Constructing Justice: The Selective Use of Scripture in Formulating Early Jewish Accounts of the Courts

Elaborate depictions of the court system in Second Temple and rabbinic literature signify its centrality for the Jewish legal tradition. Rather than offering positivistic descriptions, these representations are better thought of as templates of how to organize justice. While historically less inform...

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Détails bibliographiques
Auteur principal: Flatto, David C. (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
Vérifier la disponibilité: HBZ Gateway
Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Publié: [2018]
Dans: Harvard theological review
Année: 2018, Volume: 111, Numéro: 4, Pages: 488-515
Sujets / Chaînes de mots-clés standardisés:B Tempel Jerusalem (Jérusalem) / Judaïsme primitif / Droit juif
RelBib Classification:BH Judaïsme
HD Judaïsme ancien
KBL Proche-Orient et Afrique du Nord
XA Droit
Accès en ligne: Volltext (Resolving-System)
Volltext (doi)
Description
Résumé:Elaborate depictions of the court system in Second Temple and rabbinic literature signify its centrality for the Jewish legal tradition. Rather than offering positivistic descriptions, these representations are better thought of as templates of how to organize justice. While historically less informative, they are vivid expressions of the early Jewish legal imagination and its fascinating fixation on the architecture of justice.A measure of the ahistoric quality of early accounts of judicial administration is their considerable exegetical strata. This article surveys how four seminal Second Temple and rabbinic works constructed accounts of the judiciary on the foundation of Scripture. The variances among them unfold from decisive hermeneutical choices, beginning with the threshold question of which among several, internally inconsistent, biblical sources to select as a base text. What animates these various choices, in turn, are competing conceptions of the origin and nature of legal authority within a religious tradition that enshrines the role of law.
ISSN:1475-4517
Contient:Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/S001781601800024X