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Biblical Law A look at a society’s legal system can give us insight into that society’s values and beliefs. Mesopotamia is acknowledged to be the ultimate cradle of law, and law during Bible times was highly indebted to its Mesopotamian (Sumerian, Babylonian, and Assyrian) predecessors. These societies had a profound respect for law as the backbone of society, and many of their legal prescriptions, terminology, and formulations were adopted (and adapted) in the books of the Bible. An enormous amount of Mesopotamian legal material exists on tablets, written in cuneiform, from the mid-third millennium to the end of the 1st century B.C.E., including deeds, dockets, lawsuits, loans, leases, contracts, marriage and adoption documents, real estate transactions, commercial sales, royal edicts, and—most significantly—several collections of laws. And in these tablets we can find many similarities between their topics and terminology and those in the Bible (with some exceptions, particularly in their penalty clauses; for example, sexual relations with one’s stepmother, daughter-in-law, mother, or one’s daughter; the rape of a betrothed woman; an assault causing a miscarriage; and homosexuality). Despite this shared fundamental legal background, the basic concept of law in Israel differs radically from Mesopotamian law. Biblical law receives its validity from being a divine pronouncement, a revelation of the God of Israel. God alone is the ultimate source and sanction of law. In Mesopotamia, on the other hand, it was the king who composed the laws to impress upon the gods that he was a righteous and just ruler. The human authorship of Mesopotamian law clarifies many of the differences between these two legislative systems. Biblical Collections Biblical law is divided into several major collections: The book (or record) of the covenant, the name of which comes from Exodus 24:7: “Then he [Moses] took the record of the covenant and read it aloud to the people.” The priestly rulings in the sacral and ritual spheres found in Exodus 25–40, Leviticus 1–16, and Numbers, which can be subdivided into two separate collections: the Priestly Torah, and the Holiness School (the latter primarily in Lev. 17–26). These two are distinguished by their linguistic and stylistic traits along with their differences in ritual, legal, and theological content. 69 The Jewish Bible Deuteronomy 12–26, which is marked by its injunctions regarding the destruction of cult places outside of Jerusalem and the centralization of ritual worship within Jerusalem and its humanitarian tone. This source is dated to about 622 B.C.E., the time of the reforms instituted by King Josiah of Judah, following the discovery of “the Scroll of the Teaching” (or “the book of the Law”) in the Temple (2 Kings 22:11). The fact that these are independent collections written at different times can be shown by their many repetitions referring, for example, to festival laws and the Sabbath. Compare, for instance, the prescription, “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk,” appearing in three separate places: Exodus 23:19, Exodus 34:26, and Deuteronomy 14:21. One can cite specific differences between these collections in the laws concerning the Passover sacrifice. According to Exodus 12:9: “Do not eat it any of it raw, or cooked in any way with water, but roasted,” yet according to Deuteronomy 16:7: “You shall cook [boil] and eat it.” Nevertheless, all these collections are called Torat Moshe, “the Teaching of Moses,” just as Israel’s Wisdom Literature is ascribed to Solomon and its hymnic literature to David. The Hebrew word “Torah,” literally meaning “teaching, instruction” and misleadingly translated as “law,” came to be used to designate the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses. 70 613 Mitzvot Many people mistakenly think that the 613 mitzvot are part of biblical law. But nowhere in the Bible is there a list of these commandments, nor is there any direct reference to them. It is only in the Talmud that we read of these 613 mitzvot. According to talmudic tradition, the Torah describes 613 obligations, or commandments, required for living a good Jewish life. Many of these could be interpreted as good deeds, such as giving to charity; others have to do with Jewish rituals and ritual behavior, such as reciting prayers and keeping kosher. Some are moral obligations, such as the prohibition against incest. This last is also an example of a negative commandment, of which the sages say there are 365. The remaining 248 they consider positive...

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