ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an orientation to the legal sources preserved in the Old Testament that deal with criminal law, including discussion of a few of the signal problems besetting the proper interpretation and use of these texts. The main texts on homicide in the Pentateuch are then overviewed before addressing the complex issue of the role of the mental element in the determination of culpability and punishment. The chapter ends with a consideration of one of the main differences between contemporary law and biblical law – namely, the role of the Deity in law – in order to draw some possible, though perhaps unrecognised and undertheorised, connections between modern jurisprudence and Scripture, and what such connections might mean for a Christian approach to criminal law.
