"Is It Law or Religion? Legal Motivations in Deuteronomy and Babylonian Texts": A presentation by Bruce Wells
Bruce Wells is a professor in the Department of Theology at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia. In his research, he uses clay tablets from Mesopotamia and the Near East to answer the question of whether or not the laws in biblical texts reflect the laws that were in effect in Israel and Judah. Along with two other scholars, Wells is currently engaged in a project on Neo-Babylonian Trial Procedure, funded in large part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, to study several hundred of these tablets that contain records from trials that took place in southern Mesopotamia between 600 B.C.E and 450 B.C.E. This particular judicial system is worthy of study in its own right, and their goal is to produce a book-length analysis of it.
Much of the legal material in the biblical book of Deuteronomy is motivated by the religious interests of its authors. But is this true of all the book's laws? This presentation will consider the rationale behind several Deuteronomic laws, on topics such as fleeing manslayers, hated wives, and promiscuous daughters, and compare them with contemporary legal texts from Babylonia.
Question and Answer