Do contemporary Jews see the Bible as a source for a modern language of human rights?
At first glance, there are overwhelming differences between the thought world of the Bible and that of modern human rights. The HB/OT is essentially theocentric, whereas the discourse of human rights is anthropocentric. The very word “rights,” as it is used today, does not appear in the HB/OT. The nearest equivalent is perhaps the biblical word mitswah, a concept whose closest equivalent among modern secular concepts would be “obligation.
