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As early Jewish communities struggled with shifting imperial realities, they wrote trial stories that construct, unravel, and continually remake the links between judges, judgment, and justice. In these trial narratives they wrestle with empire and the feasibility of judges operating apart from their social and material environments. Chaya T. Halberstam offers close analyses of the trials of Daniel, Susanna, Jesus, Herod and his family, and a variety of largely unnamed litigants in rabbinic literature. The stories that are the focus of the book share the basic perspective that judges do not transcend their affective and material circumstances, even when they appeal to a higher standard and appear to follow some version of the ‘rule of law’. The judges in these narratives see and feel; they are inextricably a part of the networks, moods, and events around them. The trial stories of Jewish antiquity form a sophisticated critique of blind justice, even as it is programmatically prescribed throughout ancient literature. They suggest, instead, a counternarrative of judging that draws on feeling, relationships, and the ethic of care.
As early Jewish communities struggled with shifting imperial realities, they wrote trial stories that construct, unravel, and continually remake the links between judges, judgment, and justice. In these trial narratives they wrestle with empire and the feasibility of judges operating apart from their social and material environments. Chaya T. Halberstam offers close analyses of the trials of Daniel, Susanna, Jesus, Herod and his family, and a variety of largely unnamed litigants in rabbinic literature. The stories that are the focus of the book share the basic perspective that judges do not transcend their affective and material circumstances, even when they appeal to a higher standard and appear to follow some version of the ‘rule of law’. The judges in these narratives see and feel; they are inextricably a part of the networks, moods, and events around them. The trial stories of Jewish antiquity form a sophisticated critique of blind justice, even as it is programmatically prescribed throughout ancient literature. They suggest, instead, a counternarrative of judging that draws on feeling, relationships, and the ethic of care.
No abstract
The Introduction begins by surveying several stories from the Hebrew Bible and examining what they convey about justice and judgment. It schematizes different models of judgment, relating in particular to divine intervention, direct or indirect, in reaching a verdict. It identifies the characteristics of two key elements of the study: trial stories and counternarratives. Trial stories are identified both as a universal type-scene and also cast within more specific, ancient contexts. Counternarratives are defined as stories that are positioned against dominant cultural narratives. The chapter also describes the main objective of the book and outlines the plan of the book, summarizing each chapter.
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