The Right Chorale
Studies in Biblical Law and Interpretation
by Bernard M. Levinson
This book presents twelve selected investigations of textual composition, interpretation, revision, and transmission. With these studies, Bernard Levinson draws upon the literary forebears of biblical law in cuneiform literature and its reinterpretation in the Second Temple period to provide the horizon of ancient Israelite legal exegesis. The volume makes a sustained argument about the nature of textuality in ancient Israel: Israelite scribes were sophisticated readers, authors, and thinkers who were conscious of their place in literary and intellectual history, even as they sought to renew and transform their cultural patrimony in significant ways. Originally published over a decade and a half, the significantly revised and updated studies gathered here explore the connections between law and narrative, show the close connections between Deuteronomy and the Neo-Assyrian loyalty oath tradition, address the literary relationship of Deuteronomy and the Covenant Code, reflect upon important questions of methodology, and explore the contributions of the Bible to later western intellectual history. The volume offers essential reading for an understanding of the Pentateuch and biblical law.This collection of essays is a testimony to Levinson’s methodological brilliance and broad perspective as a bridge-builder between the various factions of Hebrew Bible scholarship.Armin Lange in Journal of Ancient Judaism 1 (2010), S. 122The collection as a whole triumphantly vindicates the significance of biblical law, the essential function of diachronic analysis (source and redaction criticism, and historical contextualization) in interpretation, and, especially in the last section, the established positions of the critical tradition in the succession of Wellhausen. The footnotes and bibliography are a superb resource for the study of biblical law. And the publishers have produced a beautiful volume worthily complementing a fine text.Walter J. Houston in Journal of Semitic Studies 55 (2010), S. 312-313
I. Setting the Agenda: Why Biblical Law Matters 1.The Right Chorale: From the Poetics of Biblical Narrative to the Hermeneutics of the Hebrew Bible 2.The Seductions of the Garden: The Genesis of Hermeneutics as Critique 3.The Covenant at Mount Sinai: The Argument of Revelation4.Deuteronomy's Conception of Law as an Ideal Type: A Missing Chapter in the History of Constitutional Law II. The Paradigm of Legal Hermeneutics: Close Studies and Test Cases 5.The Effected Object in Contractual Legal Language: The Semantics of If You Purchase a Hebrew Slave (Exodus 21:2) 6.Textual Criticism, Assyriology, and the History of Interpretation: Deuteronomy 13:7a as a Test Case in Method 7.Recovering the Lost Original Meaning of ??? ???? ???? (Deuteronomy 13:9) 8.But You Shall Surely Kill Him!: The Text-Critical and Neo-Assyrian Evidence for MT Deuteronomy 13:10 III. Debate and Dialogue: The Question of Method 9.The Case for Revision and Interpolation within the Biblical Legal Corpora 10.Calum M. Carmichael's Approach to the Laws of Deuteronomy 11.The Hermeneutics of Tradition in Deuteronomy: A Reply to J. G. McConville 12.Is the Covenant Code an Exilic Composition? A Response to John Van Seters
- By (author) Bernard M Levinson
Other Titles in this Series
Jephtas Tochter
Traditions-, religions- und rezeptionsgeschichtliche Studien zu Richter 11,29-40
Volume 71
Weisung fur Israel
Studien zu religiosem Lehren und Lernen im Deuteronomium und in seinem Umfeld
Volume 44
History and the Hebrew Bible
Studies in Ancient Israelite and Ancient Near Eastern Historiography
Volume 61
The Poetics of Visuality
Ekphrasis, Material Agency, and the Visual Imagination in Biblical Antiquity
Volume 182
The Formation of the Hebrew Psalter
The Book of Psalms Between Ancient Versions, Material Transmission and Canonical Exegesis
Volume 151
Hiob – Vom Gottesfurchtigen zum Reprasentanten Israels
Studien zur Buchwerdung des Hiobbuches und zu seinen Quellen
Volume 70
Die Erzelternerzahlungen im Lichte hofischer Erzahlkunst
Motivkritische Studien zu den Uberlieferungen von Lot, Isaak, Rebekka und Jakob
Volume 161
Die Geschichtspsalmen
Eine Studie zu den Psalmen 78, 105, 106, 135 und 136 als hermeneutische Schlusseltexte im Psalter
Volume 84
Tod und Jenseits im alten Israel und in seiner Umwelt
Theologische, religionsgeschichtliche, archäologische und ikonographische Aspekte
Recht, Ethos und Heiligkeit
Eine rechtsanthropologische und rechtstheoretische Studie zum Heiligkeitsgesetz (Lev 17-26)
Schriftgelehrtes Murren
Schriftgelehrte Fortschreibungs- und Auslegungsprozesse in den Murrerzahlungen in Exodus und Numeri
Volume 152
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