Water beyond the wilderness: Rivers in the construction of Israel's memory

Rivers play a symbolic role in the story of Israel's formation as a people found within the Hebrew Bible. From the primeval period to the return from exile, Israel's history and understanding of themselves as a people with shared identity and collective memory is tied to their interaction with rivers. The Hebrew authors tell Israel's story in a way that not only involves rivers, but is actually constructed within, beyond, and across them. These bodies of water propel the story of Israel's identity during the process of becoming a unified people, thus functioning as literary catalysts in Israelite cultural memory. Rivers are transitory markers and "liminal space," to use the language of Victor Turner, the threshold between two points of existence, with regard to both physical location and development in identity. Crossing them constitutes rites of passage, marking each stage of self-development: early Israelite ancestors and the "birth" of Israel (Jabbok), Hebrew slaves (Nile), a wandering people unified under one leader (yam-sup), a landed people in settlement (Jordan), displaced and excommunicated exiles (Jordan and Euphrates), and finally, post-exilic "Israelites" (re-crossing the Euphrates and Jordan). At each point of Israel's progression into an integrated people, the community---pictured either as a collective or through a representative of the group---encounters a river, and this literary use of rivers shapes the very foundation of how Israelite literature tells the story of its beginnings and evolution into "Israel." Ancillary texts also exhibit certain individuals appropriating and utilizing the symbolic power inherent in these rivers, thus augmenting the idea that this symbolic understanding was widespread in Israelite cultural memory.