Subproject 2: “The Formulation of Divine Legislation in the Hebrew Bible”

This subproject traces the socio-political contexts surrounding the genesis of and the literary developments involved in the compositional history of the emergence of “divine law.” Its primary focus lies in the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian epochs of the 8th to 6th centuries, the times of the emergence of the Covenant Code and Deuteronomy—the first “divine laws” in the Hebrew Bible—and their initial re-actualization in subsequent biblical and biblically-influenced texts. The idea of “divine law” first developed in ancient Judah during the Neo-Assyrian period of the 8th and 7th centuries BCE—specifically in the so-called Covenant Code of Exodus 20–23 and in the book of Deuteronomy, when Judah experienced strong Mesopotamian influence. The external advisor will offer insight especially at this point: on the basis of his expertise in comparative law of the Ancient Near East and the Bible, he will help to discern the process of borrowing and innovation in Judah from the ancient Near Eastern legal tradition.

This idea of divine law then went on to influence the entire legal tradition now preserved in the Hebrew Bible’s Pentateuch and post-biblical tradition extending to the Temple Scroll from Qumran. As a result, the present literary shape of this pentateuchal law traces its legal content back to God as the lawgiver on Mount Sinai.

Though some scholars find it historically attractive to explain this notion of God as lawgiver with reference to ancient Judah’s loss of both kingship and state at the hands of the Neo-Babylonian Empire that conquered and destroyed Jerusalem in the early 6th century, reducing the historical problem of divine laws to this historical event proves too simple. It requires that far too much material from Deuteronomy and the Covenant Code (Exodus 20–23) be relegated to the exilic period: The Neo-Assyrian background of Deuteronomy suggests the Hebrew Bible’s notion of divine laws originated before the fall of Jerusalem, and one can surmise (and this project will investigate) that reciprocal influences between the socio-political and intellectual histories took place. The redactional reworking of the Covenant Code, dating to the late 8th or early 7th century, interprets its core regulations—many adopted from longstanding ancient Near Eastern legal traditions—as divine stipulations.

Once articulated, the divine character of the Jewish law became a cornerstone of Judaism. Among its most immediate effects was the establishment of legal exegesis. That is, a divine law could not simply be altered, but could only be updated via reinterpretation. This point is of the utmost importance for determining the specific quality of the Torah (also providing later hermeneutical categories for Christianity and Islam), and is on special display in later biblical legal material such as texts of the Holiness Collection (Leviticus 17–26) and the book of Numbers. These texts emerged in post-monarchical Judean contexts, which likely led to diverse revisions in the meaning and formulation of divine law. Therefore, while the Torah claims to include laws of divine origin, it not only offers laws, but also their earliest commentaries. The resulting canonized product includes not only the laws as such, but also the subsequent interpretive process.