We think of law as rules whose words are binding, used by the courts in the adjudication of disputes. Bernard S. Jackson explains that early biblical law was significantly different, and that many of the laws in the Covenant Code in Exodus should be viewed as "wisdom-laws." By this term, he means "self-executing" rules, the provisions of which permit their application without recourse to the law-courts or similar institutions. They thus conform to two tenets of the "wisdom tradition": that judicial dispute should be avoided, and that the law is a type of teaching, or "wisdom."
We think of law as rules whose words are binding, used by the courts in the adjudication of disputes. Bernard S. Jackson explains that early biblical ...
This book explains and illustrates a variety of semiotic issues in the study of biblical law. Commencing with a review of relevant literature in linguistics, philosophy, semiotics and psychology, it examines biblical law in terms of its users, its medium and its message. It criticizes our use of the notion of 'literal meaning', at the level of both words and sentences, preferring to see meaning constructed by the narrative images that the language evokes. These images may come from either social experience or cultural narratives. Speech performance is important, both in the negotiation of...
This book explains and illustrates a variety of semiotic issues in the study of biblical law. Commencing with a review of relevant literature in li...
The texts of the New Testament have long been understood to require interpretation in the light of the Hebrew Bible, Qumran and other postbiblical literary and documentary sources. Conversely, they provide an invaluable source for the reconstruction of halakhah in the late Second Commonwealth period. These essays illustrate the complexity of the inter-relationships, and the methodological issues which arise: the "legal" content of the texts cannot be separated from the intertextualities of Jewish theology. The topics cover letter and spirit, prophecy and law, forgiveness, the accounts...
The texts of the New Testament have long been understood to require interpretation in the light of the Hebrew Bible, Qumran and other postbiblical lit...
