Law is a set, or a structure, of rules that is arguably the foundation of any human society or civilization. Everyone has at least a basic idea of what law and the legal system entails; the popular view being that the legal system is a collection of courts, judges, the police and other people in authority enforcing the rules according to the law that has been agreed on before and written down as a guideline.
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Today, as society changes and evolves, changing beliefs and the prevalence of new age thinking have made us question the very nature of law, and also its very necessity. For example, should the law allow two same sex adults to marry each other? Should criminals be put to death? Should people be allowed to take their own lives? To tackle any crisis, it is imperative that everyone has at least a brief idea about the philosophical discipline that helps develop law, called jurisprudence.
Jurisprudence can be divided into two main categories, Normative and Analytical. Normative jurisprudence questions the moral foundations of the law, and it can be described as the reasoning by which we punish. For example, should a human have the power to kill another even under the word of the law? There can be no one correct answer. Normative jurisprudence also deals rzlaw with how the law should be, and whether anyone should be punished at all.
Analytical jurisprudence, as the name suggests, deals with the law in all its aspects. Analytical jurisprudence allows us to study the various legal systems, determine their workings minutely, helps differentiate laws from rules if there is a difference and so on. Analytical jurisprudence is not concerned with morality; instead it is concerned with analyzing the system of law in place.
Law of Moses Definitions: At the outset of our consideration of the Law of Moses, we have to define three terms: Law of Moses, the Law, and Torah.
"Law of Moses": This phrase in Scripture refers to two things: the stipulations of the Mosaic Covenant and the entire Pentateuch (the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). Of course, the Mosaic covenant is contained within the Pentateuch, specifically, from Exodus 20 through Deuteronomy 33.
"The Law": This phrase has the same flexibility of the "Law of Moses": sometimes it refers to the Mosaic Covenant, and sometimes to the entire Pentateuch. In the New Testament, the Greek word translated "law" (nomos) can also mean principle, as in "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ," or "the perfect law of liberty" (Romans 8:2 and James 1:25), or simply "law" (Romans 7:21). You have to determine from the context which meaning "law" has.
"Torah": This is the Hebrew word translated "law," but is actually means "instruction." Its meaning varies according to the context.
Point of controversy: When we discuss the Mosaic Covenant, disagreement immediately arises concerning the origin of the Pentateuch, the written record of the Law. Some hold to what we could call a naive viewpoint, that we should take the books of the Pentateuch at face value as having been produced by Moses during the period of the wilderness wanderings after the Exodus from Egypt. Others believe that these books were not composed until hundreds of years later, as late as the Persian period (536 to 333 BCE).
A more likely view is one that lies between these two alternatives: the five Books of Moses do go back to the prophet whose name they bear, though they have undergone minor editing in later generations. This, I believe, is the most likely explanation, addressing both the objections to the naive view and the observations regarding stylistic differences within the documents. This view also takes seriously the weighty evidence of the validation of the authorship of Moses by both Jesus and Paul.
Characteristics of the Law of Moses: