Description
What makes one crime more serious than some other, and why? This book investigates the issue of “seriousness of offence” in English law from the comparative point of view of biblical law. Burnside takes a semiotic option to show how biblical conceptions of seriousness are synthesised and communicated through more than a few descriptive and performative registers. Seven case studies show that biblical law discriminates between the seriousness of various offences and between the relative seriousness of the similar offence when committed by different other people or when performed in different ways. Recurring elements include location and the offender’s social statue. The closing chapter considers one of the implications for the present debate about crime and punishment.