Leviticus c 550-400 BCE

Leviticus 17-20 Online

Note the date of authorship (above).  This is at least 1300 years after Abraham lived.  It is 700-800 years after the time of Moses (c.1300).

These continue the Decalogue (Ten Commandments).  They are worth reading for a number of reasons, including:

Many pages are devoted to the ritualized treatment of food.  We will see this continue in the Homeric tradition as well. Why do you think this is?

I would argue that most of Mosaic laws do in fact offer a practical, common sense way of fulfilling God's covenant with the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob) to flourish and become "as many as there are stars in the heaven".  If we assume that this simply means to ensure that you have lots of babies and ensure that those babies live to an age where they can have lots of babies, the rules make sense: circumcision, no adultery, no homosexuality, no incest, no masturbation,  no sex during menstruation and lots of clean, carefully prepared food.  Etc.

This Text In Our Culture:

In contemporary times they are the clearest and most cited source condemning homosexuality (among men; nothing seems to be said of female homosexuality) (Lev. 18:22).

It is clear here that the Hebrews considered homosexuality (between men) to be what in English translates as an "abomination", a single English word used to cover two different words in Hebrew: shiqquwts ("shiqqûts") translating as "taboo" and  to'ba (noun) or ta'ab (verb) translating as "loathful, hateful, sinful, wicked". 

Wikipedia actually offers a useful glossary and discussion of how this word is used in the Hebrew scriptures, and what the Israelites considered to be an abomination, with links to further discussions.

When read in context it is clear that Leviticus condemns and condones many practices modern people, including devout Christians, find abhorrent, or at least irrelevant to our culture.  Leviticus is, in fact, the section of the Hebrew scriptures that spells out Kosher law, including most obviously the treatment of meat, shell fish, proscription against pork, cultivation of fruit trees and wheat fields...and most obviously even Orthodox Jews no longer follow the guidelines concerning the ritualized slaughter of animals. In Leviticus we see that breaking some of these may bring the penalty of death.

Note that in Lev. 20:10 the penalty for adultery is death.  Note, however, that in 19:20, the penalty is less severe when a man has sex with another man's slave.

Note in 17:10 the reference to "goat demons" (later translated as "the devil"); this seems a clear reference to the Greco Roman demi-god Pan.

Beginning with the Apostle Peter, however, Christians were encouraged to see only some Hebrew laws as applying to the emerging religion of Christianity while others only applying to Jews -- this explains why circumcision, the very basis of the Abrahamic covenant, is only practiced by some Christians etc.  Today the issue of which laws apply to whom are certainly being highly debated.

Another glossary of the crimes associated with the death penalty in ancient Israel is offered here:

The code requires:

The code prohibits:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_bibh2.htm