C. H. W. Johns

“ If we could only assume that the nations developed each separately and independently, without mutual intercourse, it might suffice. But for ages before the institutions we are considering, both Babylonia and Palestine had been the meeting-place of many peoples. We cannot tell by any a priori method which race introduced which custom. All we know is that an improvement is often readily adopted by people from those with whom they come in contact, even when not forced upon them by conquest. But we also know that even superior usefulness or comfort is not always sufficient to keep a custom alive. ”

“ With his powerful weapon may he drink him up, with his fevers crush him like a statue of clay. May Erishtu, the exalted lady of all lands, the creator-mother, carry off his son and leave him no name. May he not beget a seed of posterity among his people. May Nin-karrak, the daughter of Anu, the completer of my mercies in Ê-KUR, award him a severe malady, a grievous illness, a painful wound, which cannot be healed, of which the physician knows not the origin, which cannot be soothed by the bandage; and rack him with palsy, until she has mastered his life; may she weaken his strength. ”

“ That the death penalty should be inflicted in the Code of Hammurabi for the brigand, for the thief who enters a temple or palace, both public treasuries, to steal, for the stealer at a neighbour’s fire, are not to be alleged as contrasts so long as we do not know what the penalties inflicted on such criminals should be. We cannot suppose such crimes unknown in Israel or so rare as not to be dealt with. All we can say is that what we have left of the Book of the Covenant does not notice them. ”

“ May she bring about the downfall of his country, the loss of his people, the efflux of his life like water, by the order of the Bêl, the king. May Ea, the grand prince, whose destiny takes premier rank, the messenger of the gods, who knows all, who has prolonged my life, distort his understanding and intellect, curse him with forgetfulness, dam up his rivers at their source. In his land may Ashnan (the deity of wheat) , the life of the people, not grow. May Shamash, great judge of heaven and earth, who governs the creatures of life, the lord of help, cut off his sovereignty ”

“ The slave who did acquire wealth often bought his own freedom. The master had to balance the value to him of the ransom paid against the reversion of his entire property at his death. In such a case, of course, the master fixed the price he would accept as a ransom. The slave, however, if married to a slave wife would have to buy her freedom also, and buy each of his slave children if he had any. ”

“ If that man has wisdom and is capable of directing his land, let him attend to the words which I have written upon my stele, let him apprehend the path, the rule, the law of the land which I judged, and the decision I decided for the land, and so let him guide forward the black-headed race; let him judge their judgment and decide their decision, let him cut off from his land the proud and violent, let him rejoice the flesh of his people. Ḥammurabi, the king of [pg 394] righteousness, to whom Shamash has granted rights, am I. My words are precious, my deeds have no rival. ”

“ So if we could fasten upon just such a point in the Code of Hammurabi which appears so artificial or arbitrary, so purely local in its character that we cannot imagine it to have independently arisen elsewhere, we could use it as a test case to decide whether the great amount of common matter found in that Code and also the Laws of Moses may be set down as due to common Semitic origin, or to common human genius faced by similar needs. There is no question as to the relative age of the codes to be compared; we know definitely which is older and more original. ”

“ They that many days were sick have recovered. The hungry are satisfied. The lean grow fat. The plantations are covered with fruits. Only I and Ardi-Gula among them have our soul depressed, our heart disturbed. Lately has the king, my lord, shown love for Nineveh, to his people, to his chiefs, saying, “Bring your sons, let them stand before me.” Ardi-Gula, my son is he, let him stand with them, before the king, my lord. We with all the people will rejoice indeed, and dance for joy. My eyes are set upon the king, my lord. They that stand in the palace, all of them, love me not. ”

“ There were still traces of borough law, but the Code was supreme and the king’s justice ran everywhere. Temples, mansions, farms, plantations, common pasture, feudal estates, existed alongside private ownership in land.
The state of society bears surprising likenesses to that of Europe in the Middle Ages.
The law itself is no less advanced. Justice has replaced vengeance. Self-help is restrained, if not suppressed; wrong must be redressed at law. There is full protection for the weak, the widows and orphans, as the lawgiver himself points out with pride. ”

“ May Ishtar, the lady of conflict and battle, who prospered my arms, my gracious protector, who loved my reign, in her heart of rage, her boundless fury, curse his sovereignty; turn all his mercies to curses, shatter his weapon in conflict and battle, appoint him trouble and sedition, strike down his heroes, and make the earth drink of their blood, scatter the plain with heaps of the carcasses of his troops, grant them no burial; deliver himself into the hands of his enemy, cause him to be carried in chains to the enemy's land. ”

“ It has long been held that the laws of the Israelites, as revealed by God to Moses, by him embodied in the books of the Pentateuch and since preserved by the zealous care of the Jewish people, are incomparable. Accordingly they have been adopted professedly by most Christian nations and were early accepted by our own king Alfred1 as the basis of the law system of this our land.
We live in an age of devotion to comparative methods, when it is an article of faith to hold that the most fruitful means to attain a clear understanding of the exact nature of anything is to compare it with its like. ”

“ To my father say, thus saith Elmeshu: Shamash and Marduk fill with well-being the days of my father perpetually. My father, be thou well, flourish; the God that preserves my father direct my father's source of grace. I have sent to greet my father. May my father's peace endure before Shamash and Marduk. From the time that Sin Amurrû named my father's name, and I answered for my fault, thou, my father, didst say, “When I shall go to Dûr-Ammi-zadûga, which is on the River Sharḳu, I will forward a sheep and five minas of silver, in a little while, to thee.” ”

“ Let us then consider a case which, like the need for pottery, might arise anywhere when men had reached the same stage of civilization. A man has lent money to another, or its equivalent in goods. The debtor, as is commonly the case among men, finds himself unable to repay the loan, for he has consumed the goods and been unable to acquire what will replace them. His labour is probably of some value; it should be worth more than his keep; the surplus value, if he can find employment and wages, should in time enable him to repay the debt. ”

“ If her master has used her as a concubine he cannot sell her. Either he must continue to treat her as a wife or give her freedom. In the Code of Hammurabi the concubine has the same rights, whether she had been slave or free woman originally, if she has borne children. If she has not borne children to her master she may still be treated as a slave if a slave before. The contrast between the laws is only apparent. A Hebrew could not sell his slave whom he had used as concubine, although she were childless, and the Babylonian could. ”

“ If the son of a palace favorite or the son of a vowed woman has come to know his father's house and has hated his father that brought him up, or his mother that brought him up, and shall go off to his father's house, his eyes shall be torn out. ”

“ Hammurabi’s cases of assault on a slave are by one who is not his master. There is nothing here to show that the law was not exactly the same for both legislations for the same cases. As far as our evidence goes one law treats one case and omits the other, the other law treats the last case and omits the first.
As a matter of fact the Book of the Covenant is here not consistent with itself. A man might beat his servant to death, provided he did not ‘die under his hand’, and go unpunished, but he might not knock out his eye without having to free him. ”

“ Absoluteness of the paternal power over the family It is customary to say that the father had absolute power over his children, but it is better to state only what is known with certainty regarding the extent of his power. The father could treat his child, or even his wife, equally with a slave, as a chattel to be pledged for his debts.351 We may therefore conclude that he could sell his child. ”

“ The recognition of the Babylonians as a type of settled Semites led by slow gradations to the admission of other features as also Semitic, while some things hitherto only known among Semites have been recognized as the common possession of many unrelated folk. Gradually, and probably unconsciously, ‘common Semitic origin’ has become a mere euphemism for ‘Babylonian’. For to what part of the Semitic world can we look for so advanced a civilization as to be common both to the Babylonian and Israelite law? ”

“ As a rule, it is antichretic, such that income or profit derived from the pledge is a fair equivalent for the interest of the loan. The lender acquires the right of enjoying the pledge. As a rule this is assigned him absolutely, so that no account is needed to be kept of interest on one side and profit on the other. If the profit exceeds the interest due, the excess may be returned, or it may be credited towards the discharge of the debt. If the interest exceeds the profit on the pledge, then the amount by which the loan exceeds the capitalized profit must pay interest. ”

“ Of course, if his master gave him a wife, the master retained power over her and the children. We cannot, however, suppose that if the enslaved Hebrew married a free woman while in servitude that the master claimed to treat her as a slave. Probably, however, the master had power to forbid such a marriage. Thus there really was no case likely to arise in Israel to compare with that legislated for in Babylonia, which law regulated all cases except this in Canaan also. The only new regulation which had come into use is the restriction on the man’s term of service. ”

“ Restrictions on free gifts Undoubtedly men were at liberty in daily life to make presents one to another. But the rights of the family were so strong that for the most part all the property of the parents was jealously regarded as tied to the children, or other legal heirs. When a man died, his property was divided according to a rigid law of inheritance. When a woman left her father's house to be married, the father gave her the share of his goods which fell to her, without waiting until his death to divide his substance. ”

“ The distinctive character of the slave is that he is fatherless by status. It is usual in legal documents to name the father and often the grandfather of the free contracting parties, the witnesses, judges, scribes, &c. No slave, unless we reckon as such a freeman temporarily reduced to slavery, is ever given as son of So-and-so. In fact, ‘the sons of fathers’, mâr banûtu, such as were the amêlu and mushkênu, are very clearly men of birth. ”

“ Sale of slaves By far the greatest number of references to the slave condition occur in documents relating to the sale of slaves. These may be summarized here. One peculiarity always marked the sale of a slave, it was not so irrevocable as that of a house or field. For a slave might not be all he seemed. He might be diseased, or subject to fits, he might have vices of disposition, especially a tendency to run away. A female slave might be defective in what constituted her chief attraction. ”