Legal Revision and Religious Renewal in Ancient Israel

This book examines the problem of divine transgenerational punishment and the writers who confronted it.

Bernard M. Levinson (Author)

9780521171915, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 16 August 2010

234 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.4 cm, 0.3 kg

'This is a path-breaking book that recasts totally the traditional dichotomy between (timeless) divine revelation and (historical, contingent, fallible) human reception and expression of the former within scripture, by showing the techniques of revision, involving even contradiction and repudiation of supposedly unchangeable 'divine' legal commands by scribes adapting the latter to altered historical circumstances, and this not in an external gloss or commentary, but operating repeatedly within scripture itself.' Patrick Madigan, The Heythrop Journal

This book examines the doctrine of transgenerational punishment found in the Decalogue – the idea that God punishes sinners vicariously, extending the punishment due them to three or four generations of their progeny. Although a 'God-given' law, the unfairness of punishing innocent people in this way was clearly recognized in ancient Israel. A series of inner-biblical and post-biblical responses to the rule demonstrates that later writers were able to criticize, reject, and replace this doctrine with the notion of individual retribution. Supporting further study, it includes a valuable bibliographical essay on the distinctive approach of inner-biblical exegesis, showing the contributions of European, Israeli, and North American scholars. This Cambridge release represents a major revision and expansion of the French edition, L'Herméneutique de l'innovation: Canon et exégèse dans l'Israël biblique, nearly doubling its length with extensive content and offering alternative perspectives on debates about canonicity, textual authority, and authorship.

1. Biblical studies as the meeting point of the humanities
2. Rethinking the relation between 'canon' and 'exegesis'
3. The problem of innovation within the formative canon
4. The reworking of the principle of transgenerational punishment: four case studies
5. The canon as sponsor of innovation
6. The phenomenon of rewriting within the Hebrew Bible: a bibliographic essay on 'inner-biblical exegesis' in the history of scholarship.

Subject Areas: Judaism [HRJ], New Testaments [HRCF2], History of religion [HRAX], Religion: general [HRA]