1995

Law seems to play a great role in the Old Testament. The central part of the Pentateuch, the five Books of Moses, consists of several collections of law material, among which we could mention the Book of the Covenant, Exodus 21:23, and the so-called Holiness Code, Leviticus 17–26. Also in Deuteronomy, the fifth Book of Moses, we find another extensive collection of laws, from Chapter 12 to 26. How on earth can any person be induced to believe that no laws were needed? A close look at the laws of the Old Testament, however, immediately changes that perception, as it becomes clear that only a limited part of the laws are laws in any normal sense of the word. In the Book of the Covenant, only the first part, Exodus 21:2–22:16, contains what are juridical laws; the second part (Exod. 22:17–23:16) is devoted to religious rules and regulations. Or, as it has often been maintained, the first part of the Book of the Covenant belongs in the realm of jus, while the second part represents fas.

Whether this distinction is absolutely clear – or was clear to people in Antiquity – may, of course, be questioned, but a fundamental difference of style between the laws of the first part and the religious regulations of the second cannot be disregarded. Apart from the very first law, that concerning the Hebrew slave (Exod. 21:2–11), which opens with ‘When you purchase a Hebrew as a slave’, the laws are all in the third person singular and all should, according to normal usage, be styled simple casuistic laws.