ABSTRACT
Although a philological connection between am ha-aretz and paganus may be weak, this modern group continued a long tradition of shifting the term’s meaning, manifest as early as the pre-exilic books of the Hebrew Bible. In an effort to make sense of the am ha-aretz’s fluidity in the Hebrew Bible, the term has been described as undergoing a “semantic revolution,” in which it initially referred “to a sociological or juridical body,” but later “a theologically reflected judgment of faith about exile, captivity and return.”3 In its earliest usage in the Hebrew Bible, the am ha-aretz pointed to the native population of a region.4 More often, the pre-
1 Jennifer Hunter, Magickal Judaism: Connecting Pagan and Jewish Practice (New York, 2006), 19.
