CORPORATE PERSONALITY. “Corporate personality” is a term used in English law. It refers to the fact that a group or body can legally be considered as an individual, possessing the rights and duties of an individual. The membership of such a group can change by the death of members or the recruitment of new ones, without affecting the rights and duties of the group as a whole.
Although Wheeler Robinson in 1907 had alluded to the concept in his commentary on Joshua, it was not until 1911 that he introduced the term -corporate personality- into biblical interpretation. He believed that it helped explain features of the Old Testament that puzzled modern readers. For example, in Joshua 7, the entire house of Achan was destroyed, even though Achan had only disobeyed God’s command not to take spoil from Jericho. If the house of Achan was a corporate personality, the entire group was guilty, even if only one of its members had offended. Again, in some of the psalms (eg, 44:5-9-Eng 44:4-8), the language changes abruptly from “I” to “we”. If the psalmist belonged to a corporate personality, he could think of himself (-I-) as the personification of the whole group; however, his sense of solidarity with the group also allowed him to use “we” language.
According to Rogerson (1980), Robinson employed “corporate personhood” in at least two different senses: (a) corporate responsibility (eg, the punishment achan) and (b) corporate representation (eg, the “I “Corporate of the Psalms). Like many scholars of his day, Robinson believed that ancient Hebrew thought was similar to that of “primitive” societies and was impressed by anthropologists’ work on this “primitive” mentality, especially that of Lévy-Bruhl. He believed that the Hebrews analyzed the relationship between the individual and the group in very different ways than modern man. For example, the Hebrews did not place limits on their individuality, but felt they belonged to a group in such a way that an individual could be or become the group. Once again, a remote ancestor, though dead,
Although Robinson took the idea of corporate personhood from English law, he applied it to TO in an imprecise way. In English law, a corporate personality cannot be punished for the fault of one of its members. However, if the offender acted as an authorized representative of the group, then the group itself could be prosecuted. Furthermore, the idea of a link of consciousness or identity between individual and group, as presupposed in explaining the corporate self of the psalms, is foreign to the legal notion adopted by Robinson to describe what he believed to be a basic characteristic and early Hebrew thought, with which modern thought had no parallel.
Since the 1930s, many OT scholars believed that Robinson had discovered an important way to avoid reading modern Western notions of individuality into the OT. His work was also believed by many to be confirmed by Pedersen’s (1926) mystical account of how the Israelites experienced the world. Corporate personality was thus used to explain the individual and collective traits of the servant in the four Servant Songs of Isaiah 42-53 (Robinson 1955; Eissfeldt 1933), the phenomenon of pseudonymity in apocalyptic literature (Russell 1964), the identity between a messenger and the person who sent him (Johnson 1961: 28), and the close affinity between the characters in the saga and the Israelite readers of the sagas (Koch 1969). However, the anthropological theories on which Robinson based his notion of the Hebrew mentality have been largely abandoned by anthropologists.
However, Robinson must be credited for drawing attention to an important question: did the Israelites view a group as a collection of individuals or as a body with several members? In some cases, the answer seems to be that a group is seen primarily as an organism whose members are so close that they must share a common destiny. In Genesis 19:22-32, the alternatives are that Sodom will be destroyed or pardoned if it contains ten righteous people; that the righteous be forgiven and the wicked destroyed is not an option. The city is treated as a collective whole.
However, care must be taken not to put this principle into service without careful thought. In the Achan incident there is a clear indication of individual responsibility. Achan is identified as the culprit, and although the people as a whole had been punished by the defeat at Ai, only Achan’s house is executed. This punishment need not depend on corporate personality; it has been explained in terms of the need to execute all those who were contaminated by contact with loot dedicated entirely to God (Porter 1965). It has also been seen as an example of ruling punishment.
The classic example of a ruler’s punishment (Daube 1947) is 2 Sam 24:1-17, where David’s punishment for taking a census results in the death of 70,000 men. Here again, the idea of individual responsibility is clear: David was wrong, but his punishment falls on his property, the 70,000 men.
The above examples should serve as a warning against those who try to fit OT texts into simplistic categories. In Old Testament law, the principle of individual responsibility was central from the earliest times. However, some individuals had power over others, which could cause them, although innocent, to be punished for the actions of the head. In Old Testament religion, the fear of contaminating the entire people by the presence within it of a group or individual who had violated the boundary separating the sacred from the profane was strong enough to require the execution of those responsible. . Again, the OT employs the devices of personification and synecdoche: Israel may be described as a virgin girl (Amos 5:2), or a king may represent all of his people (Ezekiel 28:2, 12).
It would be a mistake to assume without further investigation that the Israelites perceived the relationship between the individual and society in exactly the same way as modern scholars. It is equally wrong to assume that the OT can only be understood by positing a special Hebrew mentality radically different from that of modern Westerners. Even in modern society, where individualism is a more dominant concept than in the Old Testament, there are experiences and resources that can be sensitively used to explain features of the Old Testament narrative that are at first sight strange and puzzling.
Bibliography
A full bibliography on corporate personality is provided in H. Wheeler Robinson 1964: 61-64, and footnotes to the text. To this bibliography should be added:
Daube, D. 1947. Studies in Biblical Law. Cambridge. Rep. New York, 1969.
Eissfeldt, O. 1933. The Ebed-Yahweh in Isaiah xl – lv. Exp Tim 44: 261-68.
Gordis, R. 1971. Poets, prophets and sagas. Bloomington, IN.
Johnson, AR 1961. The one and the many in the Israelite conception of God. Cardiff.
—. 1979. The Cultic Prophet and Israel’s Psalmody. Cardiff.
Joyce, P. 1983. The individual and communities. Pages. 74-89 in Beginning Old Testament Study, ed. J. Rogerson. Philadelphia.
Koch, K. 1969. The Growth of the Biblical Tradition. London.
Pedersen, J. 1926. Israel: Its Life and Culture. 2 vols. London and Copenhagen.
Porter, JR 1965. The legal aspects of corporate personhood in the Old Testament. VT 15: 361-68.
Robinson, HW 1911. The Christian Doctrine of Man. Edinburgh.
—. 1955. The Cross in the Old Testament. London.
—. 1964. Corporate Personality in Ancient Israel. Philadelphia.
Rogerson, JW 1980. The Hebrew conception of corporate personality. JTS 21: 1-16 = pp. 43-59 in Anthropological Approaches to the Old Testament, ed. B. Lang. Philadelphia. 1985.
Russell, DS 1964. The Method and Message of the Jewish Apocalyptic. London.
JW ROGERSON