Homicide in the Biblical World Homicide in the Biblical World analyzes the treatment of homicide in the Hebrew Bible and demonstrates that it is directly linked to the unique social structure and religion of ancient Israel. Close parallels between biblical law and ancient Near Eastern law are evident in the laws of the ox that gored and the pregnant woman who was assaulted, but when the total picture of the process by which homicide was adjudicated comes into view, what is most noticeable is how little of it is similar to ancient Near Eastern law. This book reconstructs biblical law from both legal and narrative texts and analyzes both law collections and documents from actual legal cases from the ancient Near East.
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The Laws of Hammurabi is one of the earliest law codes, dating from the eighteenth century BCE Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq). It is the culmination of a tradition in which scribes would demonstrate their legal flair by composing statutes on a repertoire of traditional cases, articulating what they deemed just and fair. The book describes how the scribe of the Laws of Hammurabi advanced beyond earlier scribes in composing statutes that manifest systematization and implicit legal principles. The scribe inserted the statutes into the structure of a royal inscription, skillfully reshaping the genre. This approach allowed the king to use the law code to demonstrate that Hammurabi had fulfilled the mandate to guarantee justice enjoined upon him by the gods, affirming his authority as king. This tradition of scribal improvisation on a set of traditional cases continued outside of Mesopotamia, influencing biblical law and the law of the Hittite Empire and perhaps shaping Greek and Roman law. The Laws of Hammurabi is also a witness to the start of another stream of intellectual tradition. It became a classic text and the subject of formal commentaries, marking a Copernican revolution in intellectual culture.
This chapter addresses the rich treasury of rhetorical devices the Laws of Hammurabi uses to present its message. It is structured in the form of a royal inscription, but it is not an ordinary agglomeration of hackneyed bromides repeating standard wording. It is inventive and subtle in the way it fuses together a number of models from Hammurabi’s royal inscriptions, amplifying the authority of the king and demonstrating his devotion to justice. The Laws of Hammurabi incorporates a collection of statutes and presents them as being promulgated by the king immediately after his accession to the throne, rather than decades later: his pious actions are portrayed as timeless and unassailable achievements, rather than in chronological format. Verbal maps depict Hammurabi’s domination over different regions.
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