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Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought
Abstract
This book reveals the Hebrew Bible to be a sophisticated work of political philosophy, and the birthplace of egalitarian thought. Focusing on the Pentateuch, this book lays bare the manner in which the Bible appropriated and reconstituted ancient norms and institutions to create a new blueprint for society. Theology, politics, and economics were marshaled anew to weaken traditional seats of power, and to create a homogeneous class of empowered common citizens. Much of this anticipates developments in the history of political thought that would recur only during the Enlightenment and in the thought of the American Founding Fathers. Ancient religion granted sacral legitimation to the ruling classes and saw the masses as mere servants. The Pentateuch, by contrast, elevates the common citizenry in the eyes of God by invoking the political institution of the vassal treaty, and casting Israel as a subordinate king to the Almighty through the theology of covenant. Through the prism of the political philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and Montesquieu, the book demonstrates the Pentateuch to be history's first proposal for the distribution of political power. Utilizing the anthropology of pre-modern economies, ancient norms are explored concerning land tenure, taxation, and loans are reworked so that the common citizenry remains economically secure. Invoking the transformational role of the printing press in the spread of the Reformation and the birth of the Enlightenment, the book identifies far-reaching consequences in the Bible's approach to what was then the new technology of communication: the alphabetic text.
... The Greeks and Romans possessed an overwhelming belief in the harmony of various classes (Berman, 2020, pp. 1-2;Berman, 2011) ...
This paper examines how religious intolerance undermines genuine spiritual practice in religion, especially within Abrahamic faiths. Employing a multidisciplinary approach encompassing theological, historical, and psychological analyses, it exposes how intolerance, driven by factors such as dehumanization, corrupts faith and fuels violence; it transforms faith into idolatry. Shedding innocent blood because of religious differences is a perversion of faith and the ultimate blasphemy and heresy. By contrasting this with Abraham's peaceful legacy and the shared values of equality, social justice, and human dignity, the study emphasizes the necessity of inclusivity. True faith, it concludes, requires rejecting divisive interpretations and recognizing the divine in all, thus honoring Abraham's ethical monotheism and fostering peace.
... The aspect of liberty can also be found in the fact that Israel's entering into the covenant with YHWH is voluntary and that adherence to YHWH is, in various layers of the Hebrew Bible, described as a matter of the heart, that is, inner conviction. 60 For a summary description of the (counter-cultural) egalitarian outlook of biblical Israel and its practical social and ethical consequences see especially Berman (2008). 61 For the limits of the power of the monarch see Deut 17:14-20; for the institution of monarchy only representing "Plan B" see 1 Samuel 8-12. ...
In this study, the author looks at how biblical texts in general and Old Testament texts in particular can be used to address current ethical issues. The main focus is on the identification of the four main steps in the transfer from biblical text to current ethical issues: exegetical analysis of the biblical text – synthetical view of the biblical material – hermeneutical transfer – pragmatic application. In addition, some of the salient topics related to the ethical use of the (Hebrew) Bible are investigated: the traditional threefold division of the law, the special role of the Decalogue, the importance of creational order, the weight of exodus and Sinaitic covenant, the discussion about the unique position of love, and the lenses provided by the New Testament. Towards the end, guidelines for the assessment of the relative weight of rules and principles are presented.
... Methodologically, it seems to me incomplete to incorporate only widely known knowledge of atua Māori into a text that originally presented an erasure of an important distinction in many ancient and modern cultures (including, I suggest, the traditional world of the tohunga) (Berman 2011). 13 In other words, the test translation presents only a very partial integration of Māori lore into the text of Genesis 1 and one that is methodologically in tension with the polemical effect of Genesis 1 in its ancient Near Eastern context. ...
The recent test translation of Te Paipera Tapu (the Bible in the Māori language) has aroused considerable debate for its use in Genesis 1 of the names of atua Māori (Māori divine beings). These names of atua have been used instead of names of features of the natural world, which stands in contrast to the use of other kupu Māori (Māori words) in the earlier translation and its revisions. In this paper, I outline relevant members of the Māori pantheon and of some ancient Near Eastern pantheons, which are not identical. I then discuss the Hebrew text of Genesis 1 in its ancient literary context, making proposals about the use of the names of atua Māori in translations.
... Prohibiting interest toward the poor set Israel apart from other proximate societies. Berman (2008) notes that "alone among the cultures of the ancient Near East, the Bible issues prohibitions against charging interest" (p. 96). ...
Theonomy is the idea that the Mosaic Law should be practiced in modern societies. Theonomists reject the more usual belief that the civil and ceremonial laws of the Mosaic Law are no longer applicable. This approach to Christian economics has received little critical scrutiny, despite a volume of work by its main protagonist, Gary North. Reasons for its relative neglect appear to emanate both from within theonomy itself, and from Christian economics. This paper assesses the nature of biblical interpretation used within theonomy, illustrated in Gary North’s mammoth economic commentary on the book of Exodus. How North interprets matters of lending and interest in Exodus is the focus. His commentary extends far and wide beyond Exodus, even to Jesus. Some of these excursions are investigated here, including the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and Jesus too, whose instruction on lending and interest is compared to North’s interpretations. Since Jesus had so much to say on these matters, the second-to-last section considers how Jesus’ teaching on lending and interest is being practiced in the advanced capitalist economy and what scope may exist for its extension. With some caveats noted, North’s interpretations in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy are substantially different from most biblical exegetes. His readings of Jesus, moreover, do not sit comfortably with most of them.
... Before focusing on the material evidence for this ethos, which is our main concern here, I should note that that many biblical scholars and historians, on the basis of various texts, claimed that Israelite society had such an ideology (e.g., Lods 1932;Wolf 1947;Albright 1961, p. 119;Mendenhall 1962;Kelso 1968, p. 48;Speiser 1971;Gordis 1971, pp. 45-60;Humphrey 1978;Gottwald 1979;Lenski 1980;Cross 1988;Berman 2008;Shapira 2009). 19 While the texts are problematic sources, and each interpretation is met with counterinterpretations, the plethora of evidence for this ethos in so many biblical genres cannot be easily dismissed. ...
Most scholars in the late 20th and early 21st century believed that cultic activity in the kingdoms of Israel and Judah was practiced in various temples that were scattered throughout the kingdoms. Still, a detailed study of the archaeological evidence on Israelite cult reveals that Israelite cultic buildings were extremely rare, both in absolute terms and when compared to other ancient Near Eastern societies, suggesting that cultic activity in temples was the exception rather than the norm and that typical Israelite cult was practiced in the household and in other, non-temple settings. Hence, the evidence suggests that rather than viewing temples, like the one in Arad, as exemplifying typical cultic activity, they should be viewed as exceptions that require a special explanation. The first part of the article develops and updates the suggestion, first raised about ten years ago, that Israelite temples were indeed extremely rare. Given the ancient Near Eastern context, however, such practices seems to be exceptional, and the second part of the article will therefore explain why was such a unique pattern not identified in the past, and will suggest a possible explanation as to how was such an outstanding practice developed and adopted.
... According to the Catholic notion of the dignity of humanity, with roots in Stoic ideas, each and every person has intrinsic value (dignity), because he or she incarnates God's image (Imago Dei) ( Waldron 2010b;Berman 2008). Aquinas defines dignity as the goodness of something on account of itself, that is, as the intrinsic value of something. ...
This essay questions what is argued by many scholars today, namely that the moral concept of human dignity provides the basis for the establishment of human rights. More specifically, I critically discuss the two most prominent conceptions of human dignity, the 'status' and the 'value' (coming from the Catholic and the Kantian traditions) conceptions of dignity, which are suggested today as the foundations of human rights (sections I and II). Ultimately, I propose a different, 'duty-based' philosophical account for the justification of the latter (section III).
... One suggestion that they raised was that the house, through its non-hierarchical configuration-a quality that is lacking in most complex houses-participated in the maintenance of ancient Israel's 'egalitarian' ethos (an ideology whose existence was identified, on the basis of various lines of evidence, by biblical scholars and archaeologists, e.g. Berman 2008;Dever 1992, 54;Faust 2006;Gordis 1971, 45-60;Gottwald 1979). Another, and more relevant, explanation that they raised was that the analysis of movement within the four-room house shows that it was suitable for a society that considered privacy to be of importance, or when contact was regulated. ...
The distinction between clean and unclean, often associated with bodily functions, is a common feature of human societies. Consequently, diverse groups developed different ways of maintaining separation between the realms. Despite its prominence in many ethnographies and in anthropology at large, and although the spatial expression of this separation is susceptible to archaeological enquiry, the concept of purity had received less attention by archaeologists. The completion of the excavation of a large house at Tel ʿEton supplied us with detailed information on household life and practices in Iron Age Israel. The finds from this house, along with a very large archaeological dataset about Iron Age Israelite society at large and the wealth of textual data from this period, give us insights into the practices associated with purity/impurity. The article reconstructs how Iron Age Israelite society coped with the implications of impurity (mainly women during menstruation) in its daily life, how impurity was contained, and offers a reconstruction of the ritual that accompanied the change of status from impure to pure.
... also e.g. Berman, 2008). One may also keep in mind that the priests and Levites are envisaged as owning only a minimal amount of land, mostly concentrated around towns, 48 in number throughout the land according to the biblical documents (Num 35; Josh 21). ...
This paper looks at the question of the origins of ancient Israel from the perspective of four social-scientific based approaches. These are the ecological-evolutionary theory developed by Gerhard Lenski, theories of migration and settler colonialism and a sociological approach to violence developed by Siniša Malešević. It shows how the four theories fit together well and provide a comparative framework for interpreting both biblical and archaeological data, rendering it plausible to see early Israel as a settler colonial agrarian frontier society that was considerably based on migration from outside and where violence played a significant part in the formation and development of that society.
In an attempt to trace the tradition of nationalism back to ancient Israel, public intellectual Yarom Hazony reads Deuteronomy 2 as a representation of ancient values of land-bounded autonomy and cultural homogeny. However, he overlooks two key aspects of the passage: 1) the familial and theological reasoning behind the divine protection of the other peoples, and 2) the messy aetiologies of how those peoples came to inhabit their lands. God calls the Edomites, Moabites, and Ammonites “brothers” and “sons of Esau” or “Lot,” suggesting that the prohibition against invasion is not based on respect for sovereignty but instead mythological family and relative social connection. Thus, using postcolonial theories of group identity from Gayatri Spivak, this article argues that Deut 2 does not represent an ancient (pre)conception of the nation-state but rather a (re)negotiation of group relations and social identities in connection to co-habitation of the Levant.
Religion and law intermingled and influenced each other both in the early stages of the formation of society and in the subsequent processes of its development. It is impossible to say unequivocally which of the two developed earlier or which had a greater influence on the modern form of the other. Today, questions concerning the relationship between law and religion are rarely the subject of research. The prevailing view that proclaims the secularisation of law, while undoubtedly justified, seems to overlook the religious origins of many modern secular institutions of law, such as, equality before the law, social policy, parental authority or the posthumous protection of human corpses and graves. As it seems, the move away from religious justification of legal institutions is a valid solution, prompting legal scholarship to seek explanations for the functioning of the legal system. The purpose of this article is to point out that law and religion intermingled in the creation of their final forms, resulting in the spread of legal institutions derived from norms of a religious nature. This encourages the creation (or denotation) of legally protected values and the search for their scientific (non-religious) basis.
A society is significantly shaped by the myths it perpetuates. These myths serve as lenses for how its people see and make sense of the world around them. Myths, particularly origin myths like Enuma Elish, offer a perspective on the world that legitimates the way a society structures itself and responds to crisis, as opposing forces threaten to undermine its conception of order. This essay proposes to read Psalm 46 against the backdrop of Israel’s own origin myths which undergird and shape their own conceptions of order and in Psalm 46 are called to mind to bolster hope in the midst of crisis. This is argued on the basis of numerous literary parallels with the so-called ‘Song of the Sea’ in Exodus and the creation accounts in Genesis. In addition, parallels with First Isaiah suggest the likelihood of Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem as the crisis to which the psalmist responds.
Political individualism refers to the protection of individual property rights, including those rights usually referred to as human rights. In the first part of this chapter, we trace the sources of political individualism, which include Justinian’s reforms of Roman law, the scholastic tradition in medieval universities, the writings of Enlightenment thinkers, and the role of interjurisdictional competition from the late Middle Ages onward. In the second part, we look at twenty-first century empirical evidence regarding the relationship between political individualism and institutional attractiveness, with a focus on domestic interstate migration in the United States. The chapter concludes by explaining how the consistent application of the subsidiarity principle advances political individualism.
Hebrew Bible scholars tend to dismiss Deuteronomy’s “Law of the King” (17:14–20) as a utopian construct that was never realistic and/or historical. Underlying these views, however, are certain assumptions about what is culturally plausible in a world dominated by sacral kingship. Since this is the most common form of government in human history, generalizations about the historicity of Deuteronomic kingship requires an intercultural analysis of theopolitics, divine right of kings, and separation of powers. This article sets Deuteronomic kingship in the larger context of sacral kingship in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. What then emerges is the bridging of a notable false dichotomy in scholarship – Israel’s form of sacral kingship is both distinctive as well as realistic in nature. This suggests that skepticism about the historicity of the “Law of the King” is beholden to a Eurocentric frame of reference which is also skeptical of Western-style absolute monarchy.
There are scores of references to covenant ( berith ) throughout the Hebrew Bible. These instances range from agreements between individuals to treaties between nations to heavenly dicta/promises, where God makes agreements with human beings and with other groups; most often the Israelites. Because of the great range of circumstances leading to agreements designated by the word “covenant” in the Hebrew Bible, modern biblical scholarship has attempted to tease out the essence of this structure, resulting in a great range of approaches to what covenant really means.
Is commitment to God compatible with modern citizenship? In this book, Daniel H. Weiss provides new readings of four modern Jewish philosophers – Moses Mendelssohn, Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, and Walter Benjamin – in light of classical rabbinic accounts of God's sovereignty, divine and human violence, and the embodied human being as the image of God. He demonstrates how classical rabbinic literature is relevant to contemporary political and philosophical debates. Weiss brings to light striking political aspects of the writings of the modern Jewish philosophers, who have often been understood as non-political. In addition, he shows how the four modern thinkers are more radical and more shaped by Jewish tradition than has previously been thought. Taken as a whole, Weiss' book argues for a fundamental rethinking of the relationship between Judaism and politics, the history of Jewish thought, and the ethical and political dynamics of the broader Western philosophical tradition.
Using primarily Yairah Amit’s work on hidden polemics as a template, plus Ancient Near Eastern literature, this work argues for a hidden polemic in Genesis 2-3 against certain excesses in royal ideology and practice. The key themes of knowledge and life— as well as other terms and motifs that are related to knowledge and life— are examined in Genesis 2-3 in connection with those same themes in other parts of the Old Testament and in the Ancient Near East. It is demonstrated that knowledge and life are common themes of royal ideology in the rest of the Old Testament and in the Ancient Near East in general. This ideology is often treated in a way that is favorable to kings and their ideology. However, there are other views that are not so favorable. Such views often involve hidden polemics that seek to protect the authors as well as the readers and/or hearers of the polemics. These polemics also, by their hidden nature, tend to draw the reader/hearer into the stories.
A number of recent examples of sexual misconduct by prominent evangelical leaders has stimulated conversation regarding why Christian men exhibit such behaviours. This article adopts Osmer’s practical theological method to analyse the phenomenon and suggest more faithful practice for the Church and Christian organisations. Resources for the practical theological activity include three recent prominent cases of sexual misconduct by evangelical leaders brought into dialogue with biblical resources and wisdom related to male hegemony, psychology, power and accountability. The research concludes that sexual misconduct is connected with a faulty hermeneutic, self-justification/rationalisation, power differentials, and the failure of accountability structures. It suggests that safeguarding principles be implemented in evangelical organisations to foster safer environments for members.
A raft of recent “philosophical” interpretations have emerged within biblical studies. They have in common the expectation that ideas from the discipline of philosophy will be helpful for understanding the biblical texts. However, the way in which they engage the two varies, and it is their methods that are teased out in this article. I offer a simple trajectory of approaches for works in this area, marked by two ends of characteristic disciplinary habits: using the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament for philosophical reflection and using philosophy for biblical interpretation. In this, the article sketches a much-needed research profile for a lively subdiscipline.
This chapter examines the ethical aspect of human-animal relations in the pentateuchal narratives and historiographical writings (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles)—the creation stories, the account of the first generations, and the patriarchal narratives in Genesis, the Exodus, Balaam and his donkey, the Samson cycle, the return of the Ark from Philistia, the prophet from Bethel, etc. Although analyzed in light of their historical background, the texts are explored primarily from an ethical perspective, framed in the scholarly literature on human-animal ethics.
This chapter does not presume to outline a new economic theory, nor a novel perspective on Jewish approaches to economy. Rather, it suggests the concept of pragmatic interestedness (PI) as means for thinking on the search for conscious or moral forms of capitalism. In short, pragmatic interestedness means that having interests is basic to human nature, and that interestedness is or can be non-egoistic and pro-social. This chapter proposes that PI, which has a significant role in normative Jewish tradition, can contribute to the articulation of conscious capitalism. The chapter first defines what pragmatic interestedness is, and its opposite, namely disinterestedness (DI), which demands total impartiality. The second section considers the influential Christian concept of Agape or universal and egalitarian love, which is arguably at tension with eros and particular commitments (and with PI in this regard). It is argued that prominent modern philosophies secularize the Agape, especially Karl Marx’s Communism and Peter Singer’s Sentientism, in a way that marginalizes PI. The third section explores the appearance of pragmatic interestedness within rabbinic Jewish tradition, by: (i) presenting the complicated duality of the concept of interest, (ii) emphasizing the recognition of human needs and interests in Judaism and (iii) highlighting Jewish sensitivity to the differences between various spheres of human commitment, and (iv) the role of market and economic considerations in Jewish tradition. The fourth section reflects more broadly on how PI may contribute to the conception of conscious or humane capitalism.KeywordsInterestDisinterestednessPragmatic InterestednessMoral economic visionJudaism
The significance of the fear of YHWH for the theology of Proverbs 1–9 is incontrovertible. In the present essay it is argued firstly that, in light of numerous parallels between Proverbs 1–9 and Deuteronomy, the fear of YHWH in the former should be understood in light of the latter, denoting a response of exclusive allegiance to YHWH. This prompts a reconsideration of how Proverbs 1–9 presents the relationship between the fear of YHWH and wisdom. The scholarly consensus has been that wisdom follows from the fear of YHWH; in the present essay, this consensus is challenged. Following the pattern set out in Deuteronomy, where the fear of YHWH follows from YHWH’s instruction, it is argued that Proverbs 1–9 presents the fear of YHWH as the result, rather than the source of, wisdom. This would have been especially pertinent in the early post-exilic setting in which Proverbs 1–9 was most likely written.
Though Leviticus 25’s description of the Jubilee sounds unrealistically utopian to many biblical scholars, the Jubilee ideal has stimulated many movements for freedom and economic reform in the last 500 years. It most famously motivated enslaved people to resist and abolitionists to challenge the institution of slavery. Today it continues to inspire reform movements for land redistribution and fair housing, for sovereign debt relief, and for developing environmentally sustainable economies. The contrast between scholarly assessments of the chapter’s meaning in its literary and ancient historical contexts and its proven power to inspire movements for freedom that were unimaginable to its writers poses a moral challenge to the conventional methods of biblical scholarship. This article describes the Jubilee’s ideological context in four historical settings: in Israel’s ancient Middle Eastern political economy, in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century movement to abolish slavery, in contemporary movements for economic reform, and in modern biblical studies to explore how biblical scholars can credibly account for the chapter’s historical and contemporary power to inspire mass freedom movements in their descriptions of the meaning of Leviticus 25.
For Max Weber, modernity is characterized by a tragic conflict among value spheres, each claiming to possess the ‘true meaning’ of human life. In particular, Weber argues that while the political sphere is dominated by the unifying, exclusionary, power-driven, and war-prone nation state, the ethical sphere is characterized by the universalization of individually based, deontological norms. For Weber, I argue, the modern separation between the ethical and political spheres originates in ancient Judaism. His work on Judaism, mostly neglected by political theorists, describes the emergence of politics as an autonomous, naturalistic sphere with the establishment of kingship. Biblical prophets, simultaneously, were the inventors of an idealistic, mulish, universal ethics Weber termed the ‘ethics of ultimate ends’. Thus, against the Greek model harmonizing ethics and politics, Judaism invented an antagonistic model of the two. This Jewish imagination lay dormant for almost two millennia but returned to the stage in secularized modernity.
This article explores one tumultuous encounter between a religious legal tradition and the modern principle of equality—an encounter that also has the potential to shed light on a much wider cluster of questions. The author tracks the ways that the responsa written by prominent Conservative rabbis on the subject of female rabbinic ordination and gender equality implicitly (but unambiguously) reflect the push toward increased equality that weighed on the movement's trajectory, showing that the debate about the ordination of female rabbis reveals two principal trends in Conservative legal rulings, which differ in their responses to the challenge of egalitarianism and their visions of the law, and notes two outlier responsa that cannot be neatly classified within either trend. The author then examines the deep-seated historical, ideational, and sociological processes concurrent with the rise of what some have called the egalitarian age, which have produced these diverging responses and visions, and it determines an appropriate framework to understand them. The author shows that the fight for increased gender equality is situated within an intricate social context that imbues it with meaning and shapes its outcomes and modes of expression. In concluding, the author suggests applying the insights gained in the course of the analysis to other circumstances in which gender egalitarianism clashes with religious tradition. The framework by which the ordination of women in the Conservative movement is analyzed also proves useful, mutatis mutandis , in understanding and comparing the responses of other faith communities as they deal with challenges caused by the egalitarian age.
Philosophers commonly assume that worship is a universal attitude. Two major approaches see worship as a sui generis attitude or as the specific attitude of respect. This article criticizes the universal assumption and defines worship as a ritual that shapes a person in acquiring the attitude considered appropriate in relating to a superior such as God. Religions differ in their rituals of worship because they disagree on what this appropriate attitude is. This claim is demonstrated by distinguishing the Hebrew Bible's form of worship as bowing down. Biblical worship is shown to be political, forming the worshipper into a loyal servant of God as king. This form of worship is argued to be fundamentally ethical because it teaches that the individual's relationship with God supervenes on human relationships.
The background conditions for the emergence of the rule of law are important but underdeveloped. This paper discusses current theories of the origin of the rule of law, arguing that they are useful but incomplete. In addition to those theories, the Jewish and Christian concept of all human beings as God's image bearers is an important contributor to the rule of law in Western civilization. The formulation of universal human equality is not, however, a sufficient condition for the emergence of the rule of law. The concept has taken centuries of articulation in different institutions and social settings. It only reached full fruition when it was joined with an understanding of appropriate legal and political systems as expressed by political theorists such as Locke, Montesquieu, and Madison.
Robert K. Greenleaf mentions Exod 18:13–27 several times in his reflection on servant leaders. He suggests that this passage supports a top-down delegation from leadership. The paper revisits this suggestion about Exod 18:13–27 but reads these verses closely in its literary context and in light of the distinction between authority and power. The storyline of Exodus indicates that Moses’ authority is fairly new and has been contested frequently. His emerging authority must relate to authority already established, for example, the authority of the elders. This reading suggests that Moses does not delegate power when appointing judges. Rather, they participate in his emerging authority and this view has implications when reflecting on this passage and what it says about leadership. Perhaps, such a reading of Exodus 18 and its implications are closer to Greenleaf’s ideas than he thought.
Social "development" is a concept taken from the life of individuals "unwrapping" from inexperience into responsibility. It does not always take a smooth way, but mechanisms of coping with inexperience on the social level are yet understudied. This paper aims to fill this void. After discussing the metaphors of development and individual adolescence, the paper argues that related 'end of history' ideas of the 1950s and 1990s were naïve for two specific reasons. First, they ignored the eurocentricity of 'modern' partitioning institutions that can be overcome by applying principles of non-partitioning Civil democracy. Second, they ignored the systematic nature of the European crisis 1914-15 as result of social inexperience, that can be overcome by implementing a Civil democracy manifesto to be signed as precondition for participation. Possible applications include global climate regimes, the institutionalization of transversal hegemony, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This article recovers Martin Buber’s important but neglected critique of Carl Schmitt’s political theology. Because Buber is known primarily as an ethicist and scholar of Judaism, his attack on Schmitt has been largely overlooked. Yet as I reveal through a close reading of his Biblical commentaries, a concern about the dangers of political theology threads through decades of his work. Divine sovereignty, Buber argues, is absolute and inimitable; no human ruler can claim the legitimate power reserved to God. Buber’s response is to uncover what he sees as Judaism’s earliest political theory: a “theopolitics,” where human beings, mutually subject to divine kingship, practice non-domination. But Buber, I show, did not seek to directly revive this religious vision. Instead, he sought to incorporate the spirit of theopolitics, as embodied by Israel’s prophets, into modern society. The result is a new and significant perspective on liberal democracy and political theology.
What is, or maybe was, Europe? And might there be a nexus between the fact that specific Western institutions diffused over the globe, and global problems? The paper describes how western Christianity emerged shaping itself in a specific 'groups under roofs' structure of social relations that is described by the partition of society into groups which can easily be represented in overarching institutions. The model allows to explain the medieval European ascent, its specific development of self-governance and industrial society institutions, and the specific two-stage nature of European institutional modernization with a current second (albeit so far much less severe) modernization crisis. In a world that has become more connected and includes societies without 'groups under roofs' cultural traditions, partitioning institutions have to be reconsidered and adequately adapted.
I address three key questions in Jewish theology that have come up in readers’ criticism of my book The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture: (i) How should we think about God’s revelation to man if, as I have proposed, the sharp distinction between divine revelation and human reason is alien to the Hebrew Bible and classical rabbinic sources? (ii) Is the biblical Law of Moses intended to be a description of natural law, suggesting the path to life and the good for all nations? And (iii) what should be the role of the Jewish theologian, given the overwhelming prevalence of Christian conceptions of God and Scripture in contemporary theological discourse.
This article discusses a selection of the most recent examples from both biblical scholarship and Jewish philosophy of the construction of the Hebrew Bible as a philosophical resource. By way of a descriptive overview of the relevant ideas in the writings of exemplars such as Davies, Hazony, Gericke, Glouberman and Sekine, the study reveals a neglected albeit radical trend in the contemporary attempted return of philosophy to Hebrew Bible interpretation and vice-versa. These new developments are labelled “philosophical maximalism”, involving as they do the classification of the entire corpus of the Hebrew Bible as philosophical literature, in one sense or another
This book provides a new reading of the biblical book of Numbers in a commentary form. Mainstream readings have tended to see the book as a haphazard junkyard of material that connects Genesis-Leviticus with Deuteronomy (and Joshua), composed at a late stage in the history of ancient Israel. By contrast, this book reads Numbers as part of a wider work of Genesis-Joshua, a carefully crafted programmatic settler colonial document for a new society in Canaanite highlands in the late second millennium BCE that seeks to replace pre-existing indigenous societies. In the context of the tremendous influence that the biblical documents have had on the world in the last 2,000-3,000 years, the book also offers pointers towards reading these texts today. This volume is a fascinating study of this text, and will be of interest not only to biblical scholars, but to anyone with an interest in the history of the ancient Levant, and colonisation and colonialism in the ancient world more broadly.
This article argues that, in the arrangements for the public provision of welfare for the poor and a basic education for all in both biblical and post-biblical times, Judaism is more closely in accord with classical liberalism than it is with those variants of liberalism which favour no more than the minimal night-watchman state as well as those which favour the extensive welfare states of contemporary Western social democracies. To the extent that Israel's ultra-orthodox Jews (its Haredim) have been able to secure more by way of state subsidies (through exploiting the leverage their country's national system of proportional representation has given them, which often leaves them holding the balance of power), not only are they endangering Israel's viability as a vibrant, developed liberal democracy, they are also guilty of departing from the religious teachings and tradition of Jewish orthodoxy.
This essay will deal mainly with aspects of human behavior, yet will also touch on aspects of ethics related to God's attitude toward humans.
This chapter examines the law of the attractive female captive in Deuteronomic law.
This article examines the character of Miriam the prophetess and raises questions regarding the contradictions and contrasts in the way she is portrayed in the biblical text. Contrary to some researchers, who argued that Miriam was not actually a prophetess and did not deliver the word of God, this essay argues that Miriam was indeed equal to her brother Moses, both as a prophetess and as a messenger, equal in both essence and spiritual role. This essay aims to reveal, using the approach of cultural symbolism, the female parts of the story and the tradition of Miriam, which were censored and silenced in the hegemonic text. The essay aims to prove that Miriam, like Moses, was present at moments of revelation and was sent on the mission of leading and delivering the Hebrew nation.
This article traces the political, intellectual, and disciplinary motivations behind the establishment of the field of Jewish political thought, and pursues implications of the field's establishment for the dynamics of Jewish political debate. Jewish political thought is decisively marked by the experience of statelessness. Thus, to establish the possibility of a Jewish political tradition, scholars have had to abandon or relax the received view that sovereignty is the defining horizon for politics. Although the pervasiveness of politics is the field's animating conviction, scholars have yet to mount a sufficiently forceful challenge to sovereignty's conceptual and political priority. This review surveys the reasons why scholars have been reluctant to pursue alternative, diasporic conceptions of the political, focusing on their notions of what constitutes a tradition. The article contends that developing a more ambitious conception of the Jewish political tradition is a prerequisite for encouraging political debate about sovereignty's importance for Jewish political agency.
Babylonian and Egyptian writing systems dominated the Near East during the third and second millennia B.C., but during the latter many other scripts arose. Among them was the infant alphabet whose history can be reconstructed in outline with the aid of scattered and brief inscriptions from the Levant. Egyptian influence is seen as a stimulus in its conception and as a factor in the materials and direction of writing. By 1000 B.C. this simple and flexible system was well‐established, supplanting its local rivals, and ready for its expansion eastwards through Aramaic and for its adaptation by the Greeks in the west where it came to its maturity.
The first part of this article is a new translation and interpretation of the first incantational plaque from Arslan Tash in northern Syria. Each of the three succeeding sections identifies and discusses elements of this incantation that find resonance in texts from Ugarit, Egypt, and the Hebrew Bible, respectively. At Ugarit we find texts predating Arslan Tash which describe incantational activity involving Horon and the Sun-deity, both of whom are present in the Arslan Tash text, and who have similar roles in the two traditions. Horon is also present in Egypt during the last centuries of the city of Ugarit, and is there also associated with the Sun-deity and performs similar functions as at Arslan Tash. In the Passover account of Exod 12 there are several elements in common with Arslan Tash, albeit in the distinctive form that might be expected in the theological and literary tradition of the Hebrew Bible.
Covenantal Rights is a groundbreaking work of political theory: a comprehensive, philosophically sophisticated attempt to bring insights from the Jewish political tradition into current political and legal debates about rights and to bring rights discourse more fully into Jewish thought. David Novak pursues these aims by presenting a theory of rights founded on the covenant between God and the Jewish people as that covenant is constituted by Scripture and the rabbinic tradition. In doing so, he presents a powerful challenge to prevailing liberal and conservative positions on rights and duties and opens a new chapter in contemporary Jewish political thinking. For Novak, "covenantal rights" are rooted in God's primary rights as creator of the universe and as the elector of a particular community whose members relate to this God as their sovereign. The subsequent rights of individuals and communities flow from God's covenantal promises, which function as irrevocable entitlements. This presents a sharp contrast to the liberal tradition, in which rights flow above all from individuals. It also challenges the conservative idea that duties can take precedence over rights, since Novak argues that there are no covenantal duties that are not backed by correlative rights. Novak explains carefully and clearly how this theory of covenantal rights fits into Jewish tradition and applies to the relationships among God, the covenanted community, and individuals. This work is a profound and provocative contribution to contemporary religious and political theory.
This commentary views Exodus as a cultural document, preserving the collective memories of the Israelites and relating them to the major institutions and beliefs that emerged by the end of the time of the Hebrew Bible. It is intended to help the reader follow the story line of Exodus, understand its socio-cultural context, appreciate its literary features, recognize its major themes and values, and also note its interpretive and moral problems. Carol Meyers explains important concepts and terms as expressed in the Hebrew original so that those who know Hebrew as well as those who don't will be able to follow the text.
:The paper contributes to the understanding of the meaning of the biblical Hebrew particles ×”× ×” and ×•×”× ×”, the contextual restrictions in which they serve, and their syntactical status. The particles ×”× ×” and ×•×”× ×” share one meaning, that of a presentative, as indicated in the majority of biblical Hebrew dictionaries and other relevant works. However, these particles do not share the contexts in which they appear. The particle ×”× ×” is found to appear with the verb ×מר only, introducing direct speech. The particle ×•×”× ×” is found to occur with verbs of sight and related contexts only, introducing content clauses which include a circumstantial nuance. It is also suggested that there is a resemblance between the dichotomy in the usage of biblical Hebrew ×”× ×” and ×•×”× ×” and that of Arabic Ø¥Ú¼ and Ù±Ú§ The syntactical status of both particles is mostly that of an introductory particle. Both can introduce nominal clauses, verbal clauses, clauses including a participle, or one-member clauses, but they do not play any syntactical role within the clause which follows. Only ×”× ×” may occasionally serve as a predicate within a clause. This occurs whenever the other sentence part is definite, which may indicate that it is the subject of a one-member clause, leaving the predicate role for ×”× ×”.
The deuteronomistic presentation of Solomon revises the quasi-antimonarchical stance of Deuteronomy. The depiction of an exemplary Solomon in I Reg 1-10 evinces the Deuteronomist's largely positive view of kingship in contrast with that of Deuteronomy. For the Deuteronomist, the first period of Solomon's reign is the zenith of Israel's existence in the land. By commending the linkage between the Jerusalem temple cultus and the Davidic dynasty is providential, the Deuteronomist implicitly revamps the deuteronomic agenda for a (re)distribution of powers at the central shrine. The deuteronomic authors greatly cricumscribe royal powers - the king's only positive duty is to read the torah scroll. But the Deuteronomist explicitly endorses substantial royal powers. These include promoting and defending the Jerusalem temple cult and abolishing illicit cults. Hence, both Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomist subject the king to law, but advance competing notions of what this allegiance entails.
Differents concepts concernant la tradition orale et la tradition ecrite dans la prophetie ont marque la discussion sur l'histoire des traditions (H. Gunkel, I. Engnell, S. Mowinckel). Habacuc 2,1-5 peut etre un exemple - selon l'A. et son analyse du texte - que la prophetie n'etait pas seulement un phenomene oral et ecrit apres une tradition plus ou moins longue, mais pouvait prendre aussi des le debut la forme d'un texte ecrit (ecrit mantique)
This paper explores the uses of writing as documented in late pre-exilic and especially in exilic and post-exilic Judaean prophetic texts in the context of the orality/literacy debate. It delineates the impact the rising importance of writing had on Judaean prophecy and attempts to show that writing as a new "technology of the intellect" (J. Goody) irreversibly altered the character of Judaean prophecy. The paper also demonstrates that the concept of an orality/literacy continuum is likely to distort our view of the significance of writing in Israelite prophecyand, indeed, of Israelite history as a whole. Against this background, it makes sense to reconsider the relationship between prophecy and scribalism. The passages from exilic and post-exilic prophetic texts discussed in the present paper indicate that, from the late pre-exilic period onwards, the contacts between prophets and priests/scribes became closer and closer.
Modern scholarly attitudes to the phenomenon of restricted knowledge in ancient Egypt have been affected by political and ideological issues of the present more strongly than have some other domains of the subject. markedly affected by the and what its significance and position in society and ideology was. From the Old Kingdom onward clear cases can be found of elite display of access to restricted knowledge coupled with concealment of its content. Such knowledge includes inititation into and performance of priestly roles. The title Hry-sStA ‘keeper of secrets’ is a general designation for people with such privileges. A major relevant domain is the solar cult, in which the king is presented as having exclusive understanding, some of which is related to magic for a slightly broader elite group. In social terms, access to knowledge is displayed in terms of meritocracy and in relation to elite hierarchies. Decorum, focused on religion and royal–divine ideology, is closely integrated with the restriction of knowledge. Hierarchy and decorum are the organizing principles in Egypt of the nearly universal restriction of knowledge. Patterns of development in such knowledge that can be discerned for the Old to New kingdoms could perhaps be extended to the first millennium.