Questions about the path involved in the Exodus accounts, as well as implicit dates, have occupied biblical scholars for centuries. We will not solve these questions here, but we will try to shed light on the reasons for their existence. The covenant codex or covenant book is the name that scholars give to a text that appears in the Torah in Exodus 20:22–23:19; or, more strictly, the term federal code can be applied to Exodus 21:1 to 22:16. [1] Biblically, the text is the second of the codes of law given to Moses by God at Mount Sinai. This text of the law provides a small but substantial proportion of mitzvot in the Torah and is therefore a source of Jewish law. There are several identifiable codes of law or collections of laws in the Torah. Some of them may significantly precede the writing of the Torah, or they could be evolutions (redactions) of earlier legal codes. These older legal codes have much in common with Israel`s legal codes, but do not clearly focus on a God found in Israel`s legal material. They are also less concerned about many social justice issues that play an important role in Israeli law. The first type, the “When/if.
Type of dann, similar to the laws found in the ancient legal codes of Mesopotamia, such as Hammurabi. Scholars call this type of law “casuistry law,” i.e., laws that specify cases (see Albrecht Alt). It seems that the Israelite writers here used a mode of expression that was widely used in the ancient Middle East and applied to a number of subjects. The “codes” of Mesopotamian law provide for different penalties for different classes of free citizens. There are no such distinctions in biblical “codes.” On the contrary, in commandments or moral doctrine, a fellow citizen is called “your neighbor” (Ten Commandments, Covenant Book and Code of Holiness) or “Your Brother” (Deuteronomy and Lev 25). This ideally makes all citizens or members of the people of Israel members of a family, although it does not necessarily imply equality. Women are certainly not treated equally with men for many purposes. Many of the commandments call for compassion for the poor and those without effective family support: widows, fatherless children, and resident strangers (see David L. Baker). Archaeological evidence suggests that the reform of Josiah (at least in general) must have taken place. Excavations at Arad (±30 miles south of Jerusalem) revealed that during Josiah`s reign, a wall was built through the nave of the shrine there, making the place unsuitable for worship. The altar had already been closed by Hezekiah, who supported biblical claims that his son Manasseh was repealing his reforms, which led to Josiah`s more radical decision.
Hebrew law, a set of ancient Hebrew law codes found in various places in the Old Testament that resemble earlier codes of law of the ancient monarchs of the Middle East – such as the Codex of Hammurabi, a Babylonian king from the 18th to the 17th century BC, and the codex of Lipit-Ishtar, a king of the Mesopotamian city of Eshnunna in the 20th century BC. The codes of Hammurabi and Lipit-Ishtar are described in their prologues as mediated by a deity so that monarchs can establish justice in their country. Such codes of law therefore had the authority of the divine commandment. For these reasons, the unanimous opinion of modern biblical criticism is that Deuteronomy is not the work of Moses, as is the traditional opinion, but that it was written in its main parts in the seventh century BC, during the reign of Josiah. It is not difficult to see the meaning that the book must have had if it had been written at that time. This would have been a great protest against the dominant tendencies of the time, a century, as Jeremiah readily testifies, in which religious views, other than that of the centralized worship of Yahweh, made serious encroachments on the kingdom of Judah associated with its decline. The Deuteronomic Codex can therefore be described as the prophetic reformulation and adaptation to the new needs of older legislation, which is essentially the work not of a jurist or statesman, but of a prophet. Not surprisingly, there is a strong religious burden in the biblical “law.” This is not so true of casuistry law, but the commandments are often supported by warnings of God`s punishment for disobedience or, especially in Deuteronomy, by promises of blessing if obeyed. Much of the biblical laws are technical ritual instructions. Others place moral teachings within a religious framework: for example, the Code of Holiness commands the people of Israel to be holy, partly by observing ritual rules, partly (see Lev 19 in particular) by maintaining peace, fairness and compassion among themselves.
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