Gilead (novel)

Gilead is a novel written by Marilynne Robinson that was published in 2004. It is her second novel, following Housekeeping, which was published in 1980. Gilead won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award. Gilead is an epistolary novel that is the fictional autobiography of the Reverend John Ames, an elderly congregationalist pastor in the small, secluded town of Gilead, Iowa, who knows that he is dying of a heart condition. At the beginning of the book, the date is established as 1956, and Ames explains that he is writing an account of his life for his seven-year-old son, who will have few memories of him.

Plot

The book is an account of the memories and legacy of John Ames as he remembers his experiences of his father and grandfather to share with his son. All three men share a vocational lifestyle and profession as Congregationalist ministers in Gilead, Iowa. John Ames describes his vocation as "giving you a good basic sense of what is being asked of you and also what you might as well ignore", explaining that your vocation is something both hard to fulfill and hard to obtain. He writes that this is one of the most important pieces of wisdom he can bestow to his son. Ames's father was a Christian pacifist, but his grandfather was a radical abolitionist who carried out guerrilla actions with John Brown before the American Civil War, served as a chaplain with the Union forces in that war, and incited his congregation to join up and serve in it; as Ames remarks, his grandfather "preached his people into the war." The grandfather returned from the war maimed with the loss of his right eye. Thereafter he was given the distinction that his right side was holy or sacred in some way, that it was his link to commune with God, and he was notorious for a piercing stare with the one eye he had left.

Gilead

Gilead or Gilaad (Hebrew: גִּלְעָד), (/ˈɡɪl.i.əd/), is the name of three persons and two geographic places In the Bible.

Places

Gilead was a mountainous region east of the Jordan River divided among the tribes of Gad and Manasseh, and situated in modern-day Jordan. It is also referred to by the Aramaic name Yegar-Sahadutha, which carries the same meaning as the Hebrew (Genesis 31:47). From its mountainous character, it is called the mount of Gilead (Genesis 31:25).

It is called also the land of Gilead (Numbers 32:1), and sometimes simply Gilead (Psalm 60:9; Genesis 37:25). As a whole, it included the tribal territories of Gad, Reuben, and the eastern half of Manasseh (Deut 3:13; Num 32:40). In the Book of Chronicles, Segub controlled twenty-three towns in Gilead.1 Chronicles 2:21-22 It was bounded on the north by Bashan, and on the south by Moab and Ammon (Genesis 31:21; Deut 3:12-17).

"Half Gilead" was possessed by Sihon, and the other half, separated from it by the river Jabbok, by Og, king of Bashan. The deep ravine of the river Hieromax (the modern Sheriat el-Mandhur) separated Bashan from Gilead, which was about 60 miles in length and 20 miles in breadth, extending from near the south end of the Lake of Gennesaret to the north end of the Dead Sea. Abarim, Pisgah, Nebo, and Peor are its mountains mentioned in Scripture.

Gilead (tribal group)

Gilead was a tribal group mentioned in Biblical passages which textual scholars attribute to early sources. In these sources, for example the Song of Deborah, the Gilead group is treated with equal status to the other Israelite tribes, while certain other tribes, including the Tribe of Manasseh, are absent. An eponymous Gilead is mentioned in the biblical genealogies as fratter a descendant of Manasseh, presumably implying that the Gilead group was part of Manasseh, and since Gilead is also the name of a specific part of the land east of the Jordan River, the Gilead tribal group presumably refers to the half tribe of Manasseh which resided on this side of the Jordan. The identity as part of a single tribe named Manasseh, doesn't appear to have been fully accurate in practice, since there was very little geographic connection between the two half tribes, only just touching at a corner of each, and according to the Book of Chronicles each half tribe historically had always had separate tribal rulers.

Gilead (Bible)

Name and Etymology

Gilead (Hebrew gil‛âd) may mean hill of testimony. It is derived from galyêd, which in turn comes from gal (heap, mound, hill) and ‛êd (witness, testimony). There also exists an alternative theory that it means rocky region.

Gilead as a Person and Tribal Group

Gilead was, according to the Book of Numbers, the son of Machir, and hence the grandson of Manasseh, great-grandson of Joseph and greatx4 grandson of Abraham and Sarah. He also may have been the founder of the Israelite tribal group of Gilead, which is mentioned in Biblical passages which textual scholars attribute to early sources.

Textual scholars regard the genealogy in the Book of Numbers, which identifies Gilead as Machir's son, as originating in the priestly source, a document written centuries after the early JE source, in which the Gilead and Machir tribal groups are mentioned, and possibly having been written to rival the JE source.Biblical scholars view the biblical genealogies as postdiction, an eponymous metaphor providing an aetiology of the connectedness of the group to others in the Israelite confederation; the identification of Gilead as an aspect of Manasseh was the traditional explanation of why the tribal groups of Machir and Gilead are mentioned along with northern tribes in the ancient Song of Deborah, while Manasseh is absent from it.