Beth A. Berkowitz
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- February 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195179194
- eISBN:
- 9780199784509
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195179196.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic and Christian Cultures argues that ancient rabbis and Christians used death penalty discourse to invent themselves as ...
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Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic and Christian Cultures argues that ancient rabbis and Christians used death penalty discourse to invent themselves as figures of authority. This approach runs counter to much previous scholarship on the subject, which claims that ancient Jews opposed the death penalty and would have abolished it if not for its presence in the Bible. The book explores this scholarship and shows it to have been fueled by modern anti-Semitism, polemics with the the Jewish Enlightenment’s inheritance of anti-rabbinism, as well as controversy in the United States over capital punishment and its abolition. The book moves beyond this “humanitarianism” approach, inviting us instead to see the problem of building and maintaining authority as the crux around which ancient death penalty discourse developed. Drawing on ritual theory, postcolonial theory, and scholarship on criminal execution in other historical contexts, Execution and Invention asks new questions of the ancient texts: How and why do ancient western religions talk about killing criminals? What are the social consequences of this kind of violent talk? What kind of authority is imagined by these texts, and What strategies do the texts use to make this authority seem compelling? Combining the contemporary theory with classical source critical approaches, the book closely reads a variety of ancient texts describing criminal executions. It newly interprets these texts, showing that their descriptions of violent deaths have a complex social function. In the process, the book spins out the social implications of capital punishment and overturns enduring stereotypes of Judaism and Christianity.Less
Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic and Christian Cultures argues that ancient rabbis and Christians used death penalty discourse to invent themselves as figures of authority. This approach runs counter to much previous scholarship on the subject, which claims that ancient Jews opposed the death penalty and would have abolished it if not for its presence in the Bible. The book explores this scholarship and shows it to have been fueled by modern anti-Semitism, polemics with the the Jewish Enlightenment’s inheritance of anti-rabbinism, as well as controversy in the United States over capital punishment and its abolition. The book moves beyond this “humanitarianism” approach, inviting us instead to see the problem of building and maintaining authority as the crux around which ancient death penalty discourse developed. Drawing on ritual theory, postcolonial theory, and scholarship on criminal execution in other historical contexts, Execution and Invention asks new questions of the ancient texts: How and why do ancient western religions talk about killing criminals? What are the social consequences of this kind of violent talk? What kind of authority is imagined by these texts, and What strategies do the texts use to make this authority seem compelling? Combining the contemporary theory with classical source critical approaches, the book closely reads a variety of ancient texts describing criminal executions. It newly interprets these texts, showing that their descriptions of violent deaths have a complex social function. In the process, the book spins out the social implications of capital punishment and overturns enduring stereotypes of Judaism and Christianity.
Galit Hasan-Rokem
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520234536
- eISBN:
- 9780520928947
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520234536.003.0003
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Rabbinic creativity is distinguished, not just by its openness to ideas engendered outside the academy and synagogue. The Rabbinical establishment can be viewed both as a territory in and as a ...
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Rabbinic creativity is distinguished, not just by its openness to ideas engendered outside the academy and synagogue. The Rabbinical establishment can be viewed both as a territory in and as a metonymy for the Jewish societies within which it performed. The massive presence of folk narratives thus does not point at a permissiveness or oversight of the patriarchal Rabbinal authority resulting in the inclusion of “lower” registers of creativity that are the supposedly highbrow interests of the Rabbis. The dynamic between a more or less canonized textual center and a dialectically gyrating text emergence through dialogue with various partners seems to be the process that engendered Rabbinic culture. The dialogue among multiple centers and the inherent mobility of those centers, as well as the layering of diachronic authority, are imprinted in every single Rabbinic document.Less
Rabbinic creativity is distinguished, not just by its openness to ideas engendered outside the academy and synagogue. The Rabbinical establishment can be viewed both as a territory in and as a metonymy for the Jewish societies within which it performed. The massive presence of folk narratives thus does not point at a permissiveness or oversight of the patriarchal Rabbinal authority resulting in the inclusion of “lower” registers of creativity that are the supposedly highbrow interests of the Rabbis. The dynamic between a more or less canonized textual center and a dialectically gyrating text emergence through dialogue with various partners seems to be the process that engendered Rabbinic culture. The dialogue among multiple centers and the inherent mobility of those centers, as well as the layering of diachronic authority, are imprinted in every single Rabbinic document.
