Negotiating Law and Religion in Ancient Jewish Texts

The problem of negotiating law and religion is not a modern one; ever since ancient authors and jurists experienced the tension between optimism in divine justice and realism about injustice done on earth, they sought to find ways to reconcile the two different spheres, albeit with difficulty. This paper explores how this tension was negotiated in ancient Jewish texts that represent a variety of approaches: the canonical Hebrew Bible, which sought to provide a sense of divine justice working through history; the work of Ben Sira, which endeavored to tie the details of Jewish law to the wisdom tradition; the philosophy of Philo of Alexandria, which tied the same to Greek thought; and the obscure texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which viewed the fate of the world as dependent on the communities' particular observances. Attention is paid not only to how these texts endeavored to bring these two spheres of practice together, but also to what is lost in the process.