Homicide in the Biblical World
Pamela Barmash
Language: English
Pages: 270
ISBN: 0521547733
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Analyzing the treatment of homicide in the Hebrew Bible, this study demonstrates that it is directly linked to the social structure and religion of ancient Israel. Pamela Barmash reconstructs biblical law from both legal texts and narrative texts and analyzes the law collections and documents of actual legal cases from the ancient Near East.
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number of hapax Gt forms, and the reciprocal meaning is appropriate here. 114 Kwasman reads lines 2–6 as follows: “Shamash-knu-usur, the son of Attar-qamu, ¯ the scribe, . ¯ shall give KUR-adimri, the daughter of Attar-qamu, the scribe, in place of blood money for Samaku [who was murdered] and washes the blood away,” (Neo-Assyrian Legal Documents, ¯ uˇ ¯ su from the fol393). However, in order to render it this way, Kwasman must separate mar ¯ lowing phrase, sˇ a I sa-ma-ku, posit that it refers
Bearing of Sin in the Priestly Literature,” in Pomegranates and Golden Bells, 7; and The Holiness Legislation [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1999), 61– 63. This may be why, in both Hebrew and Akkadian, there are words that denote both sin and the punishment remedying it – @/≈ and arnu. Schwartz argues that the putative meaning “punishment” is identified only in the phrase @w[ a`n, when in fact the word still means “sin.” The phrase should still be renderd “to bear (the burden of) sin,” and in
the cities of refuge is informed by a Deuteronomic interest in social aspects of the law. Finally, I demonstrate how the different traditions of P/H and D are brought together in the description of the cities of refuge in the book of Joshua. The relationship of the treatment of homicide to Israelite religion is the subject of the next chapter, “Pollution and Homicide.” Homicide had a cultic valence. I demonstrate that blood was considered to be both a polluting and cleansing substance. The
a matter] that she is to be killed?” they said. 42–52 In the Assembly of Nippur, [the assembly] addressed them as follows: “A woman who does not support her husband may give information to his enemy and thus [the enemy] may [be able to] kill her husband. That her husband is killed, [the enemy] may let her hear – why should he not thus make her keep silent about him? – she [more than anyone else] killed her husband. Her guilt is greater than [of those] who killed a man,” they said. Even though the
IN THE Hebrew Bible, an individual found guilty of intentional killing was subject to the most severe penalty, execution.1 In our analysis of the polluting effects of homicide, we observed that the only means of removing the defilement caused by a homicide was the execution of the intentional killer or the death of the high priest in the case of an accidental killer. The execution of the intentional killer is warranted for another reason, and in order to illuminate this aspect of the punishment,