Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

CORPORATE PERSONALITY

For nearly a century scholars have debated how to explain certain corporate features of Israelite religion and culture. Many biblical narratives seem untroubled by instances in which the sin of an individual or group leads to the punishment of other people not directly involved in the original offense (e.g., Josh. 7, , in which the sin of Achan leads to the execution of his whole family and the destruction of all his property). H. Wheeler Robinson employed the term “corporate personality” as a conceptual key to elucidate these disturbing cases. He relied heavily on Emile Durkheim and Lucien Levy-Bruhl, who employed the notion of “primitive psychology” in attempting to explain totemism among so-called primitive peoples. According to these anthropologists, tribes with a totemic religion inhabited a very different psychic reality from that in which modern humans live. This primitive mindset was described as “synthetic thinking” or “psychical unity,” implying an inability of the individual to separate himself totally from nature, and especially to differentiate himself from other members of his clan and from the totemic species that represented his clan. Often this totemic psychology was called “prelogical” and was considered a type of mystical union with reality as a whole. Robinson clearly never suggested that ancient Israelite religion was totemistic in any way. However, he did fully believe that ancient Israel, especially in the earlier period, exhibited a very similar, or perhaps even the same, psychology as these anthropologists believe they have found among “primitive” tribes.

Robinson and others applied these notions as a type of cure-all invoked to solve a host of interpretive problems in the OT. Criticisms leveled at the notion of corporate personality fall under four basic rubrics: (1) This theory creates a false dichotomy between the idea of the individual and the idea of the group, and leaves the impression that Israelite society had little awareness of the individual until the later biblical period. (2) The various cases gathered under the concept of corporate personality are sometimes better explained by ideas such as bloodguilt, ancient conceptions of property rights, and violation of holiness taboos. (3) The notion of corporate personality grew out of certain anthropological ideas now recognized to be fallacious. (4) Robinson used the term in an imprecise way and thus employed different senses of the term to solve different types of problems. In doing so he emptied the term of any clear meaning and thus of any usefulness.

Corporate Responsibility

Although the term corporate personality is now rarely used, scholars studying biblical narratives that involve the transference of the sin of an individual or group to other people or to later generations still employ the term corporate responsibility. The term corporate personality was most problematic because of the psychological connotations, which alone make the use of corporate responsibility preferable. Unfortunately that term also presents some ambiguity. It can mean a person might be liable for the action of his community or part of that community because he was not recognized as an individual with individual rights; or it might mean an individual, though not directly involved, might suffer the consequences generated by the misdeeds of his community. Although this ambiguity exists, the term is still useful as long as one makes clear exactly what meaning one has in mind. Clearly, the OT contains instances of both types of corporate responsibility and some instances in which both types seem to be exhibited at once. No modern term will ever be totally adequate in explaining all the complexities in the OT’s conception of the individual’s relationship to the community, but this term does seem to capture some important elements of the biblical mindset.

Individualism

One other important feature in how the OT understands the individual’s relationship to the larger community is the question of whether there was a movement away from a more “primitive” type of collectivism and toward a type of individualism. Scholars have often viewed texts such as Josh. 7; 2 Sam. 21:1-14 — in which a ritual violation is followed by some type of corporate punishment — as advocating a set of primitive ideas that were eventually superseded by a superior, more individualized religious impulse. Those who argue for this position tend to label theologically troubling texts like Josh. 7 as aberrations and exceptions that do not reflect the higher aspects of Israel’s religion seen in texts such as Deut. 24:16; Jer. 31:29-30; Ezek. 18. The latter are understood as signaling a radical shift toward a new individualism that rejects the older corporate ways of thinking. This viewpoint is historically inaccurate and theologically problematic. On the historical side it seems strange that a period seen to exhibit a growing individualism is the same as that in which the texts assigned to the Priestly author of the Pentateuch affirm the concept of communal solidarity (Lev. 4). This period also saw the final editing of Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic history, each of which utilizes notions of corporate responsibility. If in fact the individual began to emerge during the late 6th century, why did this individualism leave so little impression upon the vast literature produced during the Second Temple period? That passages within the latest strata of the OT support the idea of communal responsibility (Dan. 6:25; Esth. 9:7-10), and that this view is still alive well into NT times (Matt. 23:29-36; John 9:2; 1 Thess. 2:14-16) and beyond (Lev. Rab. 4:6; b. Sanh. 43b-44a; Tanna Debe Eliyyahu 12), suggests that there was no simple linear progression from older corporate to later more individualized forms of retribution. That scholars have argued for such a progression in the face of much evidence to the contrary suggests an inherent bias in some modern biblical scholarship. Certain scholars apparently have been influenced by ideas that value individualism and implicitly denigrate or reject the claims of the community as well as by ideas of linear and progressive social evolution.

Before utterly rejecting all corporate notions as primitive one should note the centrality of such corporate ideas in Israelite theology. In many respects the concept of divine mercy is predicated on being treated as a favored member of a group rather than being judged exactly according to one’s own merits. Precisely this concept stands behind notions such as God’s promise after the Flood (Gen. 8:21; Isa. 54:9-10), Israel’s election especially as it relates to the promise to the patriarchs (Deut. 9:4-5), and God’s willingness to restore Israel after the Exile (Deut. 4:29-31; Jer. 31:31-34; Ezek. 36:22-32). Additionally, the corporate view of divine retribution recognizes that humans inevitably commit sins and thus depend on not being judged according to their ways (Job 4:12-21; 7:17-21; 1 Kgs. 8:46-53; Ps. 51:1-14[MT 3-16]; 103:8-14; 130:3; Jer. 10:24). In fact, it should be acknowledged that because the OT’s theology is fundamentally corporate in its outlook, the biblical emphasis upon God’s relation to a particular community cannot be treated as an early, but now irrelevant idea. The OT’s message is not directed to a loose configuration of individuals but to a living community called the people of Israel.

The biblical writers were aware that our individuality can only be understood in relation to the various collectivities in which we participate and that being human means that the individual is linked to other people through the consequences that flow from each person’s actions. But this does not mean that the Bible ignores the importance of the individual. The Bible has a very nuanced theology of the relationship between the individual and the community. Rather than playing off the more individualistic passages within the Bible against those that reflect a more corporate view, one can see the way in which these elements qualify and complement each other.

Bibliography. J. S. Kaminsky, Corporate Responsibility in the Hebrew Bible. JSOTSup 196 (Sheffield, 1995); G. Matties, Ezekiel 18 and the Rhetoric of Moral Discourse. SBLDS 126 (Atlanta, 1990); J. R. Porter, “The Legal Aspects of the Concept of ‘Corporate Personality’ in the Old Testament,” VT 15 (1965): 361-80; H. W. Robinson, “The Hebrew Conception of Corporate Personality,” in Corporate Personality in Ancient Israel, rev. ed. (Philadelphia, 1980), 25-44.

Joel S. Kaminsky

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

CORPORATE PERSONALITY

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)