Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 81:324 (Oct 1924)
Article: Deuteronomy
Author: A. Troelstra

BSac 81:324 (Oct 1924) p. 393

Deuteronomy

A. Troelstra

Translated By John H. De Vries

Historical criticism has as good as turned about the order of law and prophets. The decalogue and the so-called Book of the Covenant are conceded to be of great age, but not of Mosaic origin.

The social condition, says Wildeboer, which is regulated in the Book of the Covenant, is such as, on historic grounds, we suppose to have belonged to Israel of old. The nomad-people became for the most part tillers of the soil, while rearing and owning cattle was the chief factor in the common welfare. The state of this society was very primitive. The idea of capital was totally unknown. And as regards the principles of law and the execution of punishments, this legislation is on a line with that of dwellers in the wilderness.

But this author does not refer here to a codex framed in the times of the wanderings in the wilderness of Sinai. For he shares the opinion of Prof. Valeton, Sr., who wrote in 1879: “The making of laws, which has been in vogue in Europe for a century or more, was not known in antiquity. The framing of a law, or of a whole book of laws, by one or more persons and subject to the criticism of a legislative body, and imposed upon all people by executive authority, regardless of the fact whether or no it agrees with already existing statutes, of all this nothing is found in antiquity. All students of the origin and history of laws know that all written law has sprung from unwritten law.”

Wildeboer concludes: “If among us laws are made to be obeyed, in ancient times statutes were committed to writing because they were practiced.”

This really means that there is continuity in the processes of legislation;’ that legislation does not merely create

BSac 81:324 (Oct 1924) p. 394

new regulations, but codifies already existing ones, or borrows from previous codices regulations as they are or in a modified form. But is it true that there was no legislation in Europe until a hundred years ago? Think of the regulations of the Union of Utrecht in 1579. Even when there was no popular representation there was a lawgiver. Neither can it be said that without exception all written law has sprung from unwritten (customary) law. If that were unqualifiedly true, there must have been almost constant strife between written law and customary rights. Valeton himself writes, that it could happen, “that existing customs were gradually modified, or that some particulars were more closely defined, or even that new ideas might become current, which would cause the need of new regulations to be felt.” Thus legislation helped to prepare a new condition.

By the Book of the Covenant we...