Law as Literature

After completing my doctorate in Old Testament theology, one of the more frequent questions I get from people is about the relationship between the Old Testament law and Christians today.  Do we have to follow all the Old Testament laws?  If not, which ones are we required to follow?  How do we know?

These questions are challenging and, in many ways complex.  I won’t be giving a full answer in this post; however, I do want to highlight an aspect of the discussion of Old Testament law that is often neglected.  Law is a form of literature.  It is not simply a set of statues, but a form of literature that reinforces the narratives and values of a particular culture.  While laws are often separate, isolated statements, they can also be imbedded within a broader written or oral narrative (as in the Old Testament).

When we read Old Testament law, we do so recognizing that the Old Testament law as we have received it has been woven into a broader theological narrative beginning with creation and ending with the nation of Israel on the cusp of the Promised Land.  Even the Ten Commandments are not disconnected from the broader narrative of the first five books of Scripture, but become part of Israel’s broader story.

So, in thinking about law, Old Testament or otherwise, we must recognize that law is a form of legal literature.  In stating that Israel is to keep Sabbath, for example, God is underscoring more than a need for rest or mandating an arbitrary practice…he is calling Israel to make a weekly statement about Him.  Sabbath stands in contradistinction to the intense, unceasing labor the Israelites were force to do in Egypt.  Pharaoh was unable to secure prosperity for Egypt without slave labor.  God is not.  The Sabbath reminds Israel that they serve the God who ordered the world in six days and rested on the seventh.  It reminds Israel that the nation’s deliverance from Egypt not allows them to live a life with God.  That life has new implications and must look different from life in Egypt.

Today’s society’s, as is appropriate given their God-ordained governance over the order of the realm, craft laws to protect the disenfranchised, promote a version of human flourishing, and keep peace.  These laws, in many cases, reveal an underlying narrative about the human condition, national identity, and the values of the society more generally.  Laws do more than prescribe…they communicate and form culture through prescription and prohibition.

What bearing might this have on the question of whether or not Christians are to follow Old Testament laws?  First, once we recognize that the Old Testament laws were embedded in a broader Old Testament narrative, it conditions the manner in which we read them.  We have the opportunity to view them as part of a broader whole rather than being isolated rules that we pull out of context for today.  Second, we can see that the laws find their rationale in God’s character and give us insight into who God is.  In this manner, the Old Testament law, whether it should be viewed as prescriptive for today or not, communicates God’s identity.  Finally, we see that the law in the Old Testament is a “culture maker.”  The inscritption of Old Testament law into the Bible is an act of memory.  While we can always ask whether or not the Israelites kept the laws, Israelite practice is not the final authority for out life and faith…the Scriptures are.  As such, we recognize that the Old Testament laws revealed God to Israel and, by extension, to us.  We learn not necessarily what God wants from us in reading the law, but who God is through that law and how who God is impact the manner in which we are able to live our lives.

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