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Noahide Laws

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The Noahide laws are the mitzvot (laws) that Judaism teaches that all of humankind is morally bound to follow. Although opinions differ on the reach of these laws, all contemporary authorities agree that there are seven main laws.

Table of contents
1 Premise
2 The seven laws
3 Subdivision
4 Recent developments
5 Other religions as Noahide
6 Traditions of Origin
7 Criticism
8 Further reading
9 See also
10 External links

Premise

According to Judaism, the Noahide laws apply to all humanity through their descent from Noah after The Flood. In Judaism, B'nai Noach (Hebrew, "Descendants of Noah"), and Noahide, are non-Jews who live in accord with the seven Noahide Laws (below). Any B'nai Noach organization will be composed of gentiles who follow these rules.

All denominations of Judaism hold that gentiles (non-Jews) are not obligated to follow halakha (Jewish law and custom); only Jews are obligated do so. Judaism has no tradition of active conversion, and modern-day Judaism discourages proselytization. Rather, for non-Jews, the Noahide Laws are considered the way to have a meaningful relationship with God.

Maimonides states in his work Yad ha-Chazaka (The laws of kings and their rulership 8:11) that a non-Jew who keeps the Seven Noahide commandments is considered to be a Righteous Gentile and has earned the afterlife. This follows a similar statement in the Talmud (tractate Sanhedrin 105b). However, according to Maimonides, a share in the World to Come is only earned if a person follows the Noahide laws specifically because they consider them to be of divine origin (through the Torah) and not if they simply consider them a good way to live (in which case they would simply be a wise person). Other authorities do not make this distinction.

The seven laws

The seven laws are first mentioned in Tosefta Sanhedrin 9:4 and Talmud Sanhedrin 56a/b:

  1. Do not murder.
  2. Do not steal.
  3. Do not worship false gods.
  4. Do not be sexually immoral (forbidden sexual acts are traditionally interpreted to include incest, sodomy, male homosexual sex acts and adultery)
  5. Do not eat anything of the body of an unslaughtered animal (see Kashrut).
  6. Do not blaspheme.
  7. Set up courts and bring offenders to justice.

The Talmud says: "Righteous people of all nations have a share in the world to come" (Sanhedrin 105a). Any person who lives according to these laws is known as "the righteous among the gentiles". Maimonides states that this refers to those who have acquired knowledge of God and act in accordance with the Noahide laws.

Subdivision

Various rabbinic sources have different positions on the way the seven laws are to be subdivided in categories. The comtemporary Rabbi Dr. Aaron Lichtenstein, who bases his view on those of Maimonides, counts 66 instructions.

The commandments, according to Rav Shmuel ben Hophni Gaon (early Middle Ages), cover:

Theft, robbery, and stealing covers the appropriate understanding of other persons, their property, and their rights. The establishment of courts of justice promotes the value of the responsibility of a corporate society of people to enforce these laws, and define these terms. The refusal to engage in unnecessary lust or cruelty demonstrates respect for the Creation itself, as renewed after the Flood. To not do murder would include human sacrifice as being forbidden.

Recent developments

In recent years some non-Jews have tried to create organized Noahide religious movements, but being a Noahide has never been considered to be part of an organized religion. Still, the Jewish authority Maimonides classified Islam as a Noahide religion.

The Chabad Lubavitch movement has been especially active in promoting Noahism among non-Jews and several Christian congregations have abandoned Christianity (i.e., acceptance of the Nicene Creed) and adopted Noachidism in recent years. In the United States a few organized movements of non-Jews (primarily of Christian origin) have been influenced by Orthodox Judaism; rather than converting to Judaism, they have chosen to abandon previous religious affiliation and live by the Noahide Laws. The Rainbow is the symbol of many organised Noahide groups.

Other religions as Noahide

From the Jewish perspective, if a non-Jew keeps all of the laws entailed in the categories covered by the Seven Noahide commandments as a threshold minimum initiation into the path of Torah, he is considered a Ger Toshav (inhabitant foreigner) when with a congregation of Israel. In fact, this is considered the ideal level for all humanity by Jewish theology. A Ger Tzedek is a person who prefers to proceed to religious conversion, a procedure that is actively discouraged by Orthodox Judaism.

The term Noahide is not the name of any specific religion but a term used to describe religions and cultures compliant with the Noahide Laws outside of Israel.

Islam

Islam has a different tradition on Noah and his descendants; the Quran mentions additional narrative on Noah. As stated before, the Jewish authority Maimonides has maintained that the Islam is a Noahide religion, although the Medieval sage Nissim of Gerona disagrees.

Christianity

Except for Unitarian Christians or other followers of Jesus who do not believe in his divinity, Christians would not be considered Noahides by most Jewish authorities, because the belief in the Trinity is considered blasphemous, and the belief in the divinity of Christ as idolatry.

Traditions of Origin

One tradition is that the Noahide Laws are seven laws from the covenant made between God and Noah after the 40 days and 40 nights of rain which flooded the whole world killing everyone except Noah and his family and the creatures of the ark. They are never explicitly enumerated in the Bible, but the covenant that God made with Noah (Genesis 9) contains these admonitions:

Food

Also, flesh with the life -the blood- in it do not eat. (4)

Murder
I will also inquire about your blood, your life, from all animals, and from each human I will inquire about his brother's blood.
Who sheds the blood of man, by man his blood will be shed, because in the image of God was man made.

A common tradition (mentioned in the Talmud) is that six were given to Adam and Eve in Paradise and one to Noah in Genesis chapter 9.

In the story of Noah we see mention of Sacrifice, Kashrut, and "Uncovered Nakedness" (a biblical euphemism for incest within a patriarch's family). In the story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) Heaven puts an end to the experiment in dictatorship (indicated by the phrases "the people is one") when it had replaced the plurality intended in the original Law-Court system. Others have interpreted it that the command for a plural legal system instead of any dictatorial system was initiated at this time.

Criticism

Critics of the Noahide laws contend that insisting upon a basic set of moral laws is quite contrary to religious pluralism. This holds true especially in light of the fact that the adoption of the Noahide Laws as an enforceable legal code would (according to most authorities) criminalize activities common to religions other than Judaism (such as belief in the Trinity, the worship of Jesus and the use of crucifixes, religious pictures, the Eucharist at the Mass etc).

While most Christians would consider the Ten Commandments to be binding on them and would see some of the Noahide laws as essentially a subset of these (though the requirement to set up courts, and the dietary regulation, are not explicit in the commandments), many Jewish thinkers consider Noahide Laws as not quite as simple as they seem but as "general categories of commandments, each containing many components and details," the execution of which is left to Jewish rabbis. This, in addition to the teaching of the Jewish law that punishment for violating one of the seven Noahide Laws includes death by decapitation (Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin 57a), is a factor in the opposition of the notion of a Noachide legal system, by many Christians.

According to the New Testament book of Acts (15:20,29), the idolatry, blood, and immorality laws were recognized as laws laid down for gentiles by the early disciples of Jesus (though ante-exile Jewish, Christian, and Rabbinical Jewish interpretations as to what these mean differ); however the extent to which Jewish law in general was binding on gentile Christians was a matter of dispute in the early church, as is clear from some of the letters of Paul, especially Galatians (written before Acts, though referring to later events). The ordained, decided at the Council of Jerusalem (mentioned in Acts) that the Law of Moses is not binding at all on Christians in se as "the Law of Moses," though some of it is applicable in effect because it is reflects the Divine Law that is written into the hearts of men (Jeremiah 31:33). As a result, many Christians would see the adoption of the Noachide laws as unnecessary.

Further reading

See also

External links