It is clear in the Bible and ancient Near Eastern texts that men were sorcerers, yet Exodus 22:17 seems to single out women in its command, “You shall not permit a witch to live.”

In 1902, Friedrich Delitzsch argued in his Babel und Bibel (Babylon and the Bible) lecture series that the biblical texts are dependent upon and inferior to those of Babylonia. A key piece of evidence was the Hammurabi Stele, discovered only months before, but traditional scholars responded by maintaining the ethical superiority of Mosaic law.

The Torah’s prohibition against loaning money with interest addresses a culture of subsistence farmers. Later Jews devised halakhic loopholes to enable them to make use of credit instruments such as the suftaja and to participate in market economies.

Rashi’s Torah commentary is largely adapted from classic rabbinic sources, including midrash halakhah. And yet, he often changes their meaning in his revisions. Where does Rashi get the authority to make these changes?

The requirement of a “life for a life,” recalling the lex talionis, is provided when a man accidentally kills a pregnant woman in a brawl. While this consequence is generally explained as capital punishment or monetary repayment, its legal formulation in the Covenant Collection is suggestive of live, human, substitution.

The Feast of Ingathering is “at the tzet (צֵאת) of the year” (Exod 23:16). This phrase is generally translated as “the end of the year,” but a closer look at the meaning of the Hebrew verb in biblical Hebrew suggests it may mean the beginning.

The author of the Covenant Collection in Exodus knew the Laws of Hammurabi and revised them to fit with Israelite legal and ethical conceptions. This is clear when we compare their laws of assault in each.

For the first nine hundred years after the writing of the Mishnah in the early third century, Jews thought that laws about bailees or custodians (שומרים) in the Mishnah and in the Talmud corresponded closely to the plain meaning (peshat) of the Torah. But in the Middle Ages, Rashbam challenged that assumption, proposing an understanding of the Torah that contradicted Jewish law.

A 2000-year-old question on how to read a single word in the Torah has generated different opinions on how a custodian for someone’s animal should go about proving that the animal was killed by a beast and not stolen.

The designation ivri in the legal corpora of the Pentateuch is found only in the laws of slavery. So who is this ivri slave and why was he sold?

Four accounts of revelation and laws, but one religion

A classic example of source criticism applied to Torah legislation.

The Torah prohibits lending to poor people with interest. Why did Jewish law include business loans and how did this effect the law’s original purpose?

A Comparative Analysis

The word שור in Hebrew can refer to an ox or a bull, but which animal is the protagonist of the celebrated law of שור נגח, “the goring bovine”? 

The religiosity of civil law and the obligation to use only Jewish courts: Rashi’s fourfold homily on Exodus 21:1.

. . . and the Challenges of Putting it into Practice.

“YHWH said to Moses: ‘Come up to me on the mountain and stay there so that I might give you the tablets of stone and the teaching and the commandment that I have written to teach them.’”—Exodus 24:12

Exodus 22:28 commands Israel to give its firstborn sons to God, and makes no mention of redeeming them. What exactly is being commanded?

Early biblical laws demand a cessation of labor every seven days, but that was unconnected to Shabbat, which was originally a full moon celebration.

A bold interpretation of the verse “do not cook a kid in its mother’s milk,” from medieval commentator Bekhor Shor (12^th cent. CE) leads to an intriguing academic explanation of inner-biblical exegesis charting the development of the mitzvah. 

Traditional and Critical Approaches