The Similarities Between Hebrew Law And Hammurabi

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Connor Moore

Mr. Doty

HUM 121

18 September 2014

The Originality of the Hebrews

The Hebrew people from the beginning was a developed community that had a very special gift that not many civilizations had. The Hebrew people had the chance to build an entirely new civilization on a clean slate. Building a civilization from the ground up was not an easy task, but they did have opportunity to create values and a religion. They had faced many hardships before, and they would face many more, but that would have only made their views and ideas for a community stronger and broader. Observing how they built their civilization today is at parts confusing, such as why would people only recently freed freedom slavery allow any type of slavery

into their own community? The answer lies in various influences inside and outside of the Hebrew community.
The start of the Hebrew culture and religion began thousands of years ago in the region of Sumer. Like many Middle Eastern cultures the Hebrews needed a set of legal codes to govern their civilization. Religion, also happened to be a staple of early civilizations almost anywhere in the world. Religion also happened to be the one component that differentiated Hebrew laws and laws of surrounding cultures. To break the law in another society was to offend the society. In Hebrew society, to break the law would be to offend the one and all being deity. The aspect that shaped the Hebrew Culture and belief so drastically different from other societies was eternal punishment from god.
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The Hebrews encountered two very powerful, influential, and successful civilizations that could have very well helped mold the Hebrew culture and beliefs.

Yahweh (the Hebrew God) on the Hebrew belief was always concerned for the wellbeing and overall success of his followers. Yahweh gives moral pronouncements to the Jewish people in the Decalogue (Ten Commandments) with the preface “You shall not...” with the addition of positive obligations towards others. Hammurabi’s Code was a Babylonian set of laws to govern the Babylonian people nearly three hundred years before Moses did the same for his people. There are many similarities between the Hebrew laws and Hammurabi’s Code, but by far the most significant difference is the negative frame surrounding Hammurabi’s Code. Hammurabi’s Code was very clear cut to the Babylonian people about if they committed a certain crime what the punishment would be. The Torah gave ethical guidelines to for the Hebrews to build their lives on, with consequences for disobeying the ethical guidelines. A very reasonable answer to why the Hebrews followed the laws given to them so closely was because the punishment for disobeying was

unspecified.
When piecing together what built the religious beliefs and culture of the Hebrews you first have to look into the state of mind of the Hebrews once they had reached the promise land they were planning to settle in.

It is very important to keep in mind that as legend has it, they had been wandering through the desert for forty years after being freed from the Egyptians. The Hebrew’s views on slavery, theft, and overall human value would be fresh and evolved, perfect for building the foundations of which an empire could stand. Yet, the Jewish views on slavery is to remember that you were slaves, yet simultaneously you can own a human being. Slavery was abolished in 1865 in the United States, and nearly one hundred and fifty years later slavery

has
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come nowhere near acceptable into American culture again. For us to understand why the Hebrew law was constructed the way that it was we need to look deeper into the time and place that they were living in.
The Jewish religion is monotheistic, in great contrast to the Egyptian polytheistic religion. The incredible dedication to over two thousand gods must have been incredibly overwhelming for the Hebrews, possibly making a monotheistic god with similar views of the Egyptians very desirable. Yahweh taught moral and coexistence, Egyptian gods played the rolls of forgiving gods as well as condemning gods. To build their belief there was a second part to the religion, what values would the religion hold. Ancient Egyptians had jumbled values so the Hebrews would have to look elsewhere for values to build a community on if it was not to come from within.
The placement of the Babylonian society had a very strong possibility to be the developed and powerful role model that the Hebrew community was searching for. Babylon had the advantage of two rivers and excellent geographic placement. The Babylonian people were developed in art, agriculture, and since Hammurabi’s rule there had been a developed law governing the Babylonian people. Babylon was handicapped in the sense of breaking a law of Hammurabi’s Code was defiance to the structure of Babylon. Because of the Hebrew society breaking the rules was defiance to god, they followed the rules to not defy themselves.
The rich and powerful Hebrew civilization grew out of a small society that was open to new philosophy and guidance from a higher power. The success that came out of the Jewish nation may have been thankful to the influence that came from the Egyptian and Babylonian
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Civilizations. The Law and culture that was transferred from these civilizations was not the only aspect that made the Hebrews so strong. The originality that the Hebrews had was their morals that came from their monotheistic god. For the first time in history, law was a moral compass given from god with the intention of wellbeing for an entire society. The Hebrew originality was that the breaking of a ‘”law” was between you and god rather than between you and society like in Egypt and Babylon. The Hebrews furthering themselves from the values of Egypt was the best thing and for Hebrew society and possibly even the modern day world. The binding of Hebrew ingenuity with preexisting ideas took full advantage of the clean slate of which they built an entire civilization on.