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Surveying The Promised Land: Elizabeth Jolley’S Milk And Honey, Dorothy L. Jones

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The Bible proved a significant resource for European imperialism both in aiding colonisers to impose their own culture on those they conquered and in justifying their annexation and administration of other peoples' territory. Metaphors drawn from biblical accounts of the garden of Eden and the promised land offering a new home to Jews who had been held captive in Egypt were mobilised in relation to European colonisation. In the biblical context, these motifs emphasised God's cherishing or protection of chosen people to the exclusion of all others and so could be used to justify many forms of containment and exclusion …