Preface

It would be difficult to name another science that has been so richly enriched in its scholarly resources in recent times as biblical-historical science. The latest discoveries have brought into it so much new and precious material that its horizons have had to expand far beyond the limits set for it in earlier times. This has naturally revived interest in it, and today it attracts the attention not only of specialist theologians, but also of secular scholars—specialists in various branches of general historical science. This scholarly movement is of course strongest in Western European literature, but it finds a noticeable reflection in our own native literature as well. There, biblical-scholarly activity is now proceeding with notable energy, expressing itself in a series of successive studies on the subjects of exegesis, archaeology, philology, and other branches of biblical scholarly knowledge, and today our biblical historical science can rightly point to a number of valuable works of this kind. Among the various branches of biblical knowledge, the science of Mosaic legislation has been the least developed among us—despite the fact that it represents a deeply interesting aspect of this field. In Mosaic law, beyond its general interest, there lies in our view one of the most precious materials for the general science of apologetics—and one still entirely untouched. It also presents the wise resolution, on the basis of higher principles, of those great social problems that so fruitlessly troubled the minds of the greatest thinkers of antiquity and that now demand practical resolution with threatening urgency. Western scholarship long ago turned to serious investigation of Mosaic law on a par with Roman law, and works of this kind are numerous there. Among us, by contrast, this remains a reserved, untouched domain; and if the present work should awaken interest in this important field of knowledge, the author would consider that the finest reward he could hope to receive for his modest labor.