This book began in 1995, when I was invited to deliver the Lancaster-Yarnton Lectures for 1996. Four lectures were to be delivered, first at the University of Oxford under the auspices of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and then at Lancaster University under the auspices of the Department of Religious Studies. Being free to choose any topic relating to Judaism, I decided these lectures would provide a good opportunity to bring together in a more coherent conceptual presentation the question of natural law, a question that has concerned me since my student days. And it has been a leitmotif throughout my work for twenty-five years or so. Indeed, to a great extent, this book is stimulated by a challenge directed to me by a perceptive reviewer of a collection of essays of mine, Jewish Social Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). Writing in the journal First Things (no. 34, June/July 1993, p. 48), Edward Oakes expressed his “high hopes for what David Novak can accomplish in the future in a more consistently theoretical work.” Oakes' challenge gave me the hope that there was more to be said on natural law in Judaism than had been said in my previous work, and that there are people who might be interested to hear it. I cannot really think of any better reason to write a book.

What are now chapters 1, 3, 5, and 6, were initially written during the summer of 1995. They were then delivered in Oxford and afterwards in Lancaster in February of 1996. An abridged version of chapter 1 appeared in First Things (no. 60, February 1996) as “Law of Moses, Law of Nature.”