David Daube (1909-1999) was an eminent authority on Talmudic, Roman and ancient law, who taught legal history and jurisprudence at Cambridge, Aberdeen, Oxford and Berkeley. He was also in the vanguard of scholars who established the importance of Jewish and Talmudic perspectives to the understanding of the New Testament. This book, first published in 1947 and now reissued, contains five ground-breaking essays on the legal issues present in a number of Old Testament narratives including the story of Joseph and his brothers. Among the topics discussed are theft, deception, evidence, liability and punishment. These are set in the wider context of the growth of codes in the Pentateuch, Rabbinic interpretations of the Torah, and Roman sources including Macrobius and Gaius. Daube's book will resonate afresh in the scholarly climate of the twenty-first century, where the relationships between law and religion and between Judaism and Christianity are again the subject of lively debate.

David Daube (1909–1999) was a world-renowned biblical law scholar. He was a fellow at All Souls College at Oxford, an emeritus professor of law at Oxford, and an emeritus professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley. Scholars have hailed his essential research on Roman law, biblical law, Hebraic Law, and ethics throughout his life and today. Daube produced dozens of books and published over 150 articles in scholarly journals. Now, for the first time, his twenty Gifford Lectures, delivered in 1962 and 1964, will be available to the public. His first ten Gifford Lectures have been collected in The Deed and the Doer in the Bible: David Daube's Gifford Lectures, Volume 1. The theme of Daube's Gifford Lectures is law and wisdom in the Bible. His wide-ranging deliberations reveal how complicated and profound the biblical text is. He analyzes deeds described in the Bible and considers, for example, what causes people to act in a certain way, the role of intent, why unintended deeds are sometimes punishable, and how the origin of a deed is determined. His lectures are aimed at professionals in biblical criticism, biblical history, ethics, and the history of law concerning its roots in Old Testament traditions. Daube is a recognized master in these fields, and there are substantial applications to current ethical and legal issues.

"That over forty years after they were delivered these famous but unavailable Gifford Lectures should be published is occasion for celebration. Once again we hear Daube’s voice, patient and probing, as he turns over, tests, pushes fresh inquiries, and finds new insights. No man has had such a subtle sense of scriptural texts matched by such a supple sense of the practices and peculiarities of human beings engaged in the legal process. Law and Wisdom in the Bible is classic Daube." mdash;John T. Noonan Jr., United States Circuit JudgeDavid Daube (1909–99) was known for his unique and sophisticated research on Roman law, biblical law, Jewish Law, and medical ethics. In Law and Wisdom in the Bible, the first published collection of his 1964 Gifford Lectures, Daube derives from his complex understanding of biblical texts both ancient and contemporary notions about wisdom, justice, and education.In addressing these and other profound issues, Daube crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries and bridges thegap between humanism and religion, especially with regard to Christianity and Judaism. With his sophisticated understanding of Talmudic law and literature, his thinking, which is on full display in these lectures, revolutionized prevailing perceptions about the New Testament.

This book derives from the Messenger Lectures at Cornell. In it Daube provides a synoptic view of nonviolent civil disobedience in the Ancient World. His learning lets him draw freely on Greek and Roman sources--theological, legal historical, literary, dramatic, and popular. From these he shows that there is hardly a variety of civil disobedience known today which is not anticipated in some form or another by the ancients. Is this book more than an entertaining exercise of scholarship? Professor Daube writes, "e;To speak through historical figures is sometimes wiser than to declare in one's own name. The word 'person' originally means a mask . . . Civil disobedience can at all times profitably avail itself of persons."e;

The exodus story--telling how the Lord delivered Israel from Pharaoh, and how Israel in consequence became the people of the Lord--set a pattern which determined the thinking of both Old and New Testament writers. Professor Daube shows how the authors of the story were influenced by the social laws of their time: for it was the right and duty of a strong and loyal man to redeem an enslaved kinsman, who would then owe allegiance to his rescuer. St. Paul takes over this model when he says that those made free from sin become servants to righteousness. Entire narratives are made to approximate to the pattern: it seems to be a factor in the story of Jacob and Laban, and it is very clearly seen in that of the Ark with the Philistines. Professor Daube's demonstration of the vitality of individual notions from the exodus story and of the general pattern is illuminating, and his exposition of the legal ideas underlying it is no less so. Methods of relative dating are discussed, arising out of the fact that a considerable number of these social laws have been transmitted in sources later than the exodus story itself.

David Daube (1909-1999) was an eminent authority on Talmudic, Roman and ancient law, who taught legal history and jurisprudence at Cambridge, Aberdeen, Oxford and Berkeley. He was also in the vanguard of scholars who established the importance of Jewish and Talmudic perspectives to the understanding of the New Testament. This book, first published in 1947 and now reissued, contains five ground-breaking essays on the legal issues present in a number of Old Testament narratives including the story of Joseph and his brothers. Among the topics discussed are theft, deception, evidence, liability and punishment. These are set in the wider context of the growth of codes in the Pentateuch, Rabbinic interpretations of the Torah, and Roman sources including Macrobius and Gaius. Daube's book will resonate afresh in the scholarly climate of the twenty-first century, where the relationships between law and religion and between Judaism and Christianity are again the subject of lively debate.

David Daube (1909–1999) was a world-renowned biblical law scholar. He was a fellow at All Souls College at Oxford, an emeritus professor of law at Oxford, and an emeritus professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley. Scholars have hailed his essential research on Roman law, biblical law, Hebraic Law, and ethics throughout his life and today. Daube produced dozens of books and published over 150 articles in scholarly journals. Now, for the first time, his twenty Gifford Lectures, delivered in 1962 and 1964, will be available to the public. His first ten Gifford Lectures have been collected in The Deed and the Doer in the Bible: David Daube's Gifford Lectures, Volume 1. The theme of Daube's Gifford Lectures is law and wisdom in the Bible. His wide-ranging deliberations reveal how complicated and profound the biblical text is. He analyzes deeds described in the Bible and considers, for example, what causes people to act in a certain way, the role of intent, why unintended deeds are sometimes punishable, and how the origin of a deed is determined. His lectures are aimed at professionals in biblical criticism, biblical history, ethics, and the history of law concerning its roots in Old Testament traditions. Daube is a recognized master in these fields, and there are substantial applications to current ethical and legal issues.

"That over forty years after they were delivered these famous but unavailable Gifford Lectures should be published is occasion for celebration. Once again we hear Daube’s voice, patient and probing, as he turns over, tests, pushes fresh inquiries, and finds new insights. No man has had such a subtle sense of scriptural texts matched by such a supple sense of the practices and peculiarities of human beings engaged in the legal process. Law and Wisdom in the Bible is classic Daube." mdash;John T. Noonan Jr., United States Circuit JudgeDavid Daube (1909–99) was known for his unique and sophisticated research on Roman law, biblical law, Jewish Law, and medical ethics. In Law and Wisdom in the Bible, the first published collection of his 1964 Gifford Lectures, Daube derives from his complex understanding of biblical texts both ancient and contemporary notions about wisdom, justice, and education.In addressing these and other profound issues, Daube crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries and bridges thegap between humanism and religion, especially with regard to Christianity and Judaism. With his sophisticated understanding of Talmudic law and literature, his thinking, which is on full display in these lectures, revolutionized prevailing perceptions about the New Testament.

This book derives from the Messenger Lectures at Cornell. In it Daube provides a synoptic view of nonviolent civil disobedience in the Ancient World. His learning lets him draw freely on Greek and Roman sources--theological, legal historical, literary, dramatic, and popular. From these he shows that there is hardly a variety of civil disobedience known today which is not anticipated in some form or another by the ancients. Is this book more than an entertaining exercise of scholarship? Professor Daube writes, "e;To speak through historical figures is sometimes wiser than to declare in one's own name. The word 'person' originally means a mask . . . Civil disobedience can at all times profitably avail itself of persons."e;

The exodus story--telling how the Lord delivered Israel from Pharaoh, and how Israel in consequence became the people of the Lord--set a pattern which determined the thinking of both Old and New Testament writers. Professor Daube shows how the authors of the story were influenced by the social laws of their time: for it was the right and duty of a strong and loyal man to redeem an enslaved kinsman, who would then owe allegiance to his rescuer. St. Paul takes over this model when he says that those made free from sin become servants to righteousness. Entire narratives are made to approximate to the pattern: it seems to be a factor in the story of Jacob and Laban, and it is very clearly seen in that of the Ark with the Philistines. Professor Daube's demonstration of the vitality of individual notions from the exodus story and of the general pattern is illuminating, and his exposition of the legal ideas underlying it is no less so. Methods of relative dating are discussed, arising out of the fact that a considerable number of these social laws have been transmitted in sources later than the exodus story itself.