Talmud According to the
Babylonian Talmud, the Seven Laws of Noah laws apply to all of
humanity. Any non-Jew who lives according to these laws is regarded as one of the
Righteous among the Gentiles. The Talmud expands the scope of the seven laws to cover about 100 of the
613 mitzvot.
Punishment In practice, Jewish law makes it very difficult to apply the
Jewish death penalty. No record exists of a Gentile having been put to death for violating the seven Noahide laws. considered one of the lightest capital punishments. Other sources state that the execution is to be by stoning if he has intercourse with a Jewish betrothed woman, or by strangulation if the Jewish woman has completed the marriage ceremonies, but had not yet consummated the marriage. In Jewish law, the only form of blasphemy which is punishable by death is blaspheming the
Ineffable Name (). Some Talmudic rabbis held that only those offences for which a Jew would be executed, are forbidden to gentiles. The Talmudic rabbis discuss which offences and sub-offences are capital offences and which are merely forbidden. Maimonides states that anyone who does not accept the seven Noahide laws is to be executed, as God compelled the world to follow these laws. For the other prohibitions such as the grafting of trees and bestiality he holds that the sons of Noah are not to be executed. Maimonides adds a universalism lacking from earlier Jewish sources. According to some opinions, punishment is the same whether the individual transgresses with knowledge of the law or is ignorant of the law. Some authorities debate whether non-Jewish societies may decide to modify the Noahide laws of evidence (for example, by requiring more witnesses before punishment, or by permitting circumstantial evidence) if they consider that to be more just. Whilst Jewish law requires two witnesses, Noachide law, as recorded by Rambam, Hilkhot Melakhim 9:14, can accept the testimony of a single eyewitness as sufficient for use of the death penalty. Whilst a confession of guilt is not admissible as evidence before a Jewish court, it is a matter of considerable dispute as to whether or not it constitutes sufficient grounds for conviction in Noachide courts. There is also some debate as to whether the ideal punishment for violation of these laws is the death penalty, or if it is up to the court's discretion to decide which punishment is most fitting. While a simple reading of the Talmud might suggest that the ideal punishment is the death penalty, a number of prominent commentators, including Rav Yosef Eliyahu Henkin, have argued that it is up to the courts to decide.
Subdivisions Various
rabbinic sources have different positions on the way the seven laws are to be subdivided in categories. Maimonides, in his
Mishneh Torah, included the grafting of trees.
David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra, a commentator on Maimonides, expressed surprise that he left out castration and sorcery which were also listed in the Talmud. The Talmudist
Ulla wrote of 30 laws which the sons of Noah took upon themselves. He only lists three, namely the three that the gentiles follow: not to create a
Ketubah between males, not to sell
carrion or
human flesh in the market and to respect the Torah. The rest of the laws are not listed. Though the authorities seem to take it for granted that Ulla's thirty commandments included the original seven, an additional thirty laws are also possible from the reading. Two different lists of the 30 laws exist. Both lists include an additional twenty-three
mitzvot which are subdivisions or extensions of the seven laws. One from the 16th-century work
Asarah Maamarot by Rabbi
Menahem Azariah da Fano and a second from the 10th century
Samuel ben Hofni which was recently published from his Judeo-Arabic writings after having been found in the
Cairo Geniza. Rabbi
Zvi Hirsch Chajes suggests Menahem Azariah of Fano enumerated commandments are not related to the first seven, nor based on the
written Torah, but instead were passed down by
oral tradition.
Ger toshav (resident alien) During
biblical times, a Gentile living in the
Land of Israel who did not want to convert to Judaism but accepted the Seven Laws of Noah as binding upon himself was granted the legal status of
ger toshav (,
ger: "foreigner" or "alien" +
toshav: "resident", lit. "
resident alien"). A
ger toshav is therefore commonly deemed a "Righteous Gentile" (,
Chassid Umot ha-Olam: "Pious People of the World"), He conjectures that, according to Maimonides, only a full
ger tzedek would be found during the Messianic era. which he believes is contrary to what Maimonides thought and the
Torah teaches,
Maimonides' view and his critics During the
Golden Age of Jewish culture in the Iberian Peninsula, the
medieval Jewish philosopher and rabbi
Maimonides (1135–1204) wrote in the
halakhic legal code
Mishneh Torah (tractate
Hilkhot Melakhim) that Gentiles must perform exclusively the Seven Laws of Noah and refrain from
studying the Torah or performing any
Jewish commandment, including resting on the
Shabbat. He also states that if Gentiles willingly perform any Jewish commandment besides the Seven Laws of Noah according to the correct halakhic procedure, they are not prevented from doing so. According to Maimonides, teaching non-Jews to follow the Seven Laws of Noah is incumbent on all Jews, a commandment in and of itself. Nevertheless, the majority of
rabbinic authorities over the centuries have rejected Maimonides' opinion, and the dominant halakhic consensus has always been that Jews are not required to spread the Noahide laws to non-Jews. According to Maimonides, such non-Jews achieve the status of
Chassid Umot Ha-Olam ("Pious People of the World"), The 15th-century Sephardic Orthodox rabbi
Yosef Caro, one of the early
Acharonim and author of the
Shulchan Aruch, rejected Maimonides' denial of the access to the World to Come to the Gentiles who obey the Noahide laws guided only by their reason as
anti-rationalistic and unfounded, asserting that there is not any justification to uphold such a view in the Talmud. The 18th-century Ashkenazi German philosopher
Moses Mendelssohn, one of the leading exponents of the
Jewish Enlightenment (
Haskalah), strongly disagreed with Maimonides' formulation of the subject in the
Mishneh Torah (tractate
Hilkhot Melakhim), citing a letter sent by Maimonides to the Jewish translator
Abraham ben Samuel ibn Hasdai ha-Levi of
Barcelona, and instead contended that, in conformity to the letter itself, Gentiles which observe the seven Noahide laws out of ethical, moral, or philosophical
reasoning, without necessarily believing in the Jewish monotheistic conception of God or knowing the Torah, retained the status of "
Righteous Gentiles" and would still achieve
salvation. According to
Steven Schwarzschild, Maimonides' position has its source in his adoption of
Aristotle's skeptical attitude towards the ability of reason to arrive at moral truths, and "many of the most outstanding spokesmen of Judaism themselves dissented sharply from" this position, which is "individual and certainly somewhat eccentric" in comparison to other Jewish thinkers. The 20th-century Ashkenazi Orthodox rabbi
Abraham Isaac Kook, first
Chief Rabbi of the
British Mandate of Palestine, cited many rabbinical authorities in ruling leniently that a non-Jew who follows the seven commandments due to philosophical conviction rather than revelation (what Maimonides calls "one of their wise men") would also have a part in the
World to Come (Olam Ha-Ba). This would be in line with Maimonides' general approach, he said, that following philosophical wisdom spiritually "advances an individual even more than righteous behaviour".
Modern Noahide movement Menachem Mendel Schneerson encouraged
his followers on many occasions to preach the Seven Laws of Noah, Since the 1990s, including
The Temple Institute, In 1982, Chabad-Lubavitch had a reference to the Noahide laws enshrined in a
U.S. Presidential proclamation: the "Proclamation 4921", signed by the then-U.S. President
Ronald Reagan. signed by then-U.S. President
George H. W. Bush. In March 2016, the
Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel,
Yitzhak Yosef, declared during a sermon that Jewish law requires that only non-Jews who follow the Noahide laws are allowed to live in Israel: "According to Jewish law, it's forbidden for a non-Jew to live in the Land of Israel – unless he has accepted the seven Noahide laws, [...] If the non-Jew is unwilling to accept these laws, then we can send him to
Saudi Arabia, ... When there will be full, true redemption, we will do this." Yosef's sermon sparked outrage in Israel and was fiercely criticized by several human rights associations,
NGOs and
members of the Knesset; Noahide law differs radically from
Roman law for gentiles (
Jus Gentium), if only because the latter was enforceable judicial policy. Rabbinic Judaism has never adjudicated any cases under the Noahide laws, Some modern views hold that penalties are a detail of the Noahide Laws and that Noahides themselves must determine the details of their own laws for themselves. According to this school of thought – see N. Rakover,
Law and the Noahides (1998); M. Dallen,
The Rainbow Covenant (2003) – the Noahide laws offer humankind a set of absolute values and a framework for righteousness and justice, while the detailed laws that are currently on the books of the world's states and nations are presumptively valid. In recent years, the term "Noahide" has come to refer to non-Jews who strive to live in accord with the seven Noahide Laws; the terms "observant Noahide" or "Torah-centered Noahides" would be more precise but these are infrequently used. Support for the use of "Noahide" in this sense can be found with the
Ritva, who uses the term
Son of Noah to refer to a gentile who keeps the seven laws, but is not a
ger toshav. == Early Christianity ==