Full Description
This book presents a new window on the legal system of Ancient Israel. Building on the understanding that Israel was a society where writing was the medium for some forms of discourse but not others, where written texts were performed orally and rewritten from oral performances, Robert D. Miller II, OFS, examines law and jurisprudence in this oral-and-literate world. Using Iceland as an ethnographic analogy, Miller shows how law was practiced, performed, and transmitted; the way written artifacts of the law fit into oral performance and transmission; and the relationship of the detritus of law that survives in the Hebrew Bible, both Torah and Proverbs, to that earlier social world.
Contents
Chapter One: Approaches to Ancient Israel's Legal World
Chapter Two: Icelandic Oral-Written Law
Interlude: Gothic Law as Control
Resume: Oral-Written Customary Law
Chapter Three: Oral-Written Customary Law in Ancient Israel
Chapter Four: Oral Law and Proverbs
