The Priestly Writing(s): Scope and Nature

The existence of the so-called priestly writing is one of the most important theories in the research on the formation of the Pentateuch. This essay will discuss the five most important aspects of the current debate about the priestly writing. It will address the literary character of the priestly passages, the original end of the priestly writing, the formation of the Holiness Code, the date of the priestly writing, and the overall intention of this corpus.

The Relationship of the Legal Codes

This essay discusses the major pentateuchal legal collections (the Covenant Code, Priestly Law, Deuteronomic Law, the Holiness Code) and the possible relationships that adhere among them. It also considers different interpretive approaches to these legal materials (juridical, literary), especially as the laws relate to the narratives in which they are embedded. The essay concludes with a discussion of the revisionary methods that later authors employed in their reuse of earlier pentateuchal legislation.

Women Treated as Property: The Influence of the Ancient Near East on the Covenant Code

Gender discrimination is not a new phenomenon. It has been prevalent in many civilisations through the ages, including those in the ancient Near East. Prejudice against women thus found its way into legal codes, such as the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, which introduced the idea of “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” according to which the killer of a woman was only obliged to pay half a gold mina as punishment to her father or husband, while the punishment for the murder of a nobleman was death. Gender discrimination was also displayed in the moral codes of the Hebrew Bible, including the Deuteronomic Code, the Covenant Code, and the Holiness Code. This article will examine how the Covenant Code relates to gender discrimination. The code, which is presented in Exodus 20–23, is an ancient legislative framework of impressive breadth. Scholars agree that the Covenant Code is an excellent barometer to reveal how women were treated in ancient Israel. While the aim of the article is not to make an in-depth exegetical study of the Covenant Code, it will examine the influence that other cultures in the ancient Near East had on Israel. Appreciating the power that pagan cultures exerted over Israel does not however excuse the negative treatment of women reflected in the Covenant Code. Nevertheless, this investigation will demonstrate how significant this influence was in allowing the negative treatment of women in Israel to persist, especially against the backdrop of Yahweh’s covenant, which stipulated that women were to be treated with dignity and respect.

Ezekiel’s Concept of Covenant

Although explicit covenantal language is largely absent from the book of Ezekiel, covenant remained an important concept for how the prophet understood Israel’s relationship with its national deity. Readings of 11:14–21; 14:1–11; 37:15–23; 16:59–63; and 20:4–5 demonstrate that Ezekiel assumed that eternal covenants established by God in the past remained valid and would be remembered in the future, when the nation would be reconstituted. Moreover, the eternal covenants established by God would not be reworked; rather, the people would be changed by their experience of shame in exile. Another covenant that was mentioned during the text’s redaction, the covenant of peace, affirmed that the conflict between Yahweh and Israel has ceased. This chapter accords with recent scholarly work tying Ezekiel to the covenantal stipulations of the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17–26). It distinguishes, however, the concept of covenant found in Ezekiel from that of Jeremiah, adding to recent studies that contrast these two prophets in general.

Loving the Immigrant as the Premier Jewish and Christian Ethic

The modern term “immigrant” does not appear in the original Jewish and Christian scriptures. While concepts of nations, borders, and formal immigration did not develop until long after Biblical times, several Hebrew words existed for foreigners. An analysis of the words gēr, nēkār, rēa, zār, and tôšāb reveals how foreign strangers were regarded by the Jewish people. The established covenant commanded Jewish people to “love your neighbor (rēa) as yourself” (Lev. 19:18). This commandment, located in the middle of Leviticus and the middle of the Holiness Code, is considered by many to be the highest development of ethics in scripture. Still, a concentrated debate about passages in both Testaments continues among academics and religious leaders, especially about the Christian obligation to follow the laws of the land, but dissent if the laws are unjust. An examination of Jewish and Christian texts, world views, and contemporary scholarship is needed to determine how, if at all, believers should respond to the present immigration crisis in the United States. This paper shares some of the many stories in scripture about migration, concluding that the story of Jewish and Christian scripture, and indeed, the story of mankind, is one of migration.

Homosexuality, the Holiness Code, and Ritual Pollution: A Case of Mistaken Identity

The Holiness Code in Leviticus contains a well-known list of illicit sexual practices. Two infamous Levitical verses (18.22 and 20.13) have been widely interpreted as forbidding and calling for punishment for carnal relations between two adult males and have even influenced modern legislation regarding homosexuality and marriage equality in many countries. It is the suggestion of the author that the verses do not in fact refer to homosexual acts at all, but instead should be interpreted as forbidding and calling for punishment of the act of two males sharing simultaneously the bed of a single woman, which in the context of the Holiness Code and its other statutes aims at prohibiting the creation of offspring whose patronage is unclear and form is abominable, which in turn would lead to the ritual pollution of the Promised Land.

The Role of Law in the Formation of the Pentateuch and the Canon

Legal material is crucial for the Pentateuch’s formation. After an overview of pentateuchal research and documentary hypotheses, the legal collections and their interrelationship are discussed. Although a pre-exilic deuteronomic core, rewriting the Covenant Code, is likely, its final editing is a post-exilic development, with priestly laws and the Holiness Code following. The evolving Pentateuch becomes a distinct entity in the fourth century bce, but the text remains in a certain flux through the Hellenistic period. As a foundational document, consolidating the Judean and Samaritan communities alike, it reflects concerns with the revived temple cult(s) and Persian influence on Israelite practice. The Pentateuch receives special status earlier than the Prophets and the Writings. The transition from descriptive instruction to prescriptive law, from formative ideal to normative legislation, is a continuous process through the Hellenistic and Roman periods, with bearing on tensions around legal interpretation during the late Second Temple period.

Covenant

No ancient Near Eastern parallels exist for the presentation of civil and criminal law as clauses attaching to a covenant, established between a God and a people or nation. In the Hebrew Bible, this conception is widespread. In particular, the Covenant Code (Exod. 21–23), the Holiness Code (Lev. 17–25), and the Deuteronomic Code (Deut. 12–26) all—though in different ways—pretend to draw their force from a covenant between YHWH and Israel. The present chapter explores the notion of covenant and the various elaborations of covenant theology. It is suggested that the combination of law and covenant was first established in Exodus 19–24, and that the other law codes adopted the idea, together with an important number of laws (more in the case of Deuteronomy than in the Holiness Code), from there.

Law in the Wisdom Tradition

Originally, law and wisdom were indistinct from one another. Both case law and ethos made up family norms of behavior and were transmitted orally from generation to generation. Over time, case law was supplemented by written statutes; the earliest known codes in Mesopotamia were from Sumer, followed by Akkadian, Babylonian, and Hittite exemplars. Ethos developed into proverbial sayings and instructions, debates, and dialogue. The early sapiential corpus (Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes) ignored biblical law (the Covenant Code, Decalogue, Deuteronomy, Holiness Code). That situation changed with Sirach and Wisdom of Solomon, who fused wisdom with law. Among sages, torah, the usual word for law, was used to indicate (1) the first five books of the Bible; (2) parental instruction; and (3) specific statutes. This chapter examines all three senses, focusing on the Deuterocanonical books.