I know this blog, which I found less than a week ago, explores mainly in Biblical territory, but it might be worth noting that the Qur'an has a similar take on legal equity. Basically, the guiding principle is that the punishment shouldn't exceed the parameters of the crime. I'm a Baha'i and my master's is as generalist in world religion. My husband and I have been going through the Qur'an verse by verse as part of our "daily" devotions, and when I read the news from Iran, where it seems like every day more Baha'is are getting locked up (mainly for being Baha'is), I think back on these passages about equity in punishment for crimes and am not sure whether to sigh, cry, or try to laugh.
This parallel with Hammurabi is something my Hebrew Bible class missed, and I found it very interesting. Thanks for bringing it up and matching it to Exodus. My take after a lot of study, including early Baha'i history, is that a good portion of the Bible could be classed as "sacred history," so it's imparting truth without necessarily sticking to literal fact. I found in studying the life (thesis) of an early Baha'i hero called Quddus, that even as close to the actual events as we are (say 150 years), we have multiple redactions of events and that when 2 chains of narration vary, what one chain is communicating is some parallel with Muslim history, often specifically Shia history.
OK, so what’s the fuss? To gore or not to gore and if your pesky ox decides to engage in the most malicious of illegal and prohibited conduct, then let the gods and/or God decide the fate of the felonious rogue perpetrator.
So maybe Hammurabi predates Moses by a few hundred years or so, what’s the big deal? Oxen and their descendants are still roaming the neighborhoods, horns intact, sharp as a flint knife in search of its next victim, and so the laws to protect the fragile human target must be ceremoniously etched in stone, to be rigorously enforced from one generation to the next, regardless of which far-off country or current desert sand dune the dumb animal hails from.
So goes the same for so much more, whether to retain or update laws for open, unsecured pits, seduced unmarried daughters, slave rights, and, pray tell, not to be overlooked, the still ever so popular eye for an eye, let’s keep that one just for old times sake.
In the end, and rightly so, it’s not a case of the ‘real-God’ copy-catting the ‘fake-gods’ or their King, no, it’s simply the progression, the evolution of replacing the old and misguided with the new and the Revealed, the introduction of the one and true God who simply exiled His earlier created deities, took their rules and regulations, originally acquired from you know Who, and relegated them and their earthly appointed Royalty to the dust bins of history.
Enter Abraham and onward to Moses, that so-called ‘thievin’ law-maker-of-the-holy-mountain-high.’ But now the true story is out there for all to witness while Hammurabi and his horde of heavenly beings simply fade to complete obscurity, his code to be properly fine-tuned.
(and of course no one is forced to belief any of the new ‘theory’ either).
Any culture with oxen writes ox laws, so the existence of the rulings proves nothing. What needs explaining is the sequence. Three cases, same order, same trigger (a prior goring plus formal notice to the owner), same separate valuation when the victim was somebody's property. Then the same cluster shows up around it: the open pit, the deposit that goes missing, the seduced daughter, the debt slave released on a fixed term.
Well, Tanner, I really don’t pretend to know, but for me, the sequence isn’t an issue. It could be simply the result of the previously played out scenario retold in the same oral tradition by a contemporary group of descendants recalling the event. Those pagan descendants, the Sinai crowd, carried those tales for hundreds of years, where they originated in their various homelands. Perhaps they used the same examples over and over again to illustrate that the acts of the old, fake gods, were in reality, the acts carried out by their one true God.
We don’t know the exact method of storytelling practiced in ancient times. Maybe mirroring the same sequence of events aided in convincing people that there was only one true explanation for events and their outcome, followed by the need for laws, and that all was the result of the acts and will of their God, not the whims of multiple gods and their appointed Kings.
What's usually gets left off that list is the Canaanite one. El heads the pantheon at Ugarit, and El is one of the names Israel's God carries throughout Genesis. Psalm 82 has him standing up in a council of other gods to pass judgment on them. The Dead Sea Scrolls version of Deuteronomy 32:8-9 has the Most High dividing the nations among the sons of God and assigning Jacob to Yahweh, which puts Yahweh among the sons rather than at the top.
Mesopotamia supplies the flood, the primordial waters, and the legal material. Persia supplies what shows up late and all at once after the exile: a named adversary, bodily resurrection, ranked angels, a final judgment. Egypt supplies less than people expect, mostly a hymn sitting behind Psalm 104 and a national origin story with no archaeological trace.
I disagree. JewEL cutting is synonymous to Jewish society… Old French and Latin “language”have been and still are influenced by the ancient civilizations.
And the number 3… the pattern used to cut jewEls✡️
I don’t have to mention France has the THIRD largest Jewish population. And most of the “Jewish” population has italian DNA.
Not an issue regarding prefixes or suffixes in the identification of the Hebrew God. You don’t seem to be aware that the Hebrew Bible is a record of the evolution of their knowledge and their beliefs in the transition from the worship of many gods to the worship of one. It was a long process that carried with it the pagan traditions of their various homelands, names of gods included.
You have no idea who Moses was, whether an extraction of an Egyptian pharaoh, or a made-up deliverer of an enslaved people, so your speculation is silly at best.
Pretty much not likely to find an archeological trace left by a group of wandering emigrants if referring to pre-Mosaic times. From the Exodus onward, much new evidence is being unearthed that lends credibility to the events described in the Biblical record.
Zionist propaganda? Grasping at straws are you? Why not stick with the response regarding potential evidence. God forbid your ‘lying-eyes’ might negate your biased judgements. The need to reject any and all Jewish history gets more and more amusing as the years go by. Your bias is expected and remains irrelevant.
So what are you going to do with the potential fact of Jesus’ non-existence? Reject that too? After all, He is just another Jew.
LOL, got evidence? Produce it. However, there is evidence being discovered via archeological finds that the events described in Exodus might have occurred.
It still amazes me how desperate the Minimalists are to reject all Jewish history as having any truth. So maybe Jesus never existed never enters their minds.
The parallels are real. The conclusion does not follow.
Finding older Near Eastern laws resembling Exodus tells us that Israel’s civil law was expressed in legal forms already intelligible in its world. It does not tell us who wrote Exodus, and it certainly does not establish that God did not speak through it.
Revelation does not require God to invent an alien vocabulary. Jesus used familiar weddings, vineyards, debts, coins, shepherds, and seeds. Their prior cultural existence did not make His parables plagiarisms. He used what men already knew as the vessel for what they did not yet understand.
The same thing happens in Exodus.
Hammurabi may help explain the surface legal form—the Peshat. But Exodus contains another testimony that Hammurabi does not explain.
Consider the law with which Exodus 21 begins. A Hebrew servant serves six years and may go free in the seventh. If he entered alone, he may leave alone. But if his master has given him a wife and she has borne children, the servant faces a choice. He may take his freedom and leave them behind, or he may say:
“I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free.”
Then he is taken to the door, his ear is pierced, and he becomes a servant forever.
That is not merely borrowed labor legislation.
Christ took the form of a servant. He could have returned to the Father alone. But He loved His Father, His bride, and the children God had given Him. He therefore refused to go out free. He was taken to the door, pierced, and made the eternal servant who brings His family with Him.
Suddenly the change Tanner notices matters. Hammurabi releases the debt servant in the fourth year. Exodus releases the Hebrew servant in the seventh—the number of God’s completed work and rest. The biblical writer has not merely adjusted an old statute to suit changing social conditions. The law has been particularized so that its details participate in the revelation of Christ.
This is what source comparison continually misses. It can identify similarities between legal forms, but it cannot explain why the differences join the rest of Scripture in speaking of the same person and the same Cross.
The question is therefore not merely:
Where had anyone previously written about servants, oxen, pits, injury, and restitution?
The Emmaus question is:
Why did Israel’s version take precisely this form, and what does it say concerning Christ?
An earlier legal parallel can explain the clay from which the vessel was formed. It cannot explain the treasure placed within it.
Hammurabi does not expose the Mesopotamian invention of God’s law.
He helps us see what God changed when He turned familiar human law into prophecy.
Thanks for reading. My pieces aren’t meant to debunk things or present my own conclusions. I completely agree with what you’re saying and, in fact, have written about it. The piece isn’t just about Christianity, but about religion in general:
Well said. As for the dating of the stones, and the information found on them, how reliable is that dating actually? More importantly, how was it established?
That seems pretty critical to the entire discussion. If the “ruler” 📏 being used to measure the timeline is based on assumptions that can change, then the resulting dates can change with it. If the dating were shown to be significantly off, much of the argument built on that timeline would have to be reconsidered.
I’m skeptical of carbon dating, but I also know it isn’t the only method used to establish a timeline. So my real question is: How were these particular stones and inscriptions dated, and what evidence anchors those dates?
I guess in the end, a measurement is only as reliable as the ruler 📏 we’re using. ~B
Thanks so much for reading and taking the time to share your thoughts!
The great thing about carbon dating is that it's a proven science, meaning we can directly test its accuracy against artifacts with already established ages. To really challenge it, we'd need to find clear examples where it consistently gets those known dates wrong.
I also want to reassure you that the facts in my article reflect the general consensus of mainstream historians and archaeologists, including many respected Christian scholars, rather than any anti-Christian agenda.
Images of oxen getting stoned on weed keep dancing in my head.
Delightful!
Beefer madness.
I know this blog, which I found less than a week ago, explores mainly in Biblical territory, but it might be worth noting that the Qur'an has a similar take on legal equity. Basically, the guiding principle is that the punishment shouldn't exceed the parameters of the crime. I'm a Baha'i and my master's is as generalist in world religion. My husband and I have been going through the Qur'an verse by verse as part of our "daily" devotions, and when I read the news from Iran, where it seems like every day more Baha'is are getting locked up (mainly for being Baha'is), I think back on these passages about equity in punishment for crimes and am not sure whether to sigh, cry, or try to laugh.
This parallel with Hammurabi is something my Hebrew Bible class missed, and I found it very interesting. Thanks for bringing it up and matching it to Exodus. My take after a lot of study, including early Baha'i history, is that a good portion of the Bible could be classed as "sacred history," so it's imparting truth without necessarily sticking to literal fact. I found in studying the life (thesis) of an early Baha'i hero called Quddus, that even as close to the actual events as we are (say 150 years), we have multiple redactions of events and that when 2 chains of narration vary, what one chain is communicating is some parallel with Muslim history, often specifically Shia history.
Thank you for this additional information. The Qur'an parallel should have been in the piece, and it's the obvious extension of the argument.
A man
To be fair, several of them, a few centuries apart, and at least one of them had Babylonian legal material on the desk.
OK, so what’s the fuss? To gore or not to gore and if your pesky ox decides to engage in the most malicious of illegal and prohibited conduct, then let the gods and/or God decide the fate of the felonious rogue perpetrator.
So maybe Hammurabi predates Moses by a few hundred years or so, what’s the big deal? Oxen and their descendants are still roaming the neighborhoods, horns intact, sharp as a flint knife in search of its next victim, and so the laws to protect the fragile human target must be ceremoniously etched in stone, to be rigorously enforced from one generation to the next, regardless of which far-off country or current desert sand dune the dumb animal hails from.
So goes the same for so much more, whether to retain or update laws for open, unsecured pits, seduced unmarried daughters, slave rights, and, pray tell, not to be overlooked, the still ever so popular eye for an eye, let’s keep that one just for old times sake.
In the end, and rightly so, it’s not a case of the ‘real-God’ copy-catting the ‘fake-gods’ or their King, no, it’s simply the progression, the evolution of replacing the old and misguided with the new and the Revealed, the introduction of the one and true God who simply exiled His earlier created deities, took their rules and regulations, originally acquired from you know Who, and relegated them and their earthly appointed Royalty to the dust bins of history.
Enter Abraham and onward to Moses, that so-called ‘thievin’ law-maker-of-the-holy-mountain-high.’ But now the true story is out there for all to witness while Hammurabi and his horde of heavenly beings simply fade to complete obscurity, his code to be properly fine-tuned.
(and of course no one is forced to belief any of the new ‘theory’ either).
Hi Ariel,
Any culture with oxen writes ox laws, so the existence of the rulings proves nothing. What needs explaining is the sequence. Three cases, same order, same trigger (a prior goring plus formal notice to the owner), same separate valuation when the victim was somebody's property. Then the same cluster shows up around it: the open pit, the deposit that goes missing, the seduced daughter, the debt slave released on a fixed term.
Well, Tanner, I really don’t pretend to know, but for me, the sequence isn’t an issue. It could be simply the result of the previously played out scenario retold in the same oral tradition by a contemporary group of descendants recalling the event. Those pagan descendants, the Sinai crowd, carried those tales for hundreds of years, where they originated in their various homelands. Perhaps they used the same examples over and over again to illustrate that the acts of the old, fake gods, were in reality, the acts carried out by their one true God.
We don’t know the exact method of storytelling practiced in ancient times. Maybe mirroring the same sequence of events aided in convincing people that there was only one true explanation for events and their outcome, followed by the need for laws, and that all was the result of the acts and will of their God, not the whims of multiple gods and their appointed Kings.
But again, who knows? It could all be nonsense.
The foundation of judaism is derived from Mesopotamian deity worship and mythology with a pinch of Egyptian conflated history.
What's usually gets left off that list is the Canaanite one. El heads the pantheon at Ugarit, and El is one of the names Israel's God carries throughout Genesis. Psalm 82 has him standing up in a council of other gods to pass judgment on them. The Dead Sea Scrolls version of Deuteronomy 32:8-9 has the Most High dividing the nations among the sons of God and assigning Jacob to Yahweh, which puts Yahweh among the sons rather than at the top.
Mesopotamia supplies the flood, the primordial waters, and the legal material. Persia supplies what shows up late and all at once after the exile: a named adversary, bodily resurrection, ranked angels, a final judgment. Egypt supplies less than people expect, mostly a hymn sitting behind Psalm 104 and a national origin story with no archaeological trace.
I read your “stuff” all the time but I already know about El. It is tightly woven into Judaism:
IshmaEL
IsraEL
RaphaEL
ELlison
Even later in the word JewEL
But the stories are definitely plagiarized. Moses is an extraction of the Egyptian Pharoah Thutmose.
You're spot on about the -el suffix! Jewel and Ellison come from Old French and Latin, though.
I disagree. JewEL cutting is synonymous to Jewish society… Old French and Latin “language”have been and still are influenced by the ancient civilizations.
And the number 3… the pattern used to cut jewEls✡️
I don’t have to mention France has the THIRD largest Jewish population. And most of the “Jewish” population has italian DNA.
Not an issue regarding prefixes or suffixes in the identification of the Hebrew God. You don’t seem to be aware that the Hebrew Bible is a record of the evolution of their knowledge and their beliefs in the transition from the worship of many gods to the worship of one. It was a long process that carried with it the pagan traditions of their various homelands, names of gods included.
You have no idea who Moses was, whether an extraction of an Egyptian pharaoh, or a made-up deliverer of an enslaved people, so your speculation is silly at best.
El is not your god.
And I notice THE LACK OF CITATION FROM YOU.
zionist🤨 No wonder the Haredi reject you.
Pretty much not likely to find an archeological trace left by a group of wandering emigrants if referring to pre-Mosaic times. From the Exodus onward, much new evidence is being unearthed that lends credibility to the events described in the Biblical record.
Horseshit. The Jewish exodus is not history, AriEL. It is considered a myth by historians.
Newly found🤦🙄 Does the zionist propaganda ever stop?!
Zionist propaganda? Grasping at straws are you? Why not stick with the response regarding potential evidence. God forbid your ‘lying-eyes’ might negate your biased judgements. The need to reject any and all Jewish history gets more and more amusing as the years go by. Your bias is expected and remains irrelevant.
So what are you going to do with the potential fact of Jesus’ non-existence? Reject that too? After all, He is just another Jew.
LOL, got evidence? Produce it. However, there is evidence being discovered via archeological finds that the events described in Exodus might have occurred.
It still amazes me how desperate the Minimalists are to reject all Jewish history as having any truth. So maybe Jesus never existed never enters their minds.
Hey, you forgot to add a sprinkle or two of potential Persian influence! Shame, shame!
I stand revised. Yes, Persian, too.
The parallels are real. The conclusion does not follow.
Finding older Near Eastern laws resembling Exodus tells us that Israel’s civil law was expressed in legal forms already intelligible in its world. It does not tell us who wrote Exodus, and it certainly does not establish that God did not speak through it.
Revelation does not require God to invent an alien vocabulary. Jesus used familiar weddings, vineyards, debts, coins, shepherds, and seeds. Their prior cultural existence did not make His parables plagiarisms. He used what men already knew as the vessel for what they did not yet understand.
The same thing happens in Exodus.
Hammurabi may help explain the surface legal form—the Peshat. But Exodus contains another testimony that Hammurabi does not explain.
Consider the law with which Exodus 21 begins. A Hebrew servant serves six years and may go free in the seventh. If he entered alone, he may leave alone. But if his master has given him a wife and she has borne children, the servant faces a choice. He may take his freedom and leave them behind, or he may say:
“I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free.”
Then he is taken to the door, his ear is pierced, and he becomes a servant forever.
That is not merely borrowed labor legislation.
Christ took the form of a servant. He could have returned to the Father alone. But He loved His Father, His bride, and the children God had given Him. He therefore refused to go out free. He was taken to the door, pierced, and made the eternal servant who brings His family with Him.
Suddenly the change Tanner notices matters. Hammurabi releases the debt servant in the fourth year. Exodus releases the Hebrew servant in the seventh—the number of God’s completed work and rest. The biblical writer has not merely adjusted an old statute to suit changing social conditions. The law has been particularized so that its details participate in the revelation of Christ.
This is what source comparison continually misses. It can identify similarities between legal forms, but it cannot explain why the differences join the rest of Scripture in speaking of the same person and the same Cross.
The question is therefore not merely:
Where had anyone previously written about servants, oxen, pits, injury, and restitution?
The Emmaus question is:
Why did Israel’s version take precisely this form, and what does it say concerning Christ?
An earlier legal parallel can explain the clay from which the vessel was formed. It cannot explain the treasure placed within it.
Hammurabi does not expose the Mesopotamian invention of God’s law.
He helps us see what God changed when He turned familiar human law into prophecy.
Hi Robert,
Thanks for reading. My pieces aren’t meant to debunk things or present my own conclusions. I completely agree with what you’re saying and, in fact, have written about it. The piece isn’t just about Christianity, but about religion in general:
https://www.theunholytruth.com/p/what-keeps-religion-immune-to-archaeology
Well said. As for the dating of the stones, and the information found on them, how reliable is that dating actually? More importantly, how was it established?
That seems pretty critical to the entire discussion. If the “ruler” 📏 being used to measure the timeline is based on assumptions that can change, then the resulting dates can change with it. If the dating were shown to be significantly off, much of the argument built on that timeline would have to be reconsidered.
I’m skeptical of carbon dating, but I also know it isn’t the only method used to establish a timeline. So my real question is: How were these particular stones and inscriptions dated, and what evidence anchors those dates?
I guess in the end, a measurement is only as reliable as the ruler 📏 we’re using. ~B
Thanks so much for reading and taking the time to share your thoughts!
The great thing about carbon dating is that it's a proven science, meaning we can directly test its accuracy against artifacts with already established ages. To really challenge it, we'd need to find clear examples where it consistently gets those known dates wrong.
I also want to reassure you that the facts in my article reflect the general consensus of mainstream historians and archaeologists, including many respected Christian scholars, rather than any anti-Christian agenda.
Why do you choose to disable Pangram AI scanning on your articles?