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Rights of burial in the Hebrew Bible: natural law against positive law

  • Korean Journal of Old Testament Studies
  • Abbr : KJOTS
  • 2019, 25(2), pp.12-35
  • DOI : 10.24333/jkots.2019.25.2.12
  • Publisher : Korean Society of Old Testament Studies
  • Research Area : Humanities > Christian Theology
  • Received : March 2, 2019
  • Accepted : April 29, 2019

LeeEunAe 1

1이화여자대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

Personal death and funerals/burying are closely associated not only to awe and care for human beings, but also to political, social, and cultural customs and traditions and laws. The death of an individual in the text of the Hebrew Bible and in a Greek tragedy, which are discussed in this paper, are in common related to the politic situation and the actual laws of the state. A mother's mourning in the text of Hebrew Bible can be understood as an ethical act that demands human dignity for the body of her son, who is left unattended after his death, and as a gesture defying the country's laws of practice. The ritual of Rizpa in front of the bodies of her dead son and relatives was understood to be not only a mourning rite of death, but an active political act to bury in the ground through a proper funeral ceremony, which was a natural demand for the restoration of the dignity of human being and to oppose the law, which is represented by the supreme power, David. In the Greek tragedy Antigone, Antigone buried the dead against Creon's law, which prohibited the burial of Polyneices, and she was herself died. Her actions should be understood to be an independent and rebellious political act that requires the community's responsibilities and obligations for the death of human beings. It was not just based on the sadness and loss of emotions based on private relationships, but on the universal principles. Natural law is responsible for critically reviewing the actual law. That is, the order of state cannot be absolute law, and the fundamental order of political and social communities cannot be arbitrary. In this sense, natural law means political justice, and the basis of justice is human dignity. In other words, natural law functions to criticize the actual law by showing the limits of the actual law on both moral and ethical levels, and furthermore, it functions to change the actual law in the community. The above two texts show that the burial of human bodies is a legitimate duty in harmony with nature and can be interpreted as a demand for universal natural laws. If it is a request of the national law to prohibit the funeral of a person who died by a national power or of a traitor to the state, the burial activity to bury of a dead person in the grave according to proper funeral procedures is based on human dignity. The natural law criticizes and changes the national law.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.
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