The Code of Hammurabi

Hammurabi

• 16 mei 2017
• 9781545042779

Samenvatting:

The Code of Hammurabi is one of the most important monuments in thehistory of the human race. Containing as it does the laws which wereenacted by a king of Babylonia in the third millennium B.C., whose ruleextended over the whole of Mesopotamia from the mouths of the riversTigris and Euphrates to the Mediterranean coast, we must regard it withinterest. But when we reflect that the ancient Hebrew tradition ascribedthe migration of Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees to this very period, andclearly means to represent their tribe father as triumphing over thisvery same Hammurabi (Amraphel, Gen. xiv. 1), we can hardly doubt thatthese very laws were part of that tradition. At any rate, they must haveserved to mould and fix the ideas of right throughout that great empire,and so form the state of society in Canaan when, five hundred yearslater, the Hebrews began to dominate that region.