It's not immediately clear to what extent these rules are derived from the Torah or word of God transmitted orally from Sinai, and to what extent these rules are just rules that made sense to the Rabbis as being just and fair and appropriate. A mix, I think.
That's definitely a feeling I've gotten, that they had these rules and perhaps this mesorah and now they're trying to make it backwards compatible or justify it, or they've lost the reasons entirely and are going back to first principles.
The metahistorical concept here, though, is that the Torah is dealing with a society wracked by cycles of tribal revenge killings and comes up with a way to sanction these cycles while limiting them, and the Mishna is going a step further by trying to limit tribal violence altogether by unifying that tribal authority into a national legal system where the Beis Din is the only authorized institution that can decide if an execution will be carried out. The goel rather than being an agent of tribal range is coopted by being deputized an authorized law enforcement official, enforcing the court's justice rather than his own personal sense of justice.
I love getting these glimpses of things, like a textual archeology.
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Date: 2024-12-20 02:15 am (UTC)That's definitely a feeling I've gotten, that they had these rules and perhaps this mesorah and now they're trying to make it backwards compatible or justify it, or they've lost the reasons entirely and are going back to first principles.
I love getting these glimpses of things, like a textual archeology.