BATERBOY

Were the Exodus judgements taken from Hammurabi's Code of Laws? I compared some of them and I believe they were. For example:
Law #196: IF A MAN PUT OUT THE EYE OF ANOTHER MAN, HIS EYE SHALL BE PUT OUT.

Law # 200: IF A MAN KNOCK OUT THE TEETH OF HIS EQUAL, HIS TEETH SHALL BE KNOCKED OUT[they had a law like this for slaves, but it was just a fine!]

These compare with judgements 24 & 25.

http://yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/medieval/hamframe.htm

The website will take you to Hammurabi's code and you can compare.

HAMM. #--- JUD#
206--------- 18-19
209--------- 22
210--------- 23
199--------- 26
201--------- 27
251-52------ 28 to 32
245--------- 36
14,16,19--------- 16

#3 is a commandment. There are a lot of laws covering different types of stealing that compare with the laws in Exodus. It's pretty compeling when you compare them.
Hammurabi's code is dated 1790 BCE, almost 200 years before the biblical date of the Exodus. [ though popular belief has it written in the 7th century BCE ] So this could be the source of the judgements or at least some of them. They are a lot alike.
I took the judgements from KJV.

Doctor X

Baterboy:

You are probably correct. No matter where someone wishes to date the souces that make Exodus and later Deuteronomy, they do carry over these laws and well-known myths such as the Flood, Creation, and quality country-western music.

--J.D.

Llyricist

Is that like Jumbo Shrimp?

spin

C'mon, you gotta be kidding me. Laws are laws. Bet if you compared ancient Chinese laws with those of ancient Egyptian laws you'd find numerous similarities. Societies often have rather similar necessities.

Besides the interconnectivity of the fertile crescent meant that source for things come from the next door country which came from the one next door again and so on. Hammurabi's was not the first law code. And you'll find similarities with earlier codes. So what? Perhaps the laws migrated. Perhaps they were home-grown.


spin

DrJim

The similarities between the laws need not reflect direct borrowing. They only point to widely held conceptions of proper social order and legal traditions in the ancient Near EAst. There are other law codes: Hammurabi's in not the earliest.

AS far as the specific wording of laws "eye for an eye" etc., that may rest more in conventional figures of speach than direct borrowing one from another. Anceint scribes could be very traditional, passing on literary forms and motifs over centuries. With the interpenetration of one culture into another, the life span of some of these ideas and expressions could be measured in many centuries.

JRL.

P.S., the issue of a "date" for the "the Exodus" is likely to attract some comment here, especially as you juxtapose the "biblical date" with "popular belief". I don't suspect a majority of folks on this forum accept any kind of an exodus at all.

BATERBOY

I know laws are simillar and that there are some probably older than Hammaburi's, but the point is that the judgements were supposed to come from a god and not men. I was just showing that men thought of these , not a god.

Maybe I should have said popular belief among scholars and I said it was written then, I didn't propose any belief in it.

NOGO

This demonstrates that laws are cultural and not absolute.

I doubt that the Chinese had the same laws beyong "Thy shall not kill."

Paul5204

But there's no mention in Exodus, etc., of the punishment for any crime being, being thrown into the river, which was apparently a rather popular [as it were] punishment under the C of H.

BATERBOY

I wonder if that's where they got the idea for dunking witchs?
Hmm-- could be!