Land Tenure and the Biblical Jubilee
Land Tenure and the Biblical Jubilee

Author: Jeffrey A. Fager

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 1993-02-01

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 056762319X

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The biblical jubilee represents one of the most radical programmes for land reform from the ancient Near East, yet it was never practised in ancient Israel. What then is the meaning of this sacred law that was never enforced? This cogently argued book attempts to answer that question by using the tools of sociological analysis. Fager examines three levels of meaning within the jubilee legislation, which was produced by the priestly intellectuals during the period of exile. The actual words of the text carry one meaning and the priests intended a slightly different meaning, but underlying both was a moral world view that guided them. The laws of the biblical jubilee thus enable us to examine the deepest level of the ancient Israelites' understanding of land and justice.

Land and Temple
Land and Temple

Author: Benjamin D. Gordon

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-04-06

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 311042102X

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This exploration of the Judean priesthood’s role in agricultural cultivation demonstrates that the institutional reach of Second Temple Judaism (516 BCE–70 CE) went far beyond the confines of its houses of worship, while exposing an unfamiliar aspect of sacred place-making in the ancient Jewish experience. Temples of the ancient world regularly held assets in land, often naming a patron deity as landowner and affording the land sanctity protections. Such arrangements can provide essential background to the Hebrew Bible’s assertion that God is the owner of the land of Israel. They can also shed light on references in early Jewish literature to the sacred landholdings of the priesthood or the temple.

Am I Still My Brother's Keeper?
Am I Still My Brother's Keeper?

Author: Robert Wafawanaka

Publisher: University Press of America

Published: 2012-04-05

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 0761857028

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What does the Bible say about poverty and our responsibility toward the poor? This book examines the concept of “brother’s keeper” in both the ancient Near East and the biblical world. Wafawanaka contends that biblical Israel failed to play the rightful role of brother’s keeper and claims that we, too, have strayed from this responsibility. Am I Still My Brother’s Keeper? reveals what we can learn about poverty from a biblical context and how we might appropriate those insights to fight poverty in our own communities. Beginning with the biblical mandate in Deuteronomy 15, Wafawanaka surveys the Hebrew Scriptures and challenges those with power and resources to reevaluate their response to the poor. Failure to revisit the notion of “brother’s keeper” threatens to create a society that is increasingly disenfranchised and unjust. A glance at our world in light of biblical history suggests that poverty is an endemic global problem that requires a radical global solution.

Apocalypse Against Empire
Apocalypse Against Empire

Author: Anathea Portier-Young

Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

Published: 2011-01-06

Total Pages: 487

ISBN-13: 0802865984

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A fresh and daring take on ancient apocalyptic books. The year 167 b.c.e. marked the beginning of a period of intense persecution for the people of Judea, as Seleucid emperor Antiochus IV Epiphanes attempted forcibly and brutally to eradicate traditional Jewish religious practices. In Apocalypse against Empire Anathea Portier-Young reconstructs the historical events and key players in this traumatic episode in Jewish history and provides a sophisticated treatment of resistance in early Judaism. Building on a solid contextual foundation, Portier-Young argues that the first Jewish apocalypses emerged as a literature of resistance to Hellenistic imperial rule. She makes a sturdy case for this argument by examining three extant apocalypses, giving careful attention to the interplay between social theory, history, textual studies, and theological analysis. In particular, Portier-Young contends, the book of Daniel, the Apocalypse of Weeks, and the Book of Dreams were written to supply an oppressed people with a potent antidote to the destructive propaganda of the empire renewing their faith in the God of the covenant and answering state terror with radical visions of hope..

The Biblical Jubilee, After Fifty Years
The Biblical Jubilee, After Fifty Years

Author: Robert North

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 9788876531453

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This is not a second edition of Analecta Biblica 4, the author's dissertation on the Jubilee chapter Leviticus 25 written in 1950 and published in 1954 with the title Sociology of the Biblical Jubilee.

Trajectories of Justice
Trajectories of Justice

Author: Robert Karl Gnuse

Publisher: Lutterworth Press

Published: 2016-08-25

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 0718844564

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The Bible proclaims a message of liberation. Though the Bible arose in an age when slavery and patriarchalism permeated society, the biblical authors sought to elevate the rights of slaves, the poor, and women. Their attempts to elevate the oppressed setin motion a trajectory of evolution, which we should still be advancing today. Critics of the Bible declare that it accepts slavery and the subordination of women, but they fail to understand the biblical texts in their historical context. For their age the biblical authors were advanced in their understanding of human rights, and the democratic values we hold today actually resulted from their early attempts to affirm the dignity and rights of slaves and women. It is equally important that we critique those spokespersons of the church who quote the Bible literally but have lost sight of its historical context so that they might still subordinate women today. Such spokespersons also declare that the Bible condemns homosexuality. But a closer reading of the text discerns that those few passages that address same-sex relations actually condemn rape, ritual prostitution, and master-slave relations. To use the Bible to condemn people is to misuse the Bible.

Justice and Compassion in Biblical Law
Justice and Compassion in Biblical Law

Author: Richard H. Hiers

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2009-12-14

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0567269094

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Annotation. Richard Hiers provides a new consideration biblical law with an emphasis upon the underlying justice and compassion implicit within. Special consideration is given to matters of civil law, the death penalty, and due process.

Old Testament Ethics for the People of God
Old Testament Ethics for the People of God

Author: Christopher J.H. Wright

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Published: 2013-01-30

Total Pages: 524

ISBN-13: 0830864946

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Nothing confuses Christian ethics quite like the Old Testament. Christopher Wright examines a theological, social, and economic framework for Old Testament ethics, exploring themes in relation to contemporary issues: economics, the land and the poor, politics and a world of nations, law and justice, society and culture, and the way of the individual.

Illuminating Leviticus
Illuminating Leviticus

Author: Calum Carmichael

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2006-12-04

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 0801889634

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The origin of law in the Hebrew Bible has long been the subject of scholarly debate. Until recently, the historico-critical methodologies of the academy have yielded unsatisfactory conclusions concerning the source of these laws which are woven through biblical narratives. In this original and provocative study, Calum Carmichael—a leading scholar of biblical law and rhetoric—suggests that Hebrew law was inspired by the study of the narratives in Genesis through 2 Kings. Discussing particular laws found in the book of Leviticus—addressing issues such as the Day of Atonement, consumption of meat that still has blood, the Jubilee year, sexual and bodily contamination, and the treatment of slaves—Carmichael links each to a narrative. He contends that biblical laws did not emerge from social imperatives in ancient Israel, but instead from the careful, retrospective study of the nation’s history and identity.

God, Justice, and Society
God, Justice, and Society

Author: Jonathan Burnside

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 583

ISBN-13: 0199759219

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What is the real meaning of 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth'? Where did the idea for the 'Jubilee 2000' and 'Drop the Debt' campaigns come from? Here, Burnside looks at aspects of law and legality in the Bible, from the patriarchal narratives in the Hebrew Bible through to the trials of Jesus in the New Testament.