Ancient Near Eastern Treaties/Loyalty Oaths and Biblical Law

Author(s):  
William S. Morrow

The chapter surveys evidence from West Asian and Mesopotamian sources, focusing on texts written in Akkadian, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Hittite. Although modern scholarship distinguishes international treaties from domestic loyalty oaths, the difference is not recognized in ancient Near Eastern documents. Both types of agreements are discussed under five headings: relationships between treaties and other legal documents; the concept of the vassal treaty; forms; ratification; and covenants with gods. Each heading points to areas of ongoing research and discussion. These include the administration of oaths; difficulties in identifying vassal treaties; origin and development of treaty forms; and motivations for producing treaty documents. Among issues relevant to biblical studies are links between treaties and dynastic promises; categorization of biblical treaty texts; the role of sacrifice; and connections between covenants and vows.

Author(s):  
Samuel Greengus

Biblical laws are found mainly in the Pentateuch (i.e., the first five books of the Hebrew Bible). The laws are linked to the figure of Moses, who is depicted as having received them directly from God in order to transmit them to the people of Israel during the years in the Wilderness after being released from slavery in Egypt. Biblical laws are thus presented as being of divine origin. Their authority was further bolstered by a tradition that they were included in covenants (i.e., formal agreements made between God and the people as recorded in the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy). Similar claims of divine origin were not made for other ancient Near Eastern laws; their authority flowed from kings, who issued the laws, although these kings might also be seen as having been placed on their thrones through the favor of the gods. The biblical law collections are unlike other ancient Near Eastern “codes” in that they include sacral laws (i.e., governing cult, worship, and ritual, as well as secular laws: namely, governing civil, and criminal behaviors). This mingling of sacral and secular categories is the likely reason both for the many terms used to denote the laws, as well as for the unexpected number of formulations in which they are presented. The formulations used in biblical law can be classified as “casuistic” or “non-casuistic.” They are not equally distributed in the books of the Pentateuch nor are they equally used with secular and sacral laws. While there are similarities in content between secular laws found in the Hebrew Bible and laws found in the ancient Near Eastern law “codes,” the latter do not exhibit a comparable variety in the numbers of law terms and formulations. The Hebrew Bible tended to “blur” the differences between the law terms and their formulations, ultimately to the point of subsuming them all under the law term torah (“teaching”) to describe the totality of the divinely given laws in the Pentateuch. Biblical studies in general and Pentateuchal studies in particular are challenged by the fact that manuscripts contemporary with the events described have not survived the ravages the time. Scholars must therefore rely on looking for “clues” within the texts themselves (e.g., the laws cited by the prophets, the reform of Josiah, the teaching of torah by Ezra, and evidence for customs and customary laws found in books of the Hebrew Bible outside of the Pentateuch).


Author(s):  
Saddam Ibrahim Abdulkhaliq Abuazzam Saddam Ibrahim Abdulkhaliq Abuazzam

This descriptive analytical legal study aimed to clarify the position of international treaties in the Jordanian constitution and judiciary by shedding light on the theoretical trends that determined the status of international treaties in comparative legislation, in addition to verifying the constitutionality of the Jordanian side's signature on some international treaties that occupied Jordanian public opinion. The study revealed that the difference of international law jurists in determining the legal status of international treaties in constitutions and positive laws resulted in three directions: the trend of the unity of the two laws, the trend of the Dual-law, and the trend of reconciling the two laws. The study also showed that the Jordanian constitution did not adopt an explicit provision for the legal status of treaties. International conventions, leaving room for jurisprudential and judicial jurisprudence that affirmed the supremacy of international treaties over domestic law. The study also found that the Jordanian legislator’s neglect of determining the legal status of treaties, and the double signature of them by the executive authority alone or in combination with the legislative authority in accordance with two conditions under Paragraph B of Article 33 of the Jordanian Constitution, has opened the door wide for controversy over any treaty to be signed by the Jordanian side, To demonstrate this, the study mentioned practical applications from international treaties signed by Jordan, namely: the Israeli Gas Supply Agreement, the Casino Agreement, and the CEDAW Agreement. In light of the results were reached, the study presented a set of recommendations that were such as issuing a law for international treaties to regulate international treaties in all the stages through which they pass, adding a constitutional text confirming the oversight role of the National Assembly over international treaties, provided that this constitutional text includes informing the National Assembly of any treaty or agreement that is concluded by Jordan.


Author(s):  
Paola Ceccarelli ◽  
Lutz Doering ◽  
Thorsten Fögen ◽  
Ingo Gildenhard

The Introduction surveys scholarly work on letter-writing in the ancient world. While generally of a high standard and often interdisciplinary in nature, bridging such fields as Near Eastern and Jewish Studies, Biblical Studies, Patristics, and Classics, research on ancient epistolography often marginalizes the role of letters in constituting and sustaining communities of various stripes (political, social, ethnic, religious, philosophical). The introduction explores various reasons for this oversight (the overriding importance given to face-to-face communication in public settings, the apparently ‘private’ nature of corresponding via letters, its low rank in the hierarchy of genres, and the marginal status this aspect of letter-writing has in ancient epistolary theory) before outlining why letters played such a vital role in ancient community-building, with an emphasis on long-distance communication, permanence, and the genre’s ideological flexibility and strong pro-social outlook. The second half offers a narrative of the volume, with summaries of its thirteen case studies.


Author(s):  
Sara J. Milstein

Outside of the Bible, all of the known Near Eastern law collections were produced in the third to second millennia BCE, in cuneiform on clay tablets, and in major cities in Mesopotamia and in the Hittite Empire. None of the five major sites in Syria to have yielded cuneiform tablets has borne even a fragment of a law collection, despite the fact that several have yielded ample legal documentation. Excavations at Nuzi have turned up numerous legal documents, but again, no law collection. Even Egypt has not yielded a collection of laws. As such, the biblical blocks that scholars regularly identify as law collections would represent the only “western,” non-cuneiform expressions of the genre in the ancient Near East, produced by societies not known for their political clout, and separated in time from the “other” collections by centuries. Making a Case challenges the long-held notion that Israelite and Judahite scribes either made use of older law collections or set out to produce law collections in the Near Eastern sense of the genre. Rather, Milstein suggests that what we call “biblical law” is closer in form and function to a different and oft-neglected Mesopotamian genre: legal-pedagogical texts. In the course of their education, Mesopotamian scribes copied a variety of legal-oriented school texts: sample contracts, fictional cases, sequences of non-canonical law, and legal phrasebooks. When “biblical law” is viewed in the context of these legal-pedagogical texts, its practical roots in legal exercises begin to emerge.


Author(s):  
Assnat Bartor

The relationship between law and narrative in the Bible is a wide topic that touches on various research domains concerning ancient Near Eastern literature in general and the Bible in particular. It deals with the common combination between literary genres, with the unique model of the Pentateuch and its rhetorical, historiographical, national, and theological roles. It also relates to the intensive presence throughout biblical literature of legal issues as well as tendentious references to the laws of the Pentateuch and enables an acquaintance with the poetics of biblical laws. The “Law and Literature” school, one of the most influential contemporary schools in the study of the law, together with the framework of biblical studies and of biblical law, constitutes a methodological framework for a narrative reading of the pentateuchal laws and for the examination of the variety of connections existing between biblical law and biblical narrative.


Author(s):  
E.M. Waddell ◽  
J.N. Chapman ◽  
R.P. Ferrier

Dekkers and de Lang (1977) have discussed a practical method of realising differential phase contrast in a STEM. The method involves taking the difference signal from two semi-circular detectors placed symmetrically about the optic axis and subtending the same angle (2α) at the specimen as that of the cone of illumination. Such a system, or an obvious generalisation of it, namely a quadrant detector, has the characteristic of responding to the gradient of the phase of the specimen transmittance. In this paper we shall compare the performance of this type of system with that of a first moment detector (Waddell et al.1977).For a first moment detector the response function R(k) is of the form R(k) = ck where c is a constant, k is a position vector in the detector plane and the vector nature of R(k)indicates that two signals are produced. This type of system would produce an image signal given bywhere the specimen transmittance is given by a (r) exp (iϕ (r), r is a position vector in object space, ro the position of the probe, ⊛ represents a convolution integral and it has been assumed that we have a coherent probe, with a complex disturbance of the form b(r-ro) exp (iζ (r-ro)). Thus the image signal for a pure phase object imaged in a STEM using a first moment detector is b2 ⊛ ▽ø. Note that this puts no restrictions on the magnitude of the variation of the phase function, but does assume an infinite detector.


1988 ◽  
Vol 27 (04) ◽  
pp. 151-153
Author(s):  
P. Thouvenot ◽  
F. Brunotte ◽  
J. Robert ◽  
L. J. Anghileri

In vitro uptake of 67Ga-citrate and 59Fe-citrate by DS sarcoma cells in the presence of tumor-bearing animal blood plasma showed a dramatic inhibition of both 67Ga and 59Fe uptakes: about ii/io of 67Ga and 1/5o of the 59Fe are taken up by the cells. Subcellular fractionation appears to indicate no specific binding to cell structures, and the difference of binding seems to be related to the transferrin chelation and transmembrane transport differences


Author(s):  
M. S. Sudakova ◽  
M. L. Vladov ◽  
M. R. Sadurtdinov

Within the ground penetrating radar bandwidth the medium is considered to be an ideal dielectric, which is not always true. Electromagnetic waves reflection coefficient conductivity dependence showed a significant role of the difference in conductivity in reflection strength. It was confirmed by physical modeling. Conductivity of geological media should be taken into account when solving direct and inverse problems, survey design planning, etc. Ground penetrating radar can be used to solve the problem of mapping of halocline or determine water contamination.


Author(s):  
Brian Willems

A human-centred approach to the environment is leading to ecological collapse. One of the ways that speculative realism challenges anthropomorphism is by taking non-human things to be as valid objects of investivation as humans, allowing a more responsible and truthful view of the world to take place. Brian Willems uses a range of science fiction literature that questions anthropomorphism both to develop and challenge this philosophical position. He looks at how nonsense and sense exist together in science fiction, the way in which language is not a guarantee of personhood, the role of vision in relation to identity formation, the difference between metamorphosis and modulation, representations of non-human deaths and the function of plasticity within the Anthropocene. Willems considers the works of Cormac McCarthy, Paolo Bacigalupi, Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, Doris Lessing and Kim Stanley Robinson are considered alongside some of the main figures of speculative materialism including Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux and Jane Bennett.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-91
Author(s):  
Elena E. Rinchinova ◽  
Diyara A. Takumova ◽  
Irina I. Bochkareva

The article discusses main issues of organizing activities for the treatment of stray and street animals in the city of Novosibirsk. The important role of successful solving the problem of stray animals in ensuring environmental comfort and safety of the urban population is noted. Definitions of the concepts “stray animals” and “street animals” are given, the differences between them are emphasized. The main regulatory and legal documents governing the handling of stray and street animals are listed. The ways in which domestic animals get into a stray state are described briefly. The results of the collection and analysis of information on the activities of shelters for stray animals in Novosibirsk are described. The information on the quantitative indicators of the shelters are given. Conclusions on how to solve the problem of stray animals, relying on the latest regulations are drawn.


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