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Everyday Law in Biblical Israel: An Introduction. By Raymond Westbrook and Bruce Wells. Westminster John Knox Press2009. Pp. 156. $24.95. ISBN: 0-664-23497-6. - Justice and Compassion in Biblical Law. By Richard H. Hiers. T&T Clark2009. Pp. 243. $120.00. ISBN: 0-567-26909-4. - God, Justice, and Society: Aspects of Law and Legality in the Bible. By Jonathan Burnside. Oxford University Press2011. Pp. 542. $95.00. ISBN: 0-199-75921-9.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2015

John W. Welch
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Book Reviews
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Journal of Law and Religion , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , January 2012 , pp. 499 - 514
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Copyright © Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University 2012

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References

1. In addition to the three books here under review, other recent books include Anderson, Cheryl B., Ancient Laws and Contemporary Controversies (Oxford Univ. Press 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baker, David L., Tight Fists or Open Hands? Wealth and Poverty in Old Testament Law (Eerdmans 2009)Google Scholar; Halberstam, Chaya T., Law and Truth in Biblical and Rabbinic Literature (Ind. Univ. Press 2010)Google Scholar; Bartor, Assnat, Reading Law as Narrative: A Study in the Casuistic Laws of the Pentateuch (Soc'y Biblical Literature 2010)Google Scholar; Shinkoskey, Robert Kimball, Do My Prophets No Harm: Revelation and Religious Liberty in the Bible (Resource Publ'g 2011)Google Scholar; and Greengus, Samuel, Laws in the Bible and Early Rabbinic Collections (Cascade Books 2011)Google Scholar.

2. I found the following to be the most interesting and helpful to my students. Daube, David, Studies in Biblical Law (N.Y. 1947)Google Scholar is still a classic of legal analysis of law-related narratives in the Hebrew Bible. Boecker, Hans Jochen, Law and the Administration of Justice in the Old Testament and Ancient East (first published in German in 1976Google Scholar; English translation, SPCK 1981) compared the Covenant Code in Exodus 21-23 with the Code of Hammurabi; Epsztein, Leon, Social Justice in the Ancient Near East and the People of the Bible (first published in French in 1983; English trans., SCM Press 1986)Google Scholar offered a sociological study of laws and customs dealing with the poor and the disenfranchised. Patrick, Dale, Old Testament Law (Westminster John Knox Press 1984)Google Scholar gave a broad introduction to the study of Old Testament law, morals, community, principles, and judicial practice. Falk, Ze'ev, Hebrew Law in Biblical Times (Jerusalem, 1st ed., 1964; 2d ed., Found. Ancient Research 2001)Google Scholar treated legal subjects such as crime and punishment, property and contracts, marriage and divorce, and continuities between Biblical and later Jewish law.

3. Yaron, Reuven, Biblical Law: Prolegomena, in Jewish Law in legal History and the Modern World 31 (Jackson, Bernard S. ed., Brill 1980)Google Scholar.

4. For two excellent surveys and careful assessments of various approaches taken in the study of Biblical law, see the chapter “The History of Research on the Covenant Code,” in A Law BOOK for the Diaspora 8–46 (Seters, John Van ed., Oxford Univ. Press 2003)Google Scholar, and the chapter entitled “Some Recent Approaches to Old Testament Law,” in Anne Fitzpatrick-McKinley, The Transformation of Torah from Scribal Advice to Law 23–53 (Sheffield Acad. Press 1999)Google Scholar.

5. Welch, John W., Biblical Law Cumulative Bibliography. CD-ROM (BYU Press & Eisenbrauns 2005)Google Scholar.

6. Alt, Albrecht, The Origin of Israelite Law, in Essays on Old Testament History and Religion 79–132 (Oxford Univ. Press 1996)Google Scholar.

7. For example, Bovati, Pietro, Re-Establishing Justice: Legal Terms, Concepts, and Procedures in the Hebrew Bible (Smith, M. trans., JSOT Press 1994)Google Scholar.

8. See, e.g., Milgrom, Jacob, Leviticus 1–16 (Doubleday 1991)Google Scholar; Leviticus 17–22 (Doubleday 2000)Google Scholar; Leviticus 23–27 (Doubleday 2001)Google Scholar.

9. Yaron, supra note 3, at 27-44.

10. For Raymond Westbrook's concise introduction to Biblical law, see his chapter “Biblical Law,” An Introduction to the History and Sources of Jewish Law 1–17 (Hecht, N.S.et. al eds., Oxford Univ. Press 1995)Google Scholar. For his collected works, see Wells, Bruce & Magdalene, F. Rachel, Law from the Tigris to the Tiber: The Writings of Raymond Westbrook, 2 vols. (Eisenbrauns 2009)Google Scholar.

11. A History of Ancient Near Eastern Law, 2 vols. (Westbrook, Raymond ed., Brill 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. Jackson, Bernard S., Wisdom-Laws: a Study of the Mishpatim of Exodus 21:1- 22:16, at 23-39 (Oxford Univ. Press 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. See, e.g., Matthews, Victor H., Manner and Customs in the Bible (Hendrickson 1991)Google Scholar, and papers he presented at meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature, “The Social Context of Law in the Second Temple Period” (SBL Second Temple Section 1995); and “Kings of Israel: A Question of Crime and Punishment” (SBL Biblical Law Group 1992).

14. Beginning with Otto, Eckart, Theologische Ethik des Alten Testaments (Kohlhammer 1994)Google Scholar, and his frequent contributions in the Zeitschrift für Altorientalische und Biblische Rechtsgeschichte.

15. See also Freedman, David Noel, The Nine Commandments: Uncovering a Hidden Pattern of Crime and Punishment in the Hebrew Bible (Doubleday 2000)Google Scholar; Crusemann, Frank, The Torah: Theology and Social History of the Old Testament (Fortress 1996)Google Scholar; McConville, J.G., Law and Theology in Deuteronomy (Sheffield Acad. Press 1984)Google Scholar.

16. For example, Levinson, Bernard M., Legal Revision and Religious Renewal in Ancient Israel (Cambridge Univ. Press 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “The Right Chorale”: From the Poetics of Biblical Narrative to the Hermeneutics of the Hebrew Bible, in “Not in Heaven”: Coherence and Complexity in Biblical Narrative 129-53 (Rosenblatt, Jason P. & Sitterson, Joseph C. eds., Ind. Univ. Press 1991)Google Scholar; and The Case for Revision and Interpolation within the Biblical Legal Corpora, in Theory and Method in Biblical and Cuneiform Law 37–59 (Levinson, Bernard M. ed., Sheffield Acad. Press 1994)Google Scholar.

17. Such as Sprinkle, Joe M., “The Book of the Covenant”: A Literary Approach (Sheffield Acad. Press 1994)Google Scholar; Marshall, Jay W., Israel and the Book of the Covenant: An Anthropological Approach to Biblical Law (Scholars Press 1993)Google Scholar.

18. See, e.g., Jackson, Bernard s., Studies in the Semiotics of Biblical Law (Sheffield Acad. Press 2000)Google Scholar; Towards an Integrated Approach to Criminal Law, Crim. L. Rev. 621-29 (1979)Google Scholar; Structuralism and the Notion of Religious Law, 2/3Investigaciones Semióticas 1–43 (1982–1983)Google Scholar; and Semiotics and Legal Theory (Routledge 1987)Google Scholar.

19. Carmichael, Calum, The Spirit of Biblical Law (Univ. Ga. Press 1996)Google Scholar; Fitzpatrick-McKinley, Anne, The Transformation of Torah from Scribal Advice to Law (Sheffield Acad. Press 1999)Google Scholar.

20. Discussed in Jackson, supra note 12, at 16-24.

21. Watts, James W., Reading Law: The rhetorical Shaping of the Pentateuch (Sheffield Acad. Press 1999)Google Scholar.

22. For example, see Phillips, Anthony, Essays on Biblical Law (Sheffield Acad. Press 2002)Google Scholar.

23. For two very different approaches, see Weinfeld, Moshe, Social Justice in Ancient Israel and in the Ancient Near East (Magnes Press 1995)Google Scholar and Bennett, Harold V., Injustice Made Legal: Deuteronomic Law and the Plight of Widows, Strangers, and Orphans in Ancient Israel (Eerdmans 2002)Google Scholar.

24. Baker, supra note 1.

25. Friedmann, Daniel, To Kill and Take Possession: Law, Morality, and Society in Biblical Stories (Hendrickson 2002)Google Scholar.

26. Nardoni, Enrique, Rise Up, O Judge: A Study of justice in the Biblical World (Hendrickson 2004)Google Scholar.

27. Greengus, supra note 1.

28. Anderson, supra note 1, at 11.

29. Patrick, Dale, Studying Biblical Law as a Humanities, 45 Semeia 27–47 (1989)Google Scholar.

30. Smith, Jonathan Z., Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Univ. Chi. Press 1982)Google Scholar. See also Zgonjanin, Sanja, Quoting the Bible: The Use of Religious References in Judicial Decision-Making, 9 N. Y. City L. Rev. 31–91 (2005–2006)Google Scholar.

31. Sasson, John, Ancient Laws and Modern Problems (Third Millennium Publ'g 2001)Google Scholar.

32. Welch, John W., Bible in American Law, in Encyclopedia of American Civil Liberties 125-31 (Finkelman, Paul ed., Routledge 2006)Google Scholar; and Biblical Law in America: Historical Perspectives and Potentials for Reform, 2002 Byul. Rev. 611 (2002)Google Scholar.

33. But see the sources in his first footnote to ch. 8, pp. 173-74, to which should be added the recent publications by Baker, Friedman, and Nardoni, mentioned above, supra nn. 24, 25 & 26.

34. Stern, Fritz, Varieties of History 29 (Vintage 1973)Google Scholar.

35. See sources cited in supra note 32. See generally Medina, J. Michael, The Bible Annotated: Use of the Bible in Reported American Decisions, 12 N. Ill. Univ. L. Rev. 187 (1991)Google Scholar.