What are some errors to avoid when studying Biblical law?

⮜ Answered Questions

Here is a list of common errors which I have encountered in scholarship on Biblical law. Often, many of these errors are committed simultaneously by a particular commentator/teacher:

1. Relying upon Rabbinic interpretations of (and methods of interpreting) Biblical law. The Rabbis continued many of the errors of the Pharisees, which Jesus explicitly rebuked (Matt 15:6, Matt 16:11-12).
2. Treating Biblical law as fundamentally incomplete and/or never intended to be a law code.
3. Treating Biblical law as written much later than what is presented as fact from the text itself (Mosaic authorship).
4. Treating Biblical law as a set of disintegrated legal codes (Covenant Code, Holiness Code, Deuteronomistic Code), created by (and representing) disparate interest groups, which were then redacted/integrated into their final form later (post-monarchy or post-exile).
5. Treating Biblical law as derivative from other ancient Near East law codes (such as the Code of Hammurabi).
6. Looking for (apparent) parallels with other ancient Near East law codes (parallelomania!) and then assuming some form of cultural continuity to guide interpretation of the Biblical text. I have checked many of these alleged parallels and found them to be false (try this yourself!). Samuel Greengus, for example, has made many mistakes of this sort, and Greengus is used uncritically by many other scholars.
7. Interpreting Biblical law as evolving from Israelite or pre-Israelite cultural norms, rather than as transcendently delivered (imposed upon the existing culture) by God.
8. Allowing narrative/descriptive passages of scripture (e.g. what some Israelite king did or failed to do) to control our interpretation of the prescriptive passages, rather than the other way around. This actually consists of two separate errors:
   1. Treating descriptive passages as if they represent normative commands.
   2. Treating the description of a particular failure to follow a particular Biblical law as if it represents a normative exception to that law.
9. Making a "legal argument from silence." Two examples in this category:
   1. Allowing the absence of a detail in a casuistic law to override an explicit command in an apodictic law.
   2. Allowing the absence of a detail in a casuistic law to create an exception to a principle (or general equity rule) established explicitly in a case law.
10. Treating the law in the Hebrew scriptures as being morally deficient (in one way or another) to New Testament teaching about God's law. This is often a false dichotomy (an imposed misreading of the words of Jesus or the Apostles).
11. Attempting to force Biblical law into a presumed framework (e.g. "5-point covenant model", dispensationalism).
12. Using "Interpretive Maximalism" (e.g. the approach of James Jordan and similar commentators).
13. Failing to recognize that many of God's laws transcend God's covenants. This error causes an interpreter to fail in properly distinguishing the transcendent aspects of God's law from the covenantally-bound aspects. Biblical covenants can (and do) pass away: Heb 8:13. Many Biblical laws never pass away, because they are transcendently bound to the character of God himself.

You have to watch out for all of the above problems when you pick up a given book or commentary dealing with Biblical law. Even a good portion of "conservative" scholarship is affected by one or more of the above. This doesn't mean that you cannot learn valuable things from these books or commentaries. Just be alert for the author's biases and presuppositions, and learn to throw out any worthless observations.

Half of the task in studying God's law for yourself is simply to avoid the above 15 errors. Another quarter (of the task) is to prevent yourself from reading your modern biases/worldview into Israelite culture. Learn to read God's law in a way that is sympathetic with its expressed motive clauses. Read with the assumption of consistency and authorial unity of purpose.