Making a case : the practical roots of biblical law /
"Outside of the Bible, all of the known Near Eastern law collections were produced in the third to second millennia BCE, in cuneiform on clay tablets, and in major cities in Mesopotamia and in the Hittite Empire. None of the five major sites in Syria to have yielded cuneiform tablets has borne...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York, NY :
Oxford University Press,
[2021]
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
| Summary: | "Outside of the Bible, all of the known Near Eastern law collections were produced in the third to second millennia BCE, in cuneiform on clay tablets, and in major cities in Mesopotamia and in the Hittite Empire. None of the five major sites in Syria to have yielded cuneiform tablets has borne even a fragment of a law collection, despite the fact that several have yielded ample legal documentation. Excavations at Nuzi have turned up numerous legal documents, but again, no law collection. Even Egypt has not yielded a collection of laws. As such, the biblical blocks that scholars regularly identify as law collections would represent the only "western," non-cuneiform expressions of the genre in the ancient Near East, produced by societies not known for their political clout, and separated in time from the "other" collections by centuries. Making a Case challenges the long-held notion that Israelite and Judahite scribes either made use of older law collections or set out to produce law collections in the Near Eastern sense of the genre. Rather, Milstein suggests that what we call "biblical law" is closer in form and function to a different and oft-neglected Mesopotamian genre: legal-pedagogical texts. In the course of their education, Mesopotamian scribes copied a variety of legal-oriented school texts: sample contracts, fictional cases, sequences of non-canonical law, and legal phrasebooks. When "biblical law" is viewed in the context of these legal-pedagogical texts, its practical roots in legal exercises begin to emerge"--Publisher's description. |
|---|---|
| Physical Description: | 1 online resource : illustrations, maps |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and indexes. |
| ISBN: | 9780190911836 0190911832 9780190911812 0190911816 9780190911829 0190911824 |