TTN Tyndale Theme Notes:

Ancient Law Codes

Until the late 1800s, the law of Moses was believed to be a unique code of law, existing nearly a thousand years before anything comparable in Greek and Roman laws. Excavations in Persia in the late 1800s, however, uncovered laws set forth by the Babylonian king Hammurabi in the 1700s BC, some 300 years prior to Moses. Surprisingly, a number of the laws in that list are almost identical to those in the Bible. Though this seemed to imply that the biblical laws had been taken from Hammurabi, subsequent discoveries produced law codes preceding Hammurabi’s by at least 500 years, and several laws are common to all of them, so Hammurabi also did not originate them.

What does this mean for the Bible? First, it is not surprising that we find similar laws from cultures neighboring Israel; similar societies require similar codes of conduct in order to ensure justice. Second, the biblical laws are unique in that they are incorporated in a covenant with God. Elsewhere in the ancient Near East, religious laws (about sacrifice, prayers, offerings, etc.) and civil laws (covering theft, lying, sexual conduct, murder, etc.) were completely unrelated because ethics and religion were considered separate domains. Religion was a matter of prayer, devotion, offerings, and ritual behavior—the territory of priests. Ethics concerned social and civil behavior—the business of the king. The biblical view of things is different: God is sovereign over both religion and society. So a person who is in a relationship with the true God must not only participate in proper worship (religion) but also treat other people rightly (ethics).

Israel’s covenant with God made use of existing forms but invested them with new meaning. For example, the basic layout of Israel’s Tabernacle (Exod 26–27) and Temple (see 1 Kgs 6:1–7:51) were the same as elsewhere in the ancient world, and the basic forms of the Hebrew sacrifices (see Lev 1–7) were largely identical to the forms of pagan sacrifices. But the meaning and purpose of the Temple and the sacrifices were significantly different from the meaning and purpose of such things in paganism (see study notes on Exod 20:3-17; 25:1–40:38; Lev 1:1–7:38).

While many of the laws of Moses were not new to the world at that time, the idea that the behavior they called for is written into the very fabric of the universe by its Creator was radically new.

Passages for Further Study

Exod 20:1–23:33; 34:1–35:3; Lev 1:1–27:34; Deut 4:1–33:29; Ezra 1:1-4; Esth 1:13-19; 8:9-14; Dan 6:6-9; Luke 2:1-3