In approaching what he calls ‘biblical law’, Burnside makes it clear that he writes as a lawyer and criminologist and that he has selected those topics – land, property, social welfare, marriage and divorce, homicide, theft and sexual offences – which he thinks are likely to be of most interest to a modern student of law. There is also a chapter on the trials (sic) of Jesus. For relative beginners, this book demonstrates that the Bible (mainly the Hebrew Scriptures) contains a body of law to be taken seriously not just because of the influence that it has had on later systems of law but in its own right and for the sake of its challenging relational priorities. For the more experienced student, who wishes to reflect on comparative jurisprudence, Burnside commends the ancient wisdom to be found in biblical law. For anyone wishing to study the corpus of biblical law in the Hebrew Scriptures, this is an important and challenging work.

Burnside does not define ‘biblical law’. He ‘characterises’ it as ‘an integration of different instructional genres of the Bible which together express a vision of society ultimately answerable to God’ (p xiii). He commends it for its ‘relational’ approach, which is based in the biblical understanding of covenant, contrasting it with contemporary approaches to law, which he sees as more instrumental and individualistic. For example, in discussing land law, he looks at land in the context of the communities who inhabit it, contrasting this with the ‘commodification’ of land in contemporary land law. The importance of ‘relational justice’ to Burnside's whole project can be seen by visiting his website,Footnote ¹ and much of his discussion focuses on the relational priorities of the Torah. For me, the best thing about this book is his emphasis that the Torah does not contain a comprehensive account of case law. Rather, it exemplifies good laws and a judicious approach to their application. The law is, in this sense, ‘open-ended’: it calls for wisdom in its application. All of this is strikingly relevant to contemporary legal practice.

Burnside sees the Torah as an impressive body of teaching for a covenant community; from his exposition, it has relatively little to offer to those not in the community. In the days before the rise of Christianity, ethnocentrism of this kind can have mattered relatively little, since proselytes were ‘incorporated’ into Israel. The emerging Christian churches, however, had a universal horizon; before long, therefore, new questions began to be asked about the laws to which Christians were bound. From an early stage, Christian teaching was indebted to Stoic morality: according to Paul (Rom 2:15), when Gentiles do instinctively what the law requires they ‘show that what the law requires is written on their hearts’ – a Stoic idea. By and large, Christians were to be loyal citizens of the cosmopolitan cities to which they belonged, paying their taxes, but denying the divine status claimed by the Emperor. The point at which Mosaic law bound them unconditionally was one unknown in many ancient as well as modern systems of law: the first, great commandment that they were to have no other gods before Yahweh (Ex 20:3). Not being bound to the Torah as Jews were, Christians could in other ways accept the criminal and civil code of the societies to which they belonged, but not where these curtailed what we would now call ‘freedom of worship’. This development of biblical law, whereby it was broadly reconciled with the ethical philosophy of the ancient world but unflinching on worship of God alone, is not discussed in Burnside's book – yet it is vital for understanding the root from which the universal horizon and the respect for conscience in contemporary jurisprudence has sprung. He considers the ‘Torah-awareness’ of Jesus but not that of Paul, which is, of course, much contested.

This brings me to a central question which I do not think Burnside clearly addresses: what is the relevance of biblical law (as he understands it) in a plural society? In his words, ‘How do we do biblical law?’ (p 416). He calls attention to biblical law as a system pregnant with (relational) possibilities for contemporary societies that are confused and inadequate in their law-making. I do not myself see how ‘biblical law’, understood as Burnside does, could become a source for contemporary law-making in the way he suggests. We live in a world that has become a ‘society of societies’, held together increasingly by secular public law. We dare not now give up on the ground rules for good behaviour established in public law principally by human rights legislation rooted in a common understanding of ‘natural law’ that allows space for the ‘comprehensive commitment’ of religious believers. This was something that was deeply appreciated by John Rawls. Burnside offers an account of Rawls (p 248) which is both thin and misleading (Rawls' focus was not ‘justice as equality’ but ‘justice as fairness’), and in the one reference to human rights that I could find he says merely that it is as difficult to talk of human rights as of animal rights (p 149) – a sweeping assertion which raises more questions than it solves.

My sense is that this is a book, for all its scholarship, to be used with care. It demonstrates the depth and flexibility of the Torah. It also demonstrates the importance of Jesus' commitment to the Torah for understanding his ministry. However, it left me uneasy about the catch-all term ‘biblical law’. Burnside speaks of ‘an integration of different instructional genres of the Bible’, but how ‘integrated’ is the view of law in the Bible? In the past, Christian, especially protestant, theologians have been suspicious or dismissive of whole areas of law in the Hebrew Scriptures – by and large, the areas that concentrate on the cult. Christians have refused to accept many of the Torah's instructions, whether in its provision for circumcision, sacrifice or stoning. Within the New Testament, we see new churches beginning to develop ecclesiastical law: for example, in Paul's teaching about who may receive the Eucharist, or the teaching of the Pastorals on who is fit for ecclesiastical office. This embryonic ‘law of Christ’, which lies at the root of the ecclesiastical law studied by this journal, is contained within a number of ‘instructional genres’ of the New Testament. In this Burnside shows little interest. The question that I think Burnside raises but fails to tackle adequately is this: the Bible bears witness to systems of law developed within the covenant communities of the Old and New Testaments. It says very little about ‘natural law’ or the extent to which the laws of covenant communities may be of universal application. How can we know which aspects of ‘biblical law’ are to be commended to the law-makers of modern societies and which are to be quietly overlooked?