Pricing Persons
Consecration, Compensation, and Individuality in the Mishnah
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5349187 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mira Balberg (0009-0000-7930-2455, Institute of Religious Studies, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 103 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 169-195 |
| Publication date | 2013-03-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Jewish Quarterly Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-6682 • E-ISSN: 1553-0604 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/jqr.2013.0012 |
| OpenAlex | W1985438120 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 11 |
In this article I explore the procedures of monetary evaluation of persons as constructed in three halakhic contexts in the Mishnah consecration of humans to the Temple, restitutions for bodily injuries, and compensations for rape and seduction. I argue that in all three contexts we can identify an underlying tension between two competing paradigms of personhood: a paradigm which stresses the unity and sameness of all persons qua persons, and a paradigm which stresses variations and diversity among different persons. The rabbis oscillate between biblical legal models, which assign fixed and non-fluctuating values to human life, wellbeing, dignity, etc., and a commitment to accommodating the particularities of persons as individuals with distinct sets of traits, a commitment which is manifested, in its rabbinic construction, in the individual monetary assessment of each person. While the rabbis take different paths in grappling with this tension in these three contexts, the analysis presented here makes clear that the rabbis considered a legal model that disregards the discrepancies between different individuals to be problematic and unsatisfactory. I suggest that the competing models of sameness as opposed to diversity that we find in the Mishnah reflect a fundamental tension between a biblical ethos on the one hand, and the impact of Graeco-Roman social and conceptual frameworks on the other hand
Compensation (psychology · Consecration · Dignity · Diversity (politics · Epistemology · Ethos · Personhood · Political science · Sociology · Theology · Vitality · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Religion and Society Interactions · Social Psychology · War, Ethics, and Justification
The Category of the person
Seneca und die griechisch-römische Tradition der Seelenleitung
Seneca's On the Happy Life and Stoic Individualism
Unity, Identity, and Explanation in Aristotle’s Metaphysics
Jewish Biblical Interpretation and Cultural Exchange
Human Rights and the World's Religions
Individuality
Sources of the self
Jacob Neusner, the Mishnah, and Ventriloquism
Vows in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East
"The Meanings of "Individualism
| Citations per year | 0.36 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2015 - 2019 (5) |
| Highly cited | No |