Israel and the Book of the Covenant: An Anthropological Approach to Biblical Law.(Brief Article)

As the subtitle suggests, Marshall proposes a method that reads biblical law from an anthropological perspective, a method that considers both process and form. The method assumes an interaction between law, social structure, and cultural base, and is presented as a corrective to readings of biblical law that have been dominated by literary and comparative studies, readings that he reviews and critiques in Chapter 1.

In Chapters 2 and 3, Marshall develops the theory on which his detailed exegesis of the Book of the Covenant (BC) in Chapters 4 and 5 rests. In developing an anthropological model of law, Marshall draws on ethnographies combined with archaeological data. …