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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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Flatto, David C. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Cambridge Univ. Press [2018]
In: Harvard theological review
Year: 2018, Volume: 111, Issue: 4, Pages: 488-515
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Temple (Jerusalem) / Early Judaism / Jewish law
IxTheo Classification:BH Judaism
HD Early Judaism
KBL Near East and North Africa
XA Law
Online Access: Volltext (Resolving-System)
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Summary: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
Contains:Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/S001781601800024X