BIBLICAL LAWS OF TALION

In order to make novel observations about the role assigned to talion in Exod 21:23-25, Deut 19:21, and Lev 24:18-20, I wish to address first some problems much discussed in the scholarly literature about the Deuteronomic law concerning false testimony (Deut 19: 15-21). I shall claim that these problems are resolved on the basis of a straightforward, if sophisticated, approach. We must take seriously the fiction that Moses composed the law. As a prophet Moses anticipated Israel's future problems-for example, the false testimony that resulted in the death of the innocent Naboth, just as he anticipated the people's request for a king. What I am saying, of course, is that the Deuteronomist, living after these events, is Moses. Just as critics readily recognize the Deuter-onomist's hand in the presentation of the account of Naboth's death, so we should go further and recognize that the Deuteronomic laws them-selves are the collected judgments of the Deuteronomist upon events before Moses's life time, during it, and after it. Fictionally, in the book of Deuteronomy, Moses delivers a farewell address. In doing so, he proceeds in a way that is characteristic of this literary convention: he looks back both on his own life as Israel's leader and on Israel's life before he became leader, and he also anticipates Israel's future. Only those events in his life time are explicitly referred to in order to sustain the fiction. When we evaluate a particular Deuteronomic law, for example, the one on false testimony, we should not try to relate it to some hypo-thetical historical background. Such reconstruction of the real world of the past is virtually impossible because of the limited nature of the biblical sources and the lack of extra-biblical corroboration. Instead we should assume that the Deuteronomist is well acquainted with a rule about false testimony, for example, the one in the Book of the Covenant (Exod 23: 1) that in his time was already attributed to Moses. The same language about "a witness of violence " CCf!d /.liimiis) occurs in both Exod 23:1 and Deut 19:16. What the Deuteronomist has done is t