ABSTRACT
Esau and his progeny, the Edomites, have been depicted as Israel’s preeminent enemy throughout Jewish literary history. Beginning in the Hebrew Bible, authors use Esau and associated motifs—the Edomites, the land of Edom (or Seir), and Esau’s grandson, Amalek—as “Othering” mechanisms to promote violence, sometimes to the point of genocide. The chapter essay will begin by outlining the relationship between the biblical accounts of Esau and Edom and the underlying socio-political reality for the ancient Transjordanian kingdom. This brief sketch will show how the Hebrew Bible set a precedent for disconnecting the story of Edom from extrabiblical accounts, in order to create violent anti-Edomite propaganda for Judahite survivors and refugees enduring Jerusalem’s fall around 586 BCE. The chapter will then move to the Second Temple period to analyze how Jewish apocalyptic literature from the first two centuries BCE, specifically Jubilees and 1 Enoch, took the biblical precedent and further manipulated Esau and Edom as “Other” generally, to promote genocidal theologies toward those perceived to be outsiders. This tendency arrives at its most extreme in the War Scroll, which explicitly promotes genocide toward the Edomite “Other.”
