June 4, 2013

The Legal Theology of Nahmanides

Joseph E. David, Oxford University Faculty of Oriental Studies; Wolfson College, has published Dwelling within the Law: Nahmanides’ Legal Theology in 2013 Oxford Journal of Law and Religion 1.

The great medieval Jewish jurist and thinker R. Moses b. Nahman (1194-1270) developed an exceptional legal-theology unprecedented in traditional rabbinic thought. In jurisprudential terms, he reduces the Jewish traditional perception of the Halakhah (i.e. the Talmudic law) and introduces the view of the divine law as a territorial law. My article suggests reading anew his sayings about the God-law-land matrix against the background of his contemporary European Christendom. Our analysis raises new perspectives on his attentiveness to the conceptual vocabulary of the Crusades’ propaganda and the European legal reality.
Download the essay from SSRN at the link. 

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