That we know anything at all about the Hammurabi, Hittite, or Assyrian Codes is due to the preservation of the ancient cuneiform tablets and stones upon which the statutes of these codes were engraved. However, there exists no original text of the Noahide code, and never was the existence of such a text ever reported. The earliest sources to give systematic treatment to Noahide Law are talmudic, and the earliest book of the Halakha which undertakes to deliniate the Seven Laws is the Tosefta, attributed to Hiyya bar Abba, born circa 160.
==Philip Biberfeld's Study==
Nevertheless, a 1948 study by Philip Biberfeld tries to surmise the existence of an early Noahide legal system from due scrutiny of the extant Near East codes.
As indicated in the notes, Biberfeld's interesting thesis has shortcomings. A major weakness is the undue significance Attributed to the order of the Seven Laws as cited in the Braitha of Sanhedrin 56. Differing arrangements are to be found in other sources, as in the Tosefta, Abodah Zarah 9, and in Genesis Rabbah 16.6. Furthermore, the order cited by the Braitha of Sanhedrin is apparently based on the order in which these seven laws are derived from the verse in the second chapter of Genesis discussed there. As careful a traditionalist as Judah Halevi considered this exegetical derivation far-fetched and but a mnemonic device of the oral tradition (Kuzari 3.73). If so, the serial order is not likely to have any historical or conceptual implication.
