Redescribing Moral Agency in Sirach, 4QInstruction, and the Hodayot

This book presents the first comprehensive comparison of how moral agency is constructed in Sirach, 4QInstruction, and the Hodayot. World Kim argues that recent scholastic studies have overemphasized differences amongst various Second Temple texts and neglected the similarities between them. By employing four stages of comparison—description, juxtaposition, re-description, and rectification— Kim re-describes moral agency in Sirach, 4QInstruction, and the Hodayot, and aims to rectify the relationship between these texts.

Kim demonstrates that moral agency cannot be described by categories such as affirmation or denial, and argues that such agency should instead be described in terms of degrees and shaped by various factors such as knowledge and desire, that will either decrease or increase moral agency. Through an extensive comparison of these texts, Kim concludes that the degree to which one internalizes and actualizes the teachings of their religious text increases one’s capacity for moral agency, and that this agency must be conceived as dynamic rather than static.