(Serializing here the draft of my book, Biblical Law: Divine Justice.)
3. Basic Biblical Law Code
The Covenant of Moses was for that people, in that land, at that time in history. It was never meant to be universal. Further, it ended at the Cross. Jesus was the final fulfillment of the purpose of the Law Covenant. The nation was no longer a special project of God, just another tribal nation in a sea of humanity. Jesus had already said their DNA didn’t mean a thing: “God could raise up children of Abraham from these stones” (Matthew 3:9). This was a shocking contrast to the Jewish attitude that, God having once elected them as His Chosen, even He could not rescind that decision. Yet there is ample evidence from the prophets and the even as far back as the day of adoption at Mount Sinai that the Covenant was entirely conditional upon their faithfulness.
Though that covenant is now an artifact of history, Paul warned Timothy that it remained as the record of how we should think about God. So we study the Old Testament as the source from which we abstract a proper image of His divine character. While the particulars of the Law no long apply to anyone at all, they portray God as He preferred to be seen by mankind. It was by far the clearest expression of His nature. It was not as if He chose Israel from among many other candidate nations. He created Israel specifically for this purpose. Indeed, the prophets indicated they were easily the worst nation God could choose, often suggesting that, had any other nation been in their place, the story would have ended quite differently. But it did end and we are left with the legacy of their failure to study and understand.
At the same time, there is a far older Law Covenant still in force today. It was not a national covenant, but universal in scope: The Covenant of Noah. So long as there are rainbows in the sky, Noah is still binding on the human race.
While we generally shouldn’t trust the Talmud — what Jesus dismissed as the “tradition of the elders” — for much, what it says regarding the Noahic Laws (sometimes Noachide) seems consistent with Scripture. There are seven according to official sources:
1. Do Not Deny God (prohibition against idolatry)
2. Do Not Blaspheme God (more specifically, cursing His name)
3. Do Not Murder
4. Do Not Engage in Incestuous, Adulterous or Homosexual Relationships (includes prohibition against bestiality)
5. Do Not Steal
6. Do Not Eat of a Live Animal (also stated as meat with blood in it)
7. Establish Courts/Legal System to Ensure Law Obedience
You will notice that the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 echoes these same laws. It should be simple enough to recognize that they saw no need to restate 2, 3, 5 and 7. Blasphemy was too obvious, and the rest were covered under civil law already. It’s the remaining provisions that would have been news to most Gentiles. What we notice is that the Council considered these applicable to Gentiles, while Jews would have already been in the habit of obeying Moses. The two were more or less equivalent in that sense. (We note the Council read the sixth as a matter of meat with blood in it, in that context a reference to pagan ritual strangling.)
Indeed, given that Noah preceded Moses, and still stands after the end of Moses, we surmise that Moses was rather like a particular expression of Noah, being far more detailed and narrowly tailored to Israelis. You will also notice the Seven Noahic Laws parallel the Ten Commandments somewhat. However, the Decalogue is part of Moses, and not specifically binding on us today. Rather, like the rest of Moses’ Law, we use it reveal the moral character of God.
So how do we get those seven laws from the rather simple declaration in the Flood Narrative in Genesis 9? The business of not eating blood is clearly stated, but it seems the focus is on executing murderers. The folks who extrapolated those extra requirements were quite familiar with the very different assumptions people held back in the days of Noah. Is anyone surprised that those who wrote the ancient Scripture were addressing their own social context? Why would they state the obvious when they had no idea what would be forgotten in future generations? Our task is to make some effort to recover as much of that social and intellectual context as possible. Not in the sense of slavish emulation, but to understand why God chose to reveal Himself in that context so that we can discern what applies to us here and now.
Again, this Code of Noah remains binding on all human governments, and the entire human race as individuals. This becomes the basic reference for biblical law. However, there were a raft of basic assumptions about life that Noah and his immediate descendants held that are completely missing from our world today.
