Papers by Dylan Johnson
The Oxford Handbook of the Books of Kings, 2024
Law was a foundational social institution and a central motif of royal ideology in the ancient Ne... more Law was a foundational social institution and a central motif of royal ideology in the ancient Near East. The biblical books of Kings, however, offer only limited insight into ancient Israel’s and Judah’s legal traditions. This chapter examines the themes of law and justice in 1–2 Kings as they appear in moralizing legal narratives, descriptions of judicial oaths, and the ratification of political treaties. The chapter assesses the obstacles confronted when trying to use biblical narratives as sources of juridical information and how to balance traditional methods of exegesis with legal interpretations of a given text. Nonetheless, it affirms that by comparing and contrasting the legal narratives of Kings, Pentateuchal law, and extrabiblical evidence, a more holistic picture emerges of the relationship between biblical law and the legal cultures of Israel and Judah.
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Revue Française d'histoire des idées politiques , 2023
https://www.cairn.info/revue-francaise-d-histoire-des-idees-politiques-2023-1-page-97.htm
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Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 48, 2023
Through the lens of comparative legal history, this study reexamines the story of the Wise Woman ... more Through the lens of comparative legal history, this study reexamines the story of the Wise Woman of Tekoa (2 Sam. 14.2-24) as a narrativized legal petition-an ancient Near Eastern epistolary sub-genre known from cuneiform and alphabetic inscriptions. This brief juridical parable offers a unique account of justice and adjudication largely independent of its ideological depiction in the Pentateuchal law codes, making it a critical text in the study of biblical law. In particular, it evokes two distinct forms of judicial wisdom in the context of legal self-help and royal adjudication. By comparing and contrasting this parable with other texts dealing with similar themes, I outline the diverse ways biblical writers explained the intersections of law, wisdom, and justice.
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Journal of Biblical Literature 141 , 2022
This study examines the literary and redactional history of the allotment motif in biblical tradi... more This study examines the literary and redactional history of the allotment motif in biblical tradition. The notion that the Israelite tribes apportioned the promised land through the casting of “lots” stems from a core narrative about a ceremony for the house of Joseph at Shiloh (Josh 17:17–18; 18:4, 8–10a). Through later redactional expansions, the allotment motif came to define the distribution of all Israelite territory in the central chapters of Joshua (chs. 13–21). Outside the book of Joshua, however, this idea gained little acceptance among scribal circles that preferred other explanations for how the Israelites came to occupy and possess the land. The only extensive engagement with the allotment motif outside of Joshua appears in the concluding chapters of Numbers (chs. 26–36). The post-Priestly redactors who organized these chapters harmonized the allotment motif with their own genealogies as a means to create narrative continuity between the desert wanderings and the conquest account in Joshua. By examining many “redactional reciprocations” between Numbers and Joshua, I demonstrate how biblical books and literary motifs developed in parallel narrative contexts, with punctuated revisions that alter the form and function of each through dialectical processes of harmonization. The allotment motif in Numbers is the literary legacy of scribes who did not consider Moses’s death in Deuteronomy to be a decisive break in the biblical narrative, instead promoting the view of Joshua as Moses’s spiritual successor and the conquest as the fulfillment of the exodus.
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“A Community of Peoples” Studies on Society and Politics in the Bible and Ancient Near East in Honor of Daniel E. Fleming, 2022
This article explores how sedentary and mobile peoples in Late Bronze Age Syria laid claim to sha... more This article explores how sedentary and mobile peoples in Late Bronze Age Syria laid claim to shared social identities. The first section outlines how social identity was a matter of perspective, contrasting Middle Assyrian annalistic descriptions of hostile aḫlamû-Arameans with the rather amicable depiction of mobile peoples in the cuneiform archives of the Middle Euphrates (Emar and Ekalte). The second section examines how populations separated by time and space maintained a shared social identity through ritual. In addition to an identity defined by the town, three Emar rituals—the rites of Zarātu (Emar 446) and two forms of the zukru ritual (Emar 373+/Emar 375+)—evoked an older identity tied to the regional landscape. These rituals were a way for the inhabitants of Emar to identify with mobile groups who still occupied the Middle Euphrates, to lay claim to a common historical descent and a shared social identity embedded in the physical landscape and the worship of the deities who occupied it.
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Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 22, 2022
Ancient Near Eastern kings were always assumed to mediate between the divine and human worlds, bu... more Ancient Near Eastern kings were always assumed to mediate between the divine and human worlds, but where they fell in the spectrum between mortal and divine varied from one king or dynasty to the next. Additionally, human kings could claim divine or semi-divine status through certain activities attached to the office of kingship. Through a diachronic survey, this study examines how the royal act of lawgiving elevated human rulers above other people. As lawgivers, these rulers could embody certain attributes of gods of justice within their political realms – most evident in metaphors attributing solar imagery and solar language to human rulers in royal ideology. Using cognitive metaphor theory, I examine the various ways that ancient audiences received and processed this figurative language, answering for themselves how the king could simultaneously be a mortal man and represent a solar god of justice.
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Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 2022
The notion that the Torah represents a supervening »rule of law« that circumscribes the political... more The notion that the Torah represents a supervening »rule of law« that circumscribes the political and legal authority of the king stems from a particular Deuteronomistic scribal circle that worked long after the Davidic monarchy had ended. Using Zedekiah’s edict (Jer 34:8–22) as a case study, this paper examines how Deuteronomistic redactors recast the final normative legal act of an independent Judahite king as his pious application of Pentateuchal law.
Die Vorstellung, dass die Tora eine übergeordnete »Rechtsstaatlichkeit« darstellt, die die politische und rechtliche Autorität des Königs umschreibt, stammt aus einem bestimmten deuteronomistischen Schreiberkreis, der lange nach dem Ende der davidischen Monarchie tätig war. Anhand des Edikts von Zedekia (Jer 34,8–22) wird in diesem Beitrag untersucht, wie deuteronomistische Redaktoren/Fortschreiber den letzten normativen Rechtsakt eines unabhängigen judäischen Königs zu seiner frommen Anwendung des pentateuchischen Gesetzes umgestalteten.
Le concept selon lequel la Torah représente une »prééminence du droit« qui circonscrit l’autorité politique et légale du roi provient d’un cercle particulier de scribes deutéronomistes qui ont exercé bien après la fin de la monarchie davidique. En utilisant l’édit de Sédécias (Jr 34,8–22) comme étude de cas, cet article examine comment les rédacteurs deutéronomistes ont reformulé le dernier acte juridique normatif d’un roi judéen autonome comme étant une pieuse application de la loi du Pentateuque.
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Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires 4, 2021
I propose that a peculiar expression concluding the prologue of Hammurabi's Laws, "I established ... more I propose that a peculiar expression concluding the prologue of Hammurabi's Laws, "I established justice and equity in the mouth of the land, I made the flesh of the people content" (col. v, 20ʹ–24ʹ ), represents a very specific visual/mimetic scribal error: Hammurabi’s scribes combined two fixed Sumerian formulae that they recalled from their scribal training.
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Vetus Testamentum, 2022
In Judg 14–15, the source of Samson’s strength is not his uncut hair, but the רוח־יהוה. A Leitmot... more In Judg 14–15, the source of Samson’s strength is not his uncut hair, but the רוח־יהוה. A Leitmotif of the biblical warrior tradition, the רוח־יהוה is a corporealized metaphor of fiery anger that envelops Samson and grants him great power. This motif was adapted from early biblical poetry, in which Yhwh’s wrath erupted as a fiery breath (רוח) against his cosmic foes. This study explores how the historical context of Judg 14–15 informs the use of this motif, comparing the רוח־יהוה with similar concepts of martial anger in Near Eastern and Greek warrior traditions. Like Mesopotamian melammu and Greek μηνις, the רוח־יהוהwas part of a corporeal code that enabled ancient minds to think about the relations between mortals and divine beings in the context of battle.
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NABU, 2021
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Books by Dylan Johnson
Forschung zum Alten Testament 2/122, 2020
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Edited Volumes by Dylan Johnson
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Book Reviews by Dylan Johnson
Review of Biblical Literature, 2023
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Zeitschrift für Altorientalische und Biblische Rechtsgeschichte 28, 2022
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Talks by Dylan Johnson
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Conferences Organized by Dylan Johnson
This conference situates the evidence of the Hebrew Bible within the legal traditions from the br... more This conference situates the evidence of the Hebrew Bible within the legal traditions from the broader ancient Mediterranean / ancient Near Eastern cultures by taking a comparative approach to the issue of divine lawgiving understood in a broad sense. Covering the time frame of the First Millennium BCE (until the Hellenistic period), the inquiry not only addresses formal acts of divine legislation in differ-ent religious contexts but also investigates the many possible ways in which divine agents are represented as a source of authority, serve as guarantors for the law, enact justice or enforce norms.
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This international conference explores the origins of biblical notions of divine laws and God as ... more This international conference explores the origins of biblical notions of divine laws and God as a lawgiver. It also seeks to elucidate the impact of these ideas on religion and politics in ancient Judah/Persian Yehud. By contextualizing these developments against both the background of the ancient Near Eastern legal tradition and related developments within ancient Greek polities, this conference compares ancient discourse on “divine law” across time and between cultures
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Conference Presentations by Dylan Johnson
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Papers by Dylan Johnson
Die Vorstellung, dass die Tora eine übergeordnete »Rechtsstaatlichkeit« darstellt, die die politische und rechtliche Autorität des Königs umschreibt, stammt aus einem bestimmten deuteronomistischen Schreiberkreis, der lange nach dem Ende der davidischen Monarchie tätig war. Anhand des Edikts von Zedekia (Jer 34,8–22) wird in diesem Beitrag untersucht, wie deuteronomistische Redaktoren/Fortschreiber den letzten normativen Rechtsakt eines unabhängigen judäischen Königs zu seiner frommen Anwendung des pentateuchischen Gesetzes umgestalteten.
Le concept selon lequel la Torah représente une »prééminence du droit« qui circonscrit l’autorité politique et légale du roi provient d’un cercle particulier de scribes deutéronomistes qui ont exercé bien après la fin de la monarchie davidique. En utilisant l’édit de Sédécias (Jr 34,8–22) comme étude de cas, cet article examine comment les rédacteurs deutéronomistes ont reformulé le dernier acte juridique normatif d’un roi judéen autonome comme étant une pieuse application de la loi du Pentateuque.
Books by Dylan Johnson
Edited Volumes by Dylan Johnson
Book Reviews by Dylan Johnson
Talks by Dylan Johnson
Conferences Organized by Dylan Johnson
Conference Presentations by Dylan Johnson
Die Vorstellung, dass die Tora eine übergeordnete »Rechtsstaatlichkeit« darstellt, die die politische und rechtliche Autorität des Königs umschreibt, stammt aus einem bestimmten deuteronomistischen Schreiberkreis, der lange nach dem Ende der davidischen Monarchie tätig war. Anhand des Edikts von Zedekia (Jer 34,8–22) wird in diesem Beitrag untersucht, wie deuteronomistische Redaktoren/Fortschreiber den letzten normativen Rechtsakt eines unabhängigen judäischen Königs zu seiner frommen Anwendung des pentateuchischen Gesetzes umgestalteten.
Le concept selon lequel la Torah représente une »prééminence du droit« qui circonscrit l’autorité politique et légale du roi provient d’un cercle particulier de scribes deutéronomistes qui ont exercé bien après la fin de la monarchie davidique. En utilisant l’édit de Sédécias (Jr 34,8–22) comme étude de cas, cet article examine comment les rédacteurs deutéronomistes ont reformulé le dernier acte juridique normatif d’un roi judéen autonome comme étant une pieuse application de la loi du Pentateuque.