Most rabbinic authorities consider the Seven Noahide Laws a parallel system of general categories of commandments, each containing many components and details.
* Some rabbinic opinion regards the determination of the details of the Noahide Law as something to be left to Jewish rabbis. This, in addition to the teaching of the Jewish law that punishment for violating one of the seven Noahide Laws includes a theoretical death penalty (Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin 57a), is a factor in modern opposition to the notion of a Noahide legal system. Jewish scholars respond by noting that Jews today no longer carry out the death penalty, even within the Jewish community. Jewish law, in contemporary practice, sees the [[death penalty]] as an indicator of the seriousness of an offense; violators are not actually put to death.
* Other rabbinic opinion holds that penalties are a detail of the Noahide Laws and that Noahides themselves must determine the details of their own laws for themselves. According to this school of thought - see N. Rakover, ''Law and the Noahides'' (1998); M. Dallen, ''The Rainbow Covenant'' (2003)- the Noahide Laws offer mankind a set of absolute values and a framework for righteousness and justice, while the detailed laws that are currently on the books of the world's states and nations are presumptively valid.
