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Both Judaism and Islam have put a lot of thought in determining the sort of religiuos norms that should rule all aspects of believers´ life, from the food they are allowed to eat to what marriages are valid, from the taxes the political authorities are allowed to charge to how to peacefully resolve civil disputes. In both religions (specialy in Islam), there are different (religious) legal schools, and the search of the rightfull laws have been an important part of the work of theologues.

In Christianity, that didn't happened. The reason might be that Christianity developped mostly in the Roman world, who already had a rich legal tradition. So, instead of trying to enforce Mosaic laws in their lives, they tended to use the Roman ones, more fit to the complex society where they lived. They just made the neccesary modifications required to make this legal system compatible with Christianiy, a process that started in the IV century. These changes included, for example, making divorce harder or making it illegal for Pagans to own Christian slaves.

When the "Barbarians" invaded Western Europe, Roman law prevailed in Southern Europe, and Germanic law was applied in Northern France, "Germany" and elsewhere. But a purely "Christian" school of law wasn't developped. Yes, there was Cannonical law (based mostly on Roman law), but Cannonical law refered almost entirely to the interely to the internal regulation of the Church as an institution. It wasn't aimed to regulate how society should work and how individuals should behave.

I think there was one Eastern Roman emperor who tried to establish a purely Christian legal system, based on the Bible (mainly the old testament), but he wasn't succesful in the long term.

So, what if things were different, and a purely Christian Law had been developped, which had the same importance as Jewish Law has for Judaism or Sharia has for Muslims?
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