Law and Truth in Biblical and Rabbinic Literature

5. Objects of Narrative

147 As for conscience, it is nothing other than the inner, heartfelt conviction that inhabits the soul of the judge or the jury, equitably pronouncing the judgment. In this regard, we can say that the equity of a judgment is the objective face for which this inner conviction constitutes the subjective guarantor. The tie between inner conviction and the speech act consisting in stating the law in a particular circumstance removes the judgment in situation from pure arbitrariness. In imagining God’s role in implementing justice both the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic literature depart from their focus on punishment that fits the crime, allowing God to operate emotionally and personally in his dealings with humans. In this chapter, I would like to return to our subject of evidence and beliefs about the capacity of humans to access truth; this time, we will approach the subject not just through the lens of human jurisprudence but as it is refracted through the full religious world-view of the Bible and ancient Judaism. In order to locate the kinds of knowledge obscured by legal discourse, I turn to biblical narrative and aggadic­ midrash.1 Within the anecdotal sphere of the personal that narrative depicts , the interpretation of evidence is viewed from multiple perspectives which include both the minutia of human activity and the omniscience of the divine—and authorial—point of view. Biblical narratives abandon the exhortatory rhetoric of the law, exposing a confused and hazardous path to divine truth in which humans are easily led astray. The rabbis also expose the flaws in legal procedure, but they discover divine truth and inner conviction along the way. five Objects of Narrative 148 · Truth and Divine Justice Physical objects tend to be read in two different ways in biblical and rabbinic narratives. The American philosopher Charles Peirce (1839–1914) made a distinction between the index, or natural sign, which is causally correlatedwithitsreferent,andasymbol,orconventionalsign,whichstands foritsreferentbyvirtueofaruleorcustomofinterpretation.Physicalobjects which function as evidence would be considered indices, as they would be causally linked to what they intend to prove; for example, a bloody knife proves a murder because it was caused to become bloodied through the act of killing. For symbols, however, there is only a conventional connection betweentheobjectandtheinterpretation;forexample,abloodyknifecould symbolize violence in the abstract rather than prove a particular murder. Objects in the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic midrash are used as channels through which guilt and responsibility are designated, but they do not always act as indices; rather, they are often cast as symbols, and woven into real or internal monologues that prompt a normative response. The Perils of Deduction in Biblical Narrative Biblical narratives depict human beings struggling to assign responsibility when situations are ambiguous or out of balance. From the very first story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, human beings are told by the deity that they cannot hide their transgression, that they have betrayed their guilt by trying to hide their nakedness. In this story, Yhwh does not simply tell Adam and Eve that through his divine omniscience he knows what they did; instead, he proves his case by pointing to the evidence of their crime, the fig leaf which is in itself a tangible trace of an awareness of their nakedness: “Who told you that you were naked?” Yhwh asks. “Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” (Gen. 3:11). On the strength of this evidence, Adam and Eve are forced to admit at least partial guilt, to confess that they did in fact eat of that very tree. The story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38 offers a paradigmatic example of evidence that is proffered to prove a case and elicit an admission of responsibility.ThestoryinvolvesJudah’sfailuretomeethisobligationsrelating to levirate marriage. According to Israelite law (Deut. 25:5), if a man dies childless, his brother (or, in the absence of a brother, close male kin) is obligated to provide offspring to continue the dead man’s name and the family Objects of Narrative · 149 line by impregnating the dead man’s widow. In Genesis 38, Judah fails to give his daughter-in-law, Tamar, to his last living son after two other sons who joined with her die. Tamar decides to take matters into her own hands, and to continue the family line herself: she dresses as a prostitute, seduces Judah, and secures some of his...