The Legal Background of the Theme of Land in the Book of Joshua
Scholars have variously explained the theme of land in the book of Joshua against the background of ancient Near Eastern household, tribal, or royal agrarian legal and social concepts. However, no single agrarian concept provides a unitary key for understanding the theme of land in the book. This ar...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
The National Association of Professors of Hebrew
2018
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| In: |
Hebrew studies
Year: 2018, Volume: 59, Issue: 1, Pages: 111-128 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Scholars have variously explained the theme of land in the book of Joshua against the background of ancient Near Eastern household, tribal, or royal agrarian legal and social concepts. However, no single agrarian concept provides a unitary key for understanding the theme of land in the book. This article sketches a broad framework for understanding how land rights functioned in the ancient Near East. This legal framework clarifies how the agrarian concepts in the background to Joshua relates to one another. This article also outlines the evidence for one agrarian concept in the book that has been neglected by historians, the ancient Near Eastern legal principle according to which rights in land could be exercised collectively. The article particularly attends to texts from ancient Israel, Emar, Nineveh, and Hatti that document rights in land being exercised collectively by society's elders as representatives of society as a whole. This ancient Near Eastern legal principle clarifies three narrative scenes and one section heading in the book of Joshua. The scribes who produced the book drew on this legal principle in order to stitch together disparate and uneven territorial lists into a vision of national unity. |
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| ISSN: | 2158-1681 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Hebrew studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1353/hbr.2018.0005 |