174 EEV. ANDEEW CEAIG ROBINSON, M.A., ON THE BEARING OF 



differences are also very great. One most important distinction 

 between the two is this : that the Code of Hammurabi seems 

 to presuppose a commercial people, highly organised, and with 

 all the complicated family and trade relations belonging to such 

 a community ; whilst the Mosaic Code seems to be intended for 

 a people living under much more simple conditions. 



Dr. Pinches notices another important point which he says 

 shows the two codes to have been compiled from totally 

 different stand-points ; and that is that the laws in the Code of 

 Hammurabi are purely civil, whilst into the law of Moses all 

 kinds of provisions for the poor, the fatherless, and the 

 necessitous, have entered. " From this point of view," he goes 

 on to say, " Moses' Code is immeasurably supei ior to that of the 

 Babylonian law-giver, and can hardly on that account be 

 compared with it" (op. cit., 2nd Ed., Appendix, p. 519). 



The fact that n kindred people like the Babylonians possessed 

 a wiitten code of laws through so many centuries affords strong 

 presumptive evidence in favour of the belief that the people 

 of Israel had also a written code of law^s daring their national 

 existence — as their own national tradition and consciousness 

 most assuredly held that they had. 



" For the law was given by Moses," 



says the writer of St. John's Gospel. 



And this presumptive evidence is all the stronger owing to 

 the undeniable resemblance which in many points exists 

 between the Mosaic Code and that of Hammurabi. That it 

 was only at a late period in their national existence that the 

 Israelites received the code of laws which was to regulate the 

 life of the nation is a theory which at any time was most 

 improbable ; but seems now still more incredible since the 

 discovery of this most ancient code of laws existing among the 

 kindred Semites of Babylonia. 



This section of the subject may be closed with the words of 

 Professor Sayce, which appear to be amply justified. 



" While the Mosaic Code in contradistinction to the Babylonian 

 Code belongs to the desert rather than to the City, the lawn implied 

 in the narrative of the Book of Genesis are those which actually were 

 current in Canaan in the 'patriarchal age. No writer of a post- 

 Mosaic date could have imagined or invented them ; like the names 

 preserved in Genesis, they characterise the patriarchal period and no 

 other. The answer of archaiology to the theories of modern 

 ' criticism ' is com[)lete : tlte Law preceded the Prophets, and did not 

 follow them." Monument Facts and Higher Critical Fancies, p. 83. 



