This essentialism is then demonstrated in four aspects: time, space, hierarchy, and knowledge. Legal essentialism is a new term proposed in chapter 1 as a substitute for previous terminology of “realism” (in contrast to “nominalism,” called “legal formalism” in this study). This dissertation undertakes a shift from the comparative approach, which focuses on parallels from either early Christian or early rabbinic sources, through exploration of four theoretical concepts: legal essentialism, intentionality, exclusion, and obligation.
The study of the legal texts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls benefits from a theoretical framework that is informed by contemporary legal scholarship. The conclusions stress the extent to which the formative canon sponsors this kind of critical reflection and intellectual freedom. A series of inner-biblical and post-biblical responses to the rule demonstrates, however, that later writers were able to criticize, reject, and replace it with the alternative notion of individual retribution.
As a test-case, the article examines the idea that God punishes sinners transgenerationally, vicariously extending the punishment due them to three or four generations of their progeny. Smith on exegetical ingenuity, the study begins with cuneiform law, and then shows how ancient Israel's development of the idea of divine revelation of law creates a cluster of constraints that would be expected to impede legal revision or amendment.
Seeking to provide such a perspective, this article shows how cultures having a tradition of prestigious or authoritative texts address the problem of literary and legal innovation. For all the debate in the contemporary humanities about the canon, there is little interdisciplinary dialogue on the issue, nor even meaningful input from the perspective of academic biblical studies, the one discipline that specializes in the formation and interpretation of the canon.
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