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Anonymous
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Hi Everyone,
In a couple topics I've been in on here lately, people have mentioned "legalities" in combination with patriarchs and other prior to the Law of Moses. For that reason I wanted to present a little history on law in ancient times.
Unlike our world of today, the world in the ancient past before Christ was wild and woolly. People were only relatively safe where they banded together in cities and towns. Many ancient cities in the Middle East had high walls and large gates, to protect the city against roving armies, often from other cities. Greece, for instance, was made up of a bunch of decentralized city-states.
Although there were several large empires in ancient times, those empires were fairly limited in scope until Rome came on the scene. The empires before the time of Rome had great difficulties patrolling borders against bandits and enemies, because the world at that time had so few people that large borders could not be well-protected.
There were certainly laws in those times, but they were primarily located in cities and small geographic areas. (An example of such laws would be the Hammurabi's Code in the city-state of Babylon.)
Most areas had no law at all.
What they had were social customs and anarchy. Essentially "might makes right" governed in most areas, though the vast majority were decent people.
Now Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldees. Abraham was a Chaldean originally. He came from a nation with laws, but he went into lawless territories when God called him out of Ur.
Social customs prevailed where there were no written laws. Those social customs changed from place to place and time to time, and were by no means uniform.
In Scripture we find the ownership of slaves. Sarah owned Hagar before she gave her to Abraham. Now some have suggested that Ishmael was then Sarah's son, and the children of Bilhah and Zilpah were Rachel's and Leah's children respectively BY LAW or LEGALLY. The problem with that view is that there was no law in many of the areas where Abraham traveled.
At best we can say that they followed Abraham's "law" or social conventions as he saw them, probably from his native home in Ur of the Chaldees. What we cannot establish is that the practices of anyone prior to the Mosaic Law were based upon "legalities" in any sense of the word, UNLESS they were within the boundaries of cities or in the scant areas held by city-states.
It is clear that people prior to the Mosaic Law followed some kind of moral code. Even Hammurabi's Code would be at least partially consistent with a Biblical moral code (though it was much more severe in many cases).
It seems that God must have presented the greatest two commandments to the hearts of men through conscience or the teachings of their ancestors, that they would attempt to codify laws that rendered justice.
The Mosaic Law, given by God to the children of Israel was not the first set of laws of mankind, but it was the first recorded to have been given in such detail so directly from God. The Mosaic Law put into writing many of the moral codes that already existed among peoples across the earth, however God corrected the errors in those moral codes and put it all into one consistent set of commandments to the special group that He had designated to be the vessel through whom He would send the Messiah to the entire world for His own glory.
That's really all I had to say. I could flesh it all out in detail, but I think that most of the people know the facts in this case, but maybe haven't really put together that many areas of the world and many of the people, including many of the patriarchs of the children of Israel, lived without laws throughout most of their lives.
Please let me know what you think!
John for Christ
In a couple topics I've been in on here lately, people have mentioned "legalities" in combination with patriarchs and other prior to the Law of Moses. For that reason I wanted to present a little history on law in ancient times.
Unlike our world of today, the world in the ancient past before Christ was wild and woolly. People were only relatively safe where they banded together in cities and towns. Many ancient cities in the Middle East had high walls and large gates, to protect the city against roving armies, often from other cities. Greece, for instance, was made up of a bunch of decentralized city-states.
Although there were several large empires in ancient times, those empires were fairly limited in scope until Rome came on the scene. The empires before the time of Rome had great difficulties patrolling borders against bandits and enemies, because the world at that time had so few people that large borders could not be well-protected.
There were certainly laws in those times, but they were primarily located in cities and small geographic areas. (An example of such laws would be the Hammurabi's Code in the city-state of Babylon.)
Most areas had no law at all.
What they had were social customs and anarchy. Essentially "might makes right" governed in most areas, though the vast majority were decent people.
Now Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldees. Abraham was a Chaldean originally. He came from a nation with laws, but he went into lawless territories when God called him out of Ur.
Social customs prevailed where there were no written laws. Those social customs changed from place to place and time to time, and were by no means uniform.
In Scripture we find the ownership of slaves. Sarah owned Hagar before she gave her to Abraham. Now some have suggested that Ishmael was then Sarah's son, and the children of Bilhah and Zilpah were Rachel's and Leah's children respectively BY LAW or LEGALLY. The problem with that view is that there was no law in many of the areas where Abraham traveled.
At best we can say that they followed Abraham's "law" or social conventions as he saw them, probably from his native home in Ur of the Chaldees. What we cannot establish is that the practices of anyone prior to the Mosaic Law were based upon "legalities" in any sense of the word, UNLESS they were within the boundaries of cities or in the scant areas held by city-states.
It is clear that people prior to the Mosaic Law followed some kind of moral code. Even Hammurabi's Code would be at least partially consistent with a Biblical moral code (though it was much more severe in many cases).
It seems that God must have presented the greatest two commandments to the hearts of men through conscience or the teachings of their ancestors, that they would attempt to codify laws that rendered justice.
The Mosaic Law, given by God to the children of Israel was not the first set of laws of mankind, but it was the first recorded to have been given in such detail so directly from God. The Mosaic Law put into writing many of the moral codes that already existed among peoples across the earth, however God corrected the errors in those moral codes and put it all into one consistent set of commandments to the special group that He had designated to be the vessel through whom He would send the Messiah to the entire world for His own glory.
That's really all I had to say. I could flesh it all out in detail, but I think that most of the people know the facts in this case, but maybe haven't really put together that many areas of the world and many of the people, including many of the patriarchs of the children of Israel, lived without laws throughout most of their lives.
Please let me know what you think!
John for Christ
