Covenant Code - Academic Context

Academic Context

According to the modern documentary hypothesis, the text was originally independent, but later embedded by the Elohist ("E") in their writings. In biblical criticism, the code is understood to be the Elohist's version of the legal code which the Jahwist ("J") presents as the Ritual Decalogue. In the combined JE source, supposed by such critical scholarship, these two texts appear together, with the Ritual Decalogue appearing to be a summary version. Such academic study also supposes that the Elohist version had the Covenant Code being written on the two tablets of the law, whereas in JE, it is only the Ritual Decalogue which has this feature.

The original Priestly Source, according to the documentary hypothesis, then rewrote this to support their own ideas of law, replacing the Ritual Decalogue with the Ethical Decalogue (or the Ten Commandments), and the Covenant Code with the Holiness Code. After accretion of much extra legal material over a course of time, the resulting version of the Priestly source was combined with the JE source, its law code consequently appearing, in the torah, to be God's replacement, and expansion, of the earlier two codes after the incident of the Golden Calf, in which the first pair of the tablets of law were destroyed.

The form and content of the code is similar to many of the other codes from the near east of the early first millennium BC, in particular the Hammurabi code of Babylon. According to many scholars, such as Martin Noth and Albrecht Alt, the covenant code probably originated as a civil code with the Canaanites, and was altered to add Hebrew religious practices. Other scholars such as Michael Coogan see a noticeable difference between the Covenant Code and the non-biblical codes like the Code of Hammurabi. The Covenant Code consists largely of case or Casuistic Law (case law, often in the form of a conditional sentence, which specific situations are addressed) which deals with particularly with Exodus 21:33-36. The Apodictic laws (a type of law characterized by absolute or general commands or prohibitions, as in the Ten Commandments) on the other hand are more general and the Covenant Code contains some of these as well, for example in Exodus 21:17. The Covenant Code, like other biblical codes, differs from these by including among the laws dealing with criminal and civil matters various regulations concerning worship. Both, however, set the laws in an explicitly religious context.