Justice Menachem Elon's classic text surveys the panorama of Jewish law from biblical times to contemporary Israel. The result is the most definitive record to date of a unique legal system that integrates criminal, civil, and religious law to form a unified whole of unprecedented range. This four-volume set is an essential resource for academic, legal, and personal libraries.

The objective of these volumes is to provide a comprehensive overview of the entire field of Jewish law. Part One outlines the history and basic principles of Jewish law. Part Two studies the legal sources of Jewish law, namely, exegesis and interpretation, legislation, custom, precedent, and legal reasoning. These are the creative processes and modes of growth that enable the law to take account of changing circumstances and adapt to changing needs. Part Three surveys the literary sources of Jewish law—including pre-Biblical, Biblical, and immediately post-Biblical literature; the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmund; post-Talmudic commentaries, novellae, and codes; the response literature; and scholarly studies and reference works.

The overview presented by all four volumes combines two different perspectives: one, from within the Jewish legal system, thoroughly reviews the literature of the system itself; and the other, from outside the system, uses the technique of comparative law and the methodologies of general jurisprudence in order to provide broader insight and a better appreciation of the nature and quality of Jewish law in relation to other legal and social systems. The summary of contents at the beginning of each volume and the detailed analytical table of contents of the entire work at the beginning of Volume I indicate the vastness of the field and the scope of the study.