Periodic Reporting for period 2 - DIVLAW (How God Became a Lawgiver: The Place of the Torah in Ancient Near Eastern Legal History)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2021-07-01 do 2022-12-31
While the notion of divine law developed in ancient times, this idea came about as an historical process. Once in place, the idea of the law given by God decisively shaped the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic conceptions of religion and society. The relationships between human rulers and the divine sphere provides fodder for debate around issues of political authority and legitimacy across religious and cultural boundaries. Just within the Western world, for example, the issue proved to be one main reason leading the division of Protestant confessions in the wake of the Reformation. Furthermore, several nations still contain references to God in their constitutions such as the preamble of the Swiss federal constitution. Its reference to God emphasizes that there is an ultimate entity that precedes the state as a legislative power.
Given the ongoing relevance of this concept, this project addresses some of the earliest recorded on this interplay in recorded history and evaluates the context, development, and early receptions of the formulation of divine law as they are found in the Ancient Near East, ancient Israel and Judaism, and ancient Greece.
Scholarship of ancient West Asia and the Bible traditionally viewed the divine law as part of the very beginnings of the Hebrew Bible, the “bedrock” of biblical tradition. Developments over recent decades have, however, rendered this view implausible. This project provides a new formulation of the development of divine law and its implications in the Hebrew Bible and antiquity in four steps. First, it will elucidate the relationship between the divine and legal spheres in the ancient Near Eastern world that provide the context for the emergence of the notion of divine laws and to the conception of God as lawgiver. Second, it will describe the steps involved in God becoming a lawgiver in the Pentateuchal texts of Exodus and Deuteronomy in the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods of early Jewish history. Third, it will assess this notion’s impact on ancient Judaism, evaluating the historical, social, and political contexts in which this concept was operative throughout Persian and Hellenistic Jewish communities. Fourth and finally, it will contextualize this development in the ancient world in comparison with parallel developments with ancient Greek polities and discourse that reflect on “divine law” in radically different ways.
Given the ongoing relevance of this concept, this project addresses some of the earliest recorded on this interplay in recorded history and evaluates the context, development, and early receptions of the formulation of divine law as they are found in the Ancient Near East, ancient Israel and Judaism, and ancient Greece.
Scholarship of ancient West Asia and the Bible traditionally viewed the divine law as part of the very beginnings of the Hebrew Bible, the “bedrock” of biblical tradition. Developments over recent decades have, however, rendered this view implausible. This project provides a new formulation of the development of divine law and its implications in the Hebrew Bible and antiquity in four steps. First, it will elucidate the relationship between the divine and legal spheres in the ancient Near Eastern world that provide the context for the emergence of the notion of divine laws and to the conception of God as lawgiver. Second, it will describe the steps involved in God becoming a lawgiver in the Pentateuchal texts of Exodus and Deuteronomy in the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods of early Jewish history. Third, it will assess this notion’s impact on ancient Judaism, evaluating the historical, social, and political contexts in which this concept was operative throughout Persian and Hellenistic Jewish communities. Fourth and finally, it will contextualize this development in the ancient world in comparison with parallel developments with ancient Greek polities and discourse that reflect on “divine law” in radically different ways.
As the cultural backdrop informing the composition of the Hebrew Bible, the legal literature of the ancient Near East reveals a complex relationship between notions of divine agency in maintaining social order and the role of temporal rulers in actualizing this ideal. The boundaries between divine and human law were not always clear. In their capacities as lawgivers, human kings were imagined to assume divine attributes and stand in closer proximity to the divine world than any other human beings.
Clarifying the origins of the notion of divine law in ancient Israel and Judah has required a multi-faceted approach including conceptual, textual, and socio-historical elements. At the conceptual level this project has identified foundational aspects of the notion of divine law like the solarization of Yhwh, and the development of a solidarity ethos. Analyses of the biblical texts have illuminated a key theological tension between God, the law, and kingship. Finally, social historical elements are shown to be especially important with regards to understanding and identifying the various scribal groups which were involved in the process of the theologization of law.
The scope of divine law’s reception in early Judean communities was initially limited to cultic practices and group identity markers. Persian-period evidence from Egypt and the books of Numbers and Ezra points especially to the regulation of cultic practices like Passover. They, and the books of Esther and Daniel, also show how Judean divine law concerns group affiliation more than the judicial sphere, even when conflicts and interactions between imperial and divine laws arise.
Comparative study of Greek and Hebrew cultures attests to a world order under divine responsibility indicating an overarching notion of cosmic justice that lies at the heart of the very notion of “divine law.” This idea introduces reflection on “laws of nature” or “natural law” in the use of legal vocabulary in Greek and Hebrew texts to describe natural or cosmic phenomena. As for the Hebrew Bible, the idea of “law of nature” emerges in later wisdom traditions focused on the creation account, which is reinterpreted through a legal imagery.
Clarifying the origins of the notion of divine law in ancient Israel and Judah has required a multi-faceted approach including conceptual, textual, and socio-historical elements. At the conceptual level this project has identified foundational aspects of the notion of divine law like the solarization of Yhwh, and the development of a solidarity ethos. Analyses of the biblical texts have illuminated a key theological tension between God, the law, and kingship. Finally, social historical elements are shown to be especially important with regards to understanding and identifying the various scribal groups which were involved in the process of the theologization of law.
The scope of divine law’s reception in early Judean communities was initially limited to cultic practices and group identity markers. Persian-period evidence from Egypt and the books of Numbers and Ezra points especially to the regulation of cultic practices like Passover. They, and the books of Esther and Daniel, also show how Judean divine law concerns group affiliation more than the judicial sphere, even when conflicts and interactions between imperial and divine laws arise.
Comparative study of Greek and Hebrew cultures attests to a world order under divine responsibility indicating an overarching notion of cosmic justice that lies at the heart of the very notion of “divine law.” This idea introduces reflection on “laws of nature” or “natural law” in the use of legal vocabulary in Greek and Hebrew texts to describe natural or cosmic phenomena. As for the Hebrew Bible, the idea of “law of nature” emerges in later wisdom traditions focused on the creation account, which is reinterpreted through a legal imagery.
Scholars have traditionally depicted Near Eastern law as an essentially secular system centered on the political authority of kings, with biblical law representing a radical break in attributing law to a divine source. Yet, the notion of divine laws is well attested in ancient Mesopotamia and the promulgation of law was one way that human lawgivers embodied certain aspects of the gods of justice. With only a few exceptions, the almost complete subordination of biblical kings under the legal authority of Yhwh was an important innovation that set it apart from its Near Eastern neighbors, but it built on motifs and ideas that had circulated in the ancient Near East for millennia.
A systematic catalogue of foundational factors responsible for the conceptual development of divine law in ancient Israel and Judah during the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian epochs has led to a novel explanation for the gradual demotion of the active function of the king in the realm of law within the biblical texts. With regard to the influence of Pentateuchal law on society, this law hardly functioned like the modern Western understanding of “law,” governing property rights or criminal justice at any point in the Babylonian through Hellenistic periods. Rather, as found in recent anthropological studies of law, in Judean communities, law functions as a depiction of a more ideal society. Thus, there is a sharper break between the functional laws (e.g. royal decrees) of the Persian and Hellenistic Empires and Judean conceptions of Torah than previously anticipated. Comparative research shows substantial continuity between ancient Israelite religion and Greek conceptions of nature as a space shared between human and divine beings. The prominence of the creation model to conceptualize nature in the Hebrew Bible does not automatically imply a concept of divine transcendence, which instead resulted from a long-term process. This undercuts the stark dichotomy between divine transcendence, often connected with the ideas of creation and revelation, and the “immanent” view of the divine of Israel’s neighbors. On the other hand, the emergence of the Torah as a written law corpus of divine origin progressively impacted the notion of “natural law” itself: the insistence of late traditions on the correspondence between creation and law eventually led to the idea that the whole world is sustained by the Torah. By contrast, since the fifth cent. BCE, Greek authors refer to a core of religious or ethical principles recognized as universally valid, emanating from the gods, and occasionally labeled as “natural.” These norms are explicitly defined as unwritten, contrasting with the main written body of the city laws. In this regard, it is correct to affirm that Greek and Hebrew traditions follow divergent trajectories.
A systematic catalogue of foundational factors responsible for the conceptual development of divine law in ancient Israel and Judah during the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian epochs has led to a novel explanation for the gradual demotion of the active function of the king in the realm of law within the biblical texts. With regard to the influence of Pentateuchal law on society, this law hardly functioned like the modern Western understanding of “law,” governing property rights or criminal justice at any point in the Babylonian through Hellenistic periods. Rather, as found in recent anthropological studies of law, in Judean communities, law functions as a depiction of a more ideal society. Thus, there is a sharper break between the functional laws (e.g. royal decrees) of the Persian and Hellenistic Empires and Judean conceptions of Torah than previously anticipated. Comparative research shows substantial continuity between ancient Israelite religion and Greek conceptions of nature as a space shared between human and divine beings. The prominence of the creation model to conceptualize nature in the Hebrew Bible does not automatically imply a concept of divine transcendence, which instead resulted from a long-term process. This undercuts the stark dichotomy between divine transcendence, often connected with the ideas of creation and revelation, and the “immanent” view of the divine of Israel’s neighbors. On the other hand, the emergence of the Torah as a written law corpus of divine origin progressively impacted the notion of “natural law” itself: the insistence of late traditions on the correspondence between creation and law eventually led to the idea that the whole world is sustained by the Torah. By contrast, since the fifth cent. BCE, Greek authors refer to a core of religious or ethical principles recognized as universally valid, emanating from the gods, and occasionally labeled as “natural.” These norms are explicitly defined as unwritten, contrasting with the main written body of the city laws. In this regard, it is correct to affirm that Greek and Hebrew traditions follow divergent trajectories.