Mental and physical disability, ubiquitous in texts of the Hebrew Bible, here receive a thorough treatment. Olyan seeks to reconstruct the Hebrew Bible's particular ideas of what is disabling and ...their potential social ramifications. Biblical representations of disability and biblical classification schemas - both explicit and implicit - are compared to those of the Hebrew Bible's larger ancient West Asian cultural context, and to those of the later Jewish biblical interpreters who produced the Dead Sea Scrolls. This study will help the reader gain a deeper and more subtle understanding of the ways in which biblical writers constructed hierarchically significant difference and privileged certain groups (e.g. persons with 'whole' bodies) over others (e.g. persons with physical 'defects'). It also explores how ancient interpreters of the Hebrew Bible such as the Qumran sectarians reproduced and reconfigured earlier biblical notions of disability and earlier classification models for their own contexts and ends.
The first comprehensive study of friendship in the Hebrew BibleFriendship, though a topic of considerable humanistic and cross disciplinary interest in contemporary scholarship, has been largely ...ignored by scholars of the Hebrew Bible, possibly because of its complexity and elusiveness. Filling a significant gap in our knowledge and understanding of biblical texts, Saul M. Olyan provides this original, accessible analysis of a key form of social relationship. In this thorough and compelling assessment, Olyan analyzes a wide range of texts, including prose narratives, prophetic materials, psalms, pre-Hellenistic wisdom collections, and the Hellenistic-era wisdom book Ben Sira. This in-depth, contextually sensitive, and theoretically engaged study explores how the expectations of friends and family members overlap and differ, examining, among other things, characteristics that make the friend a distinct social actor; failed friendship; and friendships in narratives such as those of Ruth and Naomi, and Jonathan and David. Olyan presents a comprehensive look at what constitutes friendship in the Hebrew Bible.
On a beaucoup écrit sur les droits des animaux dans les quatre décennies qui ont suivi la publication de la monographie classique de Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (1975). Plusieurs études ont ...examiné – souvent en passant – en quoi les textes bibliques peuvent contribuer aux débats sur les droits des animaux. Cependant, ces travaux sont presque exclusivement réalisés par des non-spécialistes. Dans ma conférence, je commence à aborder ce manque d’érudition professionnelle sur ce sujet en expl...
Abstract
Much has been written about animal rights in the four decades since the appearance of Peter Singer's classic monograph Animal Liberation (1975) and not a few studies consider - often in ...passing - what biblical texts have to contribute to debates about animal rights. These studies are, however, almost exclusively the work of non-specialists. I begin to address this dearth of professional scholarship on this topic by exploring what four biblical laws - Exod. 23:10-11, 12; Lev. 25:2-7 and Deut. 5:12-15 - might suggest about the legal standing of animals. As legal scholar Gary L. Francione states, "We normally use the term "rights" to describe a type of protection that does not evaporate in the face of consequential considerations." In this article, I consider whether the four biblical laws in question meet this standard.
Animal law has become a topic of growing importance
internationally, with animal welfare and animal rights often
assuming center stage in contemporary debates about the legal
status of animals. While ...nonspecialists routinely decontextualize
ancient texts to support or deny rights to animals, experts in
fields such as classics, biblical studies, Assyriology, Egyptology,
rabbinics, and late antique Christianity have only just begun to
engage the topic of animals and the law in their respective areas.
This volume consists of original studies by scholars from a range
of Mediterranean and West Asian fields on a variety of topics at
the intersection of animals and the law in antiquity. Contributors
include Rozenn Bailleul-LeSuer, Beth Berkowitz, Andrew McGowan, F.
S. Naiden, Saul M. Olyan, Seth Richardson, Jordan D. Rosenblum,
Andreas Schüle, Miira Tuominen, and Daniel Ullucci. The volume is
essential reading for scholars and students of both the ancient
world and contemporary law.
Though scholars rarely comment on the beastly nature of Jehoiakim's predicted interment in Jer 22:18–19 (“With the burial of an ass he shall be buried, / Dragged and cast outside the gates of ...Jerusalem”), it is significant and worthy of careful explication, for it suggests a ritual act of reclassification: the king is to be punished by being dehumanized through the burial of his corpse, presumably in order to increase his shame. That ritual reclassification with animals represents a loss of rank for a king is made explicit in the narrative of Nebuchadnezzar's dream in Dan 3:31–4:34 and is implicit in various cuneiform descriptions of dehumanizing punitive rites imposed on living captive enemy rulers by Neo-Assyrian monarchs. Such ritual reclassification of a king represents a potentially efficacious assault on his own royal, hegemonic claims to honor, elite rank, exalted status, and, in some instances, even divinity. Far from being great, the reclassified Jehoiakim, like Nebuchadnezzar and the captive enemies of the kings of Assyria, is, according to Jer 22:18–19, nothing more than a beast with no claim whatsoever to royal honor or privilege.
