Law, narrative, and innovation
James Platania’s research focuses on the Pentateuch, biblical law, and narrative poetics, with particular attention to legal innovation and to Moses as an interpreter and mediator of divine teaching.
His work examines the relationship between law and narrative in the Pentateuch, asking how divine teaching is given, interpreted, and applied within the biblical story and how the characterization of Moses bears upon the Pentateuch’s understanding of law and its development.
Law and narrative
Biblical law is embedded in narrative. In Exodus, divine teaching is given to Moses and communicated by him to Israel at particular moments and in response to particular circumstances. Platania’s research takes this narrative setting seriously, paying close attention to the sequence of the story, the relationship between divine and Mosaic speech, and the information available to the reader at each stage.
His approach brings narrative poetics into conversation with legal hermeneutics. He reads the final form of the text sequentially, asking how characterization, repetition, gaps, and changes in speech shape the reader’s understanding of the law and of Moses’ role in its interpretation.
Moses as interpreter
Moses stands at the center of this work. Exodus presents him as the mediator of divine teaching and also as its interpreter. He recalls what God has said and done, draws consequences from it, and applies it to circumstances that have not been explicitly addressed.
Inventing Shabbat: Moses as Agent of Legal Innovation in the Narrated World of Exodus 15:22–16:36 examines this dynamic in the manna narrative. In the wilderness of Sin, God promises bread from heaven and instructs the people to gather a daily portion and a double portion on the sixth day, without mentioning a seventh-day rest. When the leaders report the double gathering to Moses, he announces, as the word of God, that the following day is a holy Shabbat and tells the people to keep what remains until morning.
The events that follow confirm Moses’ interpretation. The manna kept overnight does not spoil, none is found on the seventh day, and God’s own speech affirms that Shabbat has been given. Exodus 16 thus presents Shabbat taking shape as a lived practice before the legislation at Sinai, through Moses’ interpretation of what God has already said and done.
The episode provides a case study in legal innovation within biblical narrative. It also raises larger questions about the relationship between divine teaching and human interpretation, the authority of Moses, and the development of law within the Pentateuch. The argument is set out in full in Inventing Shabbat, forthcoming from Mohr Siebeck.
Current research
Platania’s current research develops these questions across the Pentateuch under the provisional title Moses the Interpreter. The project examines how the Pentateuch characterizes Moses as an interpreter and mediator of divine teaching and how that characterization bears upon law, narrative, and legal innovation more broadly.
A related paper, “Moses the Scribe? Techniques of Legal Innovation Reflected in Narrative (Exodus 12–16),” was presented to the Columbia University Hebrew Bible Seminar in January 2024.
Research interests
- Pentateuch
- Biblical law
- Narrative poetics and narratology
- Legal hermeneutics
- Moses as interpreter
- Legal innovation
- Divine and Mosaic speech
- Exodus
- Shabbat in Exodus 15:22–16:36
- Characterization and interpretive agency
Languages
Biblical Hebrew, Biblical Greek, Biblical Aramaic, and Latin; Italian; French, German, and Spanish for research.