Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought

ISBN-13: 9780195374704 / Angielski / Twarda / 2008 / 264 str.

Joshua Berman

Opis

In Created Equal, Joshua Berman engages the text of the Hebrew Bible from a novel perspective, considering it as a document of social and political thought. He proposes that the Pentateuch can be read as the earliest prescription on record for the establishment of an egalitarian polity. What emerges is the blueprint for a society that would stand in stark contrast to the surrounding cultures of the ancient Near East -- Egypt, Mesopotamia, Ugarit, and the Hittite Empire - in which the hierarchical structure of the polity was centered on the figure of the king and his retinue. Berman shows that an egalitarian ideal is articulated in comprehensive fashion in the Pentateuch and is expressed in its theology, politics, economics, use of technologies of communication, and in its narrative literature. Throughout, he invokes parallels from the modern period as heuristic devices to illuminate ancient developments. Thus, for example, the constitutional principles in the Book of Deuteronomy are examined in the light of those espoused by Montesquieu, and the rise of the novel in 18th-century England serves to illuminate the advent of new modes of storytelling in biblical narrative.

Recenzje

for the gutsiness of his intellectual convictions and for playing a major role in bringing the harvest of biblical scholarship to a much broader audience, we are in Joshua Berman's debt.

O autorze

Joshua Berman was raised in New York City and attended Princeton University as an undergraduate where he received his B.A. in Religion. After emigrating to Israel in 1987, he received ordination as an orthodox rabbi, and pursued doctoral studies in Bible at Bar-Ilan University. He lectures in Bible at Bar-Ilan University and at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, where he was a research fellow during the 2004-06 academic years.