Inventing Shabbat
Moses as Agent of Legal Innovation in the Narrated World of Exodus 15,22–16,36
By (author) James Platania
Paperback (Forthcoming)
(November 2026)
ISBN: 9783162002631
6.1 x 9.13 inches
Price: $150.00
James Platania argues that Shabbat is not first instituted at creation but is discovered in the wilderness of Sin – prior to its formal legislation at Sinai – through Moses’ innovative interpretation of God’s previous words and deeds.
James Platania argues that Shabbat is not first instituted at creation but is discovered in the wilderness of Sin – prior to its formal legislation at Sinai – through Moses’ innovative interpretation of God’s previous words and deeds. Focusing on Exodus 15,22-16,36, he argues that the biblical narrator presents Moses as a prophetic mediator who interprets earlier divine discourses in response to new circumstances, prior to any explicit divine command concerning Shabbat. Shabbat thus emerges within Israel’s lived experience of manna, before covenantal lawgiving, as a practice discerned and confirmed within narrative time. The author adopts a narrative approach grounded in literary poetics and legal hermeneutics, reading Exodus sequentially from the perspective of a first-time reader and treating the final form of the text as primary. Particular attention is given to Moses’ speeches and their attributional reference to prior divine utterances, as well as to narrative gaps that invite the reader to infer processes of interpretation and legal innovation. The academic contribution of the book lies in bringing narratology and legal hermeneutics into sustained dialogue. By reading scribal strategies of innovation as dramatized within the narrative world, the author reframes Moses as an exegetical prophet whose authority legitimates legal development. Geographically, the study is situated in the wilderness traditions of Exodus, and temporally it addresses the pre-Sinaitic phase of Israel’s journey. Theoretically, it offers a model for understanding biblical law as narratively mediated and dynamically unfolding, with implications for the study of Shabbat, legal innovation, prophetic authority, and Pentateuchal composition.
- By (author) James Platania
Other Titles in this Series
La Famille de Saul dans le conflit Saul versus David
tude de la construction narrative des personnages de Jonathan, Mrav et Mikal
Volume 78
Storymaking, Textual Development, and Varying Cultic Centralizations
Gathering and Fitting Unhewn Stones
Volume 142
Intertextualitat und die Entstehung des Psalters
Methodische Reflexionen - Theologiegeschichtliche Perspektiven
Volume 114
The Composition of Genesis 37
Incoherence and Meaning in the Exposition of the Joseph Story
Volume 95
Punning in Odd or Elegant Constructions in Jeremiah
The Convergence of Linguistics, Rhetoric, and Textuality in the Hebrew Text of Jeremiah
The Discourse of Rites
Shaping and Reshaping the (Counter-)Priestly Rituals Conducted Outside the Tabernacle
Dieu educateur
Une novelle approche d'un concept de la thologie biblique entre Bible Hebraique, Septante et littrature grecque classique
Volume 77
The Pillars of the First Temple (1 Kgs 7,15-22)
A Study from Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, Archaeological, and Iconographic Perspectives
Volume 116
De-Demonising the Old Testament
An Investigation of Azazel, Lilith, Deber, Qeteb and Reshef in the Hebrew Bible
Volume 37
Das Abrahamopfer im Kontext von Gen 12-25
Narratologische und literarhistorische Untersuchungen
Volume 149
Das Ende Deuterojesajas
Eine literarkritische und redaktionsgeschichtliche Studie zur Entstehung von Jes 40-60
Volume 94
Benno Jacob zu Levitikus
Eine Studie zu seinem Nachlass mit Edition des Manuskripts 'Leviticus 17-20'
Volume 134