Studies in the Semiotics of Biblical Law

Written by Bernard S. Jackson Reviewed By Nicolai Winther-Nielsen

How are the laws of Moses treated in current scholarship? How do we interpret ‘an eye for an eye’? Such questions are brilliantly addressed by Bernard Jackson of Manchester, an international expert on near eastern, biblical and Rabbinic law.

This book presents ‘a set of pilot studies of the semiotic dimensions’ of law (20). Jackson first explains how a new semiotic or communicative approach can trace the roots and essence of biblical law. In chapter 1, following Greimas, he proposes that meaning is explained in terms of expression, social knowledge and universal significance, and that the central key to unlock biblical law is found in ‘narrative typifications of action’ (28). Chapter 2 develops Austin’s speech act theory into distinctions between orality and literacy. Early biblical laws are oral speech acts embedded in narrative contexts. The ‘apodictic’ forms are more primitive than the ‘casuitic’ forms in their oral setting of domestic teaching, and this is supported by their visual imagery as ‘direct inspiration from God’ (67).

Jackson next explains how writing changes law. In chapter 3 he argues that early law retained an ‘oral residue’ and exploited this in its use of typical images of thieves and murderers. They were ‘self-executing laws’ which provided objective tests to resolve local disputes and avoid costly court-arbitration. This explains why the death penalty could be negotiated. Chapter 4 broadens this approach to larger discourse units of paragraph length in Exodus 21–22, and traces various developments in legal drafting (abstraction, consistency, multiple variables, clause-combination, elaboration, systematisation, motivation). Chapter 5 discusses the medium of written law in the Near East and the Bible, and the development from monumental inscriptions to tablets and books.

Law raises broader issues such as irrevocability and moral values. In chapter 6 Jackson claims that law originated in concrete rights, while the role of Moses as lawgiver is expressed in terms of royal and divine authority. In chapter 7 he modifies Greenberg’s ‘postulate’ that life is an absolute value in biblical law, paying more attention to each text’s precise literary form in searching for its world-view.

Jackson then broadens his perspective to historical and theological features of law collections. Chapter 8 explains repetition among laws from a narrative perspective, as giving force and validity to the communication. Repetition is found in chiasm within law codes and between laws and stories. In chapter 9 he presents a narratological study of the covenants from Genesis to Joshua in terms of Greimas’s ideas on contract, performance and recognition. He strongly attacks the alleged covenant renewal in ancient Israel, and provides many innovative and suggestive readings. The Genesis covenants do not renew, but rather reassert who is to inherit the promise. The hereditary covenant of the patriarchs is reinforced in Exodus. The covenant did not even have to be renewed after the golden calf incident. Deuteronomy is a recognition of the covenant of Horeb, and the Moab covenant is about reading and succession. Even Joshua 24 is not a renewal, but a recognition of the new role of Moses and the fulfilment of the promises. Finally, in chapter 10, Jackson argues strongly, though not always clearly, that the rabbis were right in their interpretation of ‘a life for a life’. The victim’s family could opt for compensation, with the offender working for their household rather than being executed.

Jackson’s study is a commanding Introduction to biblical law and its current scholarship, to which he is a major contributor. His new semiotic theory is not lost in the technicalities of Greimas, but is instead a rich use of semantics, pragmatics and discourse as well as speech act theory, communication theory and sociology.

I am less happy with his traditional views on historical-critical dating of the Pentateuch which informs most of his work, even if he has learnt a lot from recent approaches. More importantly, I fear that he reads a modern Western cultural practice into an evolutionary model for development from orality to literacy. I would also argue for an earlier date for writing in Israel (cf. 136–37).


Nicolai Winther-Nielsen

Lutheran School of Theology, Aarhus, Denmark