Excerpt from The Laws of Moses and the Code of Hammurabi Semitic scholars, too, and especially students of biblical and post - biblical literature, will welcome the recovery of a monument which for its bearing upon the laws of the Old Testament exceeds in value even the discoveries of Babylonian creation-legends and deluge-myths. The Code comes at a time when the biblical world is being flooded with literature, scholarly and otherwise, dealing with the extent of Babylonian civilisation upon Israel. It is, therefore, a particularly opportune discovery, since a careful examination should enable the unprejudiced reader to determine how far - if at all - Israelite legislation was indebted to Babylonia. If the indebtedness is beyond dispute, then the influence of Babylonia must have been of the most deep-seated character; but if, on the other hand, the dependence of Israel upon the Babylonian Code is not proved, only the strongest arguments will allow us to accept those views in accordance with which Palestine had been saturated with Babylonian culture and civilisation centuries before Hebrew history took its rise. As a preliminary to our account of the Code a few pages have been devoted in Chapter II. to a general consideration of Babylonia and Israel. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.