Using the Biblical Story to Learn and to Unlearn Zionism
Dr Ron Naiweld looks at the role of biblical narratives in shaping historical and contemporary perspectives on land, identity, and belonging in Palestine and Israel. He gives an overview of relevant scholarly approaches before turning to present-day debates in Israeli society, including voices that draw on biblical traditions for ethical reflection and critique. He also considers the possibilities and limits of engaging religious texts in discussions about justice, coexistence, and future pathways in the region.
Theology and Religious Studies
Date: Tuesday 03 March 2026
Time: 16:00 - 17:30
Venue: 5 University Gardens, room 205
Category: Academic events
Speaker: Dr Ron Naiweld
The role of the biblical story in justifying and structuring the Zionist settler-colonial project in Palestine has long been acknowledged by scholars, who have also emphasized its parallels with other European colonial enterprises. Indeed, however counter-intuitive it may appear, Zionism can be understood as the latest in a series of European projects that mobilized the biblical symbolic universe to legitimize violence against Indigenous populations, to naturalize racial hierarchies, and to appropriate land and natural resources. In this case, the largely accepted identification of the colonizing population and the colonized territory with the biblically inspired constructs of the “chosen people” and the “promised land” respectively renders this framework particularly powerful. This dynamic has been especially visible since the onset of the genocide in Gaza in October 2023, marked by the pervasive use of biblical imagery in Israeli political, military, and public discourse.
The lecture will be divided into two parts. The first will establish the settler-colonial framework of analysis and will offer a critical survey of existing scholarship on the role of the biblical narrative in the formation of Zionist ideological discourse. The second will examine contemporary discourses produced by dissident members of the settler society who mobilize biblical verses and narratives to condemn Israel’s policies and actions and to dismantle the ideological foundations upon which they rest. The lecture will conclude by addressing the limits of such strategies and by reflecting on the possibility of moving beyond them. More broadly, it will engage the question – raised explicitly or implicitly by the informants of this research – of whether the Bible, and the Jewish tradition that relates to it, can be mobilized in the service of the decolonization of Palestine.
The Speaker
Ron Naiweld is a Research Fellow at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), and affiliated with the Centre de recherches historiques (CRH). He teaches at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris.
His research focuses on biblical and rabbinic literatures and their role as an interface with political and social realities and dynamics, from Antiquity to the contemporary period. His work combines intellectual and social history, discourse analysis, and critical theory to examine questions of law, authority, subjectivity, and the historical production of religious knowledge.
His publications include The Age of the Parákletos: A Historical Defense of Rabbinic Knowledge (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021) and A Historical-Materialist Reading of Genesis 1–4: Undoing Satan between Colonial Brazil and Biblical Israel (Routledge, 2024).