TY - JOUR
T1 - Constructing Justice
T2 - The Selective Use of Scripture in Formulating Early Jewish Accounts of the Courts
AU - Flatto, David C.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2018 President and Fellows of Harvard College.
PY - 2018/10/1
Y1 - 2018/10/1
N2 - Elaborate depictions of the court system in Second Temple and rabbinic literature signify its centrality for the Jewish legal tradition. Rather than offering positivistic descriptions, these representations are better thought of as templates of how to organize justice. While historically less informative, they are vivid expressions of the early Jewish legal imagination and its fascinating fixation on the architecture of justice. A measure of the ahistoric quality of early accounts of judicial administration is their considerable exegetical strata. This article surveys how four seminal Second Temple and rabbinic works constructed accounts of the judiciary on the foundation of Scripture. The variances among them unfold from decisive hermeneutical choices, beginning with the threshold question of which among several, internally inconsistent, biblical sources to select as a base text. What animates these various choices, in turn, are competing conceptions of the origin and nature of legal authority within a religious tradition that enshrines the role of law.
AB - Elaborate depictions of the court system in Second Temple and rabbinic literature signify its centrality for the Jewish legal tradition. Rather than offering positivistic descriptions, these representations are better thought of as templates of how to organize justice. While historically less informative, they are vivid expressions of the early Jewish legal imagination and its fascinating fixation on the architecture of justice. A measure of the ahistoric quality of early accounts of judicial administration is their considerable exegetical strata. This article surveys how four seminal Second Temple and rabbinic works constructed accounts of the judiciary on the foundation of Scripture. The variances among them unfold from decisive hermeneutical choices, beginning with the threshold question of which among several, internally inconsistent, biblical sources to select as a base text. What animates these various choices, in turn, are competing conceptions of the origin and nature of legal authority within a religious tradition that enshrines the role of law.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85059667063&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/S001781601800024X
DO - 10.1017/S001781601800024X
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AN - SCOPUS:85059667063
SN - 0017-8160
VL - 111
SP - 488
EP - 515
JO - Harvard Theological Review
JF - Harvard Theological Review
IS - 4
ER -