At the End Returning to Questions of Beginnings

Abstract

This article engages directly with Jonathan Burnside and raises a set of further questions concerning how we read biblical law and the manner in which we might endeavor to teach it in the context of the critical and/or secular classroom. Respecting the wide-scope of Burnside’s approach and material covered, further attention to the historical and cultural contexts of biblical law, as well as a more transparent presentation of its complexity, allows us to be responsible readers of biblical law, appreciating its theological and legal sophistication.     

Law and the Ruining of the Land

Abstract

In his monograph God, Justice, and Society (Oxford University Press, 2011)response to his work uses examples from Deuteronomy, Jeremiah and other prophetic texts to explore the relationship between obedience to God’s law and the wellbeing of the natural world. It concludes that given the complexity and diversity of natural law within the Western philosophical tradition, it seems unwise to draw too direct a comparison with the biblical material, which reflects a very different world view. The close study of the texts suggests that, for the biblical authors, divine law was both commanded at Sinai and written into the fabric of the universe.     

Biblical Law and Human Formation

Abstract

The article aims to show a relationship between biblical law, or Torah, and human formation or spiritual growth. In a sympathetically critical dialogue with Burnside’s God, Justice and Society, and biblical theologians such as G. von Rad, H. H. Schmid, E. Otto and F. Crusemann, it considers the proper human response to law in terms of a vocation to understand the divine ordering of reality. Specific topics addressed include the relationship between “revealed” law and universal knowledge, law and wisdom, biblical law’s capacity to critique cultural norms, and the mandate implicit within biblical law for ongoing reinterpretation, across cultural boundaries.     

The septuagint-version of the book of Joshua

Abstract

After I published a book on the Covenant Code (A Law Book for the Diaspora, 2003), in which I challenged the early dating of CC in comparison with the Deuteronomic Code and the Holiness Code, three leading scholars of biblical law (Bernard Jackson, Bernard Levinson and Eckart Otto) wrote lengthy reviews in which they attacked my views in defense of the status quo, namely, the priority in dating of CC before D and HC. Each from his own perspective and methodology has brought forward his strongest arguments against my “revolutionary” views, so that this response to my critics should represent a fair test as to my views on the Covenant Code and provide biblical scholarship with a means by which to judge the merits of the case.     

Natural Law,Poetic Justice and the Talionic Formulation

Abstract

Significant elements of natural law are reflected in the statements of corporal punishment presented in biblical law. In relation to the “eye for eye” clause from the talionic formulation, it is suggested that acts of blinding were perceived also as a form of punishment of an offending organ and can, therefore, be classified as examples of “instrumental talion.” This is distinct from measures which focus on the character of the sinner, or the nature of his crime, which are differentiated as “reflective talion.” Both processes convey an underlying desire for poetic justice, evidenced in biblical and ancient Near Eastern sources, where aetiological explanations clarify accounts of serious injuries to the eyes.     

Note Concerning the Problem of Samson the Nazirite in the Biblical Studies

Apparently, some biblical scholars prefer to consider Samson only as a biblical character, rather than as a mythical hero too, and they think falsely that his title of Nazir has its explanation in the law text of Numbers.     

From the Preface to the French edition of Une exigence infinie

Abstract

In 2008, Rowan Williams sparked a huge controversy in Britain by pleading for more recognition of shari'a law. The present paper aims to explore Mike Higton's suggestion that this plea actually results from Williams's defence of the Enlightenment. The paper will first show that Williams's plea for increased recognition of shari'a is in line with the Enlightenment ideal of sociability. It will subsequently show that this does not mean that Williams gives up on the importance of the secular law. Special attention will be given to the two fundamental principles behind Williams's views on shari'a and these principles will be developed with the help of Edward Schillebeeckx's view of ‘the humanum’. Finally, the paper will also indicate that Williams's two fundamental principles offer a way to better understand the biblical commandment to love one's neighbour—a view that will be developed with reference to the work of Slavoj Zizek.     

Naturwissenschaft und Religion in den Niederlanden um 1600

Dutch science flourished in the late sixteenth and in the seventeenth century thanks to the immigration of cartographers, botanists, mathematicians, astronomers and the like from the Southern Netherlands after the Spanish army had captured the city of Antwerp in 1585, and thanks to the religious and the socio-economic situation of the country. A strong impulse for practical scientific activities started from the Reformation, mainly thanks to its anti-traditional attitude, which had an anti-rationalistic tendency. Therefore, in the Northern Netherlands there was no ‘warfare’ between science and religion and the biblical arguments leading to Galileo's condemnation were not used. Although the growth of the exact sciences and of technology in the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries in Protestant cirles may be partly attributed to the expansion of trade, industry, navigation and so on, this does not explain why there was also at the same time a great interest in subjects as botany and zoology, which had no immediate economic utility. There were discussions about Copernicanism and Cartesianism. So a number of astronomers and theologians rejected the earth's movement on scientific and religious grounds, but there were also those who did not reject the Copernican system on biblical grounds. In the seventeenth century there was much discussion between science and religion in the Northern Netherlands, but that discussion was not followed by censure by the Church of the State. In the Republic there was a large amount of intellectual freedom in the study of the natural sciences, thanks to practical and ideological considerations. In the eighteenth century the seventheenth century tension between science and religion changed into a physicotheological natural science. It was believed that investigations into the workings of nature should lead to a better understanding of its Creator. So Bernard Nieuwentijt in his well-known book: The right use of-world views for the conviction of atheists and unbelievers (1715) intended to prove the existence of God on the basis of teleological arguments.     

Personal Names of the Pentateuch in the Northwest Semitic Context: A Comparative Study

The personal names of the Pentateuch (the first 11 chapters excluded) have not very often been under systematic scientific investigations. The topic is interesting from the points of view of linguistics, onomastics, theology and ethnohistory. The anthroponyms of the Pentateuch are compared with personal names found from the 2^nd millennium BCE (from Amorite, Ugaritic and Amarna Canaanite sources) and with anthroponyms from extrabiblical and biblical Hebrew sources, as well as with Phoenician sources of the first half of the 1^st millennium. The conclusion is that the anthroponyms of the Pentateuch reflect the onomasticon of the second millennium, having slightly modified typological and lexical roots in the same Northwest Semitic entity as Amorite, Amarna Canaanite and Ugaritic personal names.     

Defending the Concept of Time in the Hebrew Bible

Abstract

Due to the scarcity of reflection on time as an independent subject in the Hebrew Bible, there has been a scholarly tendency to consider biblical time conception more limited than our own_perhaps even nonexistent. This article confronts the scholarly skepticism regarding the ability of the biblical authors to think about time, defending the presence of time conceptualization in the Hebrew Bible. In the article I discuss central research contributions to the subject of biblical time, in particular Sacha Stern’s thesis that the concept of time is entirely absent from the Hebrew Bible and from ancient Judaism more widely. I explore linguistic and anthropological assumptions which underpin large parts of the discussion on time within biblical studies, arguing that one cannot assume on the basis of either that the biblical authors lacked a concept of time. Finally, I suggest that the ability of the biblical writers to coordinate unrelated processes according to a temporal axis is a strong argument in favour of their awareness of time.     

Memory,Identity and Aspiration: Early Modern Jewish Maps of the Promised Land

In the sixteenth century Jews began to produce maps showing the Exodus to the Promised Land. My aim in this article is to show that, through unique compositions of written biblical references and pictured symbolism (both Jewish and Christian), maps such as the Mantua map (1560s) and, a century later, the Amsterdam Haggadah [Passover] map (1695) were a means of constructing Jewish cultural memory and identity in the Diaspora and fostering aspiration for a second salvation through a return to Zion. I also explore the Jewish approach towards the biblical land as this was reflected in the maps.     

论美国法形成的历史轨迹

美国法是英国普通法的美国化,它的形成始于殖民地时期,完成于19世纪70年代。其间,美国法从最初对英国普通法的排斥逐步转为对其加以吸收和改造,并最终形成了适应美国社会发展的法律形式和观念。因此,从总体上讲,美国法并未游离出普通法的框架之外,而是保留了普通法的精髓,成为普通法系的重要组成部分。     

Sarah the Princess: Tracing the Hellenistic Afterlife of a Pentateuchal Female Figure

This article analyses Philo of Alexandria’s and Josephus Flavius’s interpretations of Sarah from the viewpoint of social and political power attached to her. Both ascribe the figure royal attributes (i.e. she is depicted as a princess or queen) and other features that promote her as a virtuous model and an individual of public standing. A variety of emphases, philological and philosophical interpretations alike, jointly serve to construct Sarah’s exemplarity. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that different dimensions of biblical female figures may be revealed when their role as spouses and mothers is not taken as the starting point of analysis in studies concerning the reception history of biblical women.     

Rethinking the Historiographical Impulse: The History of Ancient Israel as a Problem

The first part of this paper provides some insights into the problematic nature of the genre “history of ancient Israel”, both in terms of historiography and of historical epistemology. It is argued that the concept “history of ancient Israel” is essentially valid within a particular modern theological or biblical historiographical context. As such, this history of ancient Israel may indeed progress and generate new understandings but is nonetheless seriously limited by its main concern with “biblical Israel”. It is also proposed that in order to overcome these thematic and epistemological historical limitations, a wider history of ancient Palestine or the Southern Levant should be envisioned, into which to understand the epigraphic and archaeological realia of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, together with other contemporary polities in the region, and the later development of biblical traditions and texts. The second part of the paper addresses questions of ethnogenesis, socio-political organization and identity in the light of the previous discussion, setting the stage for an alternative history of Israel and other historical realities in ancient Palestine.     

An alternative hypothesis for a historical exodus event

The biblical tale is a product of nearly random telling, retelling, revision and redaction over a period of centuries, which resulted in a narrative framework that is not intended to be reliable in the modern sense. Nevertheless, four details in the evidence suggest that the Bible may preserve the memory of a historical exodus from Egypt. From these data, it might be suggested that the biblical Exodus tale is a combination of traditions from three distinct ethnic groups, whose stories were merged at Jerusalem during the Iron II period. These three groups were: (a) ethnic Israelites residing in Judah, (b) descendants of the LB-IA 1 Shasu living in Judah, and (c) the Jerusalemites.     

Oliver O'Donovan's Critique of Autonomy

Abstract

More than any other contemporary theologian, Oliver O'Donovan has revived political theology as a field of enquiry. Yet O'Donovan has been consistent in his critique of the modern idea of autonomy, judging it to be at odds with the more communitarian idea of covenanted community found in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. He contrasts this modern idea, and its political implications, with the older biblical idea, also adding some basic points from Aristotle's idea of the polis. But unlike many contemporary communitarians, O'Donovan is also able to incorporate the idea of human rights into his political theology. He sees this supposedly modern idea having fuller precedence in the biblical idea of mishpat ("justice"), which he takes to be God's primordial claim on His covenanted community, a claim that sufficiently grounds both individual rights and communal rights and which enables them to function together. However, O'Donovan draws the line when it comes to the modern social contract theory, arguing that it is at odds with biblical teaching that the primary responsibility of rulers is to divine law. While agreeing with O'Donovan's rejection of autonomy and his acceptance of human rights, this paper argues against O'Donovan's theological rejection of social contract theory. Instead, it argues that a social contract is consistent with the doctrine of the covenant; indeed that the very possibility of the social contract is best explained by the doctrine of the covenant, and that this acceptance of the social contract serves the best political interests of covenanted communities (like the Jewish People and the Christian Church) in an otherwise secular world.     

How Christianity Won the World

ABSTRACT

This article traces the ideology that allowed Christian civilization to conquer the world. It opens with a view of biblical “national” foundation myths, the Exodus and the Babylonian Exile, and shows how this ideology also allowed for ethnic cleansing, if not genocide, and how those played a dominant role in the mind of western Christians who simply adopted the biblical attitude to foreign nations as their own. A changing perspective including a not so historically dominated reading of the Bible may put an end to the western idea of a God given right to oppress all the nations of the world.     

God,Justice and Society

Abstract

This non-evaluative overview of God, Justice, and Society: Aspects of Law and Legality in the Bible summarizes Jonathan Burnside’s introduction to biblical law and his demonstration of its value as a resource for modern legal issues     

Exile in a Land of Exiles: The Early History of Criminal Transportation Law in New South Wales, 1788–1809

This article considers the peculiar application of English criminal transportation law in the ‘convict colony’ of New South Wales during its foundation years. It demonstrates, first, that transportation was not intended to be within the sentencing jurisdiction of the New South Wales Court, but that it was adopted and practised nonetheless, with confused and incongruous results. In particular, substantial challenges emerged in applying colonial or local sentences to a population that was largely already under sentence of transportation. The result was a raft of innovations and inconsistencies that highlighted the legal and practical problems of performing exile in a land of exiles.     

On food and fossils: natural philosophy,mathematics, and biblical history in the works of John Wallis

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses how John Wallis (1616–1703), Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford, used biblical evidence to support his ideas about natural philosophy and mathematics. Examples from Wallis’s long career include his calculation of the age of the Earth, his critique of Robert Hooke’s theory concerning the origin of fossils, and his debate with Edward Tyson about whether humans are naturally herbivorous or carnivorous. My analysis shows that Wallis’s use of biblical history did not necessarily commit him to an intellectually conservative position, but neither did it always encourage him to embrace new ideas. In fact, the truth is somewhere in the middle: I argue that biblical history provided a useful way for Wallis to negotiate between tradition and innovation, to determine which new ideas represented important advances and which were unsubstantiated follies.