Who counts as one of us?
The collection does not speak with one voice about outsiders. It argues with itself, and in composition order you can see the argument happening.
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IIIc. 700-587 BCEDeuteronomy · Chapter 23
3 An Ammonite or a Moabite shall not enter into Yahweh’s assembly; even to the tenth generation shall no one belonging to them enter into Yahweh’s assembly forever,
The rule as stated: Moabites excluded from the assembly, to the tenth generation.
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V539 - c. 400 BCEIsaiah 56-66 (Third Isaiah) · Chapter 56
3 Let no foreigner who has joined himself to Yahweh speak, saying, “Yahweh will surely separate me from his people.” Do not let the eunuch say, “Behold, I am a dry tree.”
6 Also the foreigners who join themselves to Yahweh to serve him, and to love Yahweh’s name, to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath from profaning it, and holds fast my covenant,
7 I will bring these to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”
After the return: foreigners and eunuchs, both explicitly barred elsewhere in the law, are promised a name better than sons and daughters.
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V539 - c. 400 BCERuth · Chapter 4
13 So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife; and he went in to her, and Yahweh enabled her to conceive, and she bore a son.
17 The women, her neighbors, gave him a name, saying, “A son is born to Naomi”. They named him Obed. He is the father of Jesse, the father of David.
A Moabite woman, from the excluded people, is named great-grandmother of David. The genealogy is the argument.
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VIc. 400-200 BCEJonah · Chapter 4
10 Yahweh said, “You have been concerned for the vine, for which you have not labored, neither made it grow; which came up in a night and perished in a night.
11 Shouldn’t I be concerned for Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred twenty thousand persons who can’t discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also many animals?”
The book ends with God defending his pity for a foreign city, against his own prophet, who is furious about it.
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VIc. 400-200 BCEEzra · Chapter 10
10 Ezra the priest stood up and said to them, “You have trespassed, and have married foreign women, increasing the guilt of Israel.
11 Now therefore make confession to Yahweh, the God of your fathers and do his pleasure. Separate yourselves from the peoples of the land and from the foreign women.”
The same period, the opposite conclusion: foreign wives are dissolved and the children sent away. This is in the collection too, and is not softened here.
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IXc. 50-110 CEGalatians · Chapter 3
28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Paul's formulation, written around 50 CE — earlier than any gospel, and the earliest stop in this thread's Christian material.
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IXc. 50-110 CEActs · Chapter 10
34 Peter opened his mouth and said, “Truly I perceive that God doesn’t show favoritism;
35 but in every nation he who fears him and works righteousness is acceptable to him.
Peter, a Jew, in a Roman officer's house, concluding that God shows no partiality. The argument does not end; it changes venue.
These texts are not reconcilable by clever reading, and this volume does not try. Deuteronomy excludes; Ruth makes an excluded people the ancestor of the king; Third Isaiah throws the doors open; Ezra shuts them again in the same period. A reader is entitled to notice that and to decide what to make of it.
The passages above are the text, reproduced exactly and checked against the same files the reader uses; every reference is verified when the site is built. The commentary between them is editorial, written for this volume.