Death of the covenant code: capital punishment in old Greek exodus in light of Greco-Egyptian law
This work illuminates how the earliest and predominant Greek translation of Exodus significantly and surprisingly transforms the meaning of laws with capital punishment in the Covenant Code, and it suggests that these transformations might find their origin in Greco-Egyptian law.
| Summary: | This work illuminates how the earliest and predominant Greek translation of Exodus significantly and surprisingly transforms the meaning of laws with capital punishment in the Covenant Code, and it suggests that these transformations might find their origin in Greco-Egyptian law. Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Tables -- Abbreviations -- Chapter 1 Approaching Greek Exodus and Greco-Egyptian Law -- 1.1 A New Hypothesis -- 1.2 Superficial Semantic Fidelity -- 1.3 The Scope of the Inquiry -- 1.4 Septuagint Studies and Exodus -- 1.5 Methodological Considerations -- 1.5.1 Hebrew and Greek Texts -- 1.5.2 Interpreting the Septuagint -- 1.5.3 The Ptolemaic Legal System and Greco-Egyptian Legal Practice -- 1.5.4 Egyptian Law as a Source of Data -- 1.6 Jewish Law and Legal Practice in Ptolemaic Egypt -- 1.7 Parallel Activity of Translation -- 1.8 The Death Penalty in Classical Greek, Egyptian, and Greco-Egyptian Law -- 1.8.1 Introduction -- 1.8.2 Athenian Capital Punishment -- 1.8.3 Egyptian Capital Punishment -- 1.8.4 Ptolemaic Capital Punishment -- 1.8.5 Application of Data Concerning the Death Penalty -- 1.9 Conclusion: The Validity of Inferences from Greco-Egyptian Law -- 1.10 Other Possible Sources of Influences on the LXX Legal Corpus -- Chapter 2 Greek-Legal Paradigms and Techniques -- 2.1 Potential Objections -- 2.1.1 Lexical Fidelity and Flattening in Exodus 21:1-23:19 -- 2.1.2 Formulaic Language in Greek Law -- 2.2 Terminology for the Death Penalty in Classical Greek Law -- 2.2.1 Varied Contexts for Terminology -- 2.2.2 Conclusions on Terminology for the Death Penalty in the Fifth-Fourth Centuries -- 2.3 Terminology for the Death Penalty in Greco-Egyptian Law -- 2.4 τελευτάω as a Legal Term in Classical and Ptolemaic Contexts -- 2.5 'θανάτῳ + (Verb of Death)' as a Means of Expressing "Untimely Death" -- 2.6 Conclusion of Terminological Analyses: Motivations for the Translator's Choices -- 2.7 Ptolemaic Legal Syntax: Imperative vs. Future Tense in the Command Verbs of Laws -- 2.7.1 Introduction -- 2.7.2 Overview of Command Verbs in Classical Greek Law -- 2.7.3 Command Verbs in Greco-Egyptian Law. "Many laws in the Old Greek translation of the Covenant Code do not say the same thing as the Hebrew text. In the past, various idiosyncrasies in the Greek translation of laws that involve the death penalty had been glossed over and considered stylistic variations or grammatical outliers. However, when the text-linguistic features of the Greek translation are compared to contemporary literary, documentary, and legal Greek sources, new readings emerge: cursing a parent is no longer punishable by death; a law about bestiality becomes a law about animal husbandry; the authority of certain legal commands is deregulated. This work explores these and other new readings in comparison with contemporary Greco-Egyptian law"-- |
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| Item Description: | Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources |
| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (376 pages) |
| ISBN: | 900468204X |