Synopsis The remarkable discovery of ancient Near Eastern law collections or codes, beginning with the Laws of Hammurabi and followed by many other collections in decades following, opened a new window upon biblical law. This volume seeks to examine within a single study all of the biblical laws that are similar in content with ancient Near Eastern laws from Sumer, Babylonia, Assyria, and Hatti. The book also examines a small but important group of early rabbinic laws from postbiblical times that exhibit significant similarities with laws found in the ancient Near Eastern collections or codes. This later group of laws, although absent from the Bible, are nevertheless of comparable antiquity. The presentation focuses on the actual law statements preserved in these ancient law codes. The discussion then adds narratives, records, and reports of legal actions from ancient sources outside the laws-all of which relate to the formal law statements. The discourse is non-polemical in tone and d