I have already called attention to the code of laws written on stone by Hammurabi, King of Babylon, in the days of Abraham, called in the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, Amraphel, King of Shinar. The identification of the latter with the former is admitted by [436] archæologists. I have also promised to write something in the way of comparison between this code and the civil code of Moses. I now propose to make a brief comparison of the treatment of capital crimes in these codes.

      In Hammurabi's code there are thirty-three crimes for which men or women were to be put to death; in the law of Moses, only seventeen. This shows at once that the law of Moses was more enlightened and far less severe in its dealings with the sins of men than was the law of Hammurabi, written nearly a thousand years earlier.

      When we come to compare the character of the crimes thus made capital offenses, the distinction between the two codes is still more striking. A large number of sins punishable by death under the law of Moses are passed over in silence in the code of Hammurabi. For instance, idolatry, to which Hammurabi was himself extremely devoted, worshiping all the gods of the Babylonian Pantheon; blasphemy, punishable with death under Moses, is not even mentioned by Hammurabi; so with the utterance of false prophecy; so with witchcraft, sodomy, incest, prostitution, bestiality, and rebellion against the decision of judges. It was certainly not an enlightened legislation which took no cognizance of these as offenses against God and society.

      A characteristic difference, also, is seen when we consider some of the deeds punishable by death under Hammurabi's code, but not so punished under Moses. For instance, "If a man ensnares another, putting a ban upon him," by which is meant bewitching him, or, as the negroes would express it, hoodooing him, he was put to death.

      Again, if a man charge another with committing a capital crime, and failed to prove it, he was put to death. [437] Again, the crime of theft was in most instances a capital crime. If a man stole property from a temple or from the court, he was killed. If he should buy property from the son or slave of another man, he was considered a thief and put to death. If he should steal cattle or other property from a freedman, he was to restore tenfold, and if he had nothing with which to repay, he was to be put to death. Again, if one should permit runaway slaves to conceal themselves in his house, he was put to death. Quite a number of other offenses of like character with these were capital crimes.

      The universal mode of executing a criminal under the law of Moses was stoning, and he was stoned by the men of the community in which he lived, the witnesses on whose testimony he was condemned being required to throw the first stones. Under Hammurabi's code the only method of executing a criminal that is mentioned is by throwing him or her into the river, presumably bound so as not to be able to swim. In some instances, where two parties co-operated in the crime, they were tied together and thrown into the river. As this is the only method of execution named in the code, it is probable that it was universal. As the country of Babylonia was full of canals supplied with water from the Euphrates and the Tigris, this method of executing criminals was not inconvenient; and it is highly probable that the bodies of those thus drowned were allowed to float away into the Persian Gulf. In Palestine, stoning to death was equally and even more convenient, because in every part of the land stones suitable for the purpose could easily be picked up.

      Our evolutionary critics have already commenced applying their theory to the code of Hammurabi by saying that long ages of development must have preceded [438] it, but any one who reads the code can see clearly that he claimed to be the originator of it himself, and there is nothing in it that could not have been originated by any man of good sense and experience with men and with the affairs of government.

      Before the discovery of this code it was claimed by the same critics that Moses could not have written his code because he lived too early for the long period of development which must have preceded the existence of such a code. Now we find a code more elaborate than that of Moses, enacted nearly a thousand years before his, and the question for our evolutionists is, Had a sufficient number of centuries intervened between the two to enable Moses to make a code so much better than that of Hammurabi? I think, again, that to a man of common sense it would appear that Moses could very easily make a better set of laws than were made by his heathen predecessor.

      We will have some more points of comparison to present hereafter.

[SEBC 436-439]