© Charles Chandler

 

The Law Code is a little harder to date. Some have said that it was written later, such as during the Babylonian exile, or during the Second Temple period, and simply injected into the Torah to make it look more authentic, as if it came directly from Moses. If so, it was a rather half-baked effort — we'd expect the priests in Babylon to have been capable of coming up with a much more elaborate legal system. Instead, this sounds more like a quick collection of rules that would be thrown together on the march.

 

One of the most venerated of the laws was the mandate to observe the sabbath. Interestingly, this establishes the 7-day week in the Jewish liturgy, which isn't Egyptian — they had a 10-day week, with a rest day at the end. The 7-day week was originally Sumerian, and was kept in Hammurabi's calendar reform in the 1700s bce. So the Jews could have adopted this standard during the Babylonian captivity, or it could have been integrated into Mosaic Law as early as in the reading of the Book of the Law by Jacob at Shechem in 1311 bce. If so, the Book of the Law was a fusion of Hebrew & Israelite traditions from the very beginning.

• Laws
  • Exodus 21

  • Exodus 22

  • Exodus 23

  • Numbers 5

  • Numbers 6

• Offerings
  • Numbers 7

  • Numbers 8

  • Numbers 9:1-14

  • Numbers 15

• The Ten Commandments
  • Exodus 20

  • Exodus 24

  • Exodus 34

  • Deuteronomy 5

• The Tabernacle
  • Exodus 25

  • Exodus 26

  • Exodus 27

• Priestly Garments, Sacrifices
  • Exodus 28

  • Exodus 29

  • Exodus 30

  • Exodus 31

Numbers 28

Numbers 29