Friendship in the Hebrew Bible
Overview
Friendship, though a topic of considerable humanistic and cross disciplinary interest in contemporary scholarship, has been largely ignored by scholars of the Hebrew Bible, possibly because of its complexity and elusiveness. Filling a significant gap in our knowledge and understanding of biblical texts, Saul M. Olyan provides this original, accessible analysis of a key form of social relationship. In this thorough and compelling assessment, Olyan analyzes a wide range of texts, including prose narratives, prophetic materials, psalms, pre-Hellenistic wisdom collections, and the Hellenistic-era wisdom book Ben Sira. This in-depth, contextually sensitive, and theoretically engaged study explores how the expectations of friends and family members overlap and differ, examining, among other things, characteristics that make the friend a distinct social actor; failed friendship; and friendships in narratives such as those of Ruth and Naomi, and Jonathan and David. Olyan presents a comprehensive look at what constitutes friendship in the Hebrew Bible.
Top Highlights
“What is friendship? At first blush, the answer seems obvious: Friendship is a voluntary association between people who enjoy one another’s company and care, at least to some degree, about one another’s welfare. But this definition, which would probably elicit few objections from most present-day Europeans and North Americans, does not address a number of contested issues in contemporary Western friendship. For example, is it possible for men and women to be friends? Must friends be peers in every respect, or is there room for age differences, or inequality of income, social status, or power? Can parents and children be friends? Might sexual relations play a role in friendship? Does friendship necessarily involve emotional intimacy?” (Page 1)
“has violated an obligation by not demonstrating loyalty, for example, by helping at a time of need” (Page 40)
“loyalty (ḥesed) characterizes ideal familial relations” (Page 16)
“Why is it that having loyal friends and relatives generally goes unmentioned in blessing formulae, and the loss of friends and the alienation of family members is rarely formulated as a curse?” (Page 56)
“friends owe friends loyalty (ḥesed) as brothers owe loyalty to brothers, a manifestation of behavioral parity” (Page 31)
- Title: Friendship in the Hebrew Bible
- Author: Saul M. Olyan
- Series: Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Print Publication Date: 2017
- Logos Release Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Bible. O.T. › Criticism, interpretation, etc; Friendship › Biblical teaching
- ISBNs: 9780300182682, 9780300184228, 0300182686, 0300184220
- Resource ID: LLS:FRNDSHPHBRWBBL
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T00:05:27Z
