The five opening books of the Bible became known as ‘the Law of God'. When you actually examine the documents in question you find that while it is certainly true that the books mention God, and use the words for the name of God, in actual practice these prove to be the Laws of Priests, and not the laws of God, at all. The books describe the work of priests, not the work of God.
A good example of what I mean are the stoning laws found in the Bible. These describe the work of priests and religious zealots working with them. Their job description is to throw stones at other human beings until they were dead.
Now one apologetic argument used to account for the fact that the Laws of God are in actual practice the laws of priests is to suggest that in some way it was the will of God to share in a common enterprise with human beings thus giving them prominent roles in a shared endeavor. However an examination of the Bible in that case would describe a shared endeavor, rather than the work of priests. For example the laws concerning skinning and gutting cattle could assign the skinning process to be the work of priests. The law would then continue by assigning the task of gutting the animal to Almighty God, in a spirit of cooperation in sharing the work load. The law would then read, ‘And, I, the Lord, will split the carcass and remove the entrails,' instead of reading, as such laws always read, ‘And the priest shall split the carcass, etc. etc' This would be fine example of that doctrine of human divine cooperation, but the actual state of affairs in the Bible describes work done by priests, and by priests alone, with no helping hand from Almighty God.
All we have is the word of those priests that the law of priests is also the law of God, while at the same time noting that there is precious little of the Working Word of God in that so called ‘law of God' which would be one way we might have of removing all doubt and ambiguity. (A few stonings should clear the mind pretty quickly).
Now stoning people to death, or burning them at the stake, are hideously cruel things to do to another human being, especially when you consider that they gave out the death penalty even for things that were really not crimes at all, and certainly not crimes deserving the penalty of such a painfully gruesome death. This sort of makes one wish that the law of God was instant death by a sudden blow to the head, instead of painful torture. Given that the priests doled out death, a painful death, it would be expected that priests would call this the law of God, even if it turned out to be the work of priests.
Now the real Law of God on the subject of stoning people would read, ‘And the I the Lord, shall in appear in my vengeance, and I shall gather together all the people as witnesses, and my wrath will blaze out, and I, the Lord, shall gather together stones, and shall stone the offender to death. I am the Lord.' Now one could dispute, as people do, as to whether or not the said law was in fact the Law of God. But given that this really would be the Law of God, let us say, well then there wouldn't be much room for doubt or ambiguity, now would there? Again and again someone would offend and again and again God almighty would gather us all together to witness that terrifying spectacle of a truly divine stoning.
Like I said, it would be the Law of God and you can be sure everyone would understand that fact very well, and thus we can easily imagine a world where nothing even remotely similar to Christian apologetics exists, not being required due to the convincing evidence of the validity of that particular divine Law of God. No one has ever seen God stone anyone, and it is this lack of God in the Laws of God that drives the process of apologetics.
Now history teaches us that priests stoned and burned people, but as far as we have ever seen, God never did, and this is demonstrated by the fact that so called Laws of God are found to be the tasks of Priests. As for priests taking care of that problem of getting rid of all the people God wanted stoned, well you can easily understand how certain skeptical sorts like myself would greatly prefer that God do God's own stoning, and really, just stop passing off God's dirty work on the human race (under the ruse of sharing work loads in a common enterprise). This hard nosed attitude would be particularly appropriate for such so called laws of God as stoning regulations and burning regulations, which really should, being the will of Almighty God, something that God should take care of in person, showing the appropriate level of both simple responsibility and simple common sense required under such grave circumstances.
It should never be the case that a human being should see a judgment against the existence of human life being executed by priests, often simply for violating priestly dogmas. If this is to be the Law of God then it should also clearly be the work of God, and for God to shirk responsibility in something as critical as meting out the death penalty called for in that very same law of God is simply unacceptable, because that means that you will instead have priests running around killing people, So there is your choice, and if you want to be really credulous, and just believe everything in the law of Priests, and even call it the sacred law of God, that is what results. You get priests killing people as described, which is about what you would expect. No big surprises there.
Now God stoning people, that would be a surprise, but not so with priests. Killing people using cruelly sadistic tortures is in the law of Priests, including lots of laws about torturing people to death simply for getting on the wrong side of priests. While this law of the priests explains a lot of the killing done by priests, in the end it is very unconvincing as a Law of God, since it was the killing done by priests. The fact that priests tortured human beings to death is not convincing evidence that this law was the law of God, and in fact, given that the world is more evil rather than better, and this is a consequence of the law, it hardly gives one confidence to see something that evil (and not to mention irresponsible) as ever actually being the law of God, instead of the law of priests describing the doings, both good and evil, of a bunch of priests.
Consideration of just those stoning laws alone is enough to justify the position that the term ‘the law of God' is a propaganda construct used to describe the laws of priests found in the Bible. God in this case can be understood as a polemical device and a symbol being employed to justify the religious policies of the state as well as the duties and functions of the priests, who were the ones who both wrote the laws and did all the work, including all the filthy, dirty work of God, as described in the law of Priests in the Bible.