Torah Before Sinai - The BAS Library
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Home > Magazines > Bible Review > June 1996

Torah Before Sinai

The do’s and don’ts before the Ten Commandments

By Gary A. Anderson

The Law was given at Sinai. But what was the situation before Sinai? Was there no law then? Were the patriarchs free to do what they pleased, free from the constraints of law? More than 2,000 years ago, perhaps just as the ink used to write the Torah was drying, the first interpreters of biblical texts began to ask these questions. They came up with some intriguing answers. As the biblical text now stands, Israel received the complete legislative pattern for her existence at Sinai: the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20) and a complete legal code governing nearly every aspect […]

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Footnotes

1.

See Rashi’s commentary on the Torah, at Genesis 1:1.

2.

A midrash is a method of interpreting the biblical text by providing a short narrative or anecdote that accounts for some irregularity or problem in the text. This particular example can be found in Judah Goldin’s The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan, Version A, (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1955), p. 20.

3.

The Book of Jubilees was especially popular at Qumran; at least 15 copies of it were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Also, many of its expressions and ideas are similar to those in other Dead Sea Scrolls. Clearly there was a close connection between the community that produced Jubilees and the one reflected in the sectarian documents from Qumran.

4.

See Raphael Levy, “First ‘Dead Sea Scroll’ Found in Egypt Fifty Years Before Qumran Discoveries,” BAR 08:05.