Purity Reference library
William K. Gilders
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Law
...of the tabernacle and the establishment of its sacrificial cult ( Exod 25–31 ; 35–40 ; Lev 1–10 ), the Aaronide tradents addressed how to protect the tabernacle from impurity. For the P tradition, purity and impurity were categories relevant only in relation to the tabernacle and its cult. Thus, the P tradents introduced the purity legislation only after setting out the causes for its relevance. In Leviticus 15:31 , H tradents made explicit what was implicit in the older P composition. Leviticus 16 follows and depends on the body of purity legislation...
Priestly Law Reference library
William K. Gilders
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Law
...in Numbers. Issues of date, both absolute and relative, play a major role in the interpretation of priestly laws, in particular the identification of the purposes and goals for their composition and promulgation. To what particular contextual problems and issues were the tradents responding? A majority of scholars, especially in Europe, assert that the large bulk of priestly legal material is at least exilic in date (post 587 b.c.e. ), and very probably postexilic (after 538 b.c.e. ), and they explain the character of the material in terms of its...
Laws of Eshnunna Reference library
Eckart Otto
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Law
...laws mandate only fines. The cuneiform laws also make no mention of killing the goring ox by stoning. These differences speak to an indigenous Israelite-Judean origin for the laws of the goring ox. If there was any influence from the cuneiform tradition, Israelite-Judahite tradents subverted it by introducing the death penalty as a deterrent. This difference is based on the high esteem of human lives so that a fatal case could not be solved by a fine even in the case of negligence. Differences in the legal substance of the different legal collections are also...
Animals Reference library
Phillip Michael Sherman
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Law
...parallels with material found in the Book of the Covenant in Exodus. The Laws of Hammurapi contain a section (§§250–252) that is so similar to the biblical law of the goring ox that many interpreters have posited a case of direct literary dependence on the part of the biblical tradents. Similarly, the Laws of Eshnunna contain material related to the responsibilities incurred by an owner of a “habitual gorer.” While each version of the goring-ox law is culturally specific with regard to punishment, the biblical version is the only account in which an ox guilty...
Mishnah Reference library
Ishay Rosen-Zvi
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Law
... m. ʿEd. 8:6; m. Ker . 3:7–8; but cf. “I have never seen,” m. ʿEd. 2:2 = m. Zebaḥ . 12:4), and usually about matters concerning purity or Temple cult. The sages transmitting them are from the first two generations after the destruction (R. Akiva and R. Ishmael are the latest tradents of such traditions). It thus seems to represent an earlier form of transmission that embodies a certain model of authority according to which tradition is the ultimate source of the law, and is therefore nonnegotiable. But this model is hardly found outside ʿEduyyot . Most of...
Slavery Reference library
Niels Peter Lemche, Jennifer A. Glancy, and Catherine Hezser
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Law
...seventh year of their service ( Exod 21:2 ; Deut 15:12 ) or in the Jubilee year ( Lev 25:40 ), but no one could force them to actually adhere to this ideal. No such religious leniency applied to non-Israelite slaves, whose enslavement was seen as permanent by the authors and tradents of these texts. In reality, masters manumitted slaves when their maintenance costs became higher than the value of the services they delivered—that is, when they had become old, frail, and sick. The promise of manumission served as a motivation for good behavior but would have...
Gender Reference library
Sophie Démare-Lafont, Robert S. Kawashima, William Loader, and Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Law
...). Such rhetoric is often associated with high achievement measured by male norms, especially in the Hellenistic world in which men were educated for these very purposes. In substance, the aphorisms focus on the priority of response to human need as God’s priority, despite the tradents’ apparent focus on the fame achieved. Adulation drove the emphasis on the miraculous as warrant for fame, but it is clear that this met firm resistance from those persuaded that greatness should lie elsewhere. This perspective is dramatically evident in the fourth gospel, where...
