Did we invent Gods laws in the Old Testament?

ShamashUruk · Sep 11, 2017

The talk of caustic laws in the Exodus and in Hammurabi are quite similar. Hammurabi being a ruler in ancient Mesopotamia at about 1792 BC to 1750 BC and being the 6th king of the 1st Babylonian Dynasty. It isn't until about 1700 BC and sum of 50 years after the reign of Hammurabi that St. Moses who was raised in Egypt is said to have penned the Pentateuch. Also, the laws of Hammurabi are echoed throughout Mesopotamia. So just one quick example:

Laws of Hammurabi 250–252
250 If an ox gores a man while passing through the street and kills (him), that case has no claim. 251 If a man’s ox is a habitual gorer, and his district has informed him that it is a habitual gorer, but he did not file its horns and did not control his ox, and that ox gores a man (lit. son of a man) and kills (him), he shall pay one-half mina (= thirty shekels) of silver. 252 If it is the slave of a free person, he shall pay one-third mina (= twenty shekels) of silver.

Exodus 21:28–32
28 If an ox gores a man or woman and he dies, the ox shall be stoned, its flesh shall not be eaten; the owner of the ox is not liable. 29 If an ox is a habitual gorer, from previous experience, and its owner has been warned, but he did not restrain it, and it kills a man or woman, the ox shall be stoned and its owner shall be put to death. 30 If ransom is laid upon him, he shall pay the redemption price for his life, according to whatever is laid upon him. 31 Or (if) it gores a son or daughter, it shall be done for him according to this law. 32 If the ox gores a male slave or a female slave, he shall pay thirty shekels of silver to his (the slave’s) master and the ox shall be stoned.

The laws are remarkably similar to those in the Laws of Hammurabi, having the same basic content, formulation, and sequence. On the basis of the similarities in these laws alone, there is a literary connection between the two texts. These are only caustic laws and much later we see apodictic laws.

Both St. Moses and Hammurabi made the claim that the laws came from a Godly source. Both St. Moses and Hammurabi have influence on ancient Mesopotamia. However, St. Moses pens his Exodus or Shemot and is a much younger version of the Laws of Hammurabi. These laws and writs in ancient Mesopotamia set's a tone for the rest of Biblical literature, wherein we see similarities in ancient Mesopotamia to the Old Testament.

HereIStand · Sep 11, 2017

God's people in the Old Testament had the only written law given directly by God. Because God is the source of justice in societies, just laws existing in other cultures at the time or later are a reflection of unwritten natural law, which is written in our hearts. We instinctively know it because we are created in God's image. Sin has tarnished this image, but not overwritten it.

ShamashUruk · Sep 11, 2017

HereIStand said:
God's people in the Old Testament had the only written law given directly by God. Because God is the source of justice in societies, just laws existing in other cultures at the time or later are a reflection of unwritten natural law, which is written in our hearts. We instinctively know it because we are created in God's image. Sin has tarnished this image, but not overwritten it.

Okay so you say that laws existing in other cultures at the time or later are a reflection of Unwritten natural law, however Moses does not scribe those laws until 50 years after the the reign of Hammurabi. So that is the first issue; Moses doesn't come until after not before. Hammurabi also claims to have gotten his laws from God so the caustic laws of Moses are seen as and clarified to be an adoption of the laws of Hammurabi. Also keep in mind that in Israelite culture they first appear out of Canaan hence we see in their early beginnings the Israelites adopting themes, motifs, societal laws, and other inventions from other societies. The problem is that the statement that you are making does not really reflect that Moses is pre Hammurabi all you are stating is that because the Bible claims these laws that it did not adopt these laws which is untrue what we see is an adoption of these laws into biblical laws and not in the reverse order. The reason it is untrue is that to ignore P, E, and other sources disregards early Isrealite sources as well the languages written by those early Semites. There really isn't a distinctive between academia and biblical mythologues seen in Mesopotamian literature and Biblical literature. Are you then concluding that Moses was unaware of Hammurabi? If so this means that Mesopotamia did not include Egypt, but it did so that would be a hard argument to make.

HereIStand · Sep 11, 2017

Christians don't regard Old Testament law as primarily a comparative cultural study. That there were other similar laws in existence during Old Testament times law in no way negates Old Testament law. It does show that law is innate in us, even in the absence of direct revelation from God.

ShamashUruk · Sep 11, 2017

HereIStand said:
Christians don't regard Old Testament law as primarily a comparative cultural study. That there were other similar laws in existence during Old Testament times law in no way negates Old Testament law. It does show that law is innate in us, even in the absence of direct revelation from God.

I wouldn't expect any Christian to make comparable studies between ANE cultures at all, most Christian are not biblical scholars. What I would expect is that a christian will make blind claims based on biblical forethought. I'm not claiming there were similar laws, im stating those are the laws and that Moses adopted them so in cultural context.

Ken Rank · Sep 11, 2017

ShamashUruk said:
The talk of caustic laws in the Exodus and in Hammurabi are quite similar. Hammurabi being a ruler in ancient Mesopotamia at about 1792 BC to 1750 BC and being the 6th king of the 1st Babylonian Dynasty. It isn't until about 1700 BC and sum of 50 years after the reign of Hammurabi that St. Moses who was raised in Egypt is said to have penned the Pentateuch. Also, the laws of Hammurabi are echoed throughout Mesopotamia. So just one quick example:

Laws of Hammurabi 250–252
250 If an ox gores a man while passing through the street and kills (him), that case has no claim. 251 If a man’s ox is a habitual gorer, and his district has informed him that it is a habitual gorer, but he did not file its horns and did not control his ox, and that ox gores a man (lit. son of a man) and kills (him), he shall pay one-half mina (= thirty shekels) of silver. 252 If it is the slave of a free person, he shall pay one-third mina (= twenty shekels) of silver.

Exodus 21:28–32
28 If an ox gores a man or woman and he dies, the ox shall be stoned, its flesh shall not be eaten; the owner of the ox is not liable. 29 If an ox is a habitual gorer, from previous experience, and its owner has been warned, but he did not restrain it, and it kills a man or woman, the ox shall be stoned and its owner shall be put to death. 30 If ransom is laid upon him, he shall pay the redemption price for his life, according to whatever is laid upon him. 31 Or (if) it gores a son or daughter, it shall be done for him according to this law. 32 If the ox gores a male slave or a female slave, he shall pay thirty shekels of silver to his (the slave’s) master and the ox shall be stoned.

The laws are remarkably similar to those in the Laws of Hammurabi, having the same basic content, formulation, and sequence. On the basis of the similarities in these laws alone, there is a literary connection between the two texts. These are only caustic laws and much later we see apodictic laws.

Both St. Moses and Hammurabi made the claim that the laws came from a Godly source. Both St. Moses and Hammurabi have influence on ancient Mesopotamia. However, St. Moses pens his Exodus or Shemot and is a much younger version of the Laws of Hammurabi. These laws and writs in ancient Mesopotamia set's a tone for the rest of Biblical literature, wherein we see similarities in ancient Mesopotamia to the Old Testament.

I can make a pretty air-tight case that the basic do's and don'ts found within the Torah were well understood long before Sinai. Abraham kept the law (Genesis 26:5) for example, thus the law must have existed at that time. Hammurabi was a Semite and God's law would have spread as His people spread. It is far more likely that Hammurabi used known ethical standards and added to them (far less mercifully than God does at Sinai) then to think Moses plagiarized Hammurabi which is what many atheists seem to think.

HereIStand · Sep 11, 2017

ShamashUruk said:
I wouldn't expect any Christian to make comparable studies between ANE cultures at all, most Christian are not biblical scholars. What I would expect is that a christian will make blind claims based on biblical forethought. I'm not claiming there were similar laws, im stating those are the laws and that Moses adopted them so in cultural context.

From the Christian perspective, Old Testament law was given primarily to show our inability to keep it. Hence, the need for a Savior, whose coming salvation for us was prophesied in the Old Testament. The law was given so that Israel would know not to follow the ways of other nations, although they often did. This gave them greater responsibility for their actions then other nations that had only indirect light from within and not the direct revelation and miracles Israel witnessed first-hand.

Ken Rank · Sep 11, 2017

HereIStand said:
From the Christian perspective, Old Testament law was given primarily to show our inability to keep it.

I agree it reveals a need for a Savior... but God's law was well known before Sinai (see Genesis 26:5 for one example). It was at Sinai that Israel was about to become not just a family but a nation of millions of people. And so the do's and don'ts we know as commands were put in writing at Sinai and the judgments and ability to prosecute were added so that Israel could use God's laws and their own national rule of law... or constitution. So it wasn't given to show we can't keep it... if you can't refrain from murdering that, well, never mind. But it was "written" to become a rule of law for a nation. Before then, the do's and don'ts alone, yes... they were God's will and they revealed the need for help.

Hank77 · Sep 11, 2017

ShamashUruk said:
The laws are remarkably similar to those in the Laws of Hammurabi, having the same basic content, formulation, and sequence. On the basis of the similarities in these laws alone, there is a literary connection between the two texts. These are only caustic laws and much later we see apodictic laws.

Both St. Moses and Hammurabi made the claim that the laws came from a Godly source.

I have no problem with the idea that Hammurabi was influenced by God, just as Cyrus was influenced by God. We can know that there have always been men that God has influenced and men who were thoughtful thinkers who realized the existence of a very powerful and creative God. When Paul spoke with the philosophers at Mars Hill he told them that he would tell them about the unknown God that they honored with a memorial.

Rom 1:19 Because that which is known of God is manifest among them, for God did manifest it to them,
Rom 1:20 for the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world, by the things made being understood, are plainly seen, both His eternal power and Godhead--to their being inexcusable;

Soyeong · Sep 11, 2017

ShamashUruk said:
The talk of caustic laws in the Exodus and in Hammurabi are quite similar. Hammurabi being a ruler in ancient Mesopotamia at about 1792 BC to 1750 BC and being the 6th king of the 1st Babylonian Dynasty. It isn't until about 1700 BC and sum of 50 years after the reign of Hammurabi that St. Moses who was raised in Egypt is said to have penned the Pentateuch. Also, the laws of Hammurabi are echoed throughout Mesopotamia. So just one quick example:

Laws of Hammurabi 250–252
250 If an ox gores a man while passing through the street and kills (him), that case has no claim. 251 If a man’s ox is a habitual gorer, and his district has informed him that it is a habitual gorer, but he did not file its horns and did not control his ox, and that ox gores a man (lit. son of a man) and kills (him), he shall pay one-half mina (= thirty shekels) of silver. 252 If it is the slave of a free person, he shall pay one-third mina (= twenty shekels) of silver.

Exodus 21:28–32
28 If an ox gores a man or woman and he dies, the ox shall be stoned, its flesh shall not be eaten; the owner of the ox is not liable. 29 If an ox is a habitual gorer, from previous experience, and its owner has been warned, but he did not restrain it, and it kills a man or woman, the ox shall be stoned and its owner shall be put to death. 30 If ransom is laid upon him, he shall pay the redemption price for his life, according to whatever is laid upon him. 31 Or (if) it gores a son or daughter, it shall be done for him according to this law. 32 If the ox gores a male slave or a female slave, he shall pay thirty shekels of silver to his (the slave’s) master and the ox shall be stoned.

The laws are remarkably similar to those in the Laws of Hammurabi, having the same basic content, formulation, and sequence. On the basis of the similarities in these laws alone, there is a literary connection between the two texts. These are only caustic laws and much later we see apodictic laws.

Both St. Moses and Hammurabi made the claim that the laws came from a Godly source. Both St. Moses and Hammurabi have influence on ancient Mesopotamia. However, St. Moses pens his Exodus or Shemot and is a much younger version of the Laws of Hammurabi. These laws and writs in ancient Mesopotamia set's a tone for the rest of Biblical literature, wherein we see similarities in ancient Mesopotamia to the Old Testament.

There is much evidence of many of God's laws already being in place throughout Genesis long before they were given to Moses in Exodus. See this article:

Laws Before Sinai

In Genesis 26:5, it says that Abraham obeyed God's voice and kept His charge, his commandments, His statutes, and His laws. While it doesn't go into details about what these were, there is no doubt in my mind that they could be summarized as instructions for how to do what is holy, righteous, and good in accordance with God's holiness, righteousness, and goodness, which is the same way that the Mosaic Law can be summarized. God's righteousness is eternal, so since the beginning there has always existed a way to act in accordance with God's righteousness, so the Mosaic Law did not change the way to do that, but rather it revealed what has always been and will always be the way to do that, and it was not God's only revelation.

Soyeong · Sep 11, 2017

HereIStand said:
From the Christian perspective, Old Testament law was given primarily to show our inability to keep it. Hence, the need for a Savior, whose coming salvation for us was prophesied in the Old Testament. The law was given so that Israel would know not to follow the ways of other nations, although they often did. This gave them greater responsibility for their actions then other nations that had only indirect light from within and not the direct revelation and miracles Israel witnessed first-hand.

If it is impossible for us to keep God's Law, we can't be held responsible for not keeping it. However, the Bible does not say that, but just the opposite. In Deuteronomy 30:11-14, God said that what he commanded was not too difficult for us, but that God's Word was near us, in our hearts and in our mouths so that we can obey it, and in Romans 10:5-10, our faith says that same thing in regard to what it means to submit to Jesus as Lord. Furthermore, if it is impossible to keep the Law, then God is an unloving Father who does not know how to give good gifts to His children, who gave the Law in order to put His children under a curse. This is again counter to Deuteronomy 6:24 and Deuteronomy 10:13, where God said that what He commanded was for His children's own good.

According to John 14:23-24, Jesus said that if we love him, then we will obey his teachings, were which not his own, but that of the Father, in Matthew 23:23, Jesus said that faith is one of the weightier matters of the Law, and since the beginning with God walking with Adama in the Garden, He has always wanted an intimate relationship with us, so the Law is God's instructions for how to grow in that relationship with Him based on love and faith. There are many verses that describe the Mosaic Covenant as being a marriage between God and Israel, such as with God describing Himself as her husband (Jeremiah 31:32) or with Israel's unfaithfulness being described as adultery, which eventually got so bad that God wrote the Northern Kingdom of Israel a certificate of divorce (Jeremiah 3:8), and someone can only become divorced if they have first been married. So again, the Law is God's instructions for how to have this intimate relationship with Him based on faith and love. And it is through this relationship with Christ that we are saved from our sins in disobedience to God's Law.

The Law is not just about preventing Israel from following the ways of other nations, but about teaching them to follow God's ways (Deuteronomy 8:6). So it is about teaching how to reflect the attributes of God to the world, such as holiness, righteousness, goodness (Romans 7:12), justice, mercy, faithfulness (Matthew 23:23), love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control (Galatians 5:22-23, Exodus 34:6-7). Israel was intended to be a light to the nations, to teach them how to serve God, to walk in His ways, and to draw them into this intimate relationship with God (Isaiah 2:2-3, Isaiah 49:6, Deuteronomy 4:5-8).

HereIStand · Sep 11, 2017

Soyeong said:
If it is impossible for us to keep God's Law, we can't be held responsible for not keeping it. However, the Bible does not say that, but just the opposite. In Deuteronomy 30:11-14, God said that what he commanded was not too difficult for us, but that God's Word was near us, in our hearts and in our mouths so that we can obey it, and in Romans 10:5-10, our faith says that same thing in regard to what it means to submit to Jesus as Lord. Furthermore, if it is impossible to keep the Law, then God is an unloving Father who does not know how to give good gifts to His children, but rather He gave the Law in order to put His children under a curse. This is again counter to Deuteronomy 6:24 and Deuteronomy 10:13, where God said that what He commanded was for His children's own good.

According to John 14:23-24, Jesus said that if we love him, then we will obey his teachings, were which not his own, but that of the Father, in Matthew 23:23, Jesus said that faith is one of the weightier matters of the Law, and since the beginning with God walking with Adama in the Garden, He has always wanted an intimate relationship with us, so the Law is God's instructions for how to grow in that relationship with Him based on love and faith. There are many verses that describe the Mosaic Covenant as being a marriage between God and Israel, such as with God describing Himself as her husband (Jeremiah 31:32) or with Israel's unfaithfulness being described as adultery, which eventually got so bad that God wrote the Northern Kingdom of Israel a certificate of divorce (Jeremiah 3:8), and someone can only become divorced if they have first been married. So again, the Law is God's instructions for how to have this intimate relationship with Him based on faith and love. And it is through this relationship with Christ that we are saved from our sins in disobedience to God's Law.

The Law is not just about preventing Israel from following the ways of other nations, but about teaching them to follow God's ways (Deuteronomy 8:6). So it is about teaching how to reflect the attributes of God to the world, such as holiness, righteousness, goodness (Romans 7:12), justice, mercy, faithfulness (Matthew 23:23), love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control (Galatians 5:22-23, Exodus 34:6-7). Israel was intended to be a light to the nations, to teach them how to serve God, to walk in His ways, and to draw them into this intimate relationship with God (Isaiah 2:2-3, Isaiah 49:6, Deuteronomy 4:5-8).

True. There is an affirmative aspect to the law. We are to live by it, however, we can not hold to it in every instance. Hence, the need for Christ to fulfill the law and set us free from a "yoke of slavery" (Galatians 5:1) to fulfill the law of love (Romans 13:10).

SolomonVII · Sep 11, 2017

I have more and more come to reject the idea that revelations from God are dictated to us from on High, pure and unadulterated, and uninfluenced by anything of the human sphere. This would be akin to accepting the Islamic version of events of God dictating through Gabriel, and Mohammed being a perfect secretary taking down the message to the last jot and iota.
The version of the commandments written by the finger of God.
The ten commandments may have been written by the hand of God by tradition, but for the larger part the Law was hammered out in a fully human context.
Since God formed us from the mud, he has been interacting with us according to the raw material at hand. In terms of the Law, and even many of the narratives of the Bible, the raw material existed in the pre-existing cultures and beliefs that the Jewish people shared land and history and culture with
God's hand and voice is present in Scripture to be sure but he works alongside his people, dialogues rather than dictates to us through Scripture.

ShamashUruk · Sep 11, 2017

Ken Rank said:
I can make a pretty air-tight case that the basic do's and don'ts found within the Torah were well understood long before Sinai. Abraham kept the law (Genesis 26:5) for example, thus the law must have existed at that time. Hammurabi was a Semite and God's law would have spread as His people spread. It is far more likely that Hammurabi used known ethical standards and added to them (far less mercifully than God does at Sinai) then to think Moses plagiarized Hammurabi which is what many atheists seem to think.

Hammurabi is Babylonian, the Semites are not necessarily Babylonian, but the Babylonian's did speak a Semitic based language. We see Hammurabi existing long before the laws in Sinai as well. So we see a disconnect strictly between St. Moses and Hammurabi in the strictest sense. But, the connection we do see is the Egyptians and the Babylonians.

ShamashUruk · Sep 11, 2017

HereIStand said:
From the Christian perspective, Old Testament law was given primarily to show our inability to keep it. Hence, the need for a Savior, whose coming salvation for us was prophesied in the Old Testament. The law was given so that Israel would know not to follow the ways of other nations, although they often did. This gave them greater responsibility for their actions then other nations that had only indirect light from within and not the direct revelation and miracles Israel witnessed first-hand.

However, the Christian perspective would be irrelevant in Old Testament as Christianity doesn't emerge until much later in Rome. Prophecy is usually and generally related to "mancy", such as John on Patmos and his use or terms for Apocalyptic Horses which reflect that on the Island of Patmos a Hippodrome was discovered, we see Hippomancy concerning prophecy.

ShamashUruk · Sep 11, 2017

Ken Rank said:
I agree it reveals a need for a Savior... but God's law was well known before Sinai (see Genesis 26:5 for one example). It was at Sinai that Israel was about to become not just a family but a nation of millions of people. And so the do's and don'ts we know as commands were put in writing at Sinai and the judgments and ability to prosecute were added so that Israel could use God's laws and their own national rule of law... or constitution. So it wasn't given to show we can't keep it... if you can't refrain from murdering that, well, never mind. But it was "written" to become a rule of law for a nation. Before then, the do's and don'ts alone, yes... they were God's will and they revealed the need for help.

Before I begin, Hammurabi is one set of laws that dates back to even the time of Sinai, but even further back we find the code of Ur-Nammu which is pre Biblical law. And concerning Sinai and the law collection or the pinnacle of the revelation at Mount Sinai according to the story of Exodus 19–24, is directly, primarily, and throughout dependent upon the Laws of Hammurabi. The biblical text imitated the structure of this Akkadian text and drew upon its content to create the central casuistic laws of Exodus 21:2–22:19, as well as the outer sections of apodictic law in Exodus 20:23–26 (along with the introduction of 21:1) and 22:20–23:19.2 This primary use of the Laws of Hammurabi was supplemented with the occasional use of material from other cuneiform law collections and from native Israelite-Judean sources and traditions. The time for this textual borrowing was most likely during the Neo-Assyrian period, specifically sometime between 740 and 640 BCE, when Mesopotamia exerted strong and relatively continuous political control and cultural sway over the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and a time when the Laws of Hammurabi were actively copied in Mesopotamia as a literary-canonical text.

The Covenant Code also appears to be a unified composition, given the influence of Hammurabi’s laws throughout, the thematic integrity resulting from this, the unique scribal talents and interests necessary for the text’s composition, and its temporal proximity to the basic laws of Deuteronomy, which depend on the Covenant Code’s laws and date not much later, probably to the latter half of the seventh century.

Moreover, because the Covenant Code is largely a creative rewriting of Mesopotamian sources, it is to be viewed as Inventing God’s Law an academic abstraction rather than a digest of laws practiced by Israelites and Judeans over the course of centuries. Its selective character and the manner in which it reshapes the political and theological landscape of the Laws of Hammurabi, in fact, make it appear to be preeminently an ideological document, a response to Assyrian political and cultural domination.

This model differs decidedly from current critical scholarly appraisals of the text. According to these, the Covenant Code’s similarities with ancient Near Eastern law—perceived only imperfectly until now—are due to general or specific traditions, preserved orally and reflected in inherited legal practice, that reach back into the second millennium BCE. One model proposes that Mesopotamian customs became known in Syria-Canaan through the establishment of cuneiform scribal schools in this western region during the mid-to-later second millennium. These were then handed on primarily in oral form into the first millennium, at which time the people of Israel took them over,
practiced them, and encoded them in law. An alternate model proposes that the customs go back earlier to the beginning of the second millennium or even to the late third millennium, to a common stock of Amorite practices that eventually became independently encoded in the Mesopotamian law collections and the Covenant Code. Only a few scholars have allowed for direct or indirect literary influence from Mesopotamian law collections, and they usually limit this to a few laws, such as those about a goring ox. No one has ventured the idea that the apodictic laws have any connection to Hammurabi’s text. The arguments for the prevailing traditions explanation, as just described, have seemed persuasive.

These include a judgment that the Covenant Code’s basic casuistic laws (whatever a particular analysis may determine these to be) are old, from around 1000 BCE, give or take a century. Support for this date has been sought in the sociological and cultural picture imagined to be reflected in the basic casuistic laws. For example, the Covenant Code never speaks of a king. Hence the basic laws have been assumed to be premonarchic or at least built on legal traditions from that period.

An early dating of the Covenant Code is also supported by a relatively early dating of the laws of Deuteronomy. If the latter date to the eighth century, for example, then the Covenant Code
may be from the ninth or even tenth century BCE. In addition, several scholars believe that the Covenant Code was included as part of the Elohist—a few say the Yahwist—source of the Pentateuch. An early dating of these sources has required an early date for the Covenant Code. Furthermore, scholars have made connections between the Covenant Code and features in second-millennium cuneiform documents, such as slave customs reflected in Nuzi texts or the class
of persons denoted by the term ab/piru in El-Amarna and other texts, to which the designation “Hebrew” in the Covenant Code has been related.

The date of the Covenant Code, it is supposed, must be relatively close to the time of the second-millennium texts with these comparable elements. This early dating of the Covenant Code precludes borrowing from contemporary Mesopotamian literature because Mesopotamian influence did not extend to Israel and Judah until the mid-ninth-century BCE and not significantly so until the mid-eighth century.

Cuneiform scribal schools in Syria-Canaan that flourished in the second millennium, evidenced in Akkadian texts found from various Canaanite cities and the El-Amarna tablets of the fourteenth century, ceased to exist around 1200 BCE with the urban collapse at the end of the Late Bronze Age.

Hence the Covenant Code’s similarities to cuneiform law, so a traditions argument would claim, cannot be due to the maintenance of cuneiform law texts from the second millennium into the first millennium in the west. If any written sources were influential, these would have presumably been written in Aramaic or Phoenician and would have been limited in scope, perhaps small excerpts of laws or scribal exercises on particular subjects. But since there is no evidence for such texts—certainly there is none for the transmission of the whole of the Laws of Hammurabi in these Northwest Semitic languages—the content of the Covenant Code must result mainly from oral tradition. In any case, most scholarship has also assumed that the laws of the Covenant Code reflect actual legal customs in Israel or Judah. Therefore, whatever relationship there is to Mesopotamian custom, it is only through a pedigree of actual practice. This rules out dependence on a text and even oral traditions transmitted as abstract matters of academic discussion among scribes or jurists.

A portion of the casuistic laws, as well as the apodictic laws, based on different evidence and considerations. The primary historical problem before us can be boiled down to this: are we to believe that legal traditions from several centuries and maybe even a millennium or more past have happened to come together in a form and with a content that matches the Laws of Hammurabi, precisely at a time when Israel and Judah were under Assyrian control and when the Laws of Hammurabi were part of the Great Books library of Akkadian scribes, but that this text had no influence on the Covenant Code? A more parsimonious and compelling explanation of the Covenant Code’s origins recommends itself, and that is what this study presents. We'd also have to look at a methodological chronology and synchronization of the texts.

ShamashUruk · Sep 11, 2017

Hank77 said:
I have no problem with the idea that Hammurabi was influenced by God, just as Cyrus was influenced by God. We can know that there have always been men that God has influenced and men who were thoughtful thinkers who realized the existence of a very powerful and creative God. When Paul spoke with the philosophers at Mars Hill he told them that he would tell them about the unknown God that they honored with a memorial.

Rom 1:19 Because that which is known of God is manifest among them, for God did manifest it to them,
Rom 1:20 for the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world, by the things made being understood, are plainly seen, both His eternal power and Godhead--to their being inexcusable;

Hammurabi is influenced by Samas the Sun God who is essentially God in Babylonian and is El in Israelite context, so we'd see Polytheistic influence on Monotheism. So when you say you have no issue with this, I'd be aware to be specific about which "God" figure it is.

ShamashUruk · Sep 11, 2017

Soyeong said:
There is much evidence of many of God's laws already being in place throughout Genesis long before they were given to Moses in Exodus. See this article:

Laws Before Sinai

In Genesis 26:5, it says that Abraham obeyed God's voice and kept His charge, his commandments, His statutes, and His laws. While it doesn't go into details about what these were, there is no doubt in my mind that they could be summarized as instructions for how to do what is holy, righteous, and good in accordance with God's holiness, righteousness, and goodness, which is the same way that the Mosaic Law can be summarized. God's righteousness is eternal, so since the beginning there has always existed a way to act in accordance with God's righteousness, so the Mosaic Law did not change the way to do that, but rather it revealed what has always been and will always be the way to do that, and it was not God's only revelation.

Checked the website and it continues that "We see the laws of Khammurabi operating in Genesis in the following instances", meaning we see the influence of Hammurabi in the Genesis.

Before I begin, Hammurabi is one set of laws that dates back to even the time of Sinai, but even further back we find the code of Ur-Nammu which is pre Biblical law. And concerning Sinai and the law collection or the pinnacle of the revelation at Mount Sinai according to the story of Exodus 19–24, is directly, primarily, and throughout dependent upon the Laws of Hammurabi. The biblical text imitated the structure of this Akkadian text and drew upon its content to create the central casuistic laws of Exodus 21:2–22:19, as well as the outer sections of apodictic law in Exodus 20:23–26 (along with the introduction of 21:1) and 22:20–23:19.2 This primary use of the Laws of Hammurabi was supplemented with the occasional use of material from other cuneiform law collections and from native Israelite-Judean sources and traditions. The time for this textual borrowing was most likely during the Neo-Assyrian period, specifically sometime between 740 and 640 BCE, when Mesopotamia exerted strong and relatively continuous political control and cultural sway over the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and a time when the Laws of Hammurabi were actively copied in Mesopotamia as a literary-canonical text.

The Covenant Code also appears to be a unified composition, given the influence of Hammurabi’s laws throughout, the thematic integrity resulting from this, the unique scribal talents and interests necessary for the text’s composition, and its temporal proximity to the basic laws of Deuteronomy, which depend on the Covenant Code’s laws and date not much later, probably to the latter half of the seventh century.

Moreover, because the Covenant Code is largely a creative rewriting of Mesopotamian sources, it is to be viewed as Inventing God’s Law an academic abstraction rather than a digest of laws practiced by Israelites and Judeans over the course of centuries. Its selective character and the manner in which it reshapes the political and theological landscape of the Laws of Hammurabi, in fact, make it appear to be preeminently an ideological document, a response to Assyrian political and cultural domination.

This model differs decidedly from current critical scholarly appraisals of the text. According to these, the Covenant Code’s similarities with ancient Near Eastern law—perceived only imperfectly until now—are due to general or specific traditions, preserved orally and reflected in inherited legal practice, that reach back into the second millennium BCE. One model proposes that Mesopotamian customs became known in Syria-Canaan through the establishment of cuneiform scribal schools in this western region during the mid-to-later second millennium. These were then handed on primarily in oral form into the first millennium, at which time the people of Israel took them over,
practiced them, and encoded them in law. An alternate model proposes that the customs go back earlier to the beginning of the second millennium or even to the late third millennium, to a common stock of Amorite practices that eventually became independently encoded in the Mesopotamian law collections and the Covenant Code. Only a few scholars have allowed for direct or indirect literary influence from Mesopotamian law collections, and they usually limit this to a few laws, such as those about a goring ox. No one has ventured the idea that the apodictic laws have any connection to Hammurabi’s text. The arguments for the prevailing traditions explanation, as just described, have seemed persuasive.

These include a judgment that the Covenant Code’s basic casuistic laws (whatever a particular analysis may determine these to be) are old, from around 1000 BCE, give or take a century. Support for this date has been sought in the sociological and cultural picture imagined to be reflected in the basic casuistic laws. For example, the Covenant Code never speaks of a king. Hence the basic laws have been assumed to be premonarchic or at least built on legal traditions from that period.

An early dating of the Covenant Code is also supported by a relatively early dating of the laws of Deuteronomy. If the latter date to the eighth century, for example, then the Covenant Code
may be from the ninth or even tenth century BCE. In addition, several scholars believe that the Covenant Code was included as part of the Elohist—a few say the Yahwist—source of the Pentateuch. An early dating of these sources has required an early date for the Covenant Code. Furthermore, scholars have made connections between the Covenant Code and features in second-millennium cuneiform documents, such as slave customs reflected in Nuzi texts or the class
of persons denoted by the term ab/piru in El-Amarna and other texts, to which the designation “Hebrew” in the Covenant Code has been related.

The date of the Covenant Code, it is supposed, must be relatively close to the time of the second-millennium texts with these comparable elements. This early dating of the Covenant Code precludes borrowing from contemporary Mesopotamian literature because Mesopotamian influence did not extend to Israel and Judah until the mid-ninth-century BCE and not significantly so until the mid-eighth century.

Cuneiform scribal schools in Syria-Canaan that flourished in the second millennium, evidenced in Akkadian texts found from various Canaanite cities and the El-Amarna tablets of the fourteenth century, ceased to exist around 1200 BCE with the urban collapse at the end of the Late Bronze Age.

Hence the Covenant Code’s similarities to cuneiform law, so a traditions argument would claim, cannot be due to the maintenance of cuneiform law texts from the second millennium into the first millennium in the west. If any written sources were influential, these would have presumably been written in Aramaic or Phoenician and would have been limited in scope, perhaps small excerpts of laws or scribal exercises on particular subjects. But since there is no evidence for such texts—certainly there is none for the transmission of the whole of the Laws of Hammurabi in these Northwest Semitic languages—the content of the Covenant Code must result mainly from oral tradition. In any case, most scholarship has also assumed that the laws of the Covenant Code reflect actual legal customs in Israel or Judah. Therefore, whatever relationship there is to Mesopotamian custom, it is only through a pedigree of actual practice. This rules out dependence on a text and even oral traditions transmitted as abstract matters of academic discussion among scribes or jurists.

A portion of the casuistic laws, as well as the apodictic laws, based on different evidence and considerations. The primary historical problem before us can be boiled down to this: are we to believe that legal traditions from several centuries and maybe even a millennium or more past have happened to come together in a form and with a content that matches the Laws of Hammurabi, precisely at a time when Israel and Judah were under Assyrian control and when the Laws of Hammurabi were part of the Great Books library of Akkadian scribes, but that this text had no influence on the Covenant Code? A more parsimonious and compelling explanation of the Covenant Code’s origins recommends itself, and that is what this study presents. We'd also have to look at a methodological chronology and synchronization of the texts.

ShamashUruk · Sep 11, 2017

Soyeong said:
If it is impossible for us to keep God's Law, we can't be held responsible for not keeping it. However, the Bible does not say that, but just the opposite. In Deuteronomy 30:11-14, God said that what he commanded was not too difficult for us, but that God's Word was near us, in our hearts and in our mouths so that we can obey it, and in Romans 10:5-10, our faith says that same thing in regard to what it means to submit to Jesus as Lord. Furthermore, if it is impossible to keep the Law, then God is an unloving Father who does not know how to give good gifts to His children, who gave the Law in order to put His children under a curse. This is again counter to Deuteronomy 6:24 and Deuteronomy 10:13, where God said that what He commanded was for His children's own good.

According to John 14:23-24, Jesus said that if we love him, then we will obey his teachings, were which not his own, but that of the Father, in Matthew 23:23, Jesus said that faith is one of the weightier matters of the Law, and since the beginning with God walking with Adama in the Garden, He has always wanted an intimate relationship with us, so the Law is God's instructions for how to grow in that relationship with Him based on love and faith. There are many verses that describe the Mosaic Covenant as being a marriage between God and Israel, such as with God describing Himself as her husband (Jeremiah 31:32) or with Israel's unfaithfulness being described as adultery, which eventually got so bad that God wrote the Northern Kingdom of Israel a certificate of divorce (Jeremiah 3:8), and someone can only become divorced if they have first been married. So again, the Law is God's instructions for how to have this intimate relationship with Him based on faith and love. And it is through this relationship with Christ that we are saved from our sins in disobedience to God's Law.

The Law is not just about preventing Israel from following the ways of other nations, but about teaching them to follow God's ways (Deuteronomy 8:6). So it is about teaching how to reflect the attributes of God to the world, such as holiness, righteousness, goodness (Romans 7:12), justice, mercy, faithfulness (Matthew 23:23), love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control (Galatians 5:22-23, Exodus 34:6-7). Israel was intended to be a light to the nations, to teach them how to serve God, to walk in His ways, and to draw them into this intimate relationship with God (Isaiah 2:2-3, Isaiah 49:6, Deuteronomy 4:5-8).

The issue is not the laws themselves, but where the influence came from. St. Moses will patronize that the influence is from God, but sources state from Hammurabi as the laws of Moses are found earlier in Hammurabi. Also, Hammurabi is one set of laws that dates back to even the time of Sinai, but even further back we find the code of Ur-Nammu which is pre Biblical law. And concerning Sinai and the law collection or the pinnacle of the revelation at Mount Sinai according to the story of Exodus 19–24, is directly, primarily, and throughout dependent upon the Laws of Hammurabi. The biblical text imitated the structure of this Akkadian text and drew upon its content to create the central casuistic laws of Exodus 21:2–22:19, as well as the outer sections of apodictic law in Exodus 20:23–26 (along with the introduction of 21:1) and 22:20–23:19.2 This primary use of the Laws of Hammurabi was supplemented with the occasional use of material from other cuneiform law collections and from native Israelite-Judean sources and traditions. The time for this textual borrowing was most likely during the Neo-Assyrian period, specifically sometime between 740 and 640 BCE, when Mesopotamia exerted strong and relatively continuous political control and cultural sway over the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and a time when the Laws of Hammurabi were actively copied in Mesopotamia as a literary-canonical text.

The Covenant Code also appears to be a unified composition, given the influence of Hammurabi’s laws throughout, the thematic integrity resulting from this, the unique scribal talents and interests necessary for the text’s composition, and its temporal proximity to the basic laws of Deuteronomy, which depend on the Covenant Code’s laws and date not much later, probably to the latter half of the seventh century.

Moreover, because the Covenant Code is largely a creative rewriting of Mesopotamian sources, it is to be viewed as Inventing God’s Law an academic abstraction rather than a digest of laws practiced by Israelites and Judeans over the course of centuries. Its selective character and the manner in which it reshapes the political and theological landscape of the Laws of Hammurabi, in fact, make it appear to be preeminently an ideological document, a response to Assyrian political and cultural domination.

This model differs decidedly from current critical scholarly appraisals of the text. According to these, the Covenant Code’s similarities with ancient Near Eastern law—perceived only imperfectly until now—are due to general or specific traditions, preserved orally and reflected in inherited legal practice, that reach back into the second millennium BCE. One model proposes that Mesopotamian customs became known in Syria-Canaan through the establishment of cuneiform scribal schools in this western region during the mid-to-later second millennium. These were then handed on primarily in oral form into the first millennium, at which time the people of Israel took them over,
practiced them, and encoded them in law. An alternate model proposes that the customs go back earlier to the beginning of the second millennium or even to the late third millennium, to a common stock of Amorite practices that eventually became independently encoded in the Mesopotamian law collections and the Covenant Code. Only a few scholars have allowed for direct or indirect literary influence from Mesopotamian law collections, and they usually limit this to a few laws, such as those about a goring ox. No one has ventured the idea that the apodictic laws have any connection to Hammurabi’s text. The arguments for the prevailing traditions explanation, as just described, have seemed persuasive.

These include a judgment that the Covenant Code’s basic casuistic laws (whatever a particular analysis may determine these to be) are old, from around 1000 BCE, give or take a century. Support for this date has been sought in the sociological and cultural picture imagined to be reflected in the basic casuistic laws. For example, the Covenant Code never speaks of a king. Hence the basic laws have been assumed to be premonarchic or at least built on legal traditions from that period.

An early dating of the Covenant Code is also supported by a relatively early dating of the laws of Deuteronomy. If the latter date to the eighth century, for example, then the Covenant Code
may be from the ninth or even tenth century BCE. In addition, several scholars believe that the Covenant Code was included as part of the Elohist—a few say the Yahwist—source of the Pentateuch. An early dating of these sources has required an early date for the Covenant Code. Furthermore, scholars have made connections between the Covenant Code and features in second-millennium cuneiform documents, such as slave customs reflected in Nuzi texts or the class
of persons denoted by the term ab/piru in El-Amarna and other texts, to which the designation “Hebrew” in the Covenant Code has been related.

The date of the Covenant Code, it is supposed, must be relatively close to the time of the second-millennium texts with these comparable elements. This early dating of the Covenant Code precludes borrowing from contemporary Mesopotamian literature because Mesopotamian influence did not extend to Israel and Judah until the mid-ninth-century BCE and not significantly so until the mid-eighth century.

Cuneiform scribal schools in Syria-Canaan that flourished in the second millennium, evidenced in Akkadian texts found from various Canaanite cities and the El-Amarna tablets of the fourteenth century, ceased to exist around 1200 BCE with the urban collapse at the end of the Late Bronze Age.

Hence the Covenant Code’s similarities to cuneiform law, so a traditions argument would claim, cannot be due to the maintenance of cuneiform law texts from the second millennium into the first millennium in the west. If any written sources were influential, these would have presumably been written in Aramaic or Phoenician and would have been limited in scope, perhaps small excerpts of laws or scribal exercises on particular subjects. But since there is no evidence for such texts—certainly there is none for the transmission of the whole of the Laws of Hammurabi in these Northwest Semitic languages—the content of the Covenant Code must result mainly from oral tradition. In any case, most scholarship has also assumed that the laws of the Covenant Code reflect actual legal customs in Israel or Judah. Therefore, whatever relationship there is to Mesopotamian custom, it is only through a pedigree of actual practice. This rules out dependence on a text and even oral traditions transmitted as abstract matters of academic discussion among scribes or jurists.

A portion of the casuistic laws, as well as the apodictic laws, based on different evidence and considerations. The primary historical problem before us can be boiled down to this: are we to believe that legal traditions from several centuries and maybe even a millennium or more past have happened to come together in a form and with a content that matches the Laws of Hammurabi, precisely at a time when Israel and Judah were under Assyrian control and when the Laws of Hammurabi were part of the Great Books library of Akkadian scribes, but that this text had no influence on the Covenant Code? A more parsimonious and compelling explanation of the Covenant Code’s origins recommends itself, and that is what this study presents. We'd also have to look at a methodological chronology and synchronization of the texts.

ShamashUruk · Sep 11, 2017

HereIStand said:
True. There is an affirmative aspect to the law. We are to live by it, however, we can not hold to it in every instance. Hence, the need for Christ to fulfill the law and set us free from a "yoke of slavery" (Galatians 5:1) to fulfill the law of love (Romans 13:10).

We are discussing where the laws came from, however, what the laws state are not necessarily an issue. Prophecy reflects divination by certain "mancy" means that we see in an ancient Israelite cultural context. Even in Babylonian Polytheistic Omen-Texts we see divination (prophecy) which is attributed from God, the Israelite's also attribute a cosmology in the role of writing. There are many proof texts, such as the role that divine writing plays in issuing the 10 commandments (Ex 31:18), or Yahweh's heavenly text in which he keeps the name of the sinless (Ex 32:32-33), or the priestly curses that must be written via scroll, dissolved in water, and imbibed by a wife tested for unfaithfulness (Numbers 5: 23-24), or the many prophecies Yahweh order his prophets to utter before an audience and put into writing (Jeremiah 36:18; 36: 27-28). In fact we see this in early Mesopotamia as well, so even by the Bible's standards it is an adoption of the intricacies of prophecy.

Did we invent Gods laws in the Old Testament?

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