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HAROLD M. WIENEE^ M.A., LL.B., ON THE 



Indian law-books which often provide excellent parallels to it. 

 Those to which I desire to draw particular attention are as 

 follows. The Indian law-books have no idpa of national (as 

 distinct from individual) righteousness — a conception that 

 entered the world with the Mosaic legislation and has perhaps 

 not made very much progress there since. There is no 

 personal God : hence his personal interest in righteousness is 

 lacking : hence, too, there can be no relationship between God 

 and people : and while there is a supernatural element in the 

 contemplated results of human actions there is nothing that 

 can in the slightest degree compare with the Personal Divine 

 intervention that is so often promised in the Pentateuchal 

 laws.* The caste system, like Hammurabi's class system, leads 

 to distinctions that are always inequitable. The conception of 

 loving one's neighbour and one's sojourner as oneself are alike 

 lacking. The systematic provisions for poor relief are absent, 

 and the legislation is generally on a lower ethical and moral 

 level, while some of the penalties are distinguished by the most 

 perverted and barbarous cruelty. All these points are embraced 

 in the special relationship of the One God and the peculiar 

 treasure with its resulting need for national and individual 

 holiness. 



The primitive ideas of proof by oath or ordeal meet us again in 

 Israel as in Babylonia. After what has already been said they 

 need not detain us. Sympathetic talion only occurs once in 

 the jural laws, though it holds a rather more prominent place 

 in the precepts which have purely supernatural sanctions and 

 are for that reason excluded from comparison with Hammurabi. 

 Talion occupies a somewhat more important position. I have 

 elsewhere given my reasons for thinking that it was always 

 subject to composition except in the case of offences involving 

 capital punishment.^ Be that as it may, it is instructive to 

 note that the principle is carefully controlled. In lieu of the 

 penalties striking at innocent children we read, " The fathers 

 shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the 

 children be put to death for the fathers : every man shall be 

 put to death for his own sin — a provision that was perhaps 

 called forth by some legislation or custom that resembled 



* E.g., " And if ye shall say, what shall we eat the seventh year ? 

 behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase ; then I will command 

 my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for 

 the three years" (Lev. xxv, 20 tf.) 



t Studies in Biblical Law, ch. vi. J Dt. xxiv, 16. 



