Human Rights in Deuteronomy
Human Rights in Deuteronomy

Author: Daisy Yulin Tsai

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2014-10-14

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 3110385791

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The humanitarian concerns of the biblical slave laws and their rhetorical techniques rarely receive scholarly attention, especially the two slave laws in Deuteronomy. Previous studies that compared the biblical and the ANE laws focused primarily on their similarities and developed theories of direct borrowing. This ignored the fact that legal transplants were common in ancient societies. This study, in contrast, aims to identify similarities and dissimilarities in order to pursue an understanding of the underlying values promoted within these slave laws and the interests they protected. To do so, certain innovative methodologies were applied. The biblical laws examined present two diverse legal concepts that contrast to the ANE concepts: (1) all agents are regarded as persons and should be treated accordingly, and (2) all legal subjects are seen as free, dignified, and self-determining human beings. In addition, the biblical laws often distinguish an offender’s “criminal intent,” by which a criminal’s rights are also considered. Based on these features, the biblical laws are able to articulate YHWH’s humanitarian concerns and the basic concepts of human rights presented in Deuteronomy.

The Ten Commandments and Human Rights
The Ten Commandments and Human Rights

Author: Walter J. Harrelson

Publisher: Mercer University Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 9780865545427

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The Ten Commandments and Human Rights sets out to evaluate the importance of the Ten Commandments for the life of faith today. The general thesis is that the commandments are immensely important not only for Jews and Christians, but for all persons seeking to find or to reaffirm a moral foundation for their life and for the life of their children, their religious community, and their society.The fact that the commandments are put negatively is immensely important, for it means that the community that claims these commandments and builds on them has to work out for itself the positive import of not having other gods, not worshipping idols, not profaning the sabbath, not killing and stealing, and committing adultery. Put negatively, these commitments become the groundwork for a humanly free and responsible search for the will of God for individual, family, and corporate life today and in any day.It is true that the commandments originate in ancient Israel, are central to the faith of prophets, priests, and sages, and are claimed and made foundational by Jesus for the Christian community. But these commandments also share much with, for example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which has been presented by the United Nations for adoption by all the nations of earth.The Ten Commandments and Human Rights seeks to show how to avoid moralistic use of the Ten Commandments in religious life today while still affirming that there are absolutely foundational prohibitions that can and must guide the moral life of all peoples. The Ten Commandments need very little revision in order to become such a foundation for a free and responsible life today.

A Call to Action
A Call to Action

Author: Jimmy Carter

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2014-03-25

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1476773971

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In the highly acclaimed bestselling A Call to Action, President Jimmy Carter addresses the world’s most serious, pervasive, and ignored violation of basic human rights: the ongoing discrimination and violence against women and girls. President Carter was encouraged to write this book by a wide coalition of leaders of all faiths. His urgent report covers a system of discrimination that extends to every nation. Women are deprived of equal opportunity in wealthier nations and “owned” by men in others, forced to suffer servitude, child marriage, and genital cutting. The most vulnerable and their children are trapped in war and violence. A Call to Action addresses the suffering inflicted upon women by a false interpretation of carefully selected religious texts and a growing tolerance of violence and warfare. Key verses are often omitted or quoted out of context by male religious leaders to exalt the status of men and exclude women. And in nations that accept or even glorify violence, this perceived inequality becomes the basis for abuse. Carter draws upon his own experiences and the testimony of courageous women from all regions and all major religions to demonstrate that women around the world, more than half of all human beings, are being denied equal rights. This is an informed and passionate charge about a devastating effect on economic prosperity and unconscionable human suffering. It affects us all.

Reward, Punishment, and Forgiveness
Reward, Punishment, and Forgiveness

Author: Joze Krasovec

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2014-09-03

Total Pages: 997

ISBN-13: 9004276033

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This book deals with central and universal issues of reward, punishment and forgiveness for the first time in a compact and comprehensive way. Until now these themes have received far too little attention in scholarly research both in their own right and in their interrelationship. The scope of this study is to present them in relation to the foundations of our culture. These and related issues are treated primarily within the Hebrew Bible, using the methods of literary analysis. The centrality of these themes in all religions and all cultures has resulted, however, in a comparative investigation, drawing attention to the problem of terminology, the importance of Greek culture for the European tradition, and the fusion of Greek and Jewish-Christian cultures in our modern philosophical and theological systems. This broad perspective shows that the biblical personalist understanding of divine authority and of human righteousness or guilt provides the personalist key to the search for reconciliation in a divided world.

The Laws of Deuteronomy
The Laws of Deuteronomy

Author: Calum M. Carmichael

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2008-09-11

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1725222671

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Professor Carmichael here proposes a convincing solution to a perplexing problem in biblical studies--the order and arrangement of the Deuteronomic laws. He shows that Deuteronomy is not a haphazard collection of fragments, but rather a carefully constructed, coherent literary work with a definite purpose. Through his analysis, many of the peculiar features of the code are made intelligible, for example, the relationship between the laws and earlier stories, sagas, and historical narratives. Opening up a new approach to the interpretation of the laws, this book makes an important contribution to the understanding of biblical material.

Deuteronomy
Deuteronomy

Author: Ajith Fernando

Publisher: Crossway

Published: 2012-05-31

Total Pages: 770

ISBN-13: 1433531038

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The book of Deuteronomy is a call to obedience—the proper response to God's faithfulness and love. Consisting primarily of speeches that Moses gave to the Israelites shortly before they entered the Promised Land, Moses' words proclaimed God's covenant faithfulness in hopes of motivating the Israelites to obey God despite the coming temptation to conform to the Canaanite culture. The challenges they faced then are remarkably parallel to those facing Christians today as we grapple with the issue of obedience in a world that offers other attractive ways of life. We wonder: How can we be faithful to God? And how do we help our children and the people we lead to be faithful? This book tells us how Moses tackled these challenges and, as Paul confirms in the New Testament, Deuteronomy serves "as an example...written down for our instruction" (1 Cor. 10:11). Ajith Fernando unpacks the relevance of Deuteronomy and captivates us with rich anecdotes from his thirty-five years of ministry to first-generation Christians in Sri Lanka. He offers concrete examples of how the truths contained in Deuteronomy can be applied, and he teaches us that obedience is the necessary response to the God who loves and saves us. Part of the Preaching the Word series.

Women's Rights and the Bible
Women's Rights and the Bible

Author: Richard H. Hiers

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2012-05-03

Total Pages: 155

ISBN-13: 1610976274

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In this volume, Richard Hiers challenges the popular assumption that the Bible has a low view of women and that biblical law either ignores women or requires them to be subject and subservient to men. He does so by identifying and carefully examining hundreds of biblical texts and allowing them to speak for themselves. Among the findings: - that biblical tradition generally represents women positively, as strong and independent persons; - that no text represents wives as subject to their husbands and that no biblical law requires such subjection; - that biblical laws provide many protections for women's rights and interests--in several instances, rights equal to those enjoyed by men. The book focuses particularly on the Old Testament and Old Testament law, and argues that Old Testament laws and their underlying values provide important resources for Christian ethics and social policy today.

Judaism and Human Rights
Judaism and Human Rights

Author: Milton Ridvas Konvitz

Publisher: Transaction Publishers

Published:

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13: 9781412827003

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Areligion or a culture like Judaism, at least three thousand years old, cannot be expected to be all of one piece, homogeneous, self-contained, consistent, a neatly constructed system of ideas. If Judaism were that, it would have died centuries ago and would be a subject of interest only to the historian and archaeologist. Judaism has been a living force precisely because it is a teeming, thundering, and clamoring phenomenon, full of contrary tendencies and inconsistencies. Although there are no words or phrases in Hebrew Scriptures for "human rights," "conscience," or "due process of law," the ideals and values which these concepts represent were inherent in the earliest Jewish texts. This volume begins with four essays on the concept of man's being born "free and equal," in the image of God. The underpinning of this concept in Jewish law is explored in Section 2, entitled "The Rule of Law." Section 3, "The Democratic Ideal," traces the foundations of democracy in the Jewish teachings in the Bible and the Talmud, which in turn influenced the whole body of Western political thought. Relations between man and man, man and woman, employer and employee, slave and master are all spelled out. Section 4 presents essays analyzing man's freedom of conscience, and his God-given rights to dissent and protest. Section 5 deals with aspects of personal liberty, including the right of privacy. Section 6, entitled "The Earth is the Lord's," deals with the Jewish view of man's transient tenancy on God's earth, his obligations not to destroy anything that lives or grows, and to share the earth's bounty with the poor, the widowed, and the orphaned. Section 7 delivers an analysis of the "end of days" vision of Micah and man's continuing need to strive for peace and not for war. The volume concludes with three new essays, dealing with contemporary issues: "In God's Image: The Religious Imperative of Equality under Law"; "The Values of a Jewish and Democratic State: The Task of Reaching a Synthesis"; and "Religious Freedom and Religious Coercion in the State of Israel." This enlarged edition is accessibly written for a general and scholarly audience and will be of particular interest to political scientists, historians, and constitutional scholars.