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Women's Rights by Signature Books; Salt Lake City
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What are the known ancient laws that dominated the Old Testament world? Here follows a brief discussion of twelve of the most important:
Ancient legal texts, called “codes” or “codices,” are not to be confused with the sophisticated legal codes of modern Europe or even classical Rome, for their purposes were different. Ancient legal codes are rough compilations of legal abstracts of the king's rulings or those of his courts recorded to show posterity that the king had fulfilled his mandate to bestow justice and equity upon the poor, the widowed, the orphaned, and the enslaved.1 These laws were apparently not as binding as they were instructive of what one could reasonably expect.2 They also served as exercises in scribal schools, exercises which helped preserve much of the cultural and literary inheritance of the ancient Near East.3 Perhaps most important for our purposes, the law throughout the Fertile Crescent was for most practical purposes universal, and the legal principles underlying the various codes were basically the same.4 The Code Of Ur-nammu Ur-Nammu was the king and founding ruler of the third dynasty of Ur, comprising the city and region of Sumeria, the southern portion of Mesopotamia. He also built the best preserved ziggurat in Mesopotamia.5 The Ur-Nammu Codex is the oldest known legal code, dated variously from the middle to the end of the third millennium B.C.6 The code was found in two sources, both damaged and incomplete. The first was a poorly preserved tablet discovered at Nippur and translated from Sumerian by Samuel N. Kramer in 1954.7 The second source was two pieces of a tablet that seems to have been the work of a student scribe and was left unfinished. This text was found in Ur and translated by O. R. Gurney and Samuel Kramer in 1965.8 Due to their poor condition, the tablets spent fifty years in a warehouse before they were deciphered and their importance realized. I use the translation of J. J. Finkelstein, who revised and continued Kramer's translations.9 Most of the prologue to the codex has been lost, but the surviving fragments report that Ur-Nammu was the “son born of {the goddess} Ninsun,” that he was a pious supporter of the temple, that he had freed up trade by establishing equity in the land, and that he protected the widowed, the orphaned, and the “man of one shekel.”10 Much of the section on laws has been lost or badly damaged, but what remains deals among other things with adultery of a married woman, the defloration of someone else's female slave, divorce and alimony, false accusation, the escape of slaves, the status of slaves, bodily injury, the granting of security, and legal cases arising from agriculture and irrigation. Section eleven—the most bizarre and the harshest for women—requires a wife accused by a man other than her husband of adultery to prove her innocence by ordeal—leaping into the river (presumably the Euphrates). If she is guilty she drowns. If she survives her accuser pays her husband twenty shekels of silver. The code provides some protection for wives. A divorcing husband had to pay his wife one mina (sixty shekels) of silver, which was sufficient to purchase at least three slaves (sec. 6). This early code used conditional phrasing (“if a man” or “suppose that a man”), a legal convention that became the norm for all ancient Near Eastern precedent law.11 The same phrasing appears in the Code of Lipit-Ishtar and the Code of Hammurabi, suggesting that the Code of Ur-Nammu was their forerunner. The Sumerian Laws The background of the Sumerian laws is the least clear of any I deal with. In 1915 A. T. Clay published nine laws found on a large tablet at Erech (Uruk), northwest of Ur in southern Mesopotamia.12 Clay tentatively dated it to 2200-1800 B.C. Clay believed that the laws were those of a pre-Hammurabic ruler from the Lagash-Nippur area. However, current opinion, held by Finkelstein and others, is that a student in a scribal school of southern Mesopotamia made the compilation from an unknown source.13 It predates Hammurabi, which borrows some of its linguistic formulae.14 The nine laws cover such issues as the abuse of pregnant women, negligent loss of a boat, disinheritance, and the rape of a freeman's daughter. The sections dealing with abuse of pregnant women focus on intent. If a woman miscarried because a man “jostled” her but did not mean harm, he was fined ten shekels. But if he “smote” her, intending to cause harm, the fine was twenty shekels (secs. 1, 2). Sections 7 and 8 deal with the rape of a virgin. If the rapist knew that his victim was a freeman's daughter, the father could force him to marry her. If the rapist swore that he did not know her status, he did not have to marry her or pay a fine. Later codes such as the Middle Assyrian Laws (sec. A 55) removed this unfortunate loophole. The Laws of Eshnunna Eshnunna was north of Ur on the Tigris River and became politically important after the fall of the third dynasty of Ur, founded by Ur-Nammu. The Iraq Directorate of Antiquities found two parallel sets of tablets in 1945 and 1947 at Tell Abu Harmal near Baghdad. Albrecht Goetze of Yale University first translated them from Akkadian and published them in 1948.15 The laws concern marriage, matrimonial offenses, divorce, slaves and slave children, contracts, property, and various wrongs or injuries—all without much systematization, order, or structure.16 Sometimes a statute is most troublesome because of its omissions. For example, section 24 concerns the detainment and injury of the wife or child of a freeman against whom the perpetrator has no claim even though he may believe he has. If the wife or child dies from abuse, the perpetrator is executed. This leaves open the question of whether a creditor could legally seize and torture the family of a debtor. Another interesting provision of this code is section 59, which discourages men from abandoning their wives, after they had borne children. In such cases, the woman receives all of her husband's property. The more structured and carefully compiled Code of Hammurabi contains a high proportion of technical and semi-technical terms that are similar to the Laws of Eshnunna—for example, those depicting concepts of negligence or the methodology of stating claims. About 75 percent of the Laws of Eshnunna reappear without much change in the Code of Hammurabi—evidence that the later compiler knew the earlier code.17 The Lipit-Ishtar Code King Lipit-Ishtar reigned eleven years as the fifth ruler of the dynasty of Isin, a Babylonian city-state south of Babylon, before the unification under Hammurabi in the eighteenth century B.C.18 Lipit-Ishtar predated Hammurabi. Although his dates are disputed, he probably ruled sometime between 1900 and 1800 B.C.19 An expedition from the University of Pennsylvania uncovered four tablet fragments in Nippur during 1889-1900. These fragments were stored with about 3,000 other tablets until about 1939 when Samuel Kramer and Francis Steele of the University Museum at the University of Pennsylvania took note of them, matching them with a brief collection of seventeen laws from three Nippur fragments that F. Lutz of the University Museum had published in 1919. A fourth piece, making eight in all, had been published in 1929 by H. de Genouillac, who had found it in the Louvre. Steele put the puzzle together and published the Code of Lipit-Ishtar in 1948.20 The fragments reveal about four hundred lines of an original tablet that contained an estimated twelve hundred lines21 In the remnant of the prologue, Lipit-Ishtar claims to have brought well-being and justice to Sumer and Akkad (later Babylonia), a claim similar to that made by Hammurabi. He also claims to have freed his people from slavery and reestablished such equitable family practices as requiring fathers to support young children and the children to support aging fathers.22 The laws include thirty-eight sections from the second half of the code dealing with real estate, servitude, interest rates (ranging from 20 percent to 33.3 percent), inheritance, marriage, and penalties for damages to or caused by rented oxen. It has several innovative provisions. For example, it is the first legal code to deal substantively with the inheritances of children of plural wives, including slave wives and prostitutes. It is also the first to allow daughters to inherit from fathers, but the examples seem limited to daughters dedicated to a temple (sec. 22). Since this is the only code without a specific clause on divorce, it may be assumed that it is among the eight hundred lost lines. The code ends with a long epilogue, which reads in part: “I, Lipit-Ishtar, the son of Enlil, {the storm god} abolished enmity and rebellion; made weeping, lamentations, outcries . . . taboo; caused righteousness and truth to exist; brought well-being to the Sumerians and the Akkadians.”23 He concludes by blessing those who do not damage his stela and cursing those who do, a pattern followed by Hammurabi.24 The Code of Hammurabi The most famous, complete, and best preserved ancient legal text is that of Hammurabi, the sixth of eleven kings of the Old Babylonian dynasty,25 dating from approximately 1850 to 1550 B.C. His was a reign graced by academic achievement evidenced by grammatical texts, dictionaries, mathematical treatises more sophisticated than any by the Greeks, astronomical understanding, and more.26 During his forty-three-year reign, he consolidated the Babylonian empire and had a cylindrical diorite monument inscribed with a frieze depicting himself paying homage to Shamash, the sun-god who was also the god of justice. Engraved around the cylindrical monument was a prologue, a code of laws, and an epilogue. V. Scheil discovered this monument during the winter of 1901-1902 while he was excavating the ancient site of Susa (the biblical city of Esther and Daniel) located east of Babylon across the Tigris River in modern Iran. It had probably been carried there by a ruler who had successfully sacked Babylon.27 The prologue reads:
In general the 282-section code deals with crimes, real property, commerce, marriage, inheritance, priestesses, adoption, assault, agriculture, wages, slaves, and courts. The code specifies a three-year time limit on slavery for debt, which provides an interesting comparison to the Mosaic law's six-year limit on slavery for debt. Of particular interest are laws protecting gifts of real property to wife and daughter, requirements that marriage contracts be written, and automatic freedom at a master's death for a slave who has given birth to his children. The code, while showing signs of enlightenment, is not without some barbarism. If a woman goes into business, neglects her household, and humiliates her husband, the husband may either divorce her without compensation or marry another wife and make the first a slave.29 This code is the first to suggest that a woman has a right to divorce, but she must prove that her husband is unworthy. If she is found at fault instead, she is executed.30 This code is the most complete of the ancient world, but it was apparently not intended to be all-inclusive nor binding in the sense of modern codes but rather to give direction and representative verdicts of justice. According to its epilogue, its purpose is “to make justice to appear in the land, to destroy the evil and the wicked, [in order] that the strong might not oppress the weak.”31 Some of the code was erased, presumably by a subsequent ruler in Susa who perhaps intended to add his own achievements.32 The erasures include sections 66-99, some of which have been found in other poorly preserved sources.33 In the epilogue Hammurabi calls himself “the perfect king,” “the king who is pre-eminent among kings,” and “the king of justice,” announcing his intention “to give justice to the people of the land, widows, and orphans, and the oppressed.” Then follow about 270 lines of curses on those who dare disregard or deface his laws.34 The Edict of Ammisaduqa The Edict of Ammisaduqa is not a law code but is still an important legal document. After Hammurabi, who was the sixth ruler in the Old Babylonian Dynasty, Ammisaduqa, the tenth (about 1600 B.C.), also invoked authority from Shamash (both the god of justice and the sun-god) in his inaugural edict. This edict is unique in that it is the only substantially preserved record of the Babylonian kings' custom of proclaiming the forgiveness of debts at the beginning of their reigns and at intervals of at least seven years thereafter. Such edicts forgave all debts and obligations, returned all land holdings to their original owners, and freed all persons sold into slavery for debt. (This practice seems to be a forerunner of the Israelite law of jubilee.) Ammisaduqa's edict listed the debts, obligations, and other releases to be granted and the penalties (usually death) for failure to comply.35 The only women mentioned are slaves and female tavern keepers who, like merchants, are warned to give honest measure or die. Middle Assyrian Laws The Assyrian Dynasty rose after the breakup of the Babylonian Empire in the sixteenth century when the Hittites dethroned its dynastic rulers. The Middle Assyrian Laws were first inscribed between 1400 and 1100 B.C. The Deutsche Orientgesellschaft conducted an excavation of ancient Ashur northwest of Eshnunna on the Tigris River between 1903 and 1914. The outbreak of World War I terminated this project. Part of its discoveries were the nine tablets containing these laws. G. R. Driver and John Miles made the most important English translation in 1935. The tablets date from the reign of Tiglath-pileser (twelth century B.C.), but the laws themselves are believed to extend back to the fifteenth century B.C.36 It is not known who composed them or how extensively they were used.37 Tablets A and B (the tablets are lettered through O), are the most complete and deal with crimes, debt, corporal punishment, real property, and agriculture. Tablet A deals with family relations and gives us insight into the life-and-death power of a father over his family; control of a father-in-law over his daughter-in-law in betrothal and levirate marriage; and laws affecting adultery, rape, and abortion. Tablet C, which is moderately intact, deals with slaves, rented oxen, and bailiffs. Class distinctions seem significant, but the status of these classes remains unclear due to translation difficulties. The Hittite Code The Hittites lived isolated from the then-known world in the mountains of eastern Turkey and did not encourage visits from travelers and merchants. The first great ruler of record was Hattusilis who consolidated the kingdom and adopted his grandson Mursilis as his successor. Mursilis proved his prowess by besieging and destroying Babylon, five hundred miles away, in about 1590 B.C. On his return to the capital at Hattusa (modern Bogaskoy), he was assassinated, and the Hittite empire remained relatively stagnant for centuries. Hugo Winckler excavating in Bogaskoy, Anatolia, in 1906-1907 and 1911-12 unearthed some 13,000 clay tablets written front and back in cuneiform characters.38 French scholar Frederic Hrozny deciphered the language and published a French translation in 1922. E. Neufeld published a major English translation in 1951. These tablets contained royal decrees, treaties of Hittite monarchs, and historical, ritual, and mythological texts.39 Many of the records are ancient indeed, but most cover the imperial age, 1400 to 1200 B.C.40 Two of the tablets contained nearly two hundred sections of laws, though they were copies made late in the period with many sections in poor condition. The Hittite legal code like the Middle Assyrian laws has no preamble or epilogue. Furthermore, it is attributed to no god and does not identify protection of the weak as its purpose. In this sense it is unlike earlier codes.41 Its laws deal with murder, assault, theft, commerce, freemen, slaves, families, marriage, inheritance, and incest. They can be characterized as concise and businesslike. A number of codes describe lawful sexual activity for men. Sex with a pig, a dog, or a sheep was punishable by death, but other animals were lawful sexual partners as was any woman not falling within the incest or adultery prohibitions. (These relationships were forbidden by penalty of death.) Nuzi Laws and Customs Edward Chiera, of the American School of Oriental Research in Baghdad, excavating at the ancient city of Nuzi or Nuzu in northern Iraq near modern Kirkuk in 1925-31, discovered over 4,000 clay tablets written in cuneiform script.42 They covered four or five full generations dating from ca. 1480 to 1355 B.C. and were written in Akkadian by people who natively spoke Hurrian.43 Chiera translated some of the Nuzi tablets into English. But the most important translation is that of E. A. Speiser of the University of Pennsylvania beginning in the late 1920s. The Nuzi legal documents are important because they describe a number of customs with biblical parallels such as adoption for childless couples, inheritance rights of daughters, the responsibility of a wife to provide a substitute if she is unable to bear children, and benefits to slaves who bear children to their mistresses' husbands.44 The Law of Moses The Mosaic law occupies a special place in Judeo-Christian culture as part of its canon. Although many codes claim a divine origin, Mosaic law directly influences our current legal system. The religious-ethical tradition of the patriarchs had been lost, and there was a need for a legal system to firmly establish regulation of cultural and social mores. The Decalogue (Ten Commandments) is ascribed to the finger of God on Mount Sinai. The text identifies Moses as the source of the codes in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, although most modern scholars adhere to the documentary hypothesis of Julius Wellhausen that the Pentateuch (the five books of Moses) was written by several authors between the ninth and fifth centuries B.C. The identity of the code's author is not at issue in this study. The story of the daughters of Zelophehad (Num. 27:1-11) is an example of how the Bible claims the legal code beyond the Decalogue emerged. The issue was raised regarding the inheritance of daughters in the absence of sons. It was presented to the Lord, the God of Israel, who considered the matter, determined the result, and told Moses how to formulate a statute. In this case it was concluded if a man should die without sons, his estate would pass to his daughters and if there were no daughters to his nearest relatives (vv. 9-11). Although many of the statutes attributable to Moses derived from specific fact situations, others may have had their origin in previous codes and nomadic customs. An example of dependence on a previous code is Exodus 21:35, which could have been copied (at least in one detail) from the Laws of Eshnunna, section 53:
Or compare the lex talionis (eye for an eye) provision of the Code of Hammurabi, sections 196, 197, 200, with Exodus 21:23-25; Leviticus 24:19-20; and Deuteronomy 19:21:
A third example is this Middle Assyrian law, section 8:
Deuteronomy 24:11-12 is a striking parallel, but its stringent punishment was based on the mere act of touching a man's genitals, whether she injures him or not:
Although these and other similarities seem to demonstrate the natural evolution of law, the Mosaic Law was certainly unique. It set the Israelites apart yet did not leave them at an economic and legal disadvantage with their neighbors. For instance, in the matter of the ox goring described above, the Mosaic code adds the penalty of stoning the ox (Ex. 21:28); the penalty of death for the owner if he knew the ox was dangerous (v. 29); the penalty of vicarious liability if his ox gored a son or a daughter—or a payment in lieu (vv. 30-31); or the payment of damages where someone digs a pit into which an ox falls (vv. 33-34). In addition, contemporary legal systems provided multiple penalties for lawbreakers, but Israel's judges were usually limited to one penalty, generally less violent than those of their contemporaries. A major significant modification required that Hebrew slaves-for-debt be treated more as brother/servants than as slaves. Neo-Babylonian Law Though the most recent of these ancient codes, the Neo-Babylonian laws are the least well preserved. Only eleven sections are legible. F. E. Peiser found them in the British Museum, translated them into English, and published them in 1899. The laws date from the sixth century B.C. and cover such matters as ownership of land, the treatment of female slaves, and marriage. The most important section (12) deals with a widow's right to share in her husband's estate if he does not provide for her before his death. Nothing else is remarkably different from earlier codes. Jewish Law According to Jewish faith, God revealed the written law (Torah or Pentateuch) and the oral law to Moses at Sinai. Moses handed the oral law down to Joshua, where it descended to the elders of Israel, thence to the prophets (including Ezra ca. 400 B.C.), to the Great Sanhedrin, to one of the last of its eminent members, Simeon the Just (ca. 280 B.C.), and through five pairs of great scholars, ending with Hillel and Shammai. It then continued through a series of rabbis to Judah the prince, redactor of the Mishnah around A.D. 200.48 Ezra is usually credited with compiling the Old Testament as we have it today after Israel's return from the Babylonian exile. This means that the laws and customs of this important biblical period could have been influenced by Neo-Babylon. However, except for such stories as Daniel and Esther, there is little evidence of Neo-Babylonian law in the canon. In 333 B. C. Jaddua, high priest at Jerusalem, surrendered on behalf of his small nation to Alexander the Great, bringing Israel under Greek domination. When Alexander's empire was divided at his death, Palestine came under the rule of the Ptolemies of Egypt until the campaign of Antiochus III in 198 B. C. moved it into the Syrian sphere of influence under the Seleucids. In 166 B. C. the Jews, under Judas Maccabeus, revolted. After a series of victories against the Seleucid armies, Maccabean troops took over the temple mount at Jerusalem. For the next several years, control of Jerusalem swayed back and forth between the Seleucids and the Maccabees.49 Eventually, Israel became a vassal state with limited autonomy. Four groups of historical importance dominate these years of political turmoil: the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Essenes, and the Zealots. The Sadducees were the priestly aristocracy—the old guard—who sought to maintain the status quo. They relied on the written law and rejected the authority of oral law.50 They were also an elite priestly family which traced its ancestry to early Israelite leaders. Through their temple administrations people's sins were forgiven (Lev. 4:20, 26). Their strategy was to maintain leadership and control of temple rites through accommodation with Seleucids, Greeks, Hasmoneans, and Romans.51 As the position of high priest became politicized, the Sadducees lost credibility. The Pharisees appear to have had their roots in the common people. They resisted any kind of collaboration with hellenism and made the purity of the law their rallying cry,52 although they expanded the legal code through incorporation of oral law, which they assigned a status equal or superior to written law. They transferred worship from the temple to the home and synagogue, adapting temple purification rites as personal rites for practice at home.53 Ironically they also borrowed hellenistic forms and forums. For example, they replaced priesthood leadership with a class of scholars and adopted logical-deductive reasoning to solve scriptural or legal problems.54 At some point, probably in the latter half of the second century B.C., the monastic Essenes formed in the desert, decrying the wickedness of urban Judaism, the politicizing of the temple by the Hasmoneans, and predicting divine retribution.55 A small political group known as the Zealots also emerged. These were men of Maccabean mien who believed in political independence. In response to their revolt in A.D. 66, Roman emperor Titus destroyed Jerusalem four years later. The Essenes buried their writings in caves near Qumran and fled down the coast of the Dead Sea to Herod's great but abandoned fortress at Massada to join the surviving Zealots, where they all perished. Thus two of the four groups were massacred, and the third, the Sadducees, lost its basis for authority with the destruction of the temple. The Pharisees became the unchallenged spiritual leaders of Judaism. It would be incorrect to assume a high degree of unanimity among the Pharisees on oral law. Judaism was plagued by schisms of rival schools for years.56 Then Rabbi Judah the Prince (A.D. 170-219) sorted through the divergent opinions and reduced the oral law to writing—the Mishnah, published about A.D. 200 and accepted by virtually all significant factions. Practicing Jews accept the Torah as comprising two parts: the “Written” Torah or Old Testament and the “Oral” Torah or Mishnah. Two major commentaries on the oral Torah then followed. The scholars of Jerusalem published the Jerusalem Talmud (Yerushalmi) in about A.D. 400. The Jewish scholars of Babylon published the Babylonian Talmud (Bavli) about A.D. 600. Both are revered, but the Babylonian Talmud is esteemed as more authoritative. The Mishnah and the Talmud are important historical documents, created by legal scholars during the first six centuries of the Common Era. They give invaluable insights into Mosaic laws, particularly those in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. I cite them throughout the following chapters.
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1. Raymond Westbrook, “Biblical and Cuneiform Law Code,” Revue Biblique 92 (1985): 249. 2. Bernard S. Jackson, “Reflections on Biblical Criminal Law,” Journal of Jewish Studies 24 (1973): 9. 3. Westbrook, “Biblical and Cuneiform Law,” 252. 4. G. R. Driver and J. C. Miles, The Babylonian Laws, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 1:9, 11. 5. James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, including Supplement, 1969), 523. 6. John Bright, A History of Israel (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1959), 35, 53. 7. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 523. 11. William W. Hallo and William K. Simpson, The Ancient Near East, A History (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), 80. 12. S. Langdon, “The Sumerian Law Code Compared with the Code of Hammurabi,” The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (1920): 491-92. 13. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 525. 14. Langdon, “The Sumerian Law Code,” 491. 15. Reuven Yaron, ed., The Laws of Eshnunna (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1969), vii. 17. Driver and Miles, The Babylonian Laws, 1:9. 18. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 159. 19. Francis Rue Steele, “The Code of Lipit-Ishtar,” American Journal of Archaeology 51 (1947): 159; 52 (1948): 425. 22. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 159. 24. Steele, “Code of Lipit-Ishtar,” 430. 25. Driver and Miles, The Babylonian Laws, 1:xxiv. 26. Bright, History of Israel, 52. 27. Driver and Miles, The Babylonian Laws, 1:28. 28. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 164. 29. Code of Hammurabi 141, in Driver and Miles, The Babylonian Laws, 2:55. 30. Code of Hammurabi 143, in ibid., 2:57. 34. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 178-80. 36. Ibid., 180; G. R. Driver and J. C. Miles, The Assyrian Laws (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935), 4-7. 38. E. Neufeld, The Hittite Laws (London: Luzac & Co. Ltd., 1951), 70, 78. 42. Thomas L. Thompson, The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1974), 197. 44. Roland de Vaux, The Early History of Israel (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1978), 241-56. 45. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 163. 48. Aboth 1, 2, in Herbert Danby, trans., The Mishnah (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 446-49. 49. Moshe Pearlman, The Maccabees (Jerusalem: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), 192; J. Alberto Soggin, A History of Israel; From the Beginnings to the Bar Kochba Revolt, A.D. 135, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM Press Ltd., 1984), 306. 50. Solomon Zeitlin, A Study of the History of Judaism (New York: KTAV Publishing House, 1973), 103. 51. Soggin, History of Israel, 312. 52. Bright, History of Israel, 431. 53. Jacob Neusner, Judaism in the Beginning of Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 57. 54. Ellis Rivkin, “Pharisaism and the Crisis of the Individual in the Greco-Roman World,” Jewish Quarterly Review 61 (July 1970): 30. 55. Neusner, Judaism in the Beginning of Christianity, 26. 56. George Horowitz, The Spirit of Jewish Law (New York: Bloch Publishing House, 1973), 32. |
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