The Missing Goy in Second Temple Literature

This chapter examines a loose groups of texts from the Second Temple period, tracing some early and scattered evidence of an effort to abstract the biblical ethnic categories. It argues that the discursive formation that would later characterize the rabbinic goy cannot be found in any of the texts written before Paul’s letters. The goal of the chapter is twofold: first, to analyze the conceptual configurations through which the distinctions between Jews and their others were articulated in texts and compositions in which the concept of the goy is not yet the organizing principle. Second, to reconstruct discursive options that existed before the formation of the goy consolidated, and that disappeared after it took hold.