Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic and Christian Cultures argues that ancient rabbis and Christians used death penalty discourse to invent themselves as figures of authority. This approach runs counter to much previous scholarship on the subject, which claims that ancient Jews opposed the death penalty and would have abolished it if not for its presence in the Bible. The book explores this scholarship and shows it to have been fueled by modern anti-Semitism, polemics with the the Jewish Enlightenment’s inheritance of anti-rabbinism, as well as contr ... More

Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic and Christian Cultures argues that ancient rabbis and Christians used death penalty discourse to invent themselves as figures of authority. This approach runs counter to much previous scholarship on the subject, which claims that ancient Jews opposed the death penalty and would have abolished it if not for its presence in the Bible. The book explores this scholarship and shows it to have been fueled by modern anti-Semitism, polemics with the the Jewish Enlightenment’s inheritance of anti-rabbinism, as well as controversy in the United States over capital punishment and its abolition. The book moves beyond this “humanitarianism” approach, inviting us instead to see the problem of building and maintaining authority as the crux around which ancient death penalty discourse developed. Drawing on ritual theory, postcolonial theory, and scholarship on criminal execution in other historical contexts, Execution and Invention asks new questions of the ancient texts: How and why do ancient western religions talk about killing criminals? What are the social consequences of this kind of violent talk? What kind of authority is imagined by these texts, and What strategies do the texts use to make this authority seem compelling? Combining the contemporary theory with classical source critical approaches, the book closely reads a variety of ancient texts describing criminal executions. It newly interprets these texts, showing that their descriptions of violent deaths have a complex social function. In the process, the book spins out the social implications of capital punishment and overturns enduring stereotypes of Judaism and Christianity.