurocentric construction of the West via the obliterating or 'writing out' of the East (and Africa) in his two-volume work, Black Athena. Ordinarily a book as riddled with errors involving basic philology and reading of myth as history would not have caused more than a ripple on the literary and scholarly landscape. But Black Athena has generated an industry: several major colloquia at national scholarly meetings, special issues of scholarly journals, more than fifty articles, the major scholarly collection Black Athena Revisited cited fre quently in this article, as well as Mary Lefkowitz's frequent protestations about the arguments and expertise of Bernal. The field of biblical studies, scarcely a stone's throw across the Mediterranean from classics has been uninterested in the Bernal debate—at least as far as I can tell. This silence reflects more of a disciplinary myo pia, in my opinion, than a disinclination to deal with the subject of race within bib lical literature. The compartmentalism of knowledge that the scholarly disciplines exhibit in the case of Bernal versus the academy reflect the need for a blending of approaches. The first tentative steps in this direction have been taken by scholars proposing interdisciplinary programs such as peri-Mediterranean studies.
ISSN:1476-6728
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal for the study of the Old Testament
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1177/030908929802307701