The Bible has exerted an inestimable impact on contemporary culture throughout much of the world. In few other areas is this impact felt more than in its impact on legal systems and the law. For example, the Bible was used by antebellum Southerners to justify the existence of slavery, while it was later used by Martin Luther King, Jr. to argue against the disparate treatment of African-Americans that occurred under Jim Crow laws. The Bible has also been used to argue both for and against the death penalty. During this reviewer's tenure as criminal defense practitioner, numerous jurors disclosed during voir dire that their philosophy of punishment was primarily grounded on the principle of lex talionis, as enumerated in the Old Testament. In the past, laws have been enacted in accordance with biblical law, while more recent law is sometimes a repudiation of biblical law. Accordingly, it is necessary to have a strong grasp on the biblical concepts of law to understand the development of law in much of the world.

Brent Strawn has edited a two-volume encyclopedia that will assist an array of scholars, pastors, and lay readers to understand the Bible's approaches to law as well as the influence that those approaches have had, for example, on contemporary issues in criminal law or gender (in)equality. The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Law (OEBL) is bound in two attractive, burgundy-colored volumes that are roughly of equal length. The pages of the OEBL are standard copy page size, 8.5 x 11 inches. The spine of each volume notes the coverage of that volume: “Vol. 1 Adm–Lit,” “Vol 2 Mag–Wom.” The first volume has an alphabetical list of the 106 primary entries that occur in both volumes; the list also denotes the eleven primary entries that have multiple sub-entries (thirty-five subentries in total). Both volumes contain a sixteen-page list of abbreviations that are used in the articles.

Volume 2 contains some additional information after its article entries that is not included in volume 1. “Topical Outline of Contents” covers six topics: (1) “Later Legal Traditions (Non- or Postbiblical),” (2) “Legal Texts,” (3) “Overviews,” (4) “Organizations and Procedures,” (5) “Selected Legal Topics,” and (6) “Types of Law.” Entries that could belong to more than one topic are included under each one for which they qualify. For example, the entry “Adoption” is listed under both “Organizations and Procedures” and “Types of Law.” Following the topical list is the alphabetical “Directory of Contributors,” which lists each contributor, that contributor's home institution, and the articles that the contributor (co)authored. Finally, a 102-page index is included at the end of volume 2. For most topics, then, Strawn has generously provided multiple avenues by which one can arrive at the relevant entries to those topics, making the OEBL exceptionally user-friendly; however, there are some idiosyncrasies regarding the redirect, or as called in the OEBL, “blind” entries, which I discuss below.

Turning to the substance of the work, Strawn explains that he asked the authors to focus on or emphasize three things: (1) “Biblical Law: Contents, collections, and genres”; (2) “the (ancient) contexts of biblical law”; and (3) “the afterlife and influence of biblical law” (1:xv–xvi). While the first two categories may be self-explanatory, the final merits some further comment. What is envisioned here is how “biblical law lived on (and continues to do so) after or outside the Bible” (1:xvi). Strawn explains that this could include the Second Temple period, post–Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity, Islam, and even the modern period. Accordingly, this “Legacy” category could be considerable as it could encompass every impact that biblical law has made over hundreds of years. Strawn acknowledges that not every author adheres to these foci and that not every entry is amenable to covering each emphasis, either. For example, the entry “Israel, State of” does not lend itself to discussing either the genres or the contexts of biblical law. This entire entry is really devoted to the afterlife of biblical law. Accordingly, one should not expect every entry to slavishly include all three foci, but those foci do provide a template for the kinds of information that most entries should provide. Strawn summarizes how he sees these foci interacting: “In the aggregate, however, the OEBL treats all three with the common denominator being the Bible and its contribution to law and legal thinking” (1:xvi).

On the form of the entries, I offer Pamela Barmash's entry, “Ancient Near Eastern Law,” as an example.Footnote ¹ The entry is approximately eleven pages and has three components: the text of the entry itself, a list of cross-references within the OEBL, and a bibliography. The text is approximately ten pages. In addition to a one-page introduction to the entry, Barmash subdivides the text of her entry into three sections: cuneiform law, Egyptian law, and Persian law. The sections on Egyptian and Persian law together cover a little over a page, leaving the bulk of the entry to cuneiform law. Barmash first discusses all of the sources for law within the cuneiform traditions. These sources include law collections, royal decrees, trial records, and other sources. Then, Barmash outlines several characteristics that seem ubiquitous across cuneiform law, grouping them into several categories, which include “Jurisdiction,” “Trial Procedure,” and “Slavery.”

Immediately following the text of this entry are sixty-three cross-references directing the reader to other entries within the encyclopedia that have material that pertains to ancient Near Eastern law. One would certainly expect that the general topic of ancient Near Eastern law would be relevant to other topics regarding the Bible and law. Thus, it should come as no surprise that this entry directs its readers to almost half of the rest of the encyclopedia, ranging from topics such as “Adoption” to “Witchcraft and Sorcery.” This list of cross-references is followed by a bibliography of twenty-four outside sources to which the reader can turn to find more thorough treatments of the information provided in the entry. This one entry, “Ancient Near Eastern Law,” is representative of the entries. While, of course, some entries contain more or less information, a greater or lesser number of sections and cross-references, longer or shorter bibliographies, the form of the entry is consistent across the encyclopedia.

An entry on a topic as broad as ancient Near Eastern law could theoretically draw criticism for doing too little or for trying to do too much. Barmash seems to err on the side of doing too little, but that is not necessarily a negative. Multivolume books have been published on ancient Near Eastern law. As a result, it would be impossible for Barmash to adequately cover all the subjects that this entry could encompass. She has instead provided a general overview of ancient Near Eastern law and allowed the separate entries, such as “Laws of Eshnunna,” “Laws of Hammurabi,” and “Neo-Babylonian Laws,” to fill in some of the details. (Here, Strawn's system of cross-references assists the reader in finding other relevant entries in the OEBL.)

That said, Barmash's entry is strangely weighted in its treatment of the varieties of law. Cuneiform law receives approximately six and a half pages, while Egyptian law covers less than half a page and Persian law covers a little over half a page. But the OEBL has other relevant entries—“Persian Law” and “Egyptian Legal Texts,” both approximately seven pages long. Accordingly, it seems that one of two other options should have been taken: either Barmash should have dealt with cuneiform law only and left those other topics to their own entries, or the entries on Persian law and Egyptian legal texts should have been subsumed as subentries to the entry on ancient Near Eastern law. Either of those seems more reasonable than what was finalized in the OEBL. Despite this oddity, Barmash's entry provides an adequate introduction to ancient Near Eastern law and the cross-references lead the reader to the in-depth entries on individual subjects.

In terms of substance, I offer two other examples. At the time I was writing this review, I was considering as a dissertation topic the criminalization of sexual conduct in the ancient Near East, which made Carolyn Pressler's article of immediate interest. I was also studying the development of legal procedure regarding the two/three-witness rule from the biblical period to the Talmud, and so Bruce Wells's entry was especially relevant at that time. Both entries included numerous, pertinent details. Both have substantive introductions to the topics. Did they address all three of Strawn's foci? Yes, though with somewhat differing results.

Pressler's entry, “Sexual Legislation,” runs approximately twelve pages, with cross-references to thirty-three other (sub)entries and a bibliography of twenty-four sources. Pressler organizes her entry into eight subtopics: (1) “Presupposition of the Laws,” (2) “Methodological Issues,” (3) “Adultery,” (4) “Rape and Seduction,” (5) “Incest,” (6) “Laws Related to Incest Prohibitions,” (7) “Bestiality,” and (8) “Assessment.” The title “Laws Related to Incest Prohibitions” is a bit of a misnomer; a more accurate and unwieldy title would have been “Laws that are Located in Close Proximity to the Biblical Texts that Contain the Incest Prohibitions.” These are not laws about incest per se but rather laws that occur in the same chapters as the incest prohibitions; these include laws prohibiting male-male intercourse and intercourse with a menstruating woman.Footnote ²

Pressler's entry gives its attention centrally to the Pentateuchal texts that are concerned with sexual activity; however, she does not limit herself to those. She refers to other biblical books, such as Hosea, Proverbs, and 1 and 2 Samuel, in which sexual conduct is at issue. Furthermore, she makes connections with other ancient Near Eastern law codes when those codes might shed light on the background or motivation for the biblical injunctions. Pressler also highlights those seemingly anomalous gaps in the Bible's sexual legislation, that is, places where it seems laws should be present but are not. For example, Pressler considers why father-daughter incest is not specifically prohibited in Leviticus 18 and 20, even though grandfather-granddaughter incest, mother-son incest, and brother-sister incest are all enjoined.

Overall, Pressler has provided a commendable entry on the laws concerning sexual relations in the Hebrew Bible. The one place where she fails is in Strawn's third emphasis: the afterlife and influence of the biblical law. She notes how Jesus reinterprets the adultery law to include a man's lusting after a woman who is not his spouse and a man's remarriage after divorce, except when the cause for the divorce was an unchaste wife. Aside from these two instances, Pressler does not provide much in the way of the afterlife of these biblical laws. Certainly, these laws on sexual behavior have been influential both in the West and in the Islamic world. Some comment on those should have been made and would have rounded out the entry well.

Wells's entry, “Testimony and Witness,”Footnote ³ is approximately seven pages long, with seventeen cross-references and a twenty-one-source bibliography. The entry's five divisions—(1) “Witnesses,” (2) “Rules Governing Witness Testimony,” (3) “Narratives Regarding Testimony and Witness,” (4) “Poetic Descriptions of Testimony and Witness,” and (5) “Legacy”—touch on all aspects of witness testimony. He describes the different types of witnesses, what constitutes testimony, and the prohibitions against false testimony. Wells's attention is centered on the biblical text. He does reference other ancient Near Eastern documents and law codes that are relevant, but these references are not as copious as one might hope.

Not only does Wells trace the laws regarding witnesses in the law codes, he also catalogues those narratives (such as the Sabbath breaker in Numbers 15) and poetic texts (such as Psalm 27) that describe witnesses and testimony. Lastly, unlike Pressler, Wells includes a section on the afterlife of these biblical laws concerning witnesses. He notes those places in the Qumran documents and in the New Testament that pertain to witnesses and testimony. Additionally, he discusses how the biblical laws influenced Alfred the Great's law code and even the Salem witch trials. As a result, Wells aptly fulfills Strawn's aspirations to outline the content of the biblical law on witnesses and testimony, the ancient Near Eastern context, and the continuing influence of the biblical law.

In general, the other entries in the OEBL are similar quality to those of Barmash, Pressler, and Wells, and all cogently deliver the basic information on the topic, though some address Strawn's three emphases better than others. This aligns with Strawn's concession in the introduction that some topics are not conducive for his three emphases and that some authors were not qualified to speak to all three. This seems to be the case primarily for the afterlife of the biblical laws. It may have been asking too much for scholars of the ancient Near East to trace the afterlife of biblical law much past late antiquity.

With respect to the influence of biblical law, though, the most glaring lacuna is the absence of an entry for either the Deutero-Canonical (Apocrypha) or the Pseudepigraphal works. There is an entry on the Dead Sea Scrolls, which details the legal texts in that library and how they contextualized the biblical law. Something similar should have been done for the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha. One can find listings in the index for some of those books, like 1 Maccabees and the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs. So, for example, this means that to find everything that 1 Maccabees says about legal material, one must seek out each entry that lists 1 Maccabees. It would have been more constructive to have assembled everything that is said in 1 Maccabees and the other Deutero-Canonical books about biblical law under an entry titled “Deutero-Canon” or “Apocrypha,” in the same way as was done with the Qumran literature.

Like other large reference works, the encyclopedia contains more than forty entries that do not contain any information other than direction to other entries which touch on the topic. For instance, the first entry in volume one of the OEBL is “Administrative Law,” which simply reads, “See Legal Experts; Legal Institutions; and Monarchy and Administration.” It is worth noting that these “blind” entries do not appear in the list of articles, and some do not appear in the index, either. Take, for example, “Administrative Law.” If one were to look at either the list of articles or the index, one would not be able to locate any information on administrative law. Only by looking at the entry for “Administrative Law” can one find where to look in the rest of the OEBL to find information related to administrative law. Thankfully, this is not the case for every subject of these redirect entries. “Blasphemy” has a blind entry, but that term also appears in the index, directing the reader to entries in which the topic of blasphemy is addressed. It seems inexplicable why some of these redirects would have index listings and others would not.

Another issue relates to standardization—or not—of abbreviations. It appears that Strawn allowed each author to use the abbreviations she preferred rather than imposing a standard list on the authors. Consequently, depending on the entry, “Hist.” can refer to either Herodotus's Histories or to Tacitus's Historiae. The context will likely make clear which work is in view, but it would have been preferable for each author to follow a single standard abbreviation so that it would be perfectly clear to the reader whether that author was referring to Herodotus or Tacitus. Ironically, the OEBL also uses alternate abbreviations for both works: “Herodotus, Hist.” and “Tacitus, Hist.” Such a standardization would have brought an additional measure of coherency to the OEBL as a unified work.

These are not the only works that have multiple abbreviations. Codex Sinaiticus has the abbreviations “א” and “S.” Josephus's Antiquities is abbreviated “Ant.” and “A.J.” The Laws of Hammurabi are abbreviated by “LH” and “CH,” and other works have multiple abbreviations. All of these abbreviations are valid, but it could be confusing for a reader as she flips from one entry to another.

In addition, the abbreviations list is incomplete. Despite having the two abbreviations noted above, Herodotus's Histories is also abbreviated “Hdt” in the entry on crucifixion. This designation is not found at all in the abbreviation list. Again, if one has come to the entry on crucifixion from another entry that refers to the Histories by “Hist.” then the reader might be stumped as to what work is in view.

Despite its deficiencies and quirks, the OEBL is an excellent starting point for one to begin investigating a matter of biblical law. A quick perusal of the list of articles will alert the reader to the broad topics covered in the entries. A review of the exhaustive index will provide specific citations to narrower legal topics or concepts. The cross references and the bibliographies that accompany each entry can guide the researcher to other information or works that may be relevant to her research. As with any encyclopedia, some entries will be more comprehensive than others. The retail price tag of $395.00 may make this work cost prohibitive as an investment for most individual scholars (let alone students). However, the OEBL should be included in the libraries of law schools, seminaries, and any university that has a religion, religious studies, or Near Eastern languages and civilizations program. The OEBL is an excellent tool to assist researchers in their study of the biblical laws themselves as well as the lasting impact that those laws have had on later societies, cultures, and religions.