Hammurabi's Code and Moses’ laws: Law as a Mirror of Civilization
The emergence of ancient codes of law, such as the code of Hammurabi. The role of the writing system in this development.
Hammurabi’s code, Moses’ code, and other ancient law codes came into existence to establish order in the formerly agile anarchy that consumed the First Civlizations. With law, citizens understand that with every action comes a reaction and will then be less inclined to commit what was then established as illegal. Two civilizations – the Mesopotamians (second millenium B.C.E.) and the Hebrews (thirteenth century B.C.E.) had such law codes that established the central ruling body’s dominance over the rest of society. Hammurabi, one of the most known Mesopotamian monarchs, established a set of 300 written rules to govern the new civilization. Hammurabi ruled Mesopotamia from 1792-1750 B.C.E. and enforced his code with reverence and strict authority. Moses, a prophet, was said to have received the Hebrew laws directly from Yahweh. These laws are known as the Ten Commandments, given to Moses atop Mount Sinai in the form of stone tablets. Common historical misconceptions make believe that the “law codes” were newly conceived, but historical evidence suggests they were both derived from ancient culture. The Code of Hammurabi has roots of early Sumerian city law principles, while the Hebrew Covenant took inspiration from the Code of Hammurabi. A system of writing was key in the development of these culture-shaping law codes because there had to exist a concrete way of carrying on the rules to further generations. The Code of Hammurabi consisted of 300 rules that were engraved in a large basalt pillar, which was affixed near present-day Baghdad, Iraq. The Covenant was engraved on stone tablets. So, written languages had to be present for the codes to be written and persevered through thousands of years of history.
The difference between the way of life and religious beliefs of the Jews from the inhabitants of Mesopotamia.
The primary difference between Hebrew and Mesopotamian religious beliefs was that Hebrews believed in a single God, Yahweh, and Mesopotamians were polytheist: they believed many gods shaped their societies, created (creator deities), and controlled the natural processes of the Earth, including the flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. For example, they also worshipped a sun god. Mesopotamians constructed large temples called ziggurats, and priests (until the rise of kings and palaces) served as the city’s leaders. Hebrews did not portray Yahweh in the animist or personified lenses, but instead saw humans as made how God wanted them to be made. His name was not to be said “in vain” (or spoken or written unless it was a special religious occasion). He was said to make agreements with the weak and protect them. Moses, as the mortal leader of the Hebrews as they wandered the desert, was a prophet and a main reason why the Hebrews (now refugees) were freed from the bonds of slavery in Egypt. Religious texts portray Moses as the savior of the Hebrew culture and people.
Babylonians were a sedentary commerce-oriented society, implying the prominence of imports and exports of goods and labor. They built large city-states with structured governing bodies and were governed by a strict collection of ethical laws, the Code of Hammurabi. Hebrews lacked the resources, strength in healthy numbers, and environmental conditions to be able to kickstart city life, so they wandered the desert for decades after escaping Egyptian oppression. Moses, known as the savior and the leader of the Hebrews, then received the Ten Commandments from God (Hebrews were monotheists), which provided a structure for a more civilized and less barbaric society. The Hebrews were pastoralists, meaning they adopted animal husbandry and migrated to cope with the needs of their livestock.
The similarity of concepts such as retribution and perjury in two sets of laws
The principle of lex talionis was central to the Code of Hammurabi, which literally means that should you be convicted of a crime, your punishment would likely involve suffering the same (eye for an eye). To draw an example from the Code, a man who knocks out the tooth of a (free) man would have his tooth knocked out in turn. However, social classification had an influence on the severity of punishments. An individual who committed a crime against a slave would not be punished nearly as harsh as an individual who committed a crime against “free man”, which involved non-slaves and higher up on the social ladder. Because historians have determined that the Hebrew Covenant in the Exodus built their code based on the Code of Hammurabi, it is logical that they would have the same foundations. Specifically, the Covenant reads, “…life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, burn for burn, wound for wound, [and] stripe for stripe.” Thus, lex talionis was the common theme in both the Mesopotamian and Hebrew law codes. While lex talionis only referred to retaliation from a crime, perjury was a separate offense taken very seriously and punished very harshly by both ruling systems. Lying about a capital case would result in the death of the aggressor in Mesopotamia, and in the Exodus, those accused of perjury or false accusation of another would be convicted with the intention of doing the same the convicted meant to accuse his “brother” of.
The difference between marriage among Jews and Mesopotamians from modern. Its main goal.
Marriage and divorce for Mesopotamians and Hebrews were drastically different processes than they are in the 21st century. Hammurabi’s Code and Moses’ code were similar in the regard of wanting to control the man-woman relationship. The primary purpose of marriage was procreation. Marriage was essential a legal obligation for the females to give birth and raise the next generation. Regarding divorce in Babylon, the woman brought a dowry to her husband, but it was intended to reduce the chances of or protect the family from erratic (which generally could mean violent) behavior of the husband. Divorce laws require the husband to give back the dowry or an equivalent amount of compensation to his former wife. Hebrews applied a more simple approach to divorce procedures, by this meaning the husband could simply force the wife out if she was deemed “indecent” or not fit to remain his spouse. As long as the male wrote a bill of divorce, the woman would be sent out of the house and the “divorce” was then essentially compounded. In both Mesopotamia and in Hebrew culture, a loophole in the law denied a divorce process if the husband had an affair with a slave, and the slave in turn bore a child. This was both an earlier tradition in Sumer and a process in the book of Genesis, preached and practiced by Abraham and other Hebrews. Nowadays, divorce requires a long, drawn-out legal process via a family law/divorce court and the settlement between the spouses being divorced. Marriage now requires payment to obtain marriage licenses and, traditionally, a formal ceremony to “bind” husband and wife. Compared to these two ancient civilizations, modern marriage and divorce involves far more application of the law instead of the simple processes that controlled the relationships back then.
The influence of the ecological conditions of the Jews and Mesopotamians on their laws concerning agriculture.
Mesopotamian city-states rose and flourished near the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which periodically flooded. The Mesopotamians, as an society dependent on trade, had to focus on the cultivation of crops, and thus had to find efficient methods of doing so. Thus, irrigation canals and dikes were constructed. The Code of Hammurabi stated that the punishment for water breaking through the dike and flooding a crop field would be that the farmer at fault is required to replace the crops immediately. If the transgressor could not, he and his property would be sold to pay the debt. Because farming was the basis of Mesopotamian economy, a lot of the land in and around the cities were used for raising crops and livestock. Owners would rent these lands to tenants, who were tasked with the responsibility of properly taking care of the crops. Should the crops not be, the landlords would be compensated through protection of the law.
The Hebrew people lived a pastoral way of life: relying on their livestock, adopting animal husbandry, and moving to meet the needs of their livestock. In Palestine, the pastoralists set up several major cities with land, but there was no landlord-tenant business. People were thus poorer compared to those who lived in Mesopotamia. Moses’ laws, however, established a fixed responsibility for farmers – poor class relationships. Primarily, a seven-year period was set aside for the poor to collect remnants of the harvested fields, which yielded fruits, flowers, grain, et cetera. The fields were not to be sown during this period. Also, small pieces of landowners’ fields and vineyards were required to be set aside for the lower class and sojourners. This allowed historians to conclude that Hebrews were generous and compassionate to the less-fortunate, while Mesopotamian society represented a dog-eat-dog world where everyone had to fight for supreme wealth and land ownership.
The difference between the laws of Moses and Hammurabi regarding the poor.
In Palestine especially, Hebrew law sympathized with the less fortunate and those who could not afford to be land owners and cultivate their own crops. Consequently, the laws made it mandatory for farmers to do two things to ensure the health of the entire social pyramid: leave the fields harvested yet unsown for seven years so the poor and the sojourners could collect what was left of the harvest, and leave the side patch of their fields untouched so the poor and the sojourners would have (albeit limited) access to the vineyards and crop fields. Evidently, Moses’ laws were associated with mercy and the ideology that everyone deserves to live and eat, despite their social status.
Hammurabi and Mesopotamian culture treated the poor quite viciously, by means of establishing a slavery system as well as societal labels that affected how they were treated for paid services and mandatory work. The code separated the social classes into three main categories: slaves, awilum (free men), and muskenum (those dependent on employment to survive, also referred to ask villeins or subjects). Muskenum generally worked as servants in palaces, tenants on farmland, and sharecroppers. Muskenum was the most subordinate of the groups, as evidenced by lesser punishments should their superior harm them. Instead of reciprocating the punishment, the Code of Hammurabi required the payment of manehs of silver. Poorer men paid less for medical processes such as surgery (for a villein five, and a slave two). The surgeon got punished more severely if the patient that died during the procedure was a free man, but if the victim was a slave, the victim was replaced. Despite the fact that the true intention of this code was to ensure as little critical errors as possible, class bias played a major role because the Mesopotamians were not as forgiving of the less-fortunate than the Hebrews were.
Religious faith as a way to strengthen the laws of Hammurabi and Moses.
The Hebrews were monotheistic, and construed their God Yahweh as all-powerful, more powerful than even other cultures’ pantheon of deities. God’s writ was considered the supreme law of Hebrew culture because Moses preached these laws as God’s word once he took charge of the Hebrew exodus from Egypt. If the Hebrew people were to revere and keep the faith in God, they were to also obey the Commandments. The Hebrews were thoroughly pledged to God’s service and worshipped his compassion for all of his “children”, the Hebrews. Several of the Ten Commandments received by Moses on Mount Sinai demanded the keeping of monotheism and the prioritizing of God, forbidding the worship of what was referred to as “false gods and goddesses” and the use of the Lord’s name in vain, because “…your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty…executes justice for the fatherless…”. This meant that the Lord’s name must be respected in a positive, powerful light above every other supernatural in every other religion. Yahweh was caring compared to the portrayal of the violent, caprious Mesopotamian gods who could wreak havoc on the land, and he “loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing…”, which led his devotees to love the sojourner as well and mold the Hebrew laws to fit this way of thinking. This is the reason why the Hebrews had laws requiring the farmers to provide scraps and a part of their harvest for the poor and the sojourners.
Hammurabi’s Code was written with spiritual or mystical influence from the pantheon of gods worshipped by the Mesopotamians, such as Ninlil the great mother who was, according to the Code, asked to devastate the land and people, Ishtar the lady of war to ruin the armies, and Shamash to drain the Earth of its water of a future generation of Mesopotamians should they alter the Code. Harsh punishments to dissuade the citizens of Babylon from committing crimes had an ethical foundation because Hammurabi asked for divine guidance. The laws of Hebrew culture were adopted from the Babylonian code, and as generations carried it on, many nations in the 21st century now have the ethical code of both of these cultures embedded in their legal systems as well. Despite only Orthodox Jews currently following the Moisaic code, the Torah, including the Ten Commandments (part of the Hebrew bible) is still carried on, and so is the principle of protecting the poor and oppressed and the show of compassion. The reading uses the word compassionate and its variants to describe the Hebrew ethical principle, which only emphasized why it has been implemented in today’s societies and the impact on modern religion and culture.
