When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, that you may not bring the guilt of blood upon your house, if any one fall from it.
— Deuteronomy 22:8 (RSV)
Thus it was written, the first building code. When God conveyed more than 600 laws to the Israelites, it went much further than the 10 commandments that Moses brought down from the mountain. The laws governed not just fundamental obligations that most civilized persons can agree to, but food safety, criminal justice, labor management, social services, finances, warfare, the environment and marriage. They forbid the destruction of trees during a city’s siege while permitting the stoning of rebellious children.