Procedural Justice in Biblical Law

Abstract

While ancient Israelite legal thinkers did not write theoretical treatises in legal procedures, they drew on ancient Near Eastern commitments to due process, explicated and developed such older ideas, and gave them theological import within the context of the legal collections that now appear in the Hebrew Bible. Deuteronomy and Leviticus both show evidence of such concerns, as do courtroom stories in Jeremiah. The existence of such texts has received insufficient attention, but their recovery is important in the contemporary era, when the rule of law has become a contested idea in some circles.