{Tom O'Loughlin] You can't read for very long
in the Hebrew Bible without encountering stories of cities.
Of course the stories of the great city of Jerusalem,
which is a theme,
a myth, as well as a place.
And of course, there's the stories of
Eastern cities like Babylon and Nineveh,
and the great store cities
of Egypt and other places that we wouldn't even think of
as cities, such as Bethlehem
or Bethsaida or Chorizin.
These are all kinds of places,
but they've got the name 'city.' With me I've got
Dr Marian Kelsey, who's going to talk to us
about the theme of cities in the Hebrew Bible stories.
[Marian Kelsey] Yes, cities are very important in
all different cultures and all different literary traditions.
If you think in our own,
we can talk about Atlantis and
Camelot and these are far more than just places,
they're far more than geographical locations.
They say things to our culture about
past golden ages, times which
are lost and somehow we can't quite get back to them.
But this is the kind of ... what we look back to and aspire to,
that sort of thing.
And so cities can
function as very powerful ciphers within a culture.
And the same is the case for
the cities and the places in the Hebrew Bible.
And one of my areas of interest is the way that
cities function like that
within the literature of the Hebrew Bible,
how they work like that within the narratives.
And I'm particularly interested in the non-Israelite cities,
so the foreign cities,
because they tend to shape how
Israel thinks of itself by
being the contrast, by being the Other.
And one example of that is the city of Tyre,
which was kind of a city-state city,
a very powerful trading city
with a kind of hinterland that it controlled.
It was a sort of island just off the coast,
which meant it had a very powerful maritime industry,
lots of trade routes,
and it was a very wealthy, very powerful place.
And it was definitely a foreign city
in that the people of Tyre were Gentiles.
They weren't part of the Israelite cult.
And although parts of the Bible lay claim to
the territory of Tyre as belonging to Israel.
In practice, it never really did.
It was an independent city and it's this foreign city,
but it's a foreign city that is
in some ways much closer to Israel and to
Jerusalem than many other foreign cities.
It's almost a kind of sibling to Jerusalem.
And we see this in the role that
Tyre plays in the biblical narratives.
One example of that is the king of
Tyre helps to build the Jerusalem temple.
When Solomon builds his temple in Jerusalem,
the temple to God,
he uses materials brought to him by the king of Tyre.
Very rich materials brought him by the king of Tyre.
And there are one or two hints in the narrative
that the king of Tyre reveres the Israelites'
God in a way that Gentile nations did not tend to do.
And so the king of Tyre is seen as a Gentile,
but a kind of a pious Gentile
who has respect for the Israelite god.
And so they're very close in that sense.
And at periods in Israelite
history, at least as the narrative presents,
they were, they were working together. They were allies.
But at the same time, there's
a second strand to the portrayal of Tyre in the Bible,
which is much less favourable,
much more sceptical about Tyre because it is a Gentile city,
because it doesn't worship God exclusively.
And in particular, the Bible seems to view Tyre as
somewhat hubristic and especially the king of Tyre,
as setting himself above normal mortals and
viewing himself semi- divine in some ways.
And the Hebrew Bible is very sceptical of
that and doesn't really like that approach.
And so there is kinship,
and alliance between them,
but also a certain sense of keeping
distance and still seeing them as a foreign city.
And Solomon doesn't get
a particularly good portrayal in some parts of
the Hebrew Bible for his friendship with the king of Tyre.
Not all the authors of the Hebrew Bible are particularly keen on
that friendship that he has. And Tyre,
this kind of dual relationship, leads to
many condemnations of it
and to announcements that it will fall,
that it will be destroyed and
punished for sins, all that sort of stuff,
like many other foreign nations have,
Tyre is also condemned and threatened with
destruction by Israel's God.
But unlike all of the other Gentile cities,
Tyre also gets a promise of restoration.
And so you see that kind of dual attitude
in its condemnation on the one hand,
but promise of restoration on the other in
terms of the future that
the Hebrew Bible sees for the city of Tyre.
[Tom] So when we read Hebrew Bible,
narratively and we encounter a city,
particularly a foreign city.
We're not just to think of it as another geographical place.
We're to think of it as code
for these very complex relationships.
[Marian] Exactly. [Tom] Thank you very much.