Gentiles Are Not Barbarians
This chapter compares the Jew-goy distinction to another binary opposition functioning in Mediterranean antiquity, usually considered both older and similar: the Greek-barbarian one. After following the traces that this contrast has left in Jewish texts, primarily in Paul and in Tannaitic literature, the chapter compares and contrasts these two discursive formations, shedding light on the uniqueness of the Jew-goy distinction. With the aid of new studies on the concept of “barbarians” in classical Greece and Hellenistic cultures it reconstructs the relationship between the two oppositions and their different functions. Unlike the barbarian, which exists in shifting discursive, legal, and ideological terrains and is always open for negotiations, the goy remains a closed and stable rabbinic formation, a perfect performative reflection of their discursive strategies and structure of separation.