Question of Identity

'''Who am I?' and 'Who are we?' are the existential, foundational questions in our lives. In our modern world, there is no construct more influential than 'identity' - whether as individuals or as groups. The concept of group identity is the focal point of a research group named "e;A Question of Identity"e; at the Mandel Scholion Interdisciplinary Research Center in the Humanities at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The papers collected in this volume represent the proceedings of a January 2017 conference organized by the research group which dealt with identity formation in six contextual settings: Ethno-religious identities in light of the archaeological record; Second Temple period textual records on Diaspora Judaism; Jews and Christians in Sasanian Persia; minorities in the Persian achaemenid period; Inter-ethnic dialogue in pre-1948 Palestine; and redefinitions of Christian Identity in the Early Modern period.