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As mentioned in the Acknowledgments, 1 1. Introduction 19 Method and Overview of the Project As one would expect, the new scholarship on disability mostly follows the available trends already established in biblical studies: historical criticism, biblical theology, and postmodernism. These approaches tend to overlap in certain ways and not in others. For instance, a biblical theologian may accept or reject historical method. The one who accepts it may develop theologies of sources, or engage in a privileging of original forms, to the extent that those can be reconstructed (and even beyond that extent).

In the Code of Hammurabi, the prologue names the key deities, briefly refers to Marduk’s naming of Babylon, and introduces the speaker, Hammurabi. It represents Babylon as a focal point of divine attention, and the king as the agent of divine justice. A long rehearsal of various divine and royal actions concludes thus: 4. Saul M. Olyan, Rites and Rank: Hierarchy in Biblical Representations of Cult (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). 1 32 Biblical Corpora When Marduk commissioned me to guide the people aright, to direct the land, I established law and justice in the language of the land, Thereby promoting the welfare of the people.

Davis further notes that the ideal and the norm have different opposites, the grotesque and the disabled, respectively. For my purposes, Davis’s contrast is useful, but requires some adjustment to account for ancient Israelite religion. Specifically, Leviticus constructs a priestly norm in that actual priests’ bodies really are expected to conform to specifications. Historically, of course, this is not the modern industrial norm, but it has the relevant feature of real expectation on everyone encompassed by the rules.