Diana Lipton, King's College London
Terms of Endearment: A (Very) Fresh Look at Biblical Law

Abstract:

Biblical scholars, like the legal theorists addressed by H.L.A. Hart in his monumental The Concept of Law, privilege the notion of law as orders issued by a supreme and independent ‘sovereign’ being who punishes the disobedient. I attend here to an aspect of biblical law that sits in stark tension with the sovereign model: law as quasi-erotic engagement. In ‘The Valediction: A Book’, John Donne tells his lover how to ‘anger destiny’ when he is gone: Study our manuscripts, those myriads/ Of letters, which have past ‘twixt thee and me,/ Thence write our annals, and in them will be/ To all whom love’s subliming fire invades,/ Rule and example found… Donne’s letters will not replace him. Rather, the exchange of letters between himself and his lover record their engagement, preserve their love in the face of destiny, and create a model for future lovers. Though imperfect, this comparison elicits a key feature of my reading here. Biblical law, especially Deuteronomic law, is not a soliloquy but a dialogue. With this in mind, I re-read Deut. 31-33, where the Torah will remind God of his relationship with Moses; discourage unilateral punishment; intercede for Israel in Moses’ absence (31:19, 26, reading the preposition ‘be’ as ‘with’, not ‘against’); record the dialogue between God and Moses; and exemplify for Israel the dialogic ideal of law (31:21b). My reading calls for a re-evaluation of: (1) the significance of love (Deut. 6:5) and even eroticism (Ps. 119:32, 97, 131) in relation to biblical law; (2) the relationship between biblical law and rabbinic legal texts, where engagement of this kind is central; (3) the meaning of shema be’qol; (4) the desirability of obedience – which arguably forecloses engagement – as a response to biblical law; and above all (5) the classic opposition of biblical law and compassionate love.