Full Description
Contending for Justice analyses texts on social justice in the Old Testament and argues that despite their ideological character they may still assist in shaping a Christian theological approach to social and global injustice. The book argues on the one hand that a class interest is involved in all texts on the subject of social justice, and on the other that, that the very interest demands that they should appeal to the broadest possible public by using generally accepted ethical and theological ideas.
Four elements are set out in a hermeneutical proposal: texts should be understood as rhetoric in real social situations, as ideology protecting a social position, as defining recognized ethical values, and theologically as having a critical and constructive potential for the interpreter's own situation. A second chapter attempts to sketch the social conditions in which such texts were formed. The hermeneutical scheme is then applied, but not rigidly, to a wide range of texts: prophetic denunciations of oppression, texts in a variety of genres defining the characteristics of the just individual, texts in the Psalms and Isaiah defining the duty of the king to protect the poor, visions of a just community in the prophets, words of Torah aimed at protecting the indebted poor and restoring an independent peasantry, and assertions of the justice of God. The book concludes with brief reflections on the value of the Old Testament as a resource in the struggle for justice.
This new paperback edition is fully revised and updated.
Contents
Preface to Revised Edition
Preface to First Edition
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Chapter 1 Texts and Contexts
1. Introduction
1.a. The author's context
1.b. Studies of social justice in the Old Testament
1.c. Biblical justice in Christian tradition and today
1.d. The hermeneutical problem
2. A proposal for our method
3. Selecting the objects of study
Chapter 2 The Ancient Social Context
1. Explaining the evidence
2. Rent capitalism
3. 'Ancient' class society
4. The tributary state
5. The patronage system
6. Conclusions
Chapter 3 Oppression and the Prophets
1. Interpreting the prophets
2. Amos
2.a. The message of the book of Amos
2.b. Perceiving oppression in Amos
2.b.1. The victims
2.b.2. The oppressors
2.b.3. The acts of oppression
2.b.4. The law and the prophet
2.c. The paradox of Amos
3. Surveying the prophets
4. Micah
5. Isaiah
6. Jeremiah
7. Ezekiel
8. Oppression in the prophets
8.a. The victims
8.b. The oppressors
8.c. The acts of oppression
8.c.1. Bloodshed
8.c.2. Violence and coercion
8.c.3. Extortion, unjust gain
8.c.4. Loss of freedom
8.c.5. Perversion of right
8.c.6. Indulgence at the expense of the poor
9. The justice of YHWH
10. Conclusions
Chapter 4 Justice and the Patron
1. Introduction
2. Ezekiel 18
3. Exodus 22.21 (Heb. 20)-23.12
4. Proverbs
5. Job
6. The virtue of justice
Chapter 5 Justice and the King
1. Introduction
2. Criticism of monarchy?
3. The royal ideology
4. Psalm 72 and the ideology of royal justice
5. The theme of social justice in the royal traditions
6. Expecting the just king
Chapter 6 Justice and the People
1. Visions of justice in the Prophets
1.a. Introduction
1.b. Visions of justice in Isaiah
1.c. Justice in the vision of Ezekiel
1.d. A vision of justice in Zephaniah
1.e. Interpreting utopia
2. The just society in the Torah
2.a. The Torah as a whole
2.b. Deuteronomy
2.b.1. The context of composition
2.b.2. General provisions
2.b.3. The third-year tithe
2.b.4. The release of debts
2.b.5. The release of slaves
2.b.6. Deuteronomy, class and community
2.c. The law of jubilee in the Holiness Code
Chapter 7 The God of Justice
1. Introduction
2. Impartial and partial justice
3. Social affinities
3.a. Patronage
3.b. Kingship
3.c. Synthesis
4. Ideological functions
5. Reflections for today
Chapter 8 The Old Testament as a Resource in Contending for Justice?
1. Old Testament justice in today's world
2. Embodying the justice of God
Bibliography
