מצוות בני נח ומצוות התלויות בארץ

Seven commandments were given to Noah according to Tosefta Avoda Zara. It is hard to detect a link between these commandments and the biblical account of Noah and Noah’s sons. My claim in the current paper is that Noachide commandments are rooted not in Genesis but in exegesis given in Second Temple literature to Pentateuchal chapters where the children of Israel are warned not to defile the land they were promised: Leviticus 17 (misuse of animals’ blood), Leviticus 18 and 20 (incest), Numbers 35 (murder) and Deuteronomy 6 (idolatry). The biblical assumption, expressed in these chapters, that God is present only in the land of Israel was modified after the Babylonian exile. Thus, while the warning against the four transgressions in the book of Ezekiel applied only to those who live in the land of Israel (33:23-26), in the book of Jubilees and in Acts 15 the same warning is applied to the sons of Noah, that is, to the people who live all over the world. The seven commandments found in the Tannaitic literature is a further development. The Tannaim many years later turned the misuse of animals’ blood into ‘ever myn ha-chai’, – eating of a limb from a living animal and added two more warnings, against blasphemy and robbery, and one demand – establishment of judicial court.