The law of retaliation in the teaching of Christ

This article examines the law of retaliation ("an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth") in light of the teaching of Christ and the rabbinical tradition. Sandrine Caneri conducts an exegetical and comparative study that places this Old Testament legal principle in its historical and hermeneutical context, bringing Jewish and Christian readings of the text into dialogue. The central idea is that the law of retaliation, often reduced to a logic of vengeance, has an original scope of limiting violence and ensuring proportional justice, which Christ radicalizes and transcends in the Sermon on the Mount. The contribution of the article lies in bringing Jewish and Christian exegetical traditions into dialogue, demonstrating their complementarity for a renewed understanding of this precept and its transcendence in evangelical ethics.