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INJUSTICE MADE LEGAL: DEUTERONOMIC LAW AND THE PLIGHT OF WIDOWS, STRANGERS, AND ORPHANS IN ANCIENT ISRAEL. By Harold V. Bennett. Pp. xiii + 209. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002. Cloth, $50.00.
Bennett's main thesis in this book is that the biblical legislation concerning widows, strangers, and orphans (Deut 14:22-29; 16:9-12, 13-15; 24:17-18, 19-22; and 26:12-15) was not designed to protect these groups. Instead, its purpose was to co-opt these social sub-groups into a larger strategy of social transformation, which Bennett positions in the ninth century B.C.E. during the Omride administration. More to the point, Bennett suggests that "widows, strangers, and orphans were part of a strategy to regulate the behavior and to shape the ideas of local peasant fanners regarding the distribution of goods in ancient Israel...positioning intellectual elites to stave off potential uprisings by local peasant fanners in the North during the ninth century B.C.E." (p. 11). He divides his study into six main sections, beginning with a prolegomenon that discusses the history of scholarship on the topic and his critique and counter-thesis together with methodological considerations (pp. 1-22).
Methodologically, Bennett is heavily indebted to critical law theory (pp. 12-21) and social science research in general. Thus, morality or ethics are not necessarily categories based upon religious convictions or paradigms, but rather reflect social and economic realities of particular groups that may be used to reinforce or change their social status. In his discussion of relevant earlier studies dealing with the Deuteronomic Code, he only includes the works of Fensham (1962), von Waldow (1970), Craigie (1976), Mayes (1991), Malchow (1996), Epsztein (1986), and Crüsemann (1996). I missed from his bibliography relevant publications such as J. Gary Millar, Now Choose Life: Theology and Ethics in Deuteronomy (New Studies in Biblical Theology; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1998), particularly pages 99-146; Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., Toward Old Testament Ethics (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1983), pages 158-163; Waldemar Janzen, Old Testament Ethics: A Paradigmatic Approach (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster, 1994); and most recently (and interestingly going in a similar direction) Mark Sneed, "Israelite Concern for the Alien, Orphan, and Widow: Altruism or Ideology?," ZAW 111.3 (1999): 498-507. More items could be added to this list and most of these authors would not concur with Bennett in his deconstruction of...