Download or read book Execution and Invention written by Beth A. Berkowitz and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2006-03-23 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beth Berkowitz explores modern scholarship on the ancient Rabbinic death penalty and offers a fresh perspective using the approaches of ritual studies, cultural criticism and Talmudic source criticism. She argues that the death penalty was used by the early Rabbis in an attempt to assert their authority.