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Land, Labor and Law: Viewing Persian Yehud's Economy

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Land, Labor and Law: Viewing Persian Yehud's Economy View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ETD - Electronic Theses & Dissertations LAND, LABOR AND LAW: VIEWING PERSIAN YEHUD'S ECONOMY THROUGH SOCIO-ECONOMIC MODELING By Zipporah G. Glass Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Religion August, 2010 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Professor Douglas A. Knight Professor Herbert R. Marbury Professor Fernando F. Segovia Professor Kathryn H. Anderson Copyright @ 2010 by Zipporah G. Glass All Rights Reserved ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I begin this list of acknowledgments with recognizing the great influence that by mother and father had on me that realized itself in my pursuit of religious studies. Next, I am grateful to Vanderbilt University and the professors of the Graduate School of Religion and the Divinity School for their role in my formation and their guidance. I am most grateful for the insights and guidance of each member of my dissertation committee. I especially thank Dr. Douglas A Knight, first reader, for his guidance on this project and throughout my program of study. Dr. Fernando F. Segovia holds a special place for his encouragement and inspiration. From Dr. Herbert R. Marbury, I received his gentle support in this project. Dr. Kathryn H. Anderson's probing questions helped me envision economic components of this project. Each member of my dissertation committee provided insights and professional guidance in my development, including that of Dr. David C. Hopkins and Dr. Jack M. Sasson. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS................................................................................................. ii Chapter I. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................1 Significance and Methodology ................................................................................3 Amartya Sen's Model of Entitlement and Food Security ....................................5 David Ricardo's Model of Differential Rent and Diminishing Return.................7 Issues in Method .................................................................................................9 II. CONSTRUCTS OF ANCIENT ECONOMY ............................................................11 Three Constructs of Ancient Economy ..................................................................11 Sacred/Temple-Oriented Constructs of Ancient Economy ....................................16 Constructs of Yehud as a Temple-Oriented Economy ............................................18 Beyond Constructs of Ancient Sacred/Temple Economy ......................................23 Constructing Ancient Economy in Political Economy............................................31 Situating the Conflict in the Political Economy of Yehud .....................................32 Situating Yehud in Models of Political Economy ..................................................34 III. AMARTYA SEN'S MODEL AND THE CONTOURS OF DEUTERONOMIC DEBT RELEASE IN NEHEMIAH 5 ..............................36 Proximate Representations of Vulnerability ..........................................................37 Authority and the Contours of Deuteronomic Debt Release ..................................39 Food Systems, Entitlement, and Nehemiah 5 ........................................................48 Elasticity Measures and Food Economy of Yehud .................................................49 Inferences ...............................................................................................................51 Sen's Model and Nehemiah 5: A Critique ..............................................................54 iii IV. DAVID RICARDO'S MODEL AND DEUTERONOMIC DEBT RELEASE IN YEHUD .....................................................................................58 Labor and Land in Yehud .......................................................................................59 Adapting Diminishing and Differential Rent to Yehud Economy ..........................60 Inferences ...............................................................................................................64 Ricardo's Model and the Performance of Deuteronomic Debt Release ......................................................................................................65 V. SUMMARY ...............................................................................................................67 Appendix A. INTERPRETATIONS OF THE ‘AM HĀ’ĀRETS ......................................................69 B. KING ZEDEKIAH'S MANUMISSION EDICT .......................................................76 Historical Positioning of Zedekiah's Manumission Edit ........................................76 Literary Similarities to Deuteronomic Tradition.....................................................78 Interpretations of Zedekiah's Manumission Edit.....................................................80 Use of Derôr in Jer 34........................................................................................80 Derôr as Limited Release...................................................................................84 Derôr as General Release...................................................................................85 Derôr as a Non-Pentateuchal Andurârum..........................................................87 Zedekiah's Derôr as a Mišarum Act........................................................................95 C. ZEDEKIAH'S MANUMISSION EDICT AS A GÔLÂ LITERARY PROJECTION ...................................................................................................99 D. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS AND DEUTERONOMIC LITERARY STRATA ......................................................................................114 Crüsemann's Conceptual Framework....................................................................114 Otto's Conceptual Framework...............................................................................119 Frameworks and Deuteronomic Literary Strata....................................................121 Historical Contingencies..................................................................................121 Pre-Exilic Urdeuteronomium and Deuteronomic Debt Release......................125 Exilic DtrD and Derivation of Divine Law......................................................132 Post Exilic DtrL and Performance of Deuteronomic Debt Release.................136 E. RHETORIC OF DEUTERONOMY 15:1-11 ..........................................................140 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..........................................................................................................145 iv CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION This study is an exercise in ideological criticism with its focus in political economy that will use economic modeling to provide a theoretical contribution to the materialist tradition of analysis of Yehud. The study is within the materialist tradition set by Fredric Jameson1 wherein a materialist representation is brought forth by ideological conflict. That conflict is found by reading a text in relationship to social and economic contexts where it is generated, seeking corollaries between textual semantics and social and economic contradictions. In this study what is read are the Deuteronomic debt release laws, not as representative of any historical data, but as representative of a historical need for their production (see Appendix E).2 Hence, the work of the text, the production of Deuteronomic debt release, in its contours and performance, is particular, being historically contingent and correlated to the text's ideological location. For the purposes of this study, the text's final ideological location and its historical contingency is Yehud. The primary thesis of this study is that Deuteronomic debt release in its contours and its performance was an extra-economic compulsion functioning as a legal paradigm for socio-economic organization in the struggle for assets and resource allocation in 1 Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (New York: Cornell University Press, 1981). 2 Appendix E contains an exposition of the rhetoric of Deuteronomy 15:1-11. 1 Yehud. What this means is that the debt release of Deuteronomy 15 (vv. 1-11) functioned as a negotiated code specifically within agrarian economics such as that of Yehud. The implication of this thesis is that the function of the debt release called for by this code of laws was capable of appearing to accommodate economically vulnerable persons by calling for circumscribed practices to redress economic vulnerability, while undergirding and preserving exploitative features of economic conventions specific to agrarian microeconomics in Yehud that deprived many of the means to economic sufficiency, but complemented the broader macroeconomic practices and structures of the Persian imperial domain. Thus, this study performs two actions: (1) it sets the Deuteronomic debt release laws (15:1-11) within the socio-economic matrix of the Persian imperial domain3 in general and Persian Yehud in particular, and (2) it interprets the effects of the Deuteronomic debt release laws in light of the socio-economic matrices as drawn in this study. These two actions are performed in order to: (a) emphasize the pragmatic dimensions of the laws' effect on socio-economic relations revolving
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