The Shibboleth Incident (Judges 12:5-6) as a Migratory Narrative Folklore Motif

Abstract

Shibboleth is a special sociolinguistic category, denoting a functional communicative mechanism; a word, a phrase, or merely just a phoneme used as a test or a marker to identify people through their pronunciation. The term and the concept originate in a short passage in the Old Testament of the Bible, Book of Judges, chapter 12, verses 5 and 6 – called The Shibboleth incident – which describes a language trial administered by the Gileadites in order to identify disguised Ephraimites and kill them. Throughout history in different parts of the world, strikingly similar stories have emerged, set in comparable contextual circumstances of inter-ethnic bloodshed. In the article, a comprehensive folkloristic comparative analysis of various shibboleth accounts is presented, prompting a question if these stories are standalone narrative material; or if they are rather individual articulations (ecotypes) of an otherwise shared timeless migratory narrative folklore motif.

Keywords

• shibboleth incident
• the book of judges
• shibboleth test
• ecotypes
• comparative analysis
• folklore studies