It may be remembered in this connexion that according to the author of the Acts of the Apostles Moses was traditionally learned in all the learning of the Egyptians. Taking that statement as literally true, we now know from the Tell-el-Amarna tablets that that learning included the knowledge of cuneiform at least on the part of some Egyptian scribes before the Exodus. Philo tells us that Moses was also learned in the learning of the Assyrians who were correspondents of Egypt in the same period, of the Babylonians who wrote to the same kings at the same time, and the Chaldeans, who were then known as an independent kingdom in the Southern Sea lands of Babylonia. These and similar traditions are usually dismissed by critics as mere senseless attempts to enhance the reputation of Moses for wisdom and knowledge, which included that of the wisest nations of antiquity. But in view of what we have seen already may there not have been a different reason for these claims? Did not these learned men, who themselves knew much of that knowledge, recognize in the Books of Moses many startling parallels to the wisdom of Babylonia? Was it not the only acceptable way to account for such parallels to assert boldly that Moses did know these things, but in such a way that, guided by God, he used them so far as they were in accordance with Divine revelation; independently indeed as exercising his own discretion in selecting from them, but dependently in so far as they had found out already by man’s wisdom or the light of nature that which was good and of good report?
APPENDIX: SURVEY OF THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE LITERATURE RELATING TO THE CODE OF HAMMURABI.
I. Anticipations of a Babylonian Code of Laws.
In 1890, F. E. Peiser published in his thesis Iurisprudentiae Babylonicae quae supersunt (Cöthen, P. Schettler’s Erben) a number of fragments of Babylonian Codes of Laws, and aptly illustrated them by relevant legal documents. In 1902, Br. Meissner published what proved to be some fragments of the Code of Hammurabi, from copies made for Ashurbanipal’s Library at Nineveh, now preserved in the British Museum. These appeared in the Third Volume of the Beiträge zur Assyriologie (Leipzig, Hinrichs, 1898), under the title Altbabylonische Gesetze (pp. 473-523), and were commented upon by Fr. Delitzsch in the next volume (pp. 78-87) in an article entitled Zur juristischen Litteratur Babyloniens and regarded as Bruchstücke eines altbabylonischen bürgerlichen Gesetzbuchs. Judging from the early forms of words and the old Babylonian measures used in these texts the writer called the laws the Code Hammourabi (1902). In his lecture before the German Emperor, which created so much stir in theological circles and excited such general interest in Germany and then over the whole world, Fr. Delitzsch stated that Hammurabi, after his conquest of Elam and expulsion of the Elamite power from Babylonia, was able to promulgate a great Gesetzessammlung, which should unify the civilizations of the united kingdom and fix the bürgerliche Recht in all essential points. Babel und Bibel (Leipzig, Hinrichs, p. 25, 1902: delivered Jan. 13).
II. The Actual Code
was first published by V. Scheil in the Fourth Volume of the Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse, pp. 11-162, with transcriptions, translation, and some notes (Paris, E. Leroux, 1902). Fragments of a second example of the Stele were also given by V. Scheil in the Tenth Volume of the Mémoires, pp. 81-84 (1908).
All subsequent editions of the text are based upon this edition. The original monument being now in the Louvre at Paris and a superb cast of it in the Babylonian Room of the British Museum, it is open to any competent scholar to appreciate the extraordinary accuracy of V. Scheil’s work. The transcription and translation have naturally been somewhat improved by the intensive study devoted to them by the many scholars who have worked upon the text, especially as the result of comparison with the contemporary legal documents. But the highest praise must be awarded to the genius which so successfully accomplished such a task as that of editing an entirely new text involving so many new words and expressions and such unexpected subjects.