Subproject 5: “The Role of Emotional Argumentation in Divine Laws”

This subproject follows trajectories of earlier studies on the use of emotions in legal texts of the Hebrew Bible. Emotionally charged lexemes and phrases are often employed as a form of argument―a rather unique feature of these texts since virtually no other ANE legal corpora display similar textual elements in their provisions. Even more importantly, the texts often portray these emotional elements as those of God. Accordingly, they not only play a significant role in the characterization of these texts as ‘divine laws’, but also contribute substantially to their argumentative strategy, lending them their persuasive tone as well as their authoritative status. However, earlier studies have shown that it would fall short to limit their use only to these aspects. E.g. in the case of the Holiness Code, the emotional elements also serve a preventative function. Thus, the theoretical assumption used in this study is that such emotional elements should be understood as phenomena of communication, which can, and often are used intentionally to achieve certain argumentative goals. Accordingly, this subproject will look at how emotional argumentation is employed in different texts. Using the Holiness Code as point of departure, the study will focus, in particular, on the Deutoronomic Laws, Hittite Laws, the prologues and epilogues of other ANE legal corpora, the Book of Ezekiel, Wisdom Texts, and Priestly Passages. Methodologically, lexematic proximities will be analyzed as well as the pragmatics of the respective lines of argument. Assessing similarities and differences in the respective use of emotional elements, this subproject will evaluate the probabilities of these vectors of influence.