Anselm C. Hagedorn, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin
Foreigner by Inscription: Determining Ethnicity in Some Cretan Inscriptions

Abstract:

Using recent interpretative models derived from social and cultural anthropology that move beyond the general notion of ethnicity as defined by Max Weber and Frederik Barth, this paper will investigate how “foreigners” and “others” are treated and depicted in select legal inscriptions from ancient Crete (esp. Lyttos and Gortyn). Next to the so-called “foreigner-laws,” the legal material regulating access to sanctuaries in the Greek world will provide a further window on how communities (poleis) regulated their external relationships. Since we can assume that these laws were actually used and their punishments implemented, the insights from the Greek world might aid in understanding the intellectual rational behind the scribal exercise that led to the written codes of Biblical Law.