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9780190631048

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Reviews

""An erudite and interdisciplinary application of scholarship, Theory and Practice in Essene Law offers an important corrective to the imprecise adoption of legal terminology and the use of anachronistic rabbinic categories for the Judean Desert Scrolls. Amihay s excavation of the space between ideal law and lived practice brings to the fore a tension at the core of the Essene community, and revitalizes the figures preserved within these millennia-old legal records.""--Reading Religion ""An outstanding contribution to the study of ancient Judaism, this brilliant volume employs the tools of legal philosophy and sociology of law to reconstruct the essentialist-determinist worldview of the Essene sect and to illuminate the complex and dialectical relationship between this worldview and the sect's written laws and living legal practice. A remarkable achievement! ""--Christine Hayes, author of What's Divine about Divine Law? Early Perspectives ""This volume offers a fresh reading of a number of legal texts from Qumran from the perspectives of legal theory and sociology. Amihay forcefully argues against employing anachronistic rabbinic terminology with reference to Second Temple legal texts from Qumran. The introduction of a category of 'Essene law' is likely to stimulate debate and no doubt some controversy.""--Charlotte Hempel, Professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism, University of Birmingham

Author Information

Aryeh Amihay teaches Judaism and Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He holds a BA in Biblical Studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a PhD in Religion from Princeton University.

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