Appendixes to the Companion Bible – Dr E.W. Bullinger
**A LISTING OF THE LAWS BEFORE SINAI **
(Compiled in the mid 1800 a.d. by E. W. Bullinger)
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**It is amazing that many theologians assume that there was a “Dispensation of Law” that started with Moses, when anyone who seriously reads the bible can see that multiple laws were acknowledged and obeyed BEFORE SINAI, even though there was no FORMAL record of those laws being given.
One verse that clearly tells us that God’s law was known before Sinai is in Gen 26:5 where we are told
Genesis 26:5
** **Because that Abraham obeyed my voice, and kept my charge,
****my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.****
Additionally we are told that BEFORE SINAI, Moses spent untold hours with the children of Israel, teaching them THE STATUTES AND LAWS OF GOD,which were not formally given until Exodus 20:
**Exodus 18:16:**
When they have a matter, they come unto me; and I judge between one and another, and
**I do make *them* know the statutes of God, and his laws.**
Additionally Jethro (who was also a descendant of Abraham) knew about God’s laws and instructed Moses in
**Exodus 18:20
**And thou shalt teach them ****ordinances and laws***, and shalt shew them the way wherein they must walk, and the work that they must do.
So the KNOWLEDGE OF GOD’S LAW was present with Abraham, who taught his children who taught their children, that is how & why when we read in Exodus 18 “BEFORE SINAI” where we read of descendants of Abraham, Moses and Jethro KNOWING ABOUT GOD’S COMMANDMENTS STATUTES AND LAWS.
But let’s regress to the story of Noah and the flood. How could there be WICKEDNESS if God had given those antediluvian people no law/commandments to keep, which they obviously broke and were judged for their sins, by dying in the flood. God would be UNJUST to destroy people for breaking laws He had never told them about.
So dispensationalists need to throw their charts in the trash because the laws of God were known by His people BEFORE SINAI!**
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**The existence of Laws in the book of Genesis and Exodus is evident, though there is no formal record of their delivery. Cp. Ex. 18:16. Doubtless some were made known to mankind, as such, by God, e.g.**
1. The Law of the Sabbath (Gen. 2:3).
1. The days noted in connection with the flood are all **sabbaths** except one, Gen. 8:5, Tuesday. See note on gen. 8:10, 12, 14.
1. The law of the place to worship (Gen. 4:3, 4, 16).
1. The law of offerings (Gen. 4:4), &c.
But, side by side with these special Divine communications, the Babylonian laws were codified in the age of Abraham. In A.D. 1901, the Code of Amraphel (Khammurabi), Gen. 14:1, was discovered in Susa by M. J. de Morgan. The latest date for this code is 2139 B.C. Eight hundred years before Moses, these laws governed the peoples from the Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea, and from Persia to the Mediterranean, and were in force throughout Canaan.
This discovery overthrew the two main pillars of the “higher critics”, one of which was that such writing was unknown before Moses; the other, that a legal code was impossible before the Jewish kings. Hence, we have now before us both codes; and are in a position to answer Jehovah’s question in Deut. 4:8, “What nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day?”
Khammurabi calls his laws the “judgments of righteousness”, but some of them, at least, are both unrighteous and unequal, as the following brief contrast shows at a glance :–
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Appendixes to the Companion Bible – Dr E.W. Bullinger
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