The first five of my ten propositions offer a more etic perspective on the continuity of the law as expressed, in the first four propositions, by distinct legal decrees or, in the fifth one, as conveyed by the literary forms which these decrees take in the Bible and in the Qur’an.
The Biblical Basis of Law Beyond Israel.
The starting point of this study can be found in the books of Genesis and Leviticus in the Hebrew Bible. According to Genesis 9, God imposes two laws against “blood” upon Noah and his offspring: the double prohibition of shedding human blood and of consuming animal blood. In Leviticus 17–26, God imposes further laws upon the so-called “residents” of the Holy Land, the non-Israelite gerim who are, as Noah’s offspring, already prohibited from “blood.” (The meaning of the biblical term ger, plural gerim, constitutes the basis for but differs from its later usage as designating “a convert to Judaism”.) In Leviticus, Israelites along with the gerim are prohibited from idol worship, from consuming animals not properly slaughtered and emptied of blood, and from committing a number of sexual transgressions, and they are to purify themselves if they consume carrion or come into contact with a human corpse. (By contrast, most other purity laws in Leviticus, such as abstinence from pork or the injunction to wash after sexual intercourse, are apparently addressed to Israelites alone.) My first proposition is that the laws addressed to Noah in Genesis and to the gerim in Leviticus form the foundation upon which the rabbinic corpus (esp. in Tosephta Avodah Zarah 8:4) as well as the New Testament (obliquely in Paul’s letters and directly in the Acts of the Apostles 15) build their respective and partially divergent list of laws for non-Jews, namely the slightly more lenient rabbinic Noahide Laws and the somewhat stricter Christian Decree of the Apostles.
Both lists possibly build on similar postbiblical notions of universal law that precede them. At the same time, a central difference between the rabbinic and the Christian views can be found in the prohibition of carrion, for which the Bible already offers two separate rulings for the gerim: Leviticus 17:15 commands that any ger who consumes carrion must wash thereafter, whereas Deuteronomy 14:21 allows gerim to eat carrion without any such restrictions. I will suggest and assess the hypothesis that the Christian tradition, and with it the Qur’an, likely followed the stricter attitude towards the consumption of carrion expressed in Leviticus and intensified in Second Temple Judaism. The rabbinic tradition, likely based on Deuteronomy 14:21, by contrast allowed non-Jews to consume carrion, all the while creating the distinct legal category of the “ger who eats carrion”—a gentile stopping short of full conversion precisely because of this culinary proclivity—in order to account for the diverging biblical legislation.
The Christian Endorsement of Gentile Law.
I will, secondly, argue that while the establishment of a list of laws for gentiles became an ongoing yet marginal concern in the rabbinic tradition, it remained central for Christians across many geographic and linguistic boundaries, as can be traced by their respective ways of sanctioning the Decree of the Apostles and implementing its strictures. Crucially, the implementation of the individual mandates of the decree and the discussion of its authoritative nature do not fully overlap. On the one hand, we have to trace the evidence of the Decree’s individual laws as applicable for gentiles, sometimes justified with direct reference to Genesis 9 or Leviticus 17–18, yet most often simply accepted as binding for Christians. On the other hand, we need to consider explicit discussions or references to the Decree as such. Considering the evidence for both the practical and the theoretical aspects shows that late antique Christians displayed a variety of attitudes towards the laws for gentiles expressed in the Decree, constituting three main streams of legal thought that I will designate as endorsing a dismissive, an appreciative, and an expansive attitude towards gentile law. In brief, while only a minute number of Church Fathers dismissed or diminished the validity of the Decree of the Apostles (without necessarily curtailing its mandates), the large majority of Latin, Greek, and Syriac Church Fathers, and the entirety of recorded church councils without any exceptions, appreciated and sought to implement its laws in their entirety.
Some Christian authors and apparently more than a few ordinary Christians—whose number and status of authority varied over the centuries—expanded these laws by bringing them closer in line with biblical laws for Israelites, for instance by instituting restrictions concerning the menstrual cycle that go beyond the biblical prohibition for gentiles to abstain from sexual intercourse in this period, by mandating washing after sexual intercourse, or by problematizing the consumption of pork.
The Continuity of the Qur’an with Late Antique Law.
Third, I will seek to illustrate that the Qur’an, while containing echoes of the rabbinic Noahide Laws, by and large stands in discernible—though not full—continuity with the appreciative and especially with the expansive Christian attitudes towards gentile law, plausibly aligning itself with legal practices common among Eastern Roman, Mesopotamian, Arabian, and Aksumite Christians. The Qur’an, in other words, formulates the law for its own community in continuity and in conversation with late antique law for gentiles; it engages some aspects of the rabbinic list of laws for gentiles and especially of the Christian one, without ever being bound by its precedents.
The Biblical and Arabian Context of Qur’anic Law.
The Qur’an occasionally bypasses the rabbinic and the Christian tradition by taking a more direct recourse to legal materials found in the Hebrew Bible—or one of its later written or more likely oral renderings in other Semitic languages—when formulating or specifying its own laws, at times in ways that are not paralleled in any other late antique legal culture. Moreover, qur’anic law maintains important aspects of traditional Arabian practice (as can be seen, e.g., in many of the laws governing the Ḥajj) at the same time as breaking with others (such as, e.g., Meccan food laws). As a fourth proposition, I hold that we can sometimes situate the Qur’an at the confluence of biblical, pagan Arabian, and Christian law (such as, e.g., those governing the menses).
Law as Literature, Literature as Law.
My fifth proposition is the one already sketched above: that the literary form in which individual decrees are recorded in the Scriptures constitutes an inextricable part of the legal content itself. The decrees given in the Hebrew Bible and in the Qur’an are often marked by literary structures created by means of the repetition of sounds, lexemes, and roots that are constitutive of these Scriptures’ legal message to their respective audiences. A focus on the literary form of gentile law can therefore strengthen or even reveal aspects of the continuity of law from the Bible to the Qur’an. While the specific formulations in the Scriptures are unique, some of the literary structures show an additional continuity between the Bible and the Qur’an.
As is to be expected, the development of the legal narratives and discourses offered from the Bible to the Qur’an shows more variation than the comparatively stable evolution of actual law perceptible mainly in hindsight, yet continuities over the centuries can be identified here as well.
Jewish and Christian Readings of the “Residents.
” The biblical concept of the non-Israelite “residents” of the Holy Land, the gerim, whose rights and obligations are formulated especially in Leviticus 17–26, was originally formulated to allow the cultic integration of the gerim all the while avoiding the profanation of the Holy Land and of the Temple. The category of the “resident,” however, had become inoperative already in the Second Temple period, and the nature of the concern for the Temple changed dramatically after its destruction, when the rabbinic Noahide Laws and the Christian Decree of the Apostles were first formulated. Early rabbis and Christians, possibly based on legal precedent, did not abandon the gerim laws but instead employed them to pious gentiles anywhere in the world. Both groups pursued their respective legal endeavours: the rabbis, arguably, sought to broaden the distance between Jews and gentiles; early Christians, by contrast, at least initially tried to narrow it.
Noah and the Law in Judaism and Christianity.
The rabbis transformed the gerim laws by placing them within the established biblical story about universal law given to Noah, thereby delineating the concept of humanity as “Children of Noah,” in contradistinction to Israel. In doing so, the rabbis extended their notion of divine positive law—that is revealed God-given law—to pertain to non-Israelites in principle, all the while carefully distinguishing between Jew and gentile even when the content of specific biblical laws addressed to either group is identical. The Qur’an, I propose, combines the image of Noah as a warner to his generation, which is in turn prevalent in the Christian tradition, with the biblical, Christian, and especially with the rabbinic notion of Noah as law-giver—yet not necessarily a universal one, since in the Qur’an, Noah, in line with this scripture’s prophetological paradigm, is sent to his people alone.
The Decree of the Apostles and the Qur’an.
The New Testament, just like the early rabbinic corpus, extends the laws originally addressed to the gerim to apply to all believing gentiles who accept God’s rule, yet it proposes a context different from the story of the laws given to Noah and his sons. The Acts of the Apostles, rather, present a distinctly messianic legal narrative relating the genesis and legal content of the Christian take on gentile law, the so-called Decree of the Apostles. This decree, formulated chiefly in Acts 15, maintains and even expands the central laws the Hebrew Bible had promulgated for the gerim, which are now seen as applying to all non-Jews seeking to join the Jesus movement. At the same time, Acts connects the purpose of these laws not to the avoidance of the profanation of the Holy Land or the Temple, but to the instructions the Holy Spirit gives to non-Jews, in line with apostolic authority. (The purpose of keeping the decree is to establish the purity necessary for the outpouring of the spirit.) The Decree of the Apostles remains a central point of reference for all forms of late antique Christian law. The Qur’an does not explicate its endorsement thereof, yet along with incorporating all legal provisions of this decree, it offers conceptual and plausibly even lexical echoes of it, in addition to endorsing and showcasing the notion of apostolic legal authority
Christian Narratives of Law and the Qur’an.
The early Christian understanding of law was thus a dual one: the Acts of the Apostles maintain the validity of the entirety of the Torah for Israel, on the one hand, and the relatively succinct catalogue of gentile law, on the other. This duality of law led to a conceptual and ethnic tension that proved too strong to be maintained once gentiles constituted the majority of the Jesus movement. Some Christians responded to this tension by expanding the notion of Jesus’ abrogation to encompass all of the Israelite law. (Abrogation, in the Gospels, had originally—and even here to varying degrees—only pertained either to the rectification of human additions to the Torah or to falsifications in its application.) A majority of later Christian traditions thus understood Jesus as having abrogated the Israelite law in its entirety. Simultaneously, Christians excluded the Decree of the Apostles, as addressed to gentiles, from Jesus’ abrogation. Among the several late antique Christian models addressing the status of gentile law, two streams are of special relevance for the Qur’an. They both address the permanence of law in terms of Jesus’ partial abrogation thereof. First, some Christians (especially in the Syriac tradition as expressed in the Didascalia Apostolorum to be discussed below) developed the notion of an eternal law given to Moses that had only temporarily been augmented by a set of what I will call “punitive laws,” i.e. laws given as punishments. These punitive laws were given to the Israelites as a punishment for the Golden Calf and other sins, which constituted the object of Jesus’ abrogation in this narrative.
Second, a minority in the Greek tradition (especially as expressed in the Clementine Homilies, to which we will equally turn) understood the Law given to the Israelites as unchanged and timeless, yet as having been corrupted and erroneously augmented in the past. In this narrative, Jesus’ abrogation is again a partial one, pertaining only to the corrupted parts of the law, thereby restoring the Law to its pristine original state. Both narratives of Jesus’ partial abrogation—of the punitive laws or of the erroneous additions to the law—help explain many of the Qur’an’s statements on the role of Jesus as a lawgiver.
Prohibited and Regulated Impurity.
Finally, the four concrete legal narratives described above—concerning Noah, the residents of the Holy Land, the Decree of the Apostles, and Jesus’ partial abrogation of the law—should be understood in the context of the development of the broader and more diffuse biblical discourse on purity. Importantly, not all impurity is the same: the Bible differentiates between two different types I will present as regulated and as prohibited impurity. Contracting the former, regulated type of impurity is permitted and sometimes even necessary when fulfilling commandments; it results from mundane actions such as licit sexual intercourse or contact with corpses during burial. Prohibited impurity, by contrast, is contracted through acts such as idolatry, the shedding of human blood, or the consumption of animal blood, and by committing sexual transgressions. The distinction between the two types of impurity is not categorical: the failure to implement the safeguards for regulated impurity turns what is merely regulated into prohibited impurity. A woman, for example, contracts regulated impurity during the time of her menses, yet engaging in otherwise licit intercourse in this period would impart prohibited impurity both on her and her sexual partner. Significantly, the Hebrew Bible applies the rules for the most severe cases of prohibited impurity both to Israelites and to the gerim, the non-Israelite residents of the Holy Land, and, arguably, even to all human beings. Likewise, the Bible applies to the gerim select rules concerning regulated impurity, such as corpse impurity or the impurity contracted through the consumption of carrion according to Leviticus (yet not according to Deuteronomy, as mentioned above). Early Jews and Christians diverged especially when it came to the question of whether such rules governing regulated impurity were applicable to gentiles.
The rabbis dismissed the relevance of any aspect of regulated impurity for nonJews, whom they saw as unsusceptible to such impurity, thereby widening the gulf between Jewish and gentile law. The case is more complex when considering the Christian tradition. The Decree of the Apostles focuses on actions that, in the Bible, lead to prohibited impurity contracted through idolatry, sexual transgressions, the shedding of human blood, or the consumption of animal blood. The Decree, in line with Second Temple traditions, considers the consumption of carrion, which in Leviticus only imparts regulated impurity, as causing prohibited impurity. When it comes to regulated impurity, later Christians, by contrast to the rabbis, displayed a broad range of stances. Some Church Fathers, especially those associated with the dismissive attitude towards the Decree of the Apostles, much like the rabbis, rejected the relevance of regulated impurity for gentiles. Other Christians, however, in particular those associated with the appreciative and the expansive attitude towards the Decree, saw gentiles as susceptible to sexual or even other types of regulated impurity that they would contract, for example through licit sexual intercourse or, for a woman, through her menses. The Qur’an, again, shares key aspects of the biblical understanding of regulated and prohibited impurity, some traits of which share comparable observances attested throughout the ancient Near East and especially in ancient Southern Arabia. The Qur’an can therefore be situated at the confluence of elements of the pagan Arabian purity tradition, the biblical, and especially the Christian tradition leaning towards the expansive attitude vis-à-vis the Decree of the Apostles.
- Didascalia
- First, the Didascalia, along with earlier Syriac Fathers such as Aphrahat, conceives of Christianity in a distinctly “Israelite” way. The church, in this view, is neither Jewish nor gentile, but constitutes an amalgamation of “the nation”—that is Israel—with “the (gentile) nations,” that is the gentiles who joined the nation of Israel under Christ. For the Didascalia, to put it simply, Israel is the church—there is no distinction between spiritual and carnal Israel.
- The Didascalia, secondly, takes on a very distinct attitude towards the Decree of the Apostles, which it cites and fervently appreciates. It declares the content of this decree, along with its own version of the Decalogue and a number of observances and laws pertaining for example to prayer, fasting, charity, financial honesty, and a strict prohibition to murder infants, to be the original, primary divine law given to Moses. This primary law (as mentioned above on p. 12) is clearly delineated from the secondary “punitive” laws given as a retribution for the Golden Calf and other sins. In this account, only this secondary law was abrogated by Jesus, who left the primary law intact, and extended its validity by welcoming all nations to join Israel as Christians. The Didascalia can therefore be said to consider the primary Israelite law as potentially universal, as applying to all gentiles joining the church.
Third, the Didascalia offers an emphatic endorsement of the appreciative Christian attitude towards the Decree of the Apostles, which it cites and discusses in detail. It rejects the concept of regulated impurity as applicable to its community, and polemicizes against those who observe it at great length. In line with other heresiological writings, the Didascalia thereby becomes a significant witness negatively testifying to the expansive attitude towards gentile law that seems to have been held by some or even many of its community members, with whom it thoroughly disagrees. In its view, certain aspects of both prohibited and regulated impurity, such as abstinence from pork, or engaging in ritual ablutions before prayer or after sexual intercourse, were part of the punitive law given after the Golden Calf that Jesus had abrogated. Those who continue to observe these laws seen as punishment effectively deny God’s abolishment of them that marked his forgiveness of the worship of the Golden Calf—and since they deny the forgiveness, they are accused of continuing to commit the very same sin.
Clementine Homilies
The Clementine Homilies are unique in as far as they maintain and even sharpen the formulation of the strict differentiation between Jewish and gentile law that we saw in the Acts of the Apostles. The text, at least in theory, endorses the validity of Jewish law for Jews (who do not need Jesus) and the validity of the Decree of the Apostles for gentiles (who do not need Moses). By declaring Judaism to be a valid tradition based on Moses alone, the Homilies certainly constitute a Jewish text, even if they present the law as partially corrupted after Moses’ death. Yet within this framework, their endorsement of the Decree of the Apostles for gentiles, and especially their focus on the salvation of gentiles, places them into the specific tradition of a “Christian” understanding of Judaism as pioneered by the Acts of the Apostles.
- The Clementine Homilies also offer testimony for a second legal narrative about gentile law, in addition to the one about punitive law found in the Didascalia, that will prove relevant for the Qur’an. Along with previous patristic sources in particular from the Alexandrian tradition, the Homilies present their version of gentile law as underlying God’s command to the demons not to attack any human unless these humans first make themselves liable by breaking any of the divine and universal stipulations. These commandments are based on the Decree of the Apostles, yet in this reading include aspects pertaining not only to prohibited but equally to regulated impurity. The Clementine Homilies, unlike the Didascalia, do not distinguish between an eternal primary and a temporary secondary law. They do, however, offer a related concept of a two-partite law in which Jesus confirms “the Law” while abrogating part of it: the Homilies endorse a salvation history in which the Law is given orally to Moses, and subsequently corrupted and falsely expanded by human error and by Satanic intervention. Jesus here serves as the prophet who restores the law to its original state, abrogating the erroneous additions to the Bible and seeking to save the gentiles. This constitutes a partial structural parallel to Jesus’ role as the abrogator of the punitive law in the Didascalia within a different narrative framework.
- The Homilies, finally, formulate their version of gentile law by expanding the Decree of the Apostles in a way that closely resembles the observances specifically condemned in the Didascalia. The key aspect of regulated impurity law which it imposes on gentiles, beyond the stipulations of the Decree of the Apostles, is the requirement to wash after sexual intercourse and, arguably, before prayer; the Clementine Homilies also associate pigs and wine with demons.
Leave a Reply