Seven Laws of Noah


In Judaism, the Seven Laws of Noah, otherwise referred to as the Noahide Laws or the Noachian Laws, are a set of universal moral laws which, according to the Talmud, were given by God as a covenant with Noah and with the "sons of Noah"—that is, all of humanity.
The Seven Laws of Noah include prohibitions against worshipping idols, cursing God, murder, adultery and sexual immorality, theft, eating flesh torn from a living animal, as well as the obligation to establish courts of justice.
According to Jewish law, non-Jews are not obligated to convert to Judaism, but they are required to observe the Seven Laws of Noah to be assured of a place in the World to Come, the final reward of the righteous. The non-Jews that choose to follow the Seven Laws of Noah are regarded as "Righteous Gentiles".
In Samaritanism, there are only three Laws of Noah: those mentioned in Genesis 9.

List

The Seven Laws of Noah as traditionally enumerated in the Babylonian Talmud and Tosefta, are the following:
  1. Not to worship idols.
  2. Not to curse God.
  3. Not to commit murder.
  4. Not to commit adultery or sexual immorality.
  5. Not to steal.
  6. Not to eat flesh torn from a living animal.
  7. To establish courts of justice.
According to the Talmud, the seven Noahide laws were given first to Adam and subsequently to Noah. The Tannaitic and Amoraitic rabbinic sages disagreed on the exact number of Noahide laws that were originally given to Adam. Six of the seven laws were exegetically derived from passages in the Book of Genesis, with the seventh being the establishment of courts of justice. The earliest complete rabbinic version of the seven Noahide laws can be found in the Tosefta:

Origins

Hebrew Bible

The universal morality of the Noahide covenant for Gentiles was already affirmed in the Torah and was subsequently highlighted in the Book of Genesis, the Book of Job, and the Book of Jonah, showing that God directly related to every person regardless of their culture or religion, and would save all "Righteous Gentiles" who conformed to the Seven Laws of Noah.

Book of Jubilees

The Book of Jubilees, generally dated to the 1st century BCE, may include a substantially different list of six commandments at verses 7:20–25:
to observe righteousness;
to cover the shame of their flesh;
to bless their creator;
to honor their parents;
to love their neighbor; and
to guard against fornication, uncleanness, and all iniquity.

Samaritanism

In the Samaritan Pentateuch and tradition there is no record of Noahide Laws as in rabbinical literature. The reason being that the Samaritans do not sanctify any book other than the Written Torah.
This makes the Samaritan viewpoint of themselves and their relations with the world as ethnoreligious based on paternal-ancestry passed from father to son and not about advocating for universalist "Noahide Laws" in contrast to Judaism. They consider themselves "a bridge of peace" and they do not adhere to an Oral Law as in Judaism in regards to their view of gentiles, and do not believe that foreigners or people of non-paternal Israelite ancestry are bound by the Mosaic or Patriarchal covenant or laws, as the examples is shown again and again in their cordial pacts exchanged in the Pentateuch between their non-Israelite neighbors and outside of "the chosen line". No proselytism nor change was expected of them, their tribes, societies or cultures.
People who are not in the Samaritan community or seeking to practice the tenets of Samaritanism are considered foreigners. The Torah is not binding nor applicable to them, unless a potential convert decides or is in the process of joining the community, in which he/she must partake of the Paschal lamb and live with them for at least three years following all communal and ceremonial laws to be fully integrated which includes being circumcised if male.
Instead of seeking converts, they consider themselves to be a source of blessing to all the families of the nations by keeping their covenant and guarding the Torah on Mount Gerizim, the chosen and blessed place given by the God of Israel to them as enumerated many times in their book of Genesis and Deuteronomy, and expounded upon by Samaritan commentaries.

List

According to the Torah/Pentateuch only three laws not seven are explicitly stated for Noah and his descendants for the fundamental moral code considered expected and virtuous though not enforceable nor envisioned as a messianic end of days establishment of an Israelite or 'Noahide' global court but rather considered divinely sanctioned are the following:
  1. "You shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood..."
  2. "And I will require your lifeblood. From every living human, I will require it..."
  3. "Be fruitful and multiply, and populate abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein..."

    Commentary and tradition

In the book of Memar Marqah, a homiletic tractate, it is mentioned regarding the day of vengeance and recompense in its full weight and responsibility as being applicable only to the sons of Israel. all other nations and peoples are subject to their own moral laws, codes, cultures and fates as Marqah the Samaritan sage and priest pointed out in his works expounding on the Israelite Samaritan Torah.
Other references in the Torah scripture and Samaritan teachings which suggest and prove Israelite ancestral particularism is in regards to inheritance, cultures, and social structures; and the celestial bodies and heavenly hosts which can be read as the nations who are non-Israelites being 'allotted' other natural forces and/or spiritual powers and beings outside of the covenant, the Israelite Samaritan traditional cosmology regarding angels, humans, and "Sheedem" the gods of other religions appears evident to back this conclusion.

Modern analysis

Rabbinical

The Talmudic tractate Sanhedrin 105a named and excluded certain specific Jewish and non-Jewish groups of the distant past from salvation, but thereby implied, as explicitly stated there, that all other non-Jews of past or present could be righteous and would be saved as they were, without Gentiles needing to undergo conversion to Judaism. Following Moses Maimonides' analysis of Islam, medieval Jewish rabbis affirmed that Islam as an entire religion, despite its perceived errors and cruelties towards the Jews, could still be considered as a Noahide faith. The 13th–14th century Catalan rabbi Menachem ben Solomon Ha-Meiri fully extended much the same status to Christianity itself.
The Talmud has some striking accounts illustrating how far God's lovingkindness and mercies might extend, giving ultimate salvation even to persons who had led notoriously evil lives. Some said that if those persons had done only one truly selfless, kind and good deed in their entire lives God, would accept them for the sake of that precious act into Paradise, either immediately at death or after they had atoned for their sins in Purgatory. So it is evident that full observance of the Noahide covenant itself was not always obligatory for salvation after all, even if it remained the chief guide to lives of spiritual loftiness and nobility.
This led the 18th-century Italian Jewish Kabbalist and rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto to emphasize and explain at length that God would end up accepting all humanity, good and evil alike, into the World to Come —the evil ones, however, would of course need to purify themselves in Purgatory first, but there will be no eternal punishment for them.
During the 1860s in Western Europe, a resurgence of Noahide faith as the universal moral religion for Gentiles was developed by the 19th-century Italian Jewish Kabbalist and rabbi Elijah Benamozegh. Between the years 1920s–1930s, French writer  adopted the Seven Laws of Noah at the suggestion of his teacher Elijah Benamozegh. Afterwards, Pallière spread Benamozegh's doctrine in Europe and never formally converted to Judaism.
Modern historians argue that Benamozegh's role in the debate on Jewish universalism in the history of Jewish philosophy was focused on the Noahide laws for Gentiles as the means subservient to the shift of Jewish ethics from particularism to universalism, although the arguments that he used to support his universalistic viewpoint were neither original nor unheard in the history of this debate. According to Clémence Boulouque, Carl and Bernice Witten Associate Professor of Jewish and Israel Studies at Columbia University in the City of New York, Benamozegh ignored the ethnocentric biases contained in the Noahide laws, whereas some contemporary right-wing Jewish political movements have embraced them.
The Encyclopedia Talmudit, edited by the 20th-century Belarusian Hasidic rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin, states that after the giving of the Torah, the Jewish people were no longer included in the category of the sons of Noah. Maimonides indicates that the seven commandments are also part of the Torah, and the Babylonian Talmud states that Jews are obligated in all things that Gentiles are obligated in, albeit with some differences in the details. According to the Encyclopedia Talmudit, most medieval Jewish authorities considered that all the seven commandments were given to Adam, although Maimonides considered the dietary law to have been given to Noah.
Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, published and spoke about the Seven Laws of Noah many times. According to Schneerson's view, based on a detailed reading of Maimonides' tractate Hilkhot Melakhim in the Mishneh Torah, the Talmud, and the Hebrew Bible, the seven commandments originally given to Noah were given yet again, through Moses at Sinai, and it is exclusively through the giving of the Torah that the seven commandments derive their current force. What has changed with the giving of the Torah is that now, it is the duty of the Jewish people to bring the rest of the world to fulfill the Seven Laws of Noah.