the torah of moses: judaism in the bible 79
a slave hard enough to cause death was treated as a crime if the slave
died immediately. If a master put out the eye or tooth of a slave, the
slave was to be set free, and a fugitive slave who sought asylum from his
master was not to be handed over. The interdiction against slaves work-
ing on the Sabbath, and the expectation that male slaves, if circumcised,
could participate in eating the Passover lamb like free Israelites, suggest
that slaves could sometimes be seen as part of the family rather than
simply as chattels.^12
All these laws governing human relations were presented in the Bible
as divinely ordained through Moses with precisely the same authority
as the laws which shaped the relation of individual Jews to God. We
have seen that Josephus noted that, for Jews, justice, moderation, endur-
ance and harmony with the community were ‘parts of religion’. Josephus
claimed that the head of the ideal Jewish polity was the High Priest, and
that it was through him that divine laws were transmitted to the people:
‘What could be finer or more just than a structure that has made God
governor of the universe, that commits to the priests in concert the man-
agement of the most important matters, and, in turn, has entrusted to
the High Priest of all the governance of the other priests?’ But we have
seen that the Bible also envisaged other forms of authority, from inspired
prophets to wise scribes and the kings descended from David, who had
been chosen to rule by God. The Bible sometimes portrays these sources
of authority as in conflict, most notably in the critique of sinful kings by
prophets, such as the warnings of Elijah to King Ahab to turn away
from the idolatrous worship of Baal.
The Pentateuch recorded in detail how God required individuals to
behave in order to sanctify their lives: ‘You shall be holy, for I the Lord
your God am holy.’ The underlying assumption of these laws is that all
life, including human life, belongs to God and that a pious life must be
structured so as to acknowledge this subservience. So, for instance,
the first born of the flocks and herds were sacrificed in the Temple as
peace offerings, and the first- born male of the Israelites themselves was
to be redeemed from a priest by payment of a ransom of 5 shekels. To
be holy required a Jew to take special care in the treatment of his or her
body, especially in eating food. Animals could be eaten, but only if they
were of specific species – essentially, all birds apart from birds of prey;
most ordinary fish (defined as having fins and scales); and most mam-
mals of a domesticated type in the Near East, although the biblical
categorization excluded both pigs and camels. The biblical text gives
no reason for the list of prohibited animals, and attempts to explain