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and illuminating pages that have been preserved for us out of the night of ancient history.1

D

THE TORAH

Definition, History and Constituent Codes

The Old Testament consists of three great parts or divisions the Law, the Prophets, and the Wisdom Writings or Hagiographa. These were united in their present form about 90 to 100 A. D. The first of these divisions, the Torah, is for the Jews the most sacred, the very heart and essence of the Old Testament. Wherever the Law is spoken of either in the old or new Testaments, the Torah is meant. It was the Torah which according to tradition was given to Moses amid the thunders and lightnings of Sinai. It was the Torah to which Christ had reference when he spoke of the law as handed down by Moses. The Torah contained the moral rules of conduct and the religious ceremonial which all Jews must observe, as well as civil and criminal regulations. And it was the Torah which gave rise to the different schools of interpretation, and the great body of comment and decisions known as the Talmud.

The Law is not a single Code, but is made up of miscellaneous statutes and of several codes formulated at different times under varying conditions. There is little doubt that the Pentateuch was edited by later redactors who took existing laws and arranged them in their present order. The process was sometimes unskillfully done and the result is a mass of material with little coherence or unity. When the various laws are dug out of the quarries of narrative, of repetition, of allegory and tra

1 For a further study of Babylonian law see John's translation of the Code of Hammurabi.

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dition in which they are embedded they reveal different strata, each of which has its own unity of structure and purpose.

During all the period when these laws were formulated the Jews were essentially a theocracy. We must not expect to find in the Torah a complete code of civil and criminal laws in the modern sense of the term. Most Jewish laws were religious in their character. Civil government as understood at present was almost unknown. There was no specially constituted legislative body as in modern states chosen for the sole purpose of making laws. Legislative, judicial and executive power were all lodged in the same persons. The Jews were a primitive people with little or no commerce, with no large cities, but little accumulated wealth, and with the transfer of land on any considerable scale prohibited by law. No scheme of classification such as is used in modern times is exactly applicable to the Jewish system of laws. Scholars are able to point out in different parts of the Pentateuch various bodies of laws each of which had in its time an independent existence, and which developed under different conditions in various periods of Jewish history. Clearly marked these are, their boundary lines being for the most part easily distinguishable. The idea of uniformity which once prevailed as to the Bible story has been dissipated by the results of modern Biblical scholarship.

These various bodies of laws were not codified by a commission of experts. The fact that laws are repeated in the different codes proves they were not formulated by a single lawgiver. Often there are contradictions, as for instance where various places of sacrifice are commanded as in Ex. 20 and at Jerusalem only as in Dt. 12. No copies of the laws were at first made; they consisted of oral decisions and precepts, handed down from one generation to the next. Later they were committed to writing, probably on tables of stone. Ex. 24, 3118, 32 16,

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The Deuteronomic Code was compiled or at least written down in its present form about 621 B. C., the Priestly Code in the fifth century B. C. The first legislation is probably found in Ex. 18 14-16, where according to tradition Moses found it necessary to formulate rules for the de cision of disputed questions, and to appoint stated persons to whom such questions could be submitted. Ex. 18 19-22, 25, 26. This is undoubtedly the foundation of Hebrew Law. Decisions made in this way really constituted legislation, there being no other authority to make rules for the guidance of the people. The precedent of judicial decisions crystallizing into a great body of positive law finds a signal modern illustration in the common law of England, which had its origin in the decisions of the courts, but which has all the force and authority of laws expressly enacted by Parliament, in the particular fields in which it is applicable.

There is another consideration that must be kept constantly in mind. As each new code was formulated its compilers gave it vast authority by ascribing it to Moses. This constant reference of new regulations to Moses is everywhere visible. Without the sanction of his name the laws would have had but little force. It was difficult even by the help of his overshadowing authority to secure their observance. Very often the Jews were called a stiff-necked and rebellious people. This does not mean of course that all Jewish law came into being after Moses had died. No doubt there were many primitive regulations that had their origin during the wanderings in the desert, when Moses was their leader and lawgiver. We may look here for the germ of later codes. Perhaps the central core of the Ten Commandments came out of the intense experience of their early travails and misfortunes. The law of retaliation was no doubt then in actual use. Some primitive civil regulations may have developed. But the elaboration of these into code and established doctrine could happen only after later experiences and more com

J. E. C. D. H. P.

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plex conditions of life and environment. It must be remembered too that anthropomorphic ideas were common among the Jews in their earliest period. Jehovah was to them a big, glorified person, having many of the human instincts, passions, impulses. He loved his people and hated their enemies. The Israelites were his chosen people. When he spoke to them it was with visible presence, an audible voice, lightnings and thunderings, tables of stone. They were impressed by his awful majesty, which was real to them only when accompanied by these material manifestations of his power and presence.

In the light of the foregoing considerations the Jewish laws should be studied. We may establish a correct chronology of the various codes, study their real content, learn of the conditions under which they were formulated, and thus obtain a true picture of their meaning and worth to us. Let us proceed in this spirit with the study of these individual codes.

Constituent Elements of the Torah and Their

Designations

We shall refer frequently to the letters J.E.C.D.H. and P. An explanation of these is necessary.

Scholars have long recognized that the Pentateuch is not a literary unit but is made up of various elements which were united by later editors into its present form. Higher Criticism has studied this part of the Old Testament exhaustively and has reached conclusions that are fairly harmonious and generally accepted. It is agreed for instance that there is a stream of narrative or history running through the Pentateuch, which has well defined characteristics as a rule easily recognized, and which habitually uses the term Jehovah to designate God. This constituent element is by common consent represented by the letter J. Parallel to this and united with it to make up

the present form of the historic narrative is another element characterized by the use of the term Elohim and hence designated as E. These were united by a later editor into those portions of the Pentateuch known as JE. There came much later an addition of priestly narrative, for the most part easily distinguishable, designated as the Priest's Code by the letter P. Into these welded narratives were thrown certain more or less homogeneous bodies of laws known respectively as C, D, and H. These are explained fully in subsequent sections. As a convenient summary of these elements we submit the following tables taken from Driver, which represent better perhaps than any other the deliberate judgment of scholars as to the makeup of the Torah.1

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1 These citations are from Driver's Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, by permission of the publishers, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.

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