This talk examines the effect of the sixth century BCE deportations to Babylonia on Israelite identity. Paying close attention to the prophetic book of Ezekiel, whose community was deported from Jerusalem to Babylonia by Nebuchadnezzar, it explores how the experience of forced migration changed the way the people talked about themselves, their past, and their homeland. To help make sense of these changes, it places Ezekiel’s reactions in conversation with the responses of more recent forced migrants to similar experiences.

Dr. Carly L. Crouch is David Allen Hubbard Professor of Old Testament at Fuller
Theological Seminary and author of several volumes, including War and Ethics in the Ancient Near East (2009), The Making of Israel (2014), Israel and the Assyrians (2014) and An Introduction to the Study of Jeremiah (2017). Her research focuses on the intersection of theology, ethics, and community identities, with a historical focus on the social and intellectual world of ancient Israel and a contemporary interest in the relevance of this work for twenty-first century ethics. She is especially interested in integrating insights from other disciplines, such as anthropology, refugee studies, and postcolonial theory, into biblical studies. Her current work addresses the effects of Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of Jerusalem on Israelite and Judahite identities and is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.

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E-mail cjsrsvp@humnet.ucla.edu