Restoration and the Refiguring of Israel's Identity: Reading Allusion to Deuteronomy 30.1-10 in Second Temple Narratives

Whereas most biblical scholars investigate allusion to address questions concerning literary influence and authorial intentionality, my project departs from that model to develop an intertextual and reader-oriented approach to biblical allusion that considers the interpretive possibilities reading allusion allows irrespective of authorial intention. My study explores how reading allusion to Deuteronomy 30.1-10, where Moses tells of Israel's restoration from exile, contributes to the literary figuration of a restored Israel in four biblical narratives: Nehemiah, Ruth, Tobit, and the Gospel of Mark. I argue that, once activated, the allusion positions these works as participants in a kind of experimental literary theatre; read allusively, the four narratives cast a company of diverse and unlikely actors to play the role scripted in Deuteronomy for restored Israel. These include: repatriated Judean exiles sequestered from foreign influence (Nehemiah), a Moabite woman who serves as an emblem and agent of Judean restoration (Ruth), an afflicted Israelite exile who experiences a measure of divine restoration while living in diaspora (Tobit), and the followers of a Galilean prophet divinely acclaimed as Israel's messiah and charged with bringing about eschatological restoration (the Gospel of Mark). I conclude that the performances of Deut 30.1-10 enacted in the four alluding narratives imagine alternative possibilities for refiguring national restoration under the shadow of an exile literarily depicted as unresolved and ongoing.