ABSTRACT
Traditionally, the concept of a legal source was considered crucial for any understanding of the essential aspects of law, whether origin, validity, or operation, and thus was assumed to be an indispensable part of any general theory of the concept of law. 1 However, although many scholars have noted a consensus among legal theorists that the problem of the sources of law is a pivotal one, analysis of the subject has been severely neglected. Legal sources were rarely a commonly discussed topic in the traditional literature of Jewish law. At first glance it seems almost an impossible task to create a comprehensive account of Jewish legal sources, not only because of the variety of ways that law is conceived but also due to the lack of a vocabulary to define them.
