Sedaqa and Torah in postexilic discourse / by Susanne Gillmary-Bucher and Maria Hausl (ed.).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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Part I Ṣedaqa and Torah in the Pentateuch, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah and the Book of Isaiah: -- Ṣedaqa and the community of the scribes in postexilic Deuteronomy: a didactical perspective / Kåre Berge -- How Torah, ṣedaqa and prejudice mapped the contours of biblical restoration / Jeremiah W. Cataldo -- Searching for forces of group cohesion in the books of Nehemiah and Isaiah / Maria Häusl -- The role and function of ṣedaqa and Torah in the introduction to the Book of Isaiah (1.1-2.5) / Alphonso Groenewald -- 'Keep Justice!' (Isaiah 56.1): thoughts regarding the concept and redaction history of a universal understanding of ṣedaqa / Judith Gärtner -- Part II Ṣedaqa and Torah linked with other concepts: holiness, purity/impurity and faith: -- Purity/impurity: identity marker and boundary maintenance in postexilic discourse / Marianne Grohmann -- Ideas of the holy: ṣedaqa and Torah within a cultic/religious system / Dolores G. Kamrada -- How is justice referred to in faith?: some reflections on the Hellenistic Jewish tradition of the reciprocal relationship between obedience to Torah and righteousness and their reception in the New Testament with special focus on the Letter to the Romans / Christina Tuor-Kurth -- Exodus 4.24-26: the genesis of the 'Torah' of circumcision in postexilic and rabbinic discourses / Michaela Bauks.

The chapters in this volume clarify crucial aspects of Torah by exploring its relationship to sedaqa (righteousness). Observing the Torah is often considered to be the main identity-marker of Israel in the post-exilic period. However, sedaqa is also widely used as a force of group cohesion and as a resource for ethics without references to torah. The contributors to this volume explore these crucial themes for the post-exilic period, and show how they are related in the key texts that feature them. Though torah and sedaqa can have some aspects in common, especially when they are amended by aspects of creation, both terms are rarely linked to each other explicitly in the Old Testament, and if so, different relations are expressed. These are examined in this book. The opening of the book of Isaiah is shown to integrate torah-learning into a life of righteousness (sedaqa). In Deuteronomy sedaqa is shown to refer to torah-dictacticism, and in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah torah can be understood as symbol of sedaqa meaning the disposition of each individual to accept torah as prescriptive law. However, the chapters also show that these relationships are not exclusive and that sedaqa is not always linked to torah, for in late texts of Isaiah sedaqa is not realized by torah-observance, but by observing the Sabbath.

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