Oral Law of Ancient Israel

Ancient Israel's legal system was both oral and written, its law both preserved in written forms and performed orally. By unpacking this system, Robert D. Miller II, OFS, sheds light on its practitioners, venues, verbal forms, and connections to neighboring peoples.

---

This book presents a new window on the legal system of Ancient Israel. Building on the understanding that Israel was a society where writing was the medium for some forms of discourse but not others, where written texts were performed orally and rewritten from oral performances, Robert D. Miller II, OFS, examines law and jurisprudence in this oral-and-literate world. Using Iceland as an ethnographic analogy, Miller shows how law was practiced, performed, and transmitted; the way written artifacts of the law fit into oral performance and transmission; and the relationship of the detritus of law that survives in the Hebrew Bible, both Torah and Proverbs, to that earlier social world.