This encyclopaedia – the latest instalment in the Oxford Encyclopedias of the Bible series – should come with a government health warning. There are 115 notable scholars contributing some 139 essays on a variety of topics ranging from Hittite laws and the Laws of Hammurapi (or Hammurabi), through the Biblical texts and rabbinic law, to modern legal traditions. In these essays the contributors were asked ‘to pay particular attention to three major foci: (i) Biblical law: content, collections, genres; (ii) the ancient contexts of biblical law; and (iii) the afterlife and influence of biblical law’ (pp xv–xvi). As a result, once taken up the encyclopaedia is virtually impossible to put down because the reader researches one topic only to be referred to a number of related topics, in addition to a selective biography. Although embracing an enormous range of scholarship, the entries are written with a clarity which permits even the non-expert to comprehend their content.

It is impossible in a short review to take in each and every essay but a number stand out for comment. For example, as the contributor on the topic of crucifixion, Gunnar Samuelsson, points out (vol I, pp 138–142), ‘crucifixion, in a traditional sense was part of various suspension punishments of the ancient world. And it appears not to have been as well defined in society before the death of Jesus, as it seems to have become later.’ In fact, there is a real lack of specificity with regard to the terms ‘cross’ and ‘crucifixion’ in the New Testament. The accounts in the four gospels of Jesus' crucifixion ‘are concise and strikingly uninformative’; indeed, the use of nails is not mentioned at all in the passion narratives and their use is only to be inferred from the marks on Jesus' hands as recorded in John 20:25. This lack of information, of course, is reflected in the many differing pictorial representations of the crucifixion but tends to pass us by because of our own familiarity with the crucifixion story. Indeed, how many of us remember that ‘a peculiar reading of the end of Matthew 27:49 in Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus states that Jesus died by a Roman spear instead of the supposed crucifixion’? As Samuelsson concludes, ‘the sources for the detailed textual and pictorial accounts of the Church regarding exactly how Jesus died – not if or why – appears to be of a later date’. Although not mentioned, this explains why the crucified ankle to be found in the collection of the Israel Antiquities Authority in no way undermines the New Testament accounts of Jesus' death.

There is a striking attempt to present essays that are of topical concern. That on military crimes points out that Deuteronomy ‘contains the earliest known written laws of war’ (vol II, p 48) and is of particular note in relation to the treatment of women in warfare as well as the destruction of cities and non-combatants caught up in the fighting, issues which are regretfully only too current in the war against ISIS even today (vol II, pp 48–49, 51). Yet how many of us remember that Deuteronomy 20:19–20 (the destruction of fruit trees) is concerned with the economic effects of war? This passage ‘may well have originally formed a continuation of rules of battlefield conduct (20:10–14), and it breathes the same spirit of restraint that informs these rules as well as the prescriptions for the treatment of female captives' (vol II, p 49).

The essay on same-sex relations (vol II, pp 265–271) is the most balanced account that this reviewer has read. In this regard it is necessary, too, always to bear in mind that ‘the biblical laws [on sexual matters] presume familiarity with basic social institutions' (vol II, p 290), something sometimes overlooked in discussions on same-sex relationships. There is also a long essay on sexual legislation (vol II, pp 290–301).

Equally fascinating is the essay on suicide (vol II, pp 332–341), in particular in its discussion of suicide and martyrdom (although martyrdom is not mentioned in the index). There is also a timely reminder that ‘the Bible contains no law or ethical teaching against the act of suicide’ (vol II, p 332); indeed, it was only in the fourth century that Christian writers began to equate suicide with murder (vol II, p 338). It had certainly never occurred to this reviewer that

The essay on children (vol I, pp 97–104) deals inter alia with the questions of surrogacy and adoption and points out that,

However, it is disappointing that there is no explicit discussion of child abuse. In today's family courts the near sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22 would certainly be treated as child abuse.

In spite of the odd omission, however, this encyclopaedia is hugely to be welcomed and will be a treasured source for scholars and lawyers interested in the Bible, its laws and ethics for many years to come.