The Offering of the Torah

We have documented that the development of the Noahide laws can be seen in two perspectives: (1) as the pre-Sinaitic law for all humanity including Israel; (2) as the post-Sinaitic law for all humanity excluding Israel. The first provided a standard for understanding the precondition for the Torah's revelation; the second offered criteria for understanding what Jews could respect, even obey, in the non-Jewish world. This second perspective developed principally along legal lines, aiding Jews in negotiating with gentile authority and gentile religion without capitulation or complete condemnation. The first perspective matured, on the other hand, through theological categories, making it more speculative than normative. This speculation was concerned with the relevance of universal law for the understanding of Judaism itself.

This view emerges in the following aggadah:

The text continues and states that the descendants of Esau refused the Torah because of the prohibition of murder; the Ammonites and Moabites because of prohibition of incest; and the Ishmaelites due to the prohibition of robbery. In each of these cases verses from Genesis are brought to show that these nations rejected the Torah because it contradicts behavior that characterizes the mand for which the Torah had condemned them. (The prohibition of idolatry, however, is not mentioned, but of course one would be pressed to find explicit condemnation of gentile idolatry in the Bible.) The text concludes: