Overview: Origins of the main Torah laws, its influence from other cultures, and the areas where Torah advanced novel revolutionary ideas to the world.
Torah is definitely the most influential book of history, sprouting the seeds for the world’s major Abrahamic religions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. As a result, many tend to think that Torah revolutionized society. And that is true, but equally as true is that Torah did not invent most of its laws, ideas, and theologies. The vast majority of Torah consists of ideas from local ancient Near Eastern cultures, while at times it rejects certain practices of the time. Sometimes it kept the law/idea intact, and in many cases it modified it to fit the semi-monotheistic bend of Torah and to moralize certain laws it deemed immoral.
To give a broad ranging sample selection of the many laws in Torah, here is a list of what Orthodoxy regards as the fundamental Jewish laws. We will briefly examine their origins and see that Torah is not as novel as many think of it to be. Following that will be the Maimonidean approach to Torah’s revolution and examples of revolutionary new ideas introduced by Torah.[1]
Belief in one God:
The Canaanites and their primarily Ugaritic religion believed in a pantheon of gods. This consisted of many divine beings, or gods, that each served a specific role on Earth. At their head sat the Supreme God, whom they called EL, or EL Elyon. The Israelites, who spoke a Semitic language similar to that of the Canaanites, used the same generic phrase EL to denote “supreme God.” Thus, YHWH was His personal name and EL was his description, in Israelite literature. Alternatively, the biblical conception of God was influenced by Canaanite mythology and thus they both had in mind the same God EL.
Scholars have found much extra-biblical evidence of Canaanite worship of EL as the supreme deity, creator of heaven and earth, the father of humankind, the husband of the goddess Asherah, and the parent of the many other gods. EL is found at the top of a gods-list in the royal library of the Ebla civilization in Syria, dated to about 2300 BCE. Canaanites for the most part thought of EL as too lofty to serve and needed intermediaries to relate to him, predominantly Baal (a son of EL) and Asherah (wife of EL). Other nations predominantly served other gods; Assyrians served their national god Ashur, Egypt served the sun-god Ra, and the Babylonians Marduk. Canaanite mythology also speaks of a Council of Gods.
They believed that the gods needed a home to reside as well as food, drink, and entertainment. They therefore built temples for their gods, sacrificed food, and poured liquids. They sang and blew trumpets in music. The Torah commanded these very same services of God.
Tanakh also speaks of the Council of Gods, inferior gods in heaven, and each nation being allotted a god to serve (see here for more on this subject), much like the Canaanite conception of the divine. There are a few major differences ,though. In biblical theology, Israelites are only allowed to serve the Supreme God EL, allowing for no idol worshipping of the inferior gods. Secondly, even the worship of EL cannot be done via any image or replica. Thirdly, EL was regarded as the national-god of the Israelites (each nation would have their specific god they would focus worship on).
It should be noted that difference number 1 between the Canaanite theology and Israelite, was not a biblical innovation. In 1500 BCE, Pharaoh Akhenaten served the sun-god Aten, regarding it as the Creator of Heaven and Earth. He regarded him as the Supreme God and the only one worthy of worship. His legacy was a disgrace for later Pharaohs who made sure to erase his memory from Egyptian history. They succeeded in returning Egypt to its traditional polytheism.
Shabbos: The closest linguistic parallel to a Sabbath is the Sabbattu, or Shappatum, in ancient Sumer. This rarely attested-to day was apparently a day of quieting the god’s heart on the fifteenth day of the month. However, there is no indication that they rested from labor on that day, and had that been the case we’d expect more evidence for such a practice.
Perhaps a closer parallel would be of the lunar “holy days” observed by the priests and officials in ancient Babylon. Following every 7th day in the lunar calendar, the government officials refrained from their duties while the priests offered special sacrifices. They did this on the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th of the lunar month. Sometimes they did it on the 29th, 30th or 31st day of the month, if the month was longer than 28 days.
The biblical Sabbath is thus unique in its application to every citizen, as well as slave, but an idea partially borrowed from the Babylonians customs preceding Torah.
Circumcision: Circumcision was a practice done by many cultures from several thousand years ago, each at different stages in their life. The custom was widespread in Egypt, with many of the Pharaoh’s mummies found to have been circumcised. It is not clear why ancient cultures practiced circumcision, with many theories having been suggested (see here). The biblical command to circumcise seems to represent some sort of permanent covenant in the skin that reflects the special relationship between the Israelites and YHWH their God; but the idea was no novel one.
Kosher: Dietary restrictions exist in many cultures (see here), making the biblical dietary laws unoriginal. Some of the standard dietary laws practiced by Jews today are nowhere to be found in Torah, having rabbinical roots or based on rabbinical interpretations of the text. For example, the slaughter of an animal is not mandated anywhere in Torah.[2] Similarly, the mandate against eating milk and meat together is based on the biblical law not to “cook a goat in its mother’s milk.” While the interpretation may be justified,[3] by no means can we claim for certain that this Jewish practice is biblical in origin.
Tefillin: Amulets are, and especially were, very common throughout history. Head amulets played a role as jewelry, and as protective agents from evil spirits. So although original in its details, the Tefillin concept is no novelty to the ancient world. One might even argue that Tefillin is not a biblical concept (see Rashbam on Ex. 13:9 for an alternative explanation for the verse generally attributed as the biblical source for Tefillin).
Niddah: The laws of abstaining from a Niddah (a menstruating woman) were found in cultures all around the world as far as ancient Japan.[4] Thus, this strange ritual law can hardly be regarded as a biblical innovation.
Purpose of Torah:
Updating cultural norms
Progress is often achieved with compromise and small reforms one at a time. Ideal end-goals are often theoretical when the world is not at the level to achieve that specific goal. A classic example in politics is utopian Marxism that envisions a world where everyone is equal and in harmony with one another. However, the world cannot (yet) achieve such a radical societal switch, as history has demonstrated in the various failed Communist states. Perhaps at some time in the future, Marxist communism will be achievable and achieved. At that time, some people may look back into history, to our times, and wonder why we are so morally corrupt to not embrace that ideal society. But that judgment is in error, since such a society is not yet practical and cannot be achieved without that communist government spiraling into a dictatorship and a corrupt elites’ club.
Maimonides (Moreh, 3:32) understands Torah in the same light. God wanted to morally advance the Jewish people and let them be a role model for the other nations. In order to advance the semi-barbaric primitive-minded Israelites, Torah adopted common pagan practices of the time, like sacrifices and other common rituals. But the caveat is that these sacrifices would be sacrificed for the One God instead of the pagan gods. Other laws would be kept but morally modified. By not completely reforming societal norms of the time, Torah ensured that it wouldn’t be abandoned by a nation influenced by the many trends and practices of the time.
This, of course, is from a Maimonidean perspective of divine inspiration of the biblical text. If we assume that the Torah is a man-made document, like all other documents of the time, then these cultural dependencies of biblical law and ritual would be no compromise. Instead, it would be the result of scribes hoping to keep laws they thought were good (being a product of that era, they would have thought like all people of that era) and modifying them in specific aspects in order to achieve whatever political and religious reforms they wanted to establish.
Below are examples of modifications done to already-existing laws and rituals.
Sacrifices
Many of the sacrifices listed in the Torah with detailed ritual are strikingly identical to pagan sacrificial rituals done for their pagan gods. In the pagan temples, the priests would offer meat and bread to satisfy the deity’s hunger, incense to please him, pour wine and water to quench their thirst, and sing songs to appease them. These procedures were done in the Israelite temple as well, but specifically for the One God YHWH.
The 70 bulls sacrificed on Sukkot are reminiscent of the 70 lambs offered on the pagan festival of Zukru. This was the equivalent of Sukkot in the Western-Semitic influential city of Emar in modern-day Syria. They would offer 70 lambs for the 70 gods of Emar at the turn of the new year; but in the Israelite Temple, these same sacrifices were all offered to YHWH instead of a multitude of gods.[5]
The Three Festivals
The three agricultural festivals in Torah are essentially Canaanite and Babylonian festivals with a new Judaic twist to them. Many ancient agricultural societies celebrated annual markers that signified the completion of the first harvest (October time – Sukkot in the Torah) and turn of the new year.
The Babylonian Akitu was a celebration done in the spring month of Nissanu to celebrate the sowing of barley. Passover derives directly from this ancient custom but has a uniquely Jewish twist that celebrates the liberation from Egypt and the Covenant between God and His people Israel.
The Zukru festival of Emar[6] is mentioned as an annual celebration in autumn (just like the annual Sukkot) and as a once in seven years festival (Sukkot on Hakhel – Deut. 31:10-11). 70 lambs were sacrifices just as is done on Sukkot. The Sukkot holiday, however, had an Israelite twist to it. It commemorated the protection that God provided to the Israelites leaving Egypt.
The atzeret holiday at the end of Sukkot and Passover was used as a method of adding days to a calendar that was falling out of sync. In the Pentecontad calendar, used by many Canaanites, every 49 days concluded with an additional “atzeret” (Akk. and Heb. abstain) day. This is perhaps similar to the Shavuot holiday that came after a 49-day period from Passover, and is called Atzeret in rabbinic literature. This holiday celebrated the harvest of wheat. Although no biblical twist is given to this Shavuot holiday, the rabbis gave meaning to it by exclaiming that the revelation at Sinai occurred on this day.
These are, again, all examples of biblical modifications for pre-existing agricultural holidays. Other examples include the adaptation of common laws of the time, but giving them a moral twist to enhance Israelite morality. These include the laws of a goring ox (see here), the compromises Torah made for slavery (see here), the rebellious child (see here), and the female war-captive (see here).
While this Maimonidean approach answers many historical issues with Torah and its cultural dependence on other legal codes and rituals of the time, it comes with a major theological problem. If the whole point of these laws were to wean the Israelites out of these primitive acts (like sacrifice and slavery), what do we now do after millennia of societal progress where these are no longer issues any more in today’s society? Does most of Torah no longer apply? This is indeed what many Reform theologians argued. Truth is, there is no good answer to this question, since we have no divine guidance telling us how to act in today’s advanced society. Orthodox Jews will find that guidance in the directives of contemporary rabbis; but that is human directive rather than divine.
New biblical innovations
In addition to the revolutionary concept of serving an invisible deity, Creator of Heaven and Earth, and a national weekly rest-day, several other major innovations were instituted in Torah Law:
Revolutionary moral order
Torah introduces a new moral order not explicitly in the text, but one obvious from the new biblical perspective. In the pagan religions, morality was mostly a way of appeasing the gods so that they won’t strike you down and so that you get rewarded with material pleasures. Torah had a similar approach but with a whole new dynamic. In paganism, the specific deity who will give you more reward is the deity you will worship (and each nation may have a specific deity favoring them and usually worshipped). In contrast, biblical theology has the Creator of the world as the Giver of the Law. Thus, these new laws appeal to our moral elements on a deeper level and our strive to do what’s right by doing the Will of our Creator and the Creator of all morals.
Revolutionary social order
Biblical innovation is most apparent in civil law. Torah had a more moral, equal, and modern-appealing approach to economics, government, and social behavior.[7] This is not to say that Torah law is completely compatible with modern law and modern morality, but that it was a revolutionary stride in its times towards a more fair and equal society. The Toral Law adopted from other dominant Law Codes of the time but added some major innovations towards a more egalitarian society.
In many ways, Torah Law is at odds with modern social and moral norms. Examples include treatment of women and homosexuals, as well as the treatment of Canaanites and other Israelite enemies. Torah law has its moral issues that require earnest discussion, but the point of this particular discussion is the areas where Torah broke away from ancient political and moral thought.
Diminishing the monarchy
In the Ancient Near East, monarchies played a central role in religion and politics. Kings usually portray themselves as the intermediaries between the people and the gods. They were the makers of the Law and were thus usually above the Law. This viewpoint was important for them to retain their near-divine-like image and power over the people.
Torah Law does not mandate a king; in fact, it almost disregards it as a mere cultural norm (Deut. 17:14-15). There is no divine legal authority attributed to them; no priestly tasks assigned to them. They are limited to a small cavalry (Deut. 17:16). These kings are explicitly warned to follow the Law, as they are not above the Law (Deut. 17:18-20). The Covenant between God and His People Israel does not involve the king but is rather a direct Covenant with the people themselves, including the lower elements of Israelite society (Deut. 29:9-11).
Equal law
Kings in the Ancient Near East would pride themselves as being in the image of the gods. This granted them more authority and recognition as instruments in a divine mission on Earth. In biblical theology, all people were created in the Image of God (Gen. 1:27, 5:1), so that they all have human value and purpose in the divine mission on Earth.
There is no distinction between the social classes in biblical Law. The Code of Hammurabi, for example, distinguishes between the elite, free men, and slaves. The other Ancient Near East had similar class divisions with different laws applied to each of the classes. Thus, the penalty for injuring someone from a “lower status” was less severe than the punishment for injuring an equal or someone with higher status. Torah Law had nothing of that; all laws are applied equally to all people.[8]
Just as the commoners, the kings were bound to the law (Deut. 17:18-20) as were the prophets (Deut. 13:1-6).
Social welfare programs
Torah Law had several economic institutions in place to prevent the poor from becoming poorer and the rich from becoming increasingly richer. These laws included preventive measures as well as remedies to help the poor. Ancient Near Eastern kings often assisted the poor, but the biblical institutions are the first to establish these permanent, wide-scale laws to control the economy and prevent the rich from exploiting the poor. Another differentiation to be made is that while the kings assisted the poor for social stability purposes, the Torah did so for a moral sacred goal in the perspective that all people are created in the divine image.
Most significant of such laws are the following:
Social welfare taxation: A tenth of all earnings are used to feed the poor and landless Levites every third year (Deut. 14:27–29; 26:12–15).
The corners of the fields are not to be cut; they are to be left for the poor people (and the roaming animals) to consume (Lev. 19:9-10).
Every 7th year the field lies fallow for the poor people to take as they please (Ex. 23:11).
The Israelites were also commanded to glean, or not excessively collect from olive trees, so that the needy can feed on the leftovers (Deut. 24:20).
Relatives are to bail out the debt of a man who was desperate for cash and sold his field (Lev. 25:25).
All debts are cancelled every 7 years (Deut. 15:2, although an alternative interpretation is that only in that specific year he cannot demand his debt payment).
Every 50 years (Called Jubilee) the economy effectively resets. Land, the main source of wealth in an agrarian society was redistributed from the rich who had accumulated it over the previous 50 years and given back to the families and clans who owned it before. The same law applied to houses in some cases (Lev. 25:10-55).
Loans should be given with no interest (Lev. 25:36).
While it is questionable if such laws were followed by the masses in ancient Israel, it is clear that the biblical vision was a revolutionary take on a society that was till then based on division and on power. The Torah advocated for the underdog; the stranger, the orphan, and the widow, in its attempt to make the world a better place.[9] The Torah was to have a profound effect on society to come, with a new social and moral order to replace the thought of the Ancient Near East.
___________________
[1] We will not come with the perspective that Torah is or isn’t divine. This discussion is also intended to look at Torah as a final completed document, irrespective of who wrote it and when they wrote it.
[2] Deut. 12:21, an oft-cited example, is misunderstood; see Ramban on that verse where he explains the phrase “as I have commanded you” in reference to Lev. 17. The mention of slaughtering the animal seems to just be causal talk for eating meat, since that was the most common method of killing animals back then. Had it been an intentional law, we would expect to have it more vivid like the rest of biblical law, stating explicitly that only slaughter will deem it kosher for consumption.
[3] The Torah speaks of the typical case as an example for the broader qualifications. The most classic example of mixing milk and meat in those days was cooking a goat in its mother’s milk. Those days, people didn’t have the luxurious taste-buds and dishes that we have today. There were no cheeseburgers or anything beyond the simple dish as it is; meat wasn’t dressed (much). Food was just as simple as life in general was back then.
The only practical, common time milk and meat were mixed was if the actual meat was being cooked in milk. Now, most meats are heavy and require a far longer time to cook than milk. So cooking them in milk would burn the milk. The only practical meat to cook in milk was the soft fast-cooking meat of a goat. Goats give birth to two kids at a time on average, and sometimes even more. So it was the custom to cook one or both of the goats in the extra milk that the mother produced from pregnancy. Another possibility is that goat’s meat dominated the markets in that time and region. The Torah mentions the most common example where milk and meat were eaten together and by doing so it prohibits the consumption of any milk and meat.
The Torah only mentions its cooking, but the same law certainly applies to eating the mixture as well as Halacha mandates. The term chelev (which can either mean milk or fats) means milk in this context because the consumption of fats was already prohibited in Leviticus 7:23.
[4] See https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/purity-and-impurity-ritual:
“Several scholars have stressed the similarity between the laws of purity and impurity in the Bible and those of the ancient Near East, including Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the ancient Hittites. According to Herodotus (1,198), it was customary in Babylon to bathe in water after cohabitation and it was forbidden to touch any utensil prior to this. According to an ancient Babylonian text, a man touching a menstruating woman was unclean for six days. The pig was considered unclean, although it was not considered forbidden food. In Egypt it was forbidden for a man to enter the temple after cohabitation unless he first bathed, and the priests bathed twice daily and twice nightly. The king of Egypt purified himself every morning (cf. Ex. 7:15).
Among the Hittites a corpse was considered impure and there is evidence of a detailed ritual for the purification of a mother after giving birth. Despite these significant similarities and the ancient, pre-monotheistic roots for many Israelite purity practices, any effort to understand the purpose and meaning of these practices as systematized by the monotheizing priestly writings in Lev. 12–16 must attend to the larger symbolism of impurity and holiness in those writings. Thus, although Babylonian purity rites are accompanied by healing incantations, it cannot be assumed that biblical purification rites as crafted by the priestly writers are designed to heal, since they occur only after the diseased condition (abnormal genital emission, ẓara’at) has already ceased.
In some cultures purity regulations serve as tools of subordination. There is little evidence to suggest that Israelite purity regulations served this function. Ritual impurity is not a permanent or long-lasting stigma applied to certain groups selectively. The biblical system of ritual impurity is impermanent and applies to all Israelites – priests and lay Israelites, men and women.”
[5] https://www.thetorah.com/article/sukkots-seventy-bulls
[6] Also mentioned in the Mari archives, testifying its prevalence in Western Asia.
[7] See Joshua Berman’s Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought.
[8] There are a few exceptions though. An example is a master who hits a slave, in which some circumstances he will be exempt from punishment (Ex. 21:21). Another example is the different treatment for an Israelite slave to a Canaanite slave (Lev. 25:39-46).
Women were treated equally under the law, although there were societal gender roles. Men would inherit land while women did not. This is because men were the bread earners while the women were the house-keepers. The men were required to feed and house their wives. Women are not barred from public positions in Torah, but we see that they very rarely did fill such positions.
[9] It should be noted that Torah was not the first to express sympathy for these underprivileged people. For example, the prologue to the Code of Hammurabi expresses its will to protect these underprivileged by providing a law code for society. For more on this, see Widow, Orphan, and the Poor in Ancient near Eastern Legal and Wisdom Literature, F. Charles Fensham, p. 129-139 (found here).
Thank you for another great essay. I agree with what you wrote.
The revolution of the Bible is that for the first time in the history of humanity G-d is not merely a power of nature but is the source of morality (ie he is a G-d who demands morality) and, thus, the essence of religion is morality. Additionally, rituals play a lesser role in the biblical worldview. Whereas the ancient pagans used all kinds of rituals and incantations to influences god/s, the Biblical G-d cannot be influenced or enchanted. Thus, rituals and sacrifices are human-oriented (ie they influence humans to become better people, both morally and spiritually).