Ritual Violence Prescribed

2019 ◽  
pp. 13-40
Author(s):  
Saul M. Olyan
Keyword(s):  
Human Sacrifice ◽  
Biblical Law ◽  
Detailed Consideration ◽  
Ritual Violence ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
And Function

This chapter considers the representation of violent rites in legal texts. The chapter begins with a review of scholarly debates on the nature and function of biblical law and then moves on to consider striking examples of prescribed ritual violence for punitive purposes (Deut 13:7–12; 25:5–10; and Lev 24:19–20). After this, violent rites that serve nonpunitive purposes are investigated. These include animal and human sacrifice as well as the rites of Num 5:11–31, as the latter have a probative dimension in addition to their punitive aims. A detailed consideration of the rites of mass eradication (the ḥērem) rounds out the chapter.

The Pivotal Characterization: Ancient Law as Non-Statutory Law

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua A. Berman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Biblical Law ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
Statutory Law ◽  
Ancient Law ◽  
History Of

Scholars of biblical law have long seen the inconsistencies among the law corpora of the Pentateuch as signs of schools and communities in conflict. This chapter offers an introductory foundation for the following five chapters on biblical and ancient Near Eastern law. It demonstrates that the dominant approach to the critical study of biblical law—that is, as statutory law—is based on anachronistic, nineteenth-century notions of how law works and how legal texts are formulated. The chapter traces the history of legal thought in that century, and how it shaped (a better term might be distorted) how we view the ancient legal texts of the Bible and the Near East, and recovers premodern understandings of how law works and how legal texts are to be read in accordance with common-law jurisprudence.

Determining the Date of Biblical Legal Texts

2019 ◽  
pp. 232-254
Author(s):  
Pamela Barmash
Keyword(s):  
Linear Process ◽  
Legal Issue ◽  
Biblical Law ◽  
Rigorous Approach ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Relative Chronology ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Legal Texts

Determining the date of the legal texts of the Bible is fundamental to the study of biblical law because scholars seek to illuminate the interrelationship between law and the historical development of ancient Israel. Employing a pattern of evolving socio-economic institutions as a means of securing a chronological framework is faulty because a specific legal issue may have been addressed during a wide range of Israelite history. Charting the development of a single institution as a means of dating legal texts that lack an explicit chronological reference assumes a linear process without deviations. It is important to note that although we might assume that legal texts mirror reality, they might express an ideal divorced from reality or an ideology articulated in one time period that is adopted in another. By contrast, using linguistic criteria to determine dating is a more rigorous approach. This method can assign a text to a broad chronological era. It can mark out a chronology between texts from different linguistic strata, but it cannot ascertain a relative chronology between texts from the same linguistic stratum. For a relative chronology to be ascertained, a method to determine whether one text is alluding to another must be employed. Identification of an allusion must be based on shared language that is distinctive and rare.

Chapter seven Human Sacrifice at the Chotuna-Chornancap Archaeological Complex: Traditions and Transformations of Ritual Violence Under Chimú and Inka Rule

2016 ◽  
pp. 178-210
Author(s):  
Haagen D. Klaus ◽  
Bethany L. Turner ◽  
Fausto Saldaña ◽  
Samuel Castillo ◽  
Carlos Wester
Keyword(s):  
Human Sacrifice ◽  
Ritual Violence

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 107-114
Author(s):  
Saul M. Olyan
Keyword(s):  
Future Orientation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ritual Violence ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
Psychological Dimensions

After summarizing the arguments of previous chapters, the author compares the representation of ritual violence in the three types of literature that have been considered, focusing on both continuities and differences. Each literary type is characterized by diversity with respect to violent ritual acts, and each includes representations of violent rites with physical and/or psychological dimensions. Yet there are differences. Although the aim of historical prose is to represent the past and oracular, oneiric and visionary texts tend to have a present-future orientation, prescriptive texts most often speak in general, hypothetical terms. And while personification plays no role in ritual violence in legal texts and narrative, it is central to visionary, oneiric, and oracular texts, whose function often includes a predictive element, in contrast to both prescriptive and prose texts. The author ends with a consideration of what the study of ritual violence contributes to our understanding of both violence and ritual.

The cremation of care ritual: Burning of effigies or human sacrifice murder? The importance of differentiating complex trauma from schizophrenia in extreme abuse settings

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (S1) ◽  
pp. S580-S580
Author(s):  
R. Kurz
Keyword(s):  
Child Abuse ◽  
Mental Health Professionals ◽  
Human Sacrifice ◽  
Abuse Survivors ◽  
Adult Survivor ◽  
Study Materials ◽  
Ritual Violence ◽  
Competing Interest ◽  
The Impact

IntroductionThis session explores Human Sacrifice killings in extreme abuse cult settings disclosure of which often leads to a misdiagnosis of ‘Schizophrenia’.ObjectivesThe purpose of the paper is to raise awareness and signpost professional development resources regarding extreme abuse ‘Death Cults’ that operate largely with impunity across the world.AimsCase study materials and documentary evidence will be utilised to illustrate criminal practices and the impact on survivors.MethodAccounts of extreme abuse and ritual violence were identified in the context of an adult survivor assessment intervention.ResultsThere are supporters of abuse survivors who bore witness to and believe disclosures of extreme abuse and ritual violence, and ‘False Memory’ adherents who consider Ritual Abuse an unfounded ‘moral panic’. Survivors provide chilling accounts of ritual killings in Scott (2001), Becker, Karriker, Overkamp and Rutz (2008) and Epstein, Schwartz and Schwartz (2011). In the wake of institutional abuse enquiries and the ‘unbelievable’ child abuse perpetrated by celebrities like Jimmy Saville and Ian Watkins, a ‘new reality’ is setting in that child abuse is pervasive and knows no limits. Reports of elaborate rituals with ‘mock’ human sacrifices at the highly secretive annual ‘Bohemian Grove’ summer festival point towards a pervasive interest in the occult in high society.ConclusionMental health professionals have a ‘duty of care’ towards their service users. Unless clear and irrefutable counter-evidence is available it is inappropriate to claim that disclosures of extreme abuse and/or human sacrifice rituals are ‘delusions’ and indicative of Schizophrenia.Disclosure of interestThe author has not supplied his/her declaration of competing interest.

The nature and function of theErnian lülingmanuscript unearthed from Zhangjiashan Han tomb no. 247

2019 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Jingrong
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
The Social ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
Second Year ◽  
And Function

AbstractLegal manuscripts excavated from tombs serve as important materials for research on Qin and Han laws. These manuscripts differ from received legal texts or law documents found at archaeological sites in nature and function, as they were stored as funeral texts in tombs. This article studies theErnian lülingmanuscript in terms of its nature and function. It argues that the manuscript compiled in the second year of Empress Lü (186bce) nearing the death of the owner was not produced for official use but specifically for burial in the tomb. This article further proposes that the burial of theErnian lülingmanuscript may have taken place to illustrate the social status and official capabilities of the owner to the underworld. The investigation of theErnian lülingmanuscript in its archaeological context helps us achieve a stronger understanding of the dating, origins, completeness, and compilation of its text.

scholarly journals Long Lexical Bundles and Standardisation in Historical Legal Texts

2012 ◽  
Vol 47 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 3-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Kopaczyk
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
Considerable Degree ◽  
Lexical Bundles ◽  
Research Results ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
Fixed Expressions ◽  
And Function ◽  
Unchanged Form

Abstract Standardisation on the level of text is visible in the employment of stable and fixed expressions for a specific textual purpose. When gauging the extent of standardisation in texts, one of the parameters which should be taken into consideration is the length of such stable patterns. Since it is more difficult, and therefore rarer, to reproduce long chunks of text in an unchanged form, such a practice points towards greater standardisation. To explore the textual behaviour of long fixed strings in legal texts, this paper concentrates on long lexical bundles built out of eight consecutive elements (8-grams) and their frequency and function in historical legal texts. The database for this pilot paper comprises two collections of legal and administrative texts written in Scots between the fourteenth and the sixteenth century. The research results point to a considerable degree of textual standardisation throughout the corpus and to the most prominent functions of long repetitive chunks in historical legal discourse.

THE PETROGLYPHIC PRAYERS ON THE SUN STONE OF MOTECUHZOMA ILHUICAMINA

2013 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Hill Boone ◽  
Rochelle Collins
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Discourse Structure ◽  
Complex Pattern ◽  
Human Sacrifice ◽  
The Sun ◽  
And Function ◽  
Ritual Speech

AbstractThe Sun Stone of Motecuhzoma Ilhuicamina is one of the major monuments revealed by excavations in and around the Aztec Templo Mayor since 1978. Featuring the sun disk on its top surface and the Mexica conquest of 11 enemy polities on its cylindrical sides, it is considered a gladiatorial stone, similar in both iconography and function to the later Stone of Tizoc. While Tizoc's stone locates its conquest scenes between earth and sky bands, this sun stone uniquely places its conquests between two bands of repeating motifs. The authors argue that these bands are extraordinary examples of pictographic texts that parallel and likely called forth ritual speech acts. The iconography and patterning of the motifs reveal the bands to be visual exhortations or prayers related to human sacrifice specifically associated with Tezcatlipoca. The complex pattern of the repeating motifs is rhythmic and reflects the discourse structure of Nahuatl high speech.

scholarly journals LE PRÉAMBULE DE LA CONSTITUTION COMME UN EXEMPLE D'UN TEXTE DE DROIT

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 51-66
Author(s):  
Piotr PIEPRZYCA
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
The Other ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Legal Language ◽  
Legal Text ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Almost All ◽  
And Function

Preamble to the Constitution is a special type of legal text, which differs significantly from the other legislative texts, both in terms of vocabulary, syntax and semantics. This paper aims to make the characteristics of the legal language of the preamble to the Constitution – its content, form and function it plays in the legal system. The linguistic corpus is composed of over twenty preambles to constitutions of European countries. The results show that, despite some differences between the preambles of individual European countries, there are many features in common – almost all mention the values and principles, considered as fundamental to the nation, such as independence, freedom or democracy. Some preambles also refer to the history of the country or religion and to the person of God – both indirectly and directly. Despite the fact that the preamble in terms of language is not like other legal texts, it has the characteristics of a normative act.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. xvi-4
Author(s):  
Pamela Barmash
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Law And Literature ◽  
Biblical Law ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Literary Context ◽  
The Social ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ritual Law

The introduction to the Oxford Handbook of Biblical Law advocates for the study of both the law of the Hebrew Bible in its historical and literary context as well as the history of its interpretation in emerging Jewish and Christian communities. It explains that biblical law encompasses both civil/criminal law and ritual law and justifies their inclusion in a single volume. The introduction offers a survey of the organization of the Oxford Handbook of Biblical, showing how the volume offers a reappraisal of comprehensive issues in the study of biblical law in the light of the re-evaluation of the social, religious, and political context and ideology of the legal texts of the Hebrew Bible and the employment of methodologies from the fields of law and literature, gender studies, anthropology, and political theory.

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