Author(s):
Podella, Thomas (Lübeck)
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Rüpke, Jörg (Erfurt)
[German version] I. Old Testament A religious law in the sense of a legal system existing alongside profane law or even preceding it, cannot be reconstructed for the old Israel. At the centre of recent discussions is the question of the ‘theologizing’ or the ‘Jahvism’ of the law. This refers especially to the concept occurring in Exodus (Ex 20,1 ff.: Decalogue and book of the covenant) of a God Jehova as a lawgiver who thus functionally occupies a domain which in the Old Orient was reserved for royalty. By way of this construction, the Israelite law is not only legitimized by the divine, but also promulgated. As a consequence, social and criminal regulations (e.g. 2nd Tablet of the Decalogue) appear alongside those that regulate practising the cult and the Jehovah worship (1st Tablet of the Decalogue; altar law in Ex 20,22 ff.; so-called ‘cultic Decalogue’ in Ex 34,10-26). Here, the juxtaposition of religious and profane articles of law accentuates the fact that social action always has a religious dimension as well, which also becomes evident in the prayer literature of the psalms. The background to this new concept of law is the social and political experiences of crisis in the 8th cent. BC, which in the Book of Deuteronomy result in the factual ties of the king to the Torah and prophecy ( Prophet) via the so-called 'office laws' (Deut. 17,14-20). The question whether this ‘legal system’ was ever practised in the sense of current law or ─ which is more probable ─ it has to be understood as a literary compilation of legal scholarship motivated by the loss of sovereignty in the 6th cent. BC, is no…