Sydney FBS Meeting Friday 8th May

Our principal speaker will be Dr Chaya Halberstam and her subject is:

Affective Judgment Beyond the Rule of Law: Jewish Counternarratives of Justice in the Trials of Susanna and Jesus

Abstract: The minor story of the Trial of Susanna, which appears in some versions of the book of Daniel, has often been read alongside the Trial of Jesus as a type of narrative in which legal processes are subverted to condemn an innocent person in an attempt to perpetrate a judicial homicide. Implicit in this reading is the assumption that had law not been deliberately perverted or legal procedure corrupted, those same processes could have cleared and redeemed these innocent victims. This interpretation is often explicitly drawn out in relation to the Trial of Susanna in particular, where the innocent but condemned heroine is saved by a form of witness interrogation worthy of the Mishnah. Alternatively, I argue that both trials can be read as Jewish counternarratives to the prevailing Greek and Roman (and Hellenistic/Rabbinic Jewish) ideology of justice attained through the rule of law. They instead foreground the primacy of relational affect and demonstrate that legal power will not prevail.

Chaya Halberstam is a Professor of Hebrew Bible and Judaism in the department of Religious Studies at King’s University College at the University of Western Ontario. Her research focuses on the legal languages and cultures of Israelite and Jewish antiquity, with an emphasis on Second Temple and early rabbinic literature. Her work explores the interconnections between law, literature, and society.  Her first book, Law and Truth in Biblical and Rabbinic Literature, came out in 2010 and received the Salo Baron prize for best first book in Jewish Studies. Her most recent book, Trial Stories in Jewish Antiquity: Counternarratives of Justice came out in 2024 with Oxford University Press.

Our second speaker will be Dr Andrew Shead (Moore Theological College) and his presentation will dovetail nicely with Dr Halberstam's:

​Echoes of Jeremiah in the Trial of Jesus

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Summary: Striking parallels between the trials of Jeremiah and Jesus suggest that Jeremiah 26 can function as an interpretive lens for the Evangelists, and especially for Matthew.