The content of the law code — the Law — on which the covenant relationship between Yahweh and the Hebrew people was based is recorded in what is now known as the Book of the Covenant, in Exodus 20:23–23:19. The famous Decalogue, or Ten Commandments, found in the first seventeen verses of Chapter 20, may have been included in the law code given by Moses, although certainly it was not given in the exact form in which we have it today. Both Jewish and Christian traditions have for many centuries regarded Moses as the great lawgiver of the Hebrews and, accordingly, as the author of all the laws contained in the first five books of the Old Testament — the Pentateuch.
Modern scholarship has produced ample evidence to indicate that many of these laws were not known until long after Moses' own death. That these same laws were attributed to Moses was not intended to deceive anyone concerning the time of their origin; rather, these laws were in harmony with the ones given by Moses and were added to his for the purpose of continuing the work he had begun. How many of the laws contained in the five books known as the Pentateuch were actually given by Moses is not known. However, a reasonable assumption is that the ones contained in the Book of the Covenant were first enunciated by Moses since these laws are appropriate to the age in which he lived. The similarity of this law code to the older Babylonian code of Hammurabi has led many scholars to believe that the Mosaic code was modeled after the Babylonian one. However this may be, unique elements in the Mosaic code may rightly be regarded as a distinctive Hebrew contribution.
