In the ancient Near East, on the other hand, a term for jurist is
not found, not even in the long lists of professions compiled by the
scribes. Those responsible for the law—judges, officials, or parties—
did not “read” what legal authorities they had in the same way as
we do. They did not engage in interpretation of the exact words of
the text because the text was regarded neither as autonomous nor
as exhaustive, irrespective of whether it was a contract, a decree, or
a law code.
If a reason is to be sought for the difference, it probably lies in
the realm of scientific thought. Inasmuch as the formulation of law
depends upon a system of abstract reasoning, it is evident that the
jurisprudence of a given society cannot be more advanced than its
general scientific logic. The “science” of the ancient Near East was
by the standards of Aristotelian logic a proto-science. It lacked two
vital factors: definition of abstract concepts and vertical categoriza-
tion (i.e., into two or more all-embracing categories, which can then
be broken down into sub-categories). Instead, it has been dubbed a
“science of lists,” the concatenation of endless examples, grouped
suggestively in associated sequences but incapable of ever giving an
exhaustive account of a subject. Hence the casuistic nature of the
law codes.
Just as a law code could never be exhaustive, so no particular text
could ever be an exhaustive statement of a rule, even when it took
the form of a peremptory order, because the mode of thinking was
in examples, not principles. And without definition of its terms, appli-
cation of a rule could only be approximate—by analogy, inference,
or even looser associations.
Signs of a transition from this archaic jurisprudence to the system
familiar to us begin to appear in the seventh century, not from the
ancient centers of power in Mesopotamia and Egypt but on the
periphery. References are found in the Hebrew prophets to obeying
the law (torah) of God as an independent body of rules rather than
simply the will of God. The autonomy of the law reaches a dra-
matic climax in the book of Daniel (written in the second century),
according to which the king’s decree, once written down, might not
be changed, even by the king himself (Dan. 6:9). Between these two
poles, there are tentative moves toward citation of the words of the
legal text, as illustrated by a glossator’s comment on an historical
incident:20
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