In earlier articles, we saw how some notions of inspiration cannot be maintained in light of what the biblical authors actually said, and how they wrote. One of those notions was the idea that divine law does not change. In this chapter, we see how the Mosiac law, the quintessential law of YHVH and his people, changed over the years, and even how it changed as it was being given! In the next chapter, we’ll even see if there is evidence that some of the changes were added later.
Addendums in the Torah?
A dropped-from-the-sky-all-at-once Western theory of inspiration would seem to preclude Scripture from being given piecemeal, in response to various situations arising, which is the way man-made law tends to develop. However, there are multiple examples of exactly that scenario throughout Scripture. In fact, there are multiple examples of this in the Torah’s own chronology of the giving of the law.
For example, there is a law that property be passed through firstborn male heirs.[1] This was much more important than we today might realize, because laws of inheritance were supposed to keep the territories of Israel within a particular tribe, and within a particular family as well. There was even a prohibition on the sale of property outside of a tribe for more than 49 years. Failure to adhere to these rules would result in loss of Yahweh’s blessings, such as food and security from their enemies.[2] The Torah stated over and over the importance of such laws. Of course, as we’ll see in later chapters, those tribes were never fully conquered as envisioned in the Torah or the book of Joshua, where such failures are in fact alluded to in places, and it was not much more than a generation later when those territories began to be irreparably lost, according to the Bible’s own accounts.[3] Sure, Israel would occasionally regain large swaths of territory, but the original partitioning of the land to the 12 tribes—a hope never fully realized—would remain entropic throughout the history of Israel until only two kingdoms would be named for their dominant tribe (Ephraim for Israel, and Judah for the southern kingdom, from around 930-722 BCE), then finally the remnant of Israel’s heritage would be called Jews (from about the 6th century BCE onward), after the territory of Judah. True, by the time of Christ, they would still refer to various regions by their tribal names based on ancient texts,[4] but in practice there were regions based on actual divisions of the peoples, named mostly by foreign rulers, with Jewish Judea in the South, the mixed Samaritans north from there, then regions such as Galilee in the North which was predominantly Gentile. Judea itself contained peoples from all the tribes from at least the time of the Assyrian conquest of Israel, when there was probably a massive influx of refugees fleeing south, many of whom would eventually be unable to trace their lineage which was so important under Mosaic law,[5] especially by the time of the return from Babylonian captivity, when only a remnant of a remnant would return.
But I digress. When the children of Israel, guided by Moses, approached the Promised Land after four decades of wandering in the wilderness, one man was found to have only daughters.[6] Five in fact. In Numbers 27, these five daughters present their case to Moses, and request that they receive a portion of land along with their father’s brothers, and that his name be carried down through them, not their future husbands. This is a most curious case for the ancient world. Firstly, although historians have speculated that Israel’s tribal roots were much more egalitarian than the other nations, it would seem a rare thing for five women to plead any case. Secondly, at first glance it seems an odd thing for these women to ask that Moses go against the letter of the law, though their request appears to be consistent with the spirit of the law, which of course is confirmed by YHVH. It should also be noted that not only does their request precipitate an addendum to the law that female lineage is to be used where there is no male, yet another detail is added to the law in order to also uphold the intent of the original law: such women can only marry within their tribe. As we will consider below, “addendums” to Yahweh’s law are often found in totally separate books, as is the case with this incident in Numbers, with the actual law found in Leviticus. But the law is referenced again in Numbers 26 and, with the addendums, in Numbers 36.
There are other interesting examples of rules seeming to arise as the result of situations, not given all at the beginning with total foresight. For instance, in Numbers 9, there were men who had touched a dead body (probably to bury it), and were therefore ceremoniously unclean and unable to partake of the obligatory Passover. So Moses consulted God, who added a rule, that there would be a “make-up” Passover for anyone who was unclean or “on a journey” during the regularly appointed time of Passover.
Another interesting addition to at least the way Moses did things came from his father-in-law Jethro,[7] who suggested that he appoint judges to assist him in judging the people, because Moses was overburdened with the task. A fundamentalist might argue that this was not the establishment of a law, but my guess is that many ancients would have in fact seen it as a precedent that established the legitimacy of Levitical judges, which was certainly established elsewhere;[8] interestingly, contrary to the later rule of appointing Levites as judges, it says specifically that Moses chose judges from the people. Another modern fundamentalist argument might be that Jethro was a priest of YHVH,[9] and therefore spoke by inspiration. May be. But this does not change the fact that this would still be a case of YHVH giving law in response to a situation arising. Why wasn’t Moses told when he was first given law that he could or should appoint judges?
There are surely very many religious people who have absolutely no problem with the idea that God could have given revelation in response to situations arising. One might even argue that the above examples were actually given to help people learn how to apply God’s law as various situations arose. My main point, regardless of how anyone explains why or how such a thing could be, is that the law was not given all at once, and was in fact modified as situations arose.
If you wanted even more ways in which an omniscient God could have given law piecemeal, it might help to compare it to our own modern laws. Note that with secular laws, the so-called English common law tradition recognizes the need for application of legal principles, and not just a wooden adherence to a code that tries to provide for every eventuality. It is at least in some ways unfortunate that the common law today has largely been superseded by growing codifications, to a level that the Romans probably did not reach. The United States Code alone could fill an entire bookshelf, and is still only a fraction of all the laws, rules, regulations, etc. that apply to its citizens. It is similarly interesting to note that the Torah’s laws often appeared illustrative (like common law) and not all-encompassing, as our modern law must be. The requirement to help your fellow lift a fallen donkey or ox was a principle-based law:[10] most ancient people would surely have had no problem applying it to other animals, rightly believing that that was the intent of the author. This is a far cry from our modern codes which must contain the exact description and every element of the crime; in fact, modern law has become so codified that it has lost some of its spirit and even perpetuates injustice that it was intended to prevent.[11] It should also be noted that the Torah was quite different from modern law in many other ways. For instance, in the case of the various requirements to help your neighbor, we see the intent to promote love of one’s fellow, with no penalty listed if you do not do so; you will search long for equivalent moralizing in modern law, much less the command to ensure that you teach such good morals to your children all day every day.[12] Torah actually meant instruction, before the Septuagint called it nomos, i.e., “law”. In fact, modern ideas regarding the nature of law, and how it is more lettered code than guiding principle, have surely colored many fundamentalist interpretations of Scripture—and the way in which it was inspired—in ways that never would have occurred to the ancients.
It should therefore not be surprising to find some instances in the Bible of people getting some practice applying the divine law in real-world situations, even with God’s approval of their application in some cases, such as with the five daughters of Zelophehad. However, I am not arguing that that is what happened, just that we should not be bound to ideas of inspiration or law contradicted by the Bible itself, much less influenced by our own time, as far as we can help it.
What might be more difficult for the fundamentalist is the fact that many of these addendums actually altered the law, as if there was not perfect forethought in their original construction. And now we turn to yet more differences in Scripture that are even more problematic for a once-and-done-dropped-from-the-sky theory of inspiration.
There are many other types of what could be called “addendums” or even re-writes of some laws in the Bible, some of which will be covered in more depth throughout this book, since they are key to understanding how and why we got the Bible that we have. We will merely cite a few here to illustrate just how common they are. Once seen, readers should be able to find their own, at least as far as their memory can recall certain details across books, which is admittedly not easy.
[1] Deuteronomy 21:17
[2] Leviticus 25:10-28
[3]E.g., Judges 18
[4] E.g., Matthew 4:15
[5] E.g., Ezra 2:62, 63.
[6] It would seem statistically improbable for a population with more than half a million men (see Numbers 1:46) for only one of them to have only female offspring, or even a population of only a few thousand. This is probably therefore merely an exemplary case. It should also be noted that the father, Zelophehad, was a prominent man among the descendants of Ephraim (Numbers 26:33). How could every man’s name be perpetuated in Israel if the number of past generations outpaced the number of people living in each generation? The law of the double portion (Genesis 48:22; Deuteronomy 21:17) perhaps assisted in keeping the properties of Israel from becoming so divided that they were no longer large enough farms for even the support of a single family, which has been seriously proposed to explain the impoverishment of the Chinese after their significant population expansion in modern times, who did not have this law (See Robert Wyman’s fascinating open Yale course, “Global Problems of Population Growth”, lecture 17, “Population in Modern China.”). This theory has even been proposed as part of an explanation for the concurrent rise of the English, who kept a similar law of primogeniture until just the last century.
[7] Exodus 18.
[8] E.g., Deuteronomy 17:8-13.
[9] Exodus 3:1
[10] Deuteronomy 22:4
[11] For instance, you would think that you would not be able to be convicted of murder without the intent to kill, being a necessary element of the crime. However, in most states of the U.S., there is an artificial, technical construction known as “felony murder”, in which the intent to commit a dangerous felony transfers to the crime of murder, even when there is no intent to kill, and carries with it the mandatory sentences for murder in the various states which have increased sentences based on the political climate of “getting tough” on crime in the last few decades (until you die, in many states here in the “Bible belt” of the South: thank God for God’s law…). E.g., See 598 SE 2d 459; 278 Ga. 182; Ga. 2004. It should be noted that this ruling was never technically reversed, only the legal effects of the original conviction, which was overturned in June 2009, at least on paper, but release was not until July of 2010, despite having no charges remaining for over a year! See Supreme Court of GA ruling No. S10A0363. Similar transference of mens rea (bad intent) occurs in cases of vicarious liability (from one entity or person to another), or can even be ignored, in cases of strict liability.
[12] E.g., Deuteronomy 4:9, 10; 6:7