The Torah as a place of refuge : biblical criminal law and the Book of Numbers / Francesco Cocco.

Includes bibliographies and index.

The Law in the Bible and in the Ancient Near East -- "Biblical law ": ambiguities, problems and challenges of a definition -- "Does it make sense to speak of 'biblical law'?" : Epistemological problems -- Methodological difficulties : the problem of the sources -- Comparison with roman law -- Comparison with anglo-saxon law -- Juridical models of the 19th Century : between 'evolutionism' and 'diffusionism' -- The 'evolutionist' model -- The 'diffusionist' model -- The authority of the law and the law-text relationship -- The authority of the law according to the statutory model -- The authority of the law according to the customary model -- The law-text relationship in the two models -- The affirmation of statutory law in Europe -- The law of the ancient Near East -- The principal Mesopotamian juridical collections -- The juridical tradition of ancient Egypt -- General considerations on the legislative collections of the ANE -- Statutory Interpretation : the law of the ANE as positive or prescriptive law -- Customary interpretation of the laws of the ANE -- Elements of continuity between the laws of the ANE and biblical law -- Peculiar elements of biblical law compared with the laws of the ANE -- "What, then, is biblical law?" an attempt at synthesis -- Biblical Criminal Law and the Book of Numbers -- Criteria distinguishing 'civil law' and 'criminal law' in the biblical legislative texts -- The State of the art in recent literature -- A proposal to distinguish the norms based on the nature of conflict -- Criteria for the cataloguing and structuring of biblical laws -- Situational or 'external' criterion of cataloguing -- 'Internal' criterion of cataloguing of the laws -- The penal legislation in the book of Numbers -- The legislative texts of the book of Numbers : general considerations -- The general structure of the book of Numbers -- The Organisation of the legislative material of the book of Numbers -- "Repetition or Reformulation?" : the Curious Case of Num 35:9-34 -- The pericope in its literary context : demarcation and structure -- The beginning of the pericope -- The conclusion of the pericope -- The internal articolation of the pericope : a structural hypothesis -- Exegetical analysis of Num 35,9-34 -- Injunction to designate "cities of refuge" (vv. 10b-15) -- The meaning of ... -- The meaning of ... -- The meaning of ... and its specific function in Num 35,9-34 -- The meaning of the syntagma ... -- The interpretation of Num 35,12 and its consequences for the hermeneutics of the whole pericope -- The meaning of ... -- The meaning of ... and ... -- The conclusion of Num 35,15 -- Determination of the different examples of homicide and their regulation (vv. 16-29) -- The particularly wilful case, or malicious murder (vv. 16-21) -- The unintentional case, or manslaughter (vv. 22-23) -- The key function of Num 35,24 -- Procedure to be adopted in the case of homicide (vv. 24-29) -- Procedural clarifications and theologico-religious conclusion (vv. 30-34) -- Procedural clarifications (vv. 30-32) -- Theologico-religious conclusion (vv. 33-34) -- "From Law to Law" : understanding the novelty of Num 35,9-34 in the light of selected Biblical Criminal Laws -- Comparison with thematically related texts -- The case of homicide in the mishpat of Ex 21,12-14 -- The legislation in the cities of refuge in Deut 19,1-13 -- The relationship between Deut 19,1-13 and Deut 4,41-43 -- The internal structure of Deut 19,1-13 -- The introduction of the legislation on the cities of refuge (Deut 19,1-3) -- Purpose and demarcation of the area of the validity of the law (Deut 19,4-10) -- Regulation of the cases of murder (Deut 19,11-13) -- Summary considerations on the legislation of Deut 19,1-13 -- The legislation on the cities of refuge in Josh 20,1-9 -- The differences between the Hebrew and the Greek texts of Josh 20,1-9 -- The proposal of A. Rofé : the Greek text of LXXB is the archetype of Josh 20 -- The proposal of L. Schmidt : the Grundbestand of the Masoretic Text is the archetype of Josh 20 -- Conclusions on the interdependence of the four biblical texts analysed -- Conclusion --

The law on the "cities of refuge" contained in Numbers 35:9-34 is almost universally seen as a simple repetition of legal content that is basically already present in the legislation of other biblical books. Francesco Cocco demonstrates that we find ourselves here before a case of reformulation instead of simple repetition, the implications of which are extremely interesting for the understanding of biblical penal legislation. In this particular fragment, it exhibits traces of modernity so surprising as to be as good as the defence of civil liberties in the legal systems currently in force in the majority of democratic states. The author's enquiry takes its starting point and develops, therefore, from the novel contribution which the legislation in Numbers 35:9-34 confers on the entire biblical law of a penal character. --

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