BiblioVault - Books about Law (Theology)

Law and Wisdom in the Bible

David Daube's Gifford Lectures, Volume II

David Daube

Templeton Press, 2010

"That over forty years after they were delivered these famous but unavailable Gifford Lectures should be published is occasion for celebration. Once again we hear Daube’s voice, patient and probing, as he turns over, tests, pushes fresh inquiries, and finds new insights. No man has had such a subtle sense of scriptural texts matched by such a supple sense of the practices and peculiarities of human beings engaged in the legal process. Law and Wisdom in the Bible is classic Daube." mdash;John T. Noonan Jr., United States Circuit Judge

David Daube (1909–99) was known for his unique and sophisticated research on Roman law, biblical law, Jewish Law, and medical ethics. In Law and Wisdom in the Bible, the first published collection of his 1964 Gifford Lectures, Daube derives from his complex understanding of biblical texts both ancient and contemporary notions about wisdom, justice, and education.

In addressing these and other profound issues, Daube crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries and bridges the
gap between humanism and religion, especially with regard to Christianity and Judaism. With his sophisticated understanding of Talmudic law and literature, his thinking, which is on full display in these lectures, revolutionized prevailing perceptions about the New Testament.

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The Law of God

The Philosophical History of an Idea

Rémi Brague

University of Chicago Press, 2007

The law of God: these words conjure an image of Moses breaking the tablets at Mount Sinai, but the history of the alliance between law and divinity is so much longer, and its scope so much broader, than a single Judeo-Christian scene can possibly suggest. In his stunningly ambitious new history, Rémi Brague goes back three thousand years to trace this idea of divine law in the West from prehistoric religions to modern times—giving new depth to today’s discussions about the role of God in worldly affairs.

Brague masterfully describes the differing conceptions of divine law in Judaic, Islamic, and Christian traditions and illuminates these ideas with a wide range of philosophical, political, and religious sources. In conclusion, he addresses the recent break in the alliance between law and divinity—when modern societies, far from connecting the two, started to think of law simply as the rule human community gives itself. Exploring what this disconnection means for the contemporary world, Brague—powerfully expanding on the project he began with The Wisdom of the World—re-engages readers in a millennia-long intellectual tradition, ultimately arriving at a better comprehension of our own modernity.

“Brague’s sense of intellectual adventure is what makes his work genuinely exciting to read. The Law of God offers a challenge that anyone concerned with today’s religious struggles ought to take up.”—Adam Kirsch, New York Sun

“Scholars and students of contemporary world events, to the extent that these may be viewed as a clash of rival fundamentalisms, will have much to gain from Brague’s study. Ideally, in that case, the book seems to be both an obvious primer and launching pad for further scholarship.”—Times Higher Education Supplement

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Love and Joy

Law, Language, and Religion in Ancient Israel

Yochanan Muffs and Thorkild Jacobsen

Harvard University Press, 1992

Studying the interplay of figurative language, law, and religious thought, Yochanan Muffs brings us a new understanding of both the Bible and ancient Near Eastern cultures. This first single-volume collection of the pivotal writings of this great religious humanist includes his studies of love and joy as metaphors, the laws of war in ancient Israel, the figurative nature of legal language, the role of the prophet and prophetic speech, and the expressions of belonging which united a culture.

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On the Cessation of the Laws

Robert Grosseteste

Catholic University of America Press, 2012

In On the Cessation of the Laws, Grosseteste draws out the theological, christological, and soteriological issues implicit in the question of the relationship between the Old and New Covenants.

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Wisdom, Christology, and Law in Matthew's Gospel

M. Jack Suggs

Harvard University Press, 1970

The Word and the Law

Milner S. Ball

University of Chicago Press, 1993

Milner Ball takes an experimental journey into the inner life of law and the careers of men and women who use it to help disadvantaged people and to strengthen the fabric of the communities in which they live. At the center of this book are portraits of seven contemporary legal practitioners—lawyers, judges, and advocates—who have devoted their lives to an unconventional vision of the law. In their work, in areas from New York City housing court to the Warm Springs reservation in Oregon, the law exemplifies fundamental human values, manifestations of what Ball calls the "Word," the presence of God in life. To develop this concept of the Word, Ball explores its workings in familiar literary and biblical texts, primarily William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Toni Morrison's Beloved, the Book of Isaiah, and the Gospel of Mark.

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