Elizabeth Anscombe has an admirable summary of the distinctiveness of the Mosaic Law:
For example, it greatly heightens his own notion of the paramountcy of God,; it absolutely forbids superstition, 'seeking truth from the dead', concern with omens, soothsaying; if we suppose him [a 'seeker after God'] acquainted with, say, Arabian tribes of the fiercer sort, we can also suppose that he is struck by the prescriptions tending to check the licence and bloody revenge natural among such people; the arrangements tending to make impossible the casual jetttisoning of wives and the killing of those who have suddenly or accidentally killed your relations. for while revenge was forbidden as a matter of personal ethic, it is also made difficult as a matter of public law by the establishment of the cities of refuge. He notes the prohibition on punishing any but the offender - remember that even Roman law, as codified by a Christian Emperor, permitted the destruction of the family and close associates of a man found guilty of treason against the state; but the Mosaic law forbade it. He notes the restriction on stripes as a punishment to forty 'lest thy brother become vile in they sight' - equally astonishing when you think of Roman floggings, or floggings in the British navy up to quite recent times. There is no torture in the Mosaic law: remember again that the Code of Justinian retained the requirement to torture slaves as witnesses. He notes the fact that if you so much as knocked out the tooth of a slave, he was to go free; the asylum to runaway slaves from the nations round about, the prohibition on man-stealing; the provision whereby you could not send a slave or bondman away if he had married in your house and chose to remain; the provisions forbidding persecution of poor debtors. He sees the contrast between the estimation of offences against property [...] and offences against the person and sexual offences.
(italics original, p. 35, 'Prophecy and Miracles' in Faith in a Hard Ground: Essays on Religion, Philosophy and Ethics)
The essay itself is very good, and I think I will read it again and maybe even post a summary.
Look forward, in hope, to your posting on the essay!
ReplyDeleteIn particular, I'd be interested to know how you view her scepticism on the value of the resurrection as a historically-verifiable miracle.
It's interesting that you've drawn attention to her high regard for the Jewish law, which is one of her most striking traits and I think central to her argument in this essay.
I'll do my best. It will probably just be a summary though. I will do well to interact a lot. I don't generally have the time or intelligence to manage that on my blog most of the time.
ReplyDeleteThe high regard for the Jewish Law is central to her argument. And I am largely convinced on her point about fulfilment of prophecy in this essay. The miracle part may require more careful reading.