Copyright

Christian Canu Højgaard

Published On

2024-05-30

Page Range

pp. 9–70

Language

  • English

Print Length

62 pages

2. Towards a Social Network Analysis of the Holiness Code

Chapter of: Roles and Relations in Biblical Law: A Study of Participant Tracking, Semantic Roles, and Social Networks in Leviticus 17-26(pp. 9–70)
There are dozens of persons in Leviticus 17–26. They are all interrelated in a complex web of interactions that can be used as a clue to their role in the implied society of the text. By contrast, previous studies of the text have focused more narrowly on individual persons, most often the sojourner but also the Israelite addressees, the priests, and the women.
This chapter provides a detailed introduction to the general research history of Leviticus 17–26, also known as the Holiness Code, before discussing previous presentations of the persons described in the legislative collection. It is argued that a social network analysis can better describe the roles and statuses of the participants because each participant is not treated as an isolate but as a part of a network of people. Accordingly, the chapter develops a model for conducting social network analysis on an ancient law text in light of relational and legal sociology.

Contributors

Christian Canu Højgaard

(author)
Assistant professor of Old Testament at Fjellhaug Internasjonale Høgskole
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1855-1017

Christian Canu Højgaard (PhD, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 2021, awarded cum laude) is Assistant Professor of Old Testament at Fjellhaug International University College Copenhagen. His main interests include Biblical Hebrew language (in particular verbal syntax and semantics), social readings of Biblical law, and digitalization of ancient texts. He is the general editor of Hiphil Novum, a journal for Biblical linguistics. He is currently involved in Creating Annotated Corpora of Classical Hebrew Text, a cross-institutional research project for the digitalization and annotation of ancient texts, and A Grammar of Biblical Hebrew led by Professor Geoffrey Khan.