Law and Order: The Birth of a Nation and the Creation of the World

doi:10.1017/9781108233705.007

7 - Law and Order: The Birth of a Nation and the Creation of the World

from Part II - Medieval

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 December 2020

Daniel Frank

Edited by

Steven Kepnes

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Steven Kepnes: Affiliation:
Colgate University, New York

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Summary

Every judge who judges with complete fairness even for a single hour, the Writ gives him credit as though he had become a partner to the Holy One, blessed be He, in the creation.(BT Shabbat 10a)

In acting and judging with fairness—in applying the law in an impartial and equitable way—a judge models himself on divine creation. In this chapter, I interpret this rabbinic dictum along Maimonidean lines, drawing in part on some of Maimonides’ own views on creation and Mosaic prophecy. In the second part of the Guide Maimonides draws close connections between the two topics, and I help myself to that in presenting my own discussion of the aforementioned rabbinic dictum. The chapter proceeds in three sections, over the course of which I am concerned with teasing out the juridical analogy in a variety of ways: morphologically/structurally, psychologically, and finally teleologically.

Keywords

law creation justice prophecy Maimonides Moses

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Companion to Jewish Theology , pp. 132 - 148

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108233705.007 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2020

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References

Selected Further Reading

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