Return Migration and the Meaning of Home and Belonging in the Hebrew Bible

In this article, I look back over a decade of my own contributions to the field of Hebrew Bible and migration, to assess where these have been helpful, and where revisions are needed. I argue that boundaries are still an extremely important topic of dialogue, but that a focus on identity has not always been so helpful. Instead, I gravitate towards a more conceptually flexible framework concerning belonging, in terms of theoretical dialogue, to help sensitise us to the complexity of boundary negotiation. I also highlight the importance of meta-critical questions concerning how we talk about the Bible and about textual interpretation itself creates and sustains power structures of its own as well as negotiations around belonging. In addition, I suggest that interpreters must be conscious of the invitation that texts extend when representing identity and difference. Through awareness of the constructed nature of identities within Biblical texts, we are able simultaneously to understand these constructions, while also having space to recognise how complexity is flattened through construction.