Moses and Hammurabi

Reference has already been made to the latest discovery of the critics. But yesterday Genesis xiv. was rejected as unhistorical. Amraphel was dismissed as a myth, just as Nebuchadnezzar used to be. The article about him in Smith’s Bible Dictionary is merely a few lines to say that explorations in Babylonia might probably bring something to light about him. Dr. Pinches it was who expressed that hope. The frontispiece to his last book is a portrait of Amraphel; for to-day Amraphel (or Hammurabi) stands out as one of the great figures of the past, and his code of laws excites our admiration. But what use do the critics make of the discovery? Instead of acknowledging the ignorance and folly of the grounds on which they formerly rejected the Mosaic eS 2 ee ee mefely an. adaptation of Amsaphel

ut this only displays their animus against the Bible, and their incapacity: to deal with questions of evidence. Every pastoral people with any claim to be civilized would have laws

such: as are common to both codes. But if the question be raised whether the one was derived from the other, the true critic — the expert in evidence — will ask whether the penalties are the same. As a matter of fact there is no kinship between the two codes in any of the incidental points by which the student of evidence would decide the question. :We all wash our faces; and so did Kin Amyzaphel; butourpractice in this respect is snot based on his.

Nor is this all. Error is in its very nature absurd, and this Hammurabi theory exemplifies the fact. Blinded by their fixed determination to disparage the Pentateuch, the critics have here sprung a mine which blows their Pentateuchal theories into the air. Ee thatMoses was ionorant of the Jegal codes in operation in other nations than Egypt, and no shi GhELia Chimie The aiaad clesiet in divine revelation would be surprised to find proofs of this in “the Mosaic code.” But what then becomes of the theory that the books of Moses were written in the era of ile? Eliminate all element of divine authorship, as the critics do, and the inference is obvious that a code of laws for the young nation of the exodus would be based upon the best existing code then available. But to suppose that the author of the critic’s Pentateuch, writing

in Palestine some fourteen centuries later, would take the Hammurabi code as his model,

is-a-theory too wild for discussion. “Every P e critics can offer that the Jewish code

was based on the Babylonian code goes to support the view that the Jewish code was framed in the Mosaic age.

The critical hypothesis, moreover, is sufficiently refuted by the single fact that the Pentateuch was the Bible of the Samaritans. That purely Jewish books, and Jewish books 0 a time long after the captivity of the te tribes, would have been singled out for suc unique and unbounded reverence by a peopl who hated everything Jewish, is a figment unworthy of discussion. Its acceptance by the critics proves their unfitness to deal with any question of the kind.

Christianized Rationalism