ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the Pentateuchal legal tradition within its larger narrative context. It also examines many literary parallels that exist between the Pentateuchal legal narratives and Greek literature that featured laws and lawgivers, especially stories about expedition leaders who created constitutions and law codes for the colonies their founded in a new land that provide direct parallels to the foundation story in Exodus-Joshua. Greek stories about autochthonous peoples who had lived in a region from earliest times could include traditions about the ancestral laws and constitution along with other charter myths about national civic and religious institutions. The divine appointment of Moses as expedition leader in the biblical narrative followed the normal conventions of Greek foundation stories. Both the biblical narrative and Greek foundation stories prominently featured the establishment of the ancestral constitution and political institutions. The organic evolution of biblical social and legal institutions was entirely in line with models taken from Greek political philosophy.
