The Heart of Self Formation: The Overlap of Moral Selfhood and Legalities in Ancient Scriptural Discourse

This article discusses the “heart” as part of the terminology for selfhood in ancient Jewish literature. After discussing a couple of criticisms of studies of the self and showing how these criticisms fail to persuade, the paper examines a range of texts in the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and beyond for conceptions of the moral self. Special attention is given to the legal S tradition in the Scrolls as a fruitful illustration of how the self and law are recurring conceptual companions. In this legal tradition, a universalizing conception of selfhood and agency is rooted in local, practical concerns of a community.