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MANY SCHOLARS MAINTAIN THAT THE HEBREW BIBLE
contains two opposing views of divine retribution: a superior one that portrays divine retribution as individualized and an inferior one that operates on a principle of corporate responsibility. Furthermore, the apparent tensions between those biblical texts that stress the communal aspects of punishment and those that stress the individual aspects are often resolved by placing the various biblical statements surrounding divine retribution into a chronological framework. This viewpoint understands the growth of individualism within the biblical corpus as an evolutionary movement in which the individual slowly emerges from the murky depths of communal obscurity and gradually gains autonomy. In its most benign form this bias leads scholars to date materials that have no clear historical markers simply on the basis of their use of individualistic language.
This argument assumes that texts that stress the individual must be late because such concern could only have developed in the later biblical period. Claus Westermann employs this dubious assumption in his discussion of Psalm 23: "Its transfer to the individual's relationship with God indicates a change towards a greater prominence for the individual, such as we see elsewhere in later Old Testament writings, particularly Ezekiel. Therefore we can certainly conclude that Psalm 23 is a late composition."' Not unexpectedly this evolutionary bias often carries with it a tendency to criticize the earlier stages of Israelite culture and religion. Thus J. R. Porter in his discussion of cases that involve corporate retribution clearly depicts an evolutionary movement toward a greater recognition of the individual and toward a superior type of justice. "The Hebrew, it may be suggested, realized as well as we do that, if a particular person commits a crime, he is responsible for it, in a way that even those closest to him, his wife or his son, really cannot be. But his basic recognition was qualified, as far as the operation of the law was concerned, not so much by ideas of `corporate personality,' as by the notion that a man can possess persons in much the same way that he possesses property and by early religious beliefs about the contagious nature of blood, holiness, sin and uncleanness. That we do not share these concepts no doubt makes our...