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Making sense of biblical law from the distance of the 21st century means being aware of the “presupposition pool” of biblical Israel, especially in relation to law and its social practice. It shows how biblical law is similar to, and different from, ancient Near Eastern law, whilst also being different from modern law. This means we should be careful not to project a “semantic” reading onto biblical law when a “narrative” reading is more appropriate. The chapter considers how biblical law is integrated into the wider story of God's purposes for Israel and her vocation. It also shows how biblical law is characterized by a strongly didactic function and by sophisticated literary presentation, whilst also being relational, dynamic and an expression of wisdom.

This introduction provides an overview to the comparative study of the Covenant Code and Mesopotamian law, particularly the Laws of Hammurabi. It provides a summary of the argument of the book and contrasts the views of other recent academic studies, including those of Eckart Otto, Raymond Westbrook, Ludger Schwienhort-Schönberger, Ralf Rothenbusch, and Bernard Jackson. It also discusses methodological questions and problems arising in the comparative study of Near Eastern law, including similarities as proof of literary borrowing and the "hermaneutics of legal innovation" (as pioneered by Bernard Levinson) or compositional logic of the text.

This chapter explores a sharply contrasting response to the cognitive dissonance engendered by the incongruity between biblical and classical notions of divine law. This response distinguished biblical divine law from classical divine law. Far from bridging the gap between the universal law grounded in reason and the particular Mosaic Law grounded in will, this response chose to emphasize it, attributing few or none of the features of classical divine law to biblical Law. Versions of this response in the period under study are found in the Gospels and other New Testament books, especially the letters of Paul, and in subsequent Christian writings. The chapter examines select passages touching on the Law in the writings of Paul as but one example of this response.

This chapter describes Michaelis’s efforts to remake the figure of Moses and reexamine biblical law. Michaelis was not alone among early modern interpreters in wanting to reinterpret the significance of the great prophet. He portrayed Moses as an enlightened statesman committed to philosophical monotheism, tolerance, and happiness. He also saw Moses as a poetic genius, the author of the book of Job, and a sublime moralist; his portrait of Moses as a classical paragon rested on erudite foundations. Michaelis denied that the Old Testament, as scripture, had any kind of direct relevance or authority in modern life. His work on Moses showed how a scholar could apply the tools of history and philology to remake the biblical tradition and see the value of biblical figures by new, non-confessional lights.

The Chronicler attributes to Jehoshaphat of Judah (874–850 BCE) the appointment of royal judges in all the fortified cities of his kingdom, and the establishment of a central court in Jerusalem (2 Chron. 19.5–11). This chapter examines the issue of anachronism from the standpoint of the history of biblical law, and asks whether the Chronicler paints a picture coherent with law as it is likely to have functioned in the ninth century. The problem, however, does not commence in the ninth century. Almost universally, 2 Chron. 19.4–11 is taken to be a ‘judicial reform’, which assumes the existence of a preceding judicial system. Unlike some parts of the ancient Near East, ancient Israel was weakly institutionalized. Regular law courts and applying written rules (and thus assuming the presence of literate personnel) backed by state enforcement was a matter for the future.

This chapter discusses how Christian Reconstructionism had grown out of Rushdoony’s hostile relationship with the editors of Christianity Today, most notably Carl F. H. Henry, as he tried to challenge other conservative Christians to see Mosaic law as the antidote to the perceived lawlessness of the 1960s. After failing to create an expedient alliance with businessman and philanthropist J. Howard Pew in an attempt to influence Christianity Today and the neoevangelical coalition it represented, Rushdoony turned his attention to fully articulating his vision of Biblical law as an alternative to the “law and order” discourse emerging among his fellow conservatives. He argued that Biblical law could provide the necessary mechanism to reconstruct America into a neofeudal Protestant state that would eventually usher in Christ’s second coming.

This chapter considers the Hebrew Bible's seemingly nonchalant attitude toward the food of foreigners. The Hebrew Bible emphasizes the distinction between “us” and “them”, and the superiority of Israelite religion over all others. Biblical texts that address dietary laws, moreover, consistently associate these regulations with Israel's distinctive identity. Because Israelites are holy, these texts declare, they must adhere to various norms regarding the consumption of flesh from formerly living creatures. Why, then, do these texts fail to prohibit the consumption of meat prepared by non-Israelites or, for that matter, the practice of eating with non-Israelites? The silence of Biblical law in this respect becomes even more perplexing when narrative references to instances in which Israelites consume food associated with foreigners are examined. The chapter surveys such references before turning its attention to the central question. It concludes with a brief discussion of impurity, a concept whose significance to the present study will become apparent in subsequent chapters.

This chapter explores how public theology challenges criminal justice orthodoxies by asking, provocatively, whether Christianity has been hijacked by imprisonment. The question is systematically explored with reference to three, interrelated, strands: (1) the moral question of ‘seriousness of offence’ which undergirds the sanction of imprisonment; (2) the development of ‘Relational Justice’ as a reform dynamic for criminal justice and prison reform; and (3) the role of faith-based units in prisons. These three strands show the different ways in which juxtaposing prisons and public theology challenges criminal justice orthodoxies; critiques retributive punishment and provides the hope of restoration. They also provide worked examples of the methodologies that are required to successfully link up law with applied social sciences and theology.

Scholars of the Dead Sea Scrolls often compare and contrast ‘sectarian law’ as opposed to ‘biblical law’. This chapter argues that this differentiation was not upheld by Qumran sectarians with regard to the origins and authority of the law. There was no distinction between these areas of law at Qumran; the sectarians believed that all aspects of the law are from God and have the same binding authority. The Damascus Document is the composition in which the distinction between religious and communal law is most visible.

This chapter discusses the importance of biblical law on the suspected adulteress. It explains the reasons why the law relating to sexual adulteress has received so much attention. First, the topic of sexual wrongdoing is always likely to attract interest. Second, with no witness to testify, trials will always involve self-incrimination, which is detrimental from a legal perspective. Third, there has been little or no light shed on what prompts a lawgiver to present the law in the first place. Fourth, from the point of view of comparative law, we find a rule in Hammurabi Code wherein a wife is accused by a husband but there is a lack of evidence, so therefore she has to swear an oath to clear herself.

This chapter analyses the transformation of biblical law into Torah in both historical and literary perspective. It traces and illuminates the difficult literary history of Deuteronomy from its beginnings in the Assyrian Period to Hellenistic times. It shows the historical anchor of the earliest parts of Deuteronomy in both the revision of the Covenant Code and in the application of Neo-Assyrian treaty rhetoric to Israel's relationship with Yahweh. As such Deuteronomy has its beginnings in a document of reform during the Josianic period.

This chapter assesses the state of the field concerning the mechanics of legal revision among the Torah’s four codes of law. Classically, scholars of biblical law assumed that as jurists redrafted these laws, they did so with the intention that their new formulations would supersede the older ones, and that the older versions of the law were thereby denied any authority or standing. However, since the 1990’s some scholars have viewed the biblical law corpora as complementary. For these scholars, the inconsistencies between the various law corpora represent a process of reapplication, not rejection. No study to date has thoroughly measured the arguments for the two approaches. The evidence brought thus far in Part II of this book bolsters the argument for the complementary nature of the inconsistent law collections.

This chapter argues that women, like foreigners, were subject to having their personhood erased by those who were dominant over them. The chapter begins with an assessment of whether women were considered persons in ancient Israel, addressing in detail the issue of whether they were considered to be property. Responding to previous research on this question, the chapter contends that women were treated in the ways they were not because they were the property of their husbands but because they were subordinates, and their subordination had clear physical dimensions. Just as subordinate men were liable to having their personhood erased in certain situations, the position of having dominance over women as husbands and fathers also entailed the ability to erase women’s personhood through violence in cases of transgression.

Scholars of biblical law have long seen the inconsistencies among the law corpora of the Pentateuch as signs of schools and communities in conflict. This chapter offers an introductory foundation for the following five chapters on biblical and ancient Near Eastern law. It demonstrates that the dominant approach to the critical study of biblical law—that is, as statutory law—is based on anachronistic, nineteenth-century notions of how law works and how legal texts are formulated. The chapter traces the history of legal thought in that century, and how it shaped (a better term might be distorted) how we view the ancient legal texts of the Bible and the Near East, and recovers premodern understandings of how law works and how legal texts are to be read in accordance with common-law jurisprudence.