Law and Narrative in the Bible

Calum M. Carmichael here challenges commonly accepted views respecting the derivation of the biblical laws recorded in Deuteronomy and the Decalogue, presenting compelling evidence that literary traditions, rather than social imperatives, dictated the form taken by the laws. Carmichael confronts and discusses such problematic and important issues as the sequence in which apparently unrelated laws appear. Why, he then asks, are some laws general in scope, while others are extremely specific?...