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What's Divine about Divine Law?: Early Perspectives
How ancient thinkers grappled with competing conceptions of divine law
In the thousand years before the rise of Islam, two radically diverse conceptions of what it means to say that a law is divine confronted one another with a force that reverberates to the present. What's Divine about Divine Law? untangles the classical and biblical roots of the Western idea of divine law and shows how early adherents to biblical tradition―Hellenistic Jewish writers such as Philo, the community at Qumran, Paul, and the talmudic rabbis―struggled to make sense of this conflicting legacy.
Christine Hayes shows that for the ancient Greeks, divine law was divine by virtue of its inherent qualities of intrinsic rationality, truth, universality, and immutability, while for the biblical authors, divine law was divine because it was grounded in revelation with no presumption of rationality, conformity to truth, universality, or immutability. Hayes describes the collision of these opposing conceptions in the Hellenistic period, and details competing attempts to resolve the resulting cognitive dissonance. She shows how Second Temple and Hellenistic Jewish writers, from the author of 1 Enoch to Philo of Alexandria, were engaged in a common project of bridging the gulf between classical and biblical notions of divine law, while Paul, in his letters to the early Christian church, sought to widen it. Hayes then delves into the literature of classical rabbinic Judaism to reveal how the talmudic rabbis took a third and scandalous path, insisting on a construction of divine law intentionally at odds with the Greco-Roman and Pauline conceptions that would come to dominate the Christianized West.
A stunning achievement in intellectual history, What's Divine about Divine Law? sheds critical light on an ancient debate that would shape foundational Western thought, and that continues to inform contemporary views about the nature and purpose of law and the nature and authority of Scripture.
In the thousand years before the rise of Islam, two radically diverse conceptions of what it means to say that a law is divine confronted one another with a force that reverberates to the present. What's Divine about Divine Law? untangles the classical and biblical roots of the Western idea of divine law and shows how early adherents to biblical tradition―Hellenistic Jewish writers such as Philo, the community at Qumran, Paul, and the talmudic rabbis―struggled to make sense of this conflicting legacy.
Christine Hayes shows that for the ancient Greeks, divine law was divine by virtue of its inherent qualities of intrinsic rationality, truth, universality, and immutability, while for the biblical authors, divine law was divine because it was grounded in revelation with no presumption of rationality, conformity to truth, universality, or immutability. Hayes describes the collision of these opposing conceptions in the Hellenistic period, and details competing attempts to resolve the resulting cognitive dissonance. She shows how Second Temple and Hellenistic Jewish writers, from the author of 1 Enoch to Philo of Alexandria, were engaged in a common project of bridging the gulf between classical and biblical notions of divine law, while Paul, in his letters to the early Christian church, sought to widen it. Hayes then delves into the literature of classical rabbinic Judaism to reveal how the talmudic rabbis took a third and scandalous path, insisting on a construction of divine law intentionally at odds with the Greco-Roman and Pauline conceptions that would come to dominate the Christianized West.
A stunning achievement in intellectual history, What's Divine about Divine Law? sheds critical light on an ancient debate that would shape foundational Western thought, and that continues to inform contemporary views about the nature and purpose of law and the nature and authority of Scripture.
432 pages, Hardcover
First published May 25, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 25, 2020
So it took me like two years but I'm finally done this book! Woooooo! I should make a siyum.
This book was honestly terrific. Christine hayes is a fantastic scholar.
The book makes the claim that there's two concepts of divine law in the ancient world. Greco Roman concept is seeing divine law as unchanging, universal, true, rational. The problem is the Torah doesn't always seem to fit those descriptions. How is kosher rational?
So you have people like Philo who attempt to bridge the gap and say rationales for kosher laws and show how actually Torah does fit Greco Roman concept of divine law. Then you have people like Paul who used Greco Roman concept to show Torah isn't legitimate or relevant anymore.
Then you have the rabbis who say "screw your rules and ideas, Greco Romans." They don't see Torah as corresponding to this objective truth, as universal, as unchanging, or as always rational. Instead they see it as the will of God and they say divine law doesn't need to be all those things. This split in how you see divine law is something relevant even today in understanding source of law.
That's the basic argument of this book. The greatness of it is how she goes into intricate detail showing you the argument and making you come to the same conclusion. It's a slow read because there's so many sources and she's a very nuanced reader of texts. She doesn't smooth over the parts that don't agree with her thesis but go over those sources too and attempt to make sense of it all. It uses the latest research to understand a multitude of Rabbinic texts.
Every single chapter can be a book by itself and is great to hear her perspective and have her pull you through the primary sources so you can read them and understand yourself. Honestly fantastic. She doesn't just present her conclusions but presents the research.
This isn't an easy read but for those interested in Rabbinics, law or just good Academia, this is an amazing read. To me, it only got really good once she got into the Rabbinics part but the other parts were great too, I just don't have any independent knowledge for context so harder.
This book was honestly terrific. Christine hayes is a fantastic scholar.
The book makes the claim that there's two concepts of divine law in the ancient world. Greco Roman concept is seeing divine law as unchanging, universal, true, rational. The problem is the Torah doesn't always seem to fit those descriptions. How is kosher rational?
So you have people like Philo who attempt to bridge the gap and say rationales for kosher laws and show how actually Torah does fit Greco Roman concept of divine law. Then you have people like Paul who used Greco Roman concept to show Torah isn't legitimate or relevant anymore.
Then you have the rabbis who say "screw your rules and ideas, Greco Romans." They don't see Torah as corresponding to this objective truth, as universal, as unchanging, or as always rational. Instead they see it as the will of God and they say divine law doesn't need to be all those things. This split in how you see divine law is something relevant even today in understanding source of law.
That's the basic argument of this book. The greatness of it is how she goes into intricate detail showing you the argument and making you come to the same conclusion. It's a slow read because there's so many sources and she's a very nuanced reader of texts. She doesn't smooth over the parts that don't agree with her thesis but go over those sources too and attempt to make sense of it all. It uses the latest research to understand a multitude of Rabbinic texts.
Every single chapter can be a book by itself and is great to hear her perspective and have her pull you through the primary sources so you can read them and understand yourself. Honestly fantastic. She doesn't just present her conclusions but presents the research.
This isn't an easy read but for those interested in Rabbinics, law or just good Academia, this is an amazing read. To me, it only got really good once she got into the Rabbinics part but the other parts were great too, I just don't have any independent knowledge for context so harder.
September 10, 2023
A bit more of a mixed bag than I was expecting. There's a lot of good information here and the large section on rabbinic material was fairly interesting. The latter seems to be more the author's forte as the other sections were not nearly so good and often the kind of dichotomies that Hayes is interested in seemed to be shoehorned into a particular text under consideration, ignoring other backgrounds or meanings that might make more sense of the text in its actual literary and historical contexts.
On the topic of the texts of the Hebrew Bible, for instance, Hayes cites and talks briefly about the work of LeFebvre and others on the non-statutory nature of Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) law collections such as are found in the Torah. In the surrounding text and throughout the rest of the work, however, Hayes does not seem to really incorporate these insights, which would otherwise show, for instance, that there is not in fact these multiple, perhaps conflicting takes on the law in the biblical texts that Hayes purports to find (once one understands how ANE law collections work, that is), and would also cast the New Testament material in a potentially different light (maybe even some of the rabbinic material as well! - Hayes seems to presuppose that all the authors and figures under consideration adopt a statutory understanding of the Torah, which is not in fact a given).
As another example, there is an amount of pervasive misreading and mischaracterization of the New Testament writers and figures where we can see some characteristic examples of shoehorning everything said into the dichotomous categories under discussion like a kind of procrustean bed, while ignoring more obvious backgrounds or contexts which would put what is said into a completely different light. Most "Jesus in Judaism" and "Paul in Judaism" research, for instance, has reached almost exactly opposite conclusions to some of those on offer here (e.g., finding the idea that the Markan Jesus rejects the food laws a mistranslation and misreading of the passage and Jewish context). Ultimately, the actual textual material seems to have little to do with the realism/nominalism distinction Hayes seems to want to force onto it.
In addition, underneath the wide variety of citations and complex discussions, there is a kind of conceptual and terminological sloppiness to this book that affects it throughout. One can find the misuse of, misleading usage of, or otherwise failure to grasp a number of concepts or terms, such as (ir)rational, truth, logic, deduction, contradiction, inconsistency, etc. Contributing to this is a disconcerting widespread failure to consistently define terms or properly delineate the topic of discussion. I found *at least* three different, distinct views Hayes equivocates between under the term "realism", for instance. All of this sloppiness makes the sections dealing with or incorporating such concepts or terms a huge mess or at least liable to be extremely misleading (consider the final two sentences of the body of the book, which, when parsed carefully, end up borderline incoherent with little to no motivation or relation to the preceding work or its own internal parts, certainly not following from any of it).
A prime example of this is the very topic of the book itself. The question presented in the title of the book is almost never really discussed in the book. The topic the book actually dwells on appears to be more along the lines of "What is divine law like?" rather than "What is divine about it?" But even this does not really successfully delineate what the book is about. If we're meant to be looking at different accounts of a particular phenomenon, we should expect an author to somehow delineate what this particular phenomenon is in the first place so we can know what it is that is being discussed and how the different accounts under consideration are in fact accounts of the same. This is not done, as far as I can tell. The book simply uses this term "divine law" - which doesn't appear to be a biblical or even, from what I can tell, a rabbinic term and not a universal Hellenistic or Roman either - without any explanation of what is being discussed. Some motivation for seeing a single thing, what it is, why we should think these various views are views of the same thing, and why we should use such a single category in the first place (and whether it in fact describes a single ancient category of thought at all) is completely missing yet very much needed. This sets the rest of the discussion on shaky foundations indeed.
All that being said, I couldn't give this anything more than two stars, these things bothered me so much throughout my reading, affecting the work throughout.
On the topic of the texts of the Hebrew Bible, for instance, Hayes cites and talks briefly about the work of LeFebvre and others on the non-statutory nature of Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) law collections such as are found in the Torah. In the surrounding text and throughout the rest of the work, however, Hayes does not seem to really incorporate these insights, which would otherwise show, for instance, that there is not in fact these multiple, perhaps conflicting takes on the law in the biblical texts that Hayes purports to find (once one understands how ANE law collections work, that is), and would also cast the New Testament material in a potentially different light (maybe even some of the rabbinic material as well! - Hayes seems to presuppose that all the authors and figures under consideration adopt a statutory understanding of the Torah, which is not in fact a given).
As another example, there is an amount of pervasive misreading and mischaracterization of the New Testament writers and figures where we can see some characteristic examples of shoehorning everything said into the dichotomous categories under discussion like a kind of procrustean bed, while ignoring more obvious backgrounds or contexts which would put what is said into a completely different light. Most "Jesus in Judaism" and "Paul in Judaism" research, for instance, has reached almost exactly opposite conclusions to some of those on offer here (e.g., finding the idea that the Markan Jesus rejects the food laws a mistranslation and misreading of the passage and Jewish context). Ultimately, the actual textual material seems to have little to do with the realism/nominalism distinction Hayes seems to want to force onto it.
In addition, underneath the wide variety of citations and complex discussions, there is a kind of conceptual and terminological sloppiness to this book that affects it throughout. One can find the misuse of, misleading usage of, or otherwise failure to grasp a number of concepts or terms, such as (ir)rational, truth, logic, deduction, contradiction, inconsistency, etc. Contributing to this is a disconcerting widespread failure to consistently define terms or properly delineate the topic of discussion. I found *at least* three different, distinct views Hayes equivocates between under the term "realism", for instance. All of this sloppiness makes the sections dealing with or incorporating such concepts or terms a huge mess or at least liable to be extremely misleading (consider the final two sentences of the body of the book, which, when parsed carefully, end up borderline incoherent with little to no motivation or relation to the preceding work or its own internal parts, certainly not following from any of it).
A prime example of this is the very topic of the book itself. The question presented in the title of the book is almost never really discussed in the book. The topic the book actually dwells on appears to be more along the lines of "What is divine law like?" rather than "What is divine about it?" But even this does not really successfully delineate what the book is about. If we're meant to be looking at different accounts of a particular phenomenon, we should expect an author to somehow delineate what this particular phenomenon is in the first place so we can know what it is that is being discussed and how the different accounts under consideration are in fact accounts of the same. This is not done, as far as I can tell. The book simply uses this term "divine law" - which doesn't appear to be a biblical or even, from what I can tell, a rabbinic term and not a universal Hellenistic or Roman either - without any explanation of what is being discussed. Some motivation for seeing a single thing, what it is, why we should think these various views are views of the same thing, and why we should use such a single category in the first place (and whether it in fact describes a single ancient category of thought at all) is completely missing yet very much needed. This sets the rest of the discussion on shaky foundations indeed.
All that being said, I couldn't give this anything more than two stars, these things bothered me so much throughout my reading, affecting the work throughout.
October 8, 2017
"In short, the biblical god is depicted as a god who changes his mind in response to the activity of human beings, not only in these prophetic proclamatins, but also in narrative texts... And as his mind can change, so can his Law." (20)
"In addition to gap filling, innovations, and self-contradictions, biblican divine law contains examples of revisions and modification." (20)
"Divine law is often depicted as decidedly particular and in some respects nonrational or arbitrary, rather than universal and rational." (23)
"The Hebrew Bible may be said to refer to divine law in two modalities. The primary and dominant modality is that of the divinely revealed Torah, a set of laws delivered through Moses at Sinai. A second and much less explicitly attested modality of divine law is that of a universal moral order that obligates humankind more generally. Discourse 1 focused on the first modality, presenting the divine law revealed through Moses at Sinai as grounded in will. Discourse 2, which explores divine law as an expression of reason, addresses both of the modalities of biblical divine law. On the one hand, it seeks to represent the divine law revealed at Sinai as a law grounded in reason. On the other hand, it assumes a universal moral order that appears to bear some relationship to divine wisdom." (24)
"To paraphrase LeFebvre, Athens established not merely the rule of law but the rule of written law - law writings as the source of law." (34)
GREAT PHRASE : ''we need not adjudicate this debate''
"In addition to gap filling, innovations, and self-contradictions, biblican divine law contains examples of revisions and modification." (20)
"Divine law is often depicted as decidedly particular and in some respects nonrational or arbitrary, rather than universal and rational." (23)
"The Hebrew Bible may be said to refer to divine law in two modalities. The primary and dominant modality is that of the divinely revealed Torah, a set of laws delivered through Moses at Sinai. A second and much less explicitly attested modality of divine law is that of a universal moral order that obligates humankind more generally. Discourse 1 focused on the first modality, presenting the divine law revealed through Moses at Sinai as grounded in will. Discourse 2, which explores divine law as an expression of reason, addresses both of the modalities of biblical divine law. On the one hand, it seeks to represent the divine law revealed at Sinai as a law grounded in reason. On the other hand, it assumes a universal moral order that appears to bear some relationship to divine wisdom." (24)
"To paraphrase LeFebvre, Athens established not merely the rule of law but the rule of written law - law writings as the source of law." (34)
GREAT PHRASE : ''we need not adjudicate this debate''
March 1, 2023
Oh Christine Hayes! I am a huge fan of yours! I have listened to your Old Testiment Yale course twice and watched many of your lectures for the Hartman Institute, NLI and many other organizations. Your lectures are wonderful, concise and clear, you are able to unpack complicated information to a general audience beautifully. But this book was pedantic and bogged down by semantics, I almost didn't finish it. After the 18th use of the term "sapential/lizing" I almost flung the book across the room. There must be quite an academic debate raging about the definitions of nominalism and realism because my eyes went cross reading all the footnotes and reiterations you gave to the usage of these words. And I was going to start keeping track of the use of the word verisimilitude when it started seeming redundant, but didn't want to be petty. Great information, not a great read.
March 3, 2017
This was an assigned book for a class, and as far as my limited knowledge goes,
she treated her subject well, with the exception of Paul on the Law.
she treated her subject well, with the exception of Paul on the Law.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews