Law And Narrative In The Bible

Casuistic or case law in the Pentateuch deals with real human affairs; each case law entails a compressed story that can encourage reader engagement with seemingly "dry" legal text. This book is the first to present an interpretive method integrating biblical law, jurisprudence, and literary theory, reflecting the current "law and literature" school within legal studies. It identifies the narrative elements that exist in the laws of the Pentateuch, exposes the narrative techniques employed by the authors, and discovers the poetics of biblical law, thus revealing new or previously unconsidered aspects of the relationship between law and narrative in the Bible

Calum M. Carmichael here challenges commonly accepted views respecting the derivation of the biblical laws recorded in Deuteronomy and the Decalogue, presenting compelling evidence that literary traditions, rather than social imperatives, dictated the form taken by the laws. Carmichael confronts and discusses such problematic and important issues as the sequence in which apparently unrelated laws appear. Why, he then asks, are some laws general in scope, while others are extremely specific? Acknowledging the literary sophistication of the biblical compilers, Carmichael accounts for their attribution of the Deuteronomic laws to Moses, and of the Decalogue to Yahweh. He asserts that, in order to preserve the prophetic impact of their material, the compilers closely studied existing biblical narrative, and selected laws which maintained the appropriate historical context. Using this perspective, Carmichael is able to detect strong logical continuity in both the structure and the content of the Decalogue and the Deuteronomic laws. An original and distinguished contribution to the study of biblical law, Law and Narrative in the Bible will interest legal historians and Biblical scholars alike.

The Bible is full of law. Yet too often, Christians either pick and choose verses out of context to bolster existing positions, or assume that any moral judgment the Bible expresses should become the law of the land. Law and the Bible asks: What inspired light does the Bible shed on Christians’ participation in contemporary legal systems? It concludes that more often than not the Bible overturns our faulty assumptions and skewed commitments rather than bolsters them. In the process, God gives us greater insight into what all of life, including law, should be. Each chapter is cowritten by a legal professional and a theologian, and focuses on a key aspect of the biblical witness concerning civil or positive law--that is, law that human societies create to order their communities, implementing and enforcing it through civil government. A foundational text for legal professionals, law and prelaw students, and all who want to think in a faithfully Christian way about law and their relationship to it.

Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel tracks the mystery of narratives in the Hebrew Bible and their allusions to Sinai laws by highlighting intertextual allusions created by verbal resonances. While the second and the third parts of the volume illustrate allusions to Sinai narratives made by some narratives occurring in the post-Sinaitic era, twenty-three Genesis narratives are analyzed to show that the protagonists were bound by Sinai Laws before God supposedly gave them to Moses, anticipating the Book of Jubilees. Legal Friction suggests that most of Genesis was composed during or after the Babylonian exile, after the codification of most Sinai laws, which Genesis protagonists consistently violate. The fact that they are not punished for these violations implies to the exiles that the Sinai Covenant was unconditional. In addition, the author proposes that Genesis contains a hidden polemic, encouraging the Judean exiles to follow the revisions of laws of the Covenant Code by the Holiness Code and Deuteronomy. Genesis narratives, like those describing post-Sinai events, often cannot be understood properly without recognition of their allusions to biblical laws.

Calum M. Carmichael here challenges commonly accepted views respecting the derivation of the biblical laws recorded in Deuteronomy and the Decalogue, presenting compelling evidence that literary traditions, rather than social imperatives, dictated the form taken by the laws. Carmichael confronts and discusses such problematic and important issues as the sequence in which apparently unrelated laws appear. Why, he then asks, are some laws general in scope, while others are extremely specific? Acknowledging the literary sophistication of the biblical compilers, Carmichael accounts for their attribution of the Deuteronomic laws to Moses, and of the Decalogue to Yahweh. He asserts that, in order to preserve the prophetic impact of their material, the compilers closely studied existing biblical narrative, and selected laws which maintained the appropriate historical context. Using this perspective, Carmichael is able to detect strong logical continuity in both the structure and the content of the Decalogue and the Deuteronomic laws. An original and distinguished contribution to the study of biblical law, Law and Narrative in the Bible will interest legal historians and Biblical scholars alike.

Liminal moments in biblical narrative are moments of transition and change, which are typically fraught with ambivalence. Such new beginnings enshrine both hope and doubt for the future, as in the account of the rebuilding of life after the Flood (Genesis 9). In this subtle analysis, Stahl observes how frequently one component of these liminal moments is law, offering as it does stability and order in a chaotic world but also resonating with the ambiguities inherent in the narrative history. In the Bible, law as well as narrative is multi-voiced.

"This book presents a new framework for understanding the relationship between biblical narrative and rabbinic law. Drawing on legal theory and models of rabbinic exegesis, Jane L. Kanarek argues for the centrality of biblical narrative in the formation of rabbinic law. Through close readings of selected Talmudic and midrashic texts, Kanarek demonstrates that rabbinic legal readings of narrative scripture are best understood through the framework of a referential exegetical web. She shows that law should be viewed as both prescriptive of normative behavior and as a meaning-making enterprise. By explicating the hermeneutical processes through which biblical narratives become resources for legal norms, this book transforms our understanding of the relationship of law and narrative as well as the ways in which scripture becomes a rabbinic document that conveys legal authority and meaning"--

Law is not only conveyed in codified clauses; it is often featured as a pivotal topic in literary texts. Existing legal relationships can determine the historical or the fictive setting of a drama or a plot, narratives can propagate laws or demonstrate their inherent problems. Literature can be used as an integral part of a strategy to implement legally justified demands, it can aim at correcting or even at denouncing legal rules. The authors of this volume examine literary and functional texts from the bible, the Ancient Near East, early Judaism and classical antiquity. They choose from the fields of constitutional law, litigation, family law, property and inheritance law, damages, punishment, privilege and maintenance.