The Relations between the Laws of Babylonia and the Laws of the Hebrew Peoples / The Schweich Lectures

by C. H. W. Johns

In my first lecture I tried to set out in brief some of the most striking features of the Babylonian Code of Laws due to the famous king Hammurabi, especially such as were likely to be useful for our comparison with the laws of Israel. We must, however, have a precise idea of the laws of Israel before we can institute a comparison.

Now this is by no means so easy to obtain as one might expect. It is indeed true that the laws of the Hebrew peoples, as set out in the so-called Books of Moses, have been the subject of uninterrupted and intense study by the Jews themselves for many centuries, and that not only for their antiquarian interest but as of supreme importance for religion and morals in the life of to-day. Most of us have heard of the Rabbinic writings, of the Mishna and Gemara, of the Talmud, and may even know the names of some of the famous Rabbis, lawyers, and doctors who have commented upon them. But, I fear, few of us have any clear idea of the stupendous work which they represent. Perhaps the new Jewish Encyclopaedia may give us a better idea. Christian scholars, such as the famous Dr. John Lightfoot, made much use of the treasures of the Jewish writers, but modern scholars appear to have paid small attention to this type of learning.

Nevertheless we are sometimes assured that the discussions of the Jewish Rabbis embody all the most assured results of modern criticism. Certainly they do contain an amount of material for the elucidation of the Mosaic laws which is almost bewildering in extent. When the traditional information and explanation which they furnish are freely taken into account we shall doubtless be in a far better position to understand much that is now very obscure. Certain it is that some scholars who have made a special study of this large traditional body of interpretation, such as D. H. Müller, Nathan, and Pick, have been willing to admit most striking likenesses between the Rabbinic rules and old Babylonian law. In fact, it seems to be the case that the later Jewish interpretation of the Mosaic law so closely follows Babylonian law that it may be regarded as no less a commentary on that legislation. Our task would soon be at an end if we could be sure that this traditional view was not strongly influenced by the Jewish exile, but really represented what the old Jewish law was intended to be. For it is practically indistinguishable from the Code of Hammurabi except for the peculiar usages based upon a separate religion and a progressive interpretation in favour of the criminal due to benevolence and humane sentiment.

Very little more need be said than that the Jews, with their wonderful adaptability to the customs of the land of their adoption which has always rendered them the best of citizens, readily assimilated all that was good in Babylonia while preserving also the best things in their own ancient law and jealously guarding whatever was sacred by its religious value. Such a course was not only sane and sensible; it affords a proof of the great hold which Hammurabi’s Code still had in Babylonia at the time of the Exile and much later; it sets the seal of approval on its regulations as the judgement of some of the most penetrating intellects the world has seen, and furnishes a brilliant example of a learned but not pedantic attitude which we may do well to imitate.

We shall have reason to refer presently to some of the later Jewish traditions and to appreciate their value.

It is the case that among Christians also the laws of Moses have been studied with deep interest and increasingly careful scholarship. Possibly too little attention has been paid by the modern Christian scholar to ancient tradition. At any rate, the chief part of the difficulties which we are likely to find in comparing the two legislations arise from the results of the studies pursued by orthodox modern Christian, or at any rate non-Jewish, scholars which have been carried out for the most part without reference to Jewish susceptibilities or Rabbinic interpretations.

Modern scholarship has succeeded in fixing and separating out of the Books of Moses a number of different sources or documents. In the case of the laws these may be regarded as different codes promulgated at very different dates, or in some cases mere pious wishes for future observance, ultimately worked up into a loosely combined book written in the interest of a party of religious zealots whose prominence later led to the system of thought known to us as Judaism.

We must accept these results, so far as we can get a distinct notion of them, and refer to the separate codes rather than to a single body of laws known as those of Moses. No one can venture to dispute these decisions on pain of being reckoned reactionary and obscurantist. These scholars hold the seat of authority, and it would be rash presumption to question their ruling. Nor have I any wish to do this. Yet it may be hoped that they will pardon a sigh of regret on our part that we are now unable to compare the Mosaic law as a whole with the Code of Hammurabi. It would be so much easier for the lecturer, and the indebtedness of Moses to Hammurabi so much more convincing to you. Sadly as many have lamented the tearing of the great law-book of Moses into pieces as rendering it a mere thing of shreds and patches, they may take comfort that its present condition renders it much harder to recognize the characteristic texture of the Babylonish garment.

For now, when one fancies he can discern a surprising likeness between some clause in the Code of Hammurabi and some verse in the Bible, he is wise to keep his surprise to himself until he has procured and studied the latest critical subdivision of the laws of Israel and satisfied himself to which source or sources his verse belongs. Then one has to ransack other authorities to know whether this ruling is one which is widely accepted, and even more important, whether it had been independently reached or was constructed with an eye to the very likeness to Babylonian law which it dreaded to acknowledge.

Consequently we have to be very careful to-day. We cannot use our comparisons, even if they should suggest identity, to restore to more ancient dates the Mosaic items which seem to be most closely in accord with Hammurabi’s laws. For here tradition itself imports many difficulties. If we set Moses the lawgiver at his old place in history, just before the entrance of the Israelites into Canaan, and accept the traditional synchronism of Abraham and Amraphel, then if we accept the modern identification of Amraphel with Hammurabi we are landed in this difficulty: the Hammurabi Code is thus as much older than the Mosaic law as Abraham is before Moses. On the authority of Moses himself that means 430 years. Now the Babylonians reckoned 650 years from the death of Hammurabi to the death of Kadashman-Ellil, who was corresponding with Amenophis King of Egypt while that king was still sovereign of Palestine, and therefore before Moses. This is the lowest figure yet suggested based on documentary sources, and gives at least 700 years between the two codes. How can we reconcile the disparity in dates?