Hammurabi and Moses! Did Moses plagurise Hammurabi?

by Gill 14 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  Gill

  Hammurabi, a great King of the Babylonians was a Great Lawgiver. Some of his laws were pretty humane and he set in place in Babylon a legal system with Judges, lawyers etc and some pretty advanced for its time, laws protecting women and children from abuse.

  He claimed to have received his laws from the top of a mountain engraved in stone!

  He claimed this 500 years before Moses did and to be honest, his laws were pretty much more humane, though still not overthrowing a life for a life, he was able to set in place compensation system which meant people of Babylon were not after eachothers lives anymore for misdemeanours but could claim compensation from the Courts. Far more civilised than the system the Jews lived under 500 years after him, especially since the Jews claimed their laws were from the Almighty God!

  So! Is Moses claiming to have received his laws in stone tablets from the top of Mount Sinai, just copying this Great Lawgiver?
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  Narkissos

  According to current scholarship, most of the Jewish Torah was developed gradually from the 8th to the 4th century BC -- in any case, more than one millenium after Hammurabi, and with strong Mesopotamian influence down to the late 6th century.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi (and a link from the bottom of the page to a complete translation).

  The Hammurabi code is explicitly ascribed to the god Shamash, and this is comparable to the Yhwh/Moses legendary relationship, but I don't know where you got the story of the mountain from...
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  Butters

  I'm confused. Didn't Moses write about the garden of Eden and creation and that snake that Eve had sex with? Didn't all that happen before King Hammburabi's lifetime? Suddently, I have become hungry and desire to go to burger king... Don't know why...
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  hambeak

  Butters Eve didn't have sex with the snake lmao.
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  Leolaia

  I also know of no claim that Hammurabi received his law code "on a mountain" (there are no mountains in Mesopotamia). Here is a compilation of parallels between the law code of Hammurabi and the Pentateuch (put together George Duncan in the April 1904 issue of Biblical World):

  

  Of course, these parallels do not necessarily indicate literary dependence because the Hebrew law code and the one of Hammurabi are separated by over a millennium, and doubtless there were other law codes in the intervening period that were influenced by the laws promulgated by King Hammurabi which may have had a more direct influence.
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  greendawn

  Butters there is secular history and Biblical history, secular sources often seek to discredit Biblical history eg by claiming that the law of Moses was written 1000 after Moses and spuriously ascribed to him. Likewise they claim much of Genesis was taken and adopted from older pre existing Mesopotamian myths whereas Bible believers claim the opposite is true.
• 

  Gill

  Narkissos - This is from the book 'By the Waters of Babylon' written 1972 by James Wellard.

  'That Babylon achieved such a place in history was largely due to the triumphs of a king not in war, but in peace. For Hammurabi the warrior turned out to be one of the great law-givers of his age, worthy to be ranked with Solon the Athenian. In its way the Babylonian's code of conduct for regulating the relations between men was as important a step forward towards a saner society as that which Moses formulated for his people some 500 years later; and the resemblance between the two leaders of their nations is all the more striking since both are reputed to have received the tablets of their law from a god on a mountain top.'
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  Gill

  The Code of Hammurabi (which - perhaps not surprisingly much like the 10 Commandments - were reportedly delivered to Hammurabi by his god on a mountain top), with its "eye for an eye" mentality was an obvious influence on the Exodus, Leviticus and other Biblical writers. And, of course, it in turn was likely influenced by earlier Mesopotamian sets of laws - Hammurabi was just one of the first known to have his laws "set in stone," literally.
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  Gill

  http://www.sodabob.com/DeepThoughts/DT_2004_11_10.asp
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  Butters

  Ok, I am back and I got my hamburger. I don't know why I had the urge to go to Burger King. Hammburger was good though.

  I have found the original copy of Hammurabi here, and see that it was indeed a mountain he was on, but not the type we think of. It was actually a giant preexistent breast implant left there by a mysterious time traveler from our future.