The Undivided Heart

Law, Morality, Human Nature, and Ethical Theory in Ancient Israel and Second Temple Judaism

Zachary Alan Starr

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9798385244225, 9798385244232
• eBook ISBN: 9798385244249
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Crítica e interpretación bíblicas

The Undivided Heart presents a history of legal and moral thought in Jewish civilization from the earliest times until 200 CE. It discusses Israelite wisdom literature, biblical law collections, the prophets, works of the Hellenic Jewish Diaspora, the apocrypha, apocalypses, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Mishnah, and it compares the moral teaching of the Pharisees/tannaim, the Essenes, and Jesus of Nazareth. Among the book's important insights is that ancient Israel experienced a fundamental moral change, from people esteeming qualities and conduct having competitive value to people esteeming qualities and conduct having cooperative value. These newly esteemed qualities and conduct were, moreover, not originally justified as being commanded by God but as promoting the nation's well-being. Another important insight concerns Jeremiah's belief that human beings would not be righteous until given a "single heart." Although Jeremiah is typically understood as envisioning the end of free will, this book argues that Jeremiah was actually envisioning the integration of human desires and emotions, and that a "single heart" is better translated an "undivided heart." The notion of an undivided and a divided heart was used throughout the Second Temple period to explain, respectively, moral rectitude and moral failure.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The sages of the ancient Israelite wisdom tradition precipitated a moral change in Israelite society by extolling qualities and conduct having cooperative value, claiming that they were conducive to a prosperous society.
• Chapter 2: The secular law collections mandated qualities and conduct having cooperative value justified on the grounds that they were beneficial for the Israelite nation, but later justified on the grounds that Yahweh commanded them.
• Chapter 3: The priestly law collections associated qualities and conduct having cooperative value with the holiness Yahweh demanded from the Israelites.
• Chapter 4: The prophets condemned the Israelites for disobeying Yahweh’s moral commands, and Jeremiah concluded that obedience required giving human beings an undivided heart.
• Chapter 5: Job and Qoheleth questioned the traditional doctrine that Yahweh rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked, but Ben Sira defended the doctrine; other texts posited a postmortem reward and punishment.
• Chapter 6: The Hellenized Jews of the diaspora intertwined Jewish law and morality with Greek philosophy, accepting the Platonic notion of a soul which is rewarded or punished in an afterlife.
• Chapter 7: Philo of Alexandria subsumed all the Greek virtues within biblical law and justified both on the basis that they were conducive to individual and societal well-being.
• Chapter 8: The Tannaim and their predecessors, the Pharisees, promulgated and developed new rules of conduct that were handed down from generation to generation and eventually collected and organized in the Mishnah and the Tosefta.
• Chapter 9: The Tannaim changed biblical law to achieve desirable communal ends and claimed that torah study could control the evil yetzer.
• Chapter 10: Jewish apocalyptic works emphasized the influence of demonic forces on human conduct, the irremediable evil nature of human beings, the need for the righteous to separate themselves from the wicked, the promise of an individual reward and punishment, and the transformation of human nature at an end time.
• Chapter 11: The Essenes and the followers of Jesus of Nazareth criticized the tradition of the fathers on the grounds that its rules of conduct were man-made, not divine; and they believed that an end time was imminent.
• Bibliography