8 
Indiana University Studies 
The patriarchal system was a system in which absolute 
power was lodged in the head of the family, or clan, by virtue 
of blood relationship, or custom, or necessity, and all the other 
members of the family, or clan, were completely under that 
power . 29 There was no law but the patriarch’s word. He 
was legislative, executive, and judicial power, all in one per- 
son. Except as restrained by religious fear, there were no 
bonds nor fetters to restrain him. In his hands was the power 
of life and death. He could sell his dependents as tho chattels. 
In the patriarchal trial of Adam and Eve, where Jehovah is 
pictured as acting like an oriental patriarch, not only are 
there no forms of legal procedure but the real offender, Adam, 
has his punishment reduced from death to a life sentence, the 
serpent is condemned without a hearing, while Eve is pun- 
ished the most severely. Jephthah killed his daughter, and no 
one objected: later comment was not even aroused. He was 
accountable to no one. His daughter’s life was in his own 
hands. Isaac was under the power of Abraham. Apparently 
it was customary for fathers to sacrifice their first-born, and 
this custom was so strong that Moses and the other Hebrew 
judges did not dare to destroy it directly, but accomplished 
customs and traditions were absorbed from the conquered Canaanites, who for ten cen- 
turies had been absorbing the civilizations of Chaldea and Egypt. After the assimilation 
of the Canaanites, new instruction was received from the Phoenicians, kinsmen of the 
Canaanites. After the Assyrian conquests, the Assyrians were imitated in many ways. 
Arabian and perhaps Egyptian influences also continued to have some influence thruout 
Hebrew history. Still later, as for example, in the time of Paul and the Gospel of 
John, the Greek influence was manifested. All such customs and traditions had to he 
taken into account by the Hebrew judges in the decision of cases, and in this way they 
gradually became a part of Hebrew law. Of course the most powerful influences in the 
development of Hebrew law were those from within the Hebrew people themselves. 
Yet the influences from without were not inconsiderable. Consequently Hebrew law 
must be thought of as a resultant, or composite, of all of these influences. 
In addition to the customs and traditions of other peoples, Hebrew law may have 
made use of the legal codes of other systems. One of the most important of these 
extant codes was the Code of Hammurabi. This was a Babylonian code of the twenty- 
third century B.C. The similarities between this code and many parts of Hebrew law 
are striking, altho no more striking than the resemblance between it and the Anglo- 
Saxon dooms of Aethelburt of 600 A.D. (Maitland and Montague: Sketch of English 
Legal History, Appendix I) . Hebrew law may have borrowed from this code, directly 
or indirectly, either in the time of Moses or later, but just when or how much it is 
impossible to say. 
Canon S. R. Driver is of the opinion: “The influence of this code (Code of Ham- 
murabi), as all admit, was wide and lasted long; the laws of the Pentateuch which 
may have been founded on it, might thus have been codified at any period of the his- 
tory : granting that they were borrowed, directly or indirectly, from Hammurabi, it 
does not in the least follow that they could have been borrowed only in the age of 
Moses.’’ “The resemblances between the Code of Hammurabi and the laws of the 
Pentateuch are, however, entirely either with the civil and criminal regulations of JE 
or (less often) with those of Dt. and H (Lev. 20: 10, 11, 12, 14). There are none with 
the ceremonial laws of P.” Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, XIX, 
XX. 
Mr. Stanley A. Cook, after making a careful comparison of the provisions of Hebrew 
law with the provisions of the Code of Hammurabi, comes to the conclusion that the 
“evidence does not suggest that Israelite legislation was to any considerable extent in- 
debted to Babylonia, and the parallels and analogies which have been observed are to 
be ascribed most naturally to the common Semitic origin of the two systems.” The Laics 
of Moses and the Code of Hammurabi, 281. 
29 Cf. Patria potestas of the Roman law, Buckland’s Roman Laic, 103 sqq. 
