Commentaries in Legal and Theological Discourse

Commentaries have always been an essential medium of legal and theological discourse as they reflect how theological and legal thinking is related to authoritative reference texts. In this volume, lawyers and theologians analyse commentaries from a comparative historical perspective. They examine their form, methods, functions and institutional relations as well as the authority commentaries may carve out for themselves. The authors cover a wide range of approaches and traditions from antiquity to modern times. They discuss the classical commentaries of the Roman legal scholars, the Christian and Jewish Bible commentaries, the flourishing traditions of the medieval and early modern ages, and they trace the more recent developments leading up to the current state of commentaries in 21st century law and theology. The comparison shows that commentaries both adopt and shape the structure and culture of the respective discourse.

Literature: Kästle, David, and Nils Jansen (eds.), Kommentare in Recht und Religion, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2014 (in cooperation with Reinhard Achenbach and Georg Essen).