9781422279977

Inside Hammurabi’s Code Hammurabi’s code provided a variety of different techniques to investigate crimes and other legal issues. When faced with a dispute over property, for example, a judge would question both sides in an argument and choose between them based on their answers. Here, again, the code establishes an important lawprinciple: the right to a legal trial. This principle is still followed inmost nations today. However, other ancient legal cases were resolved by resorting to other methods. If hearings before a judge did not decide a case, officers threw the accused into a raging river; if he swam to the other side successfully, authorities judged him the winner in the case, but if he drowned, they believed the gods had declaredhimguilty. Apparently, ancient Babylonians never suspected that in this case, swimming ability rather than divine justice might carry more weight. The Code of Hammurabi is very different from the laws of modern nations in one important aspect. Today, most law codes assume the principle of equal justice. Ideally, a poor, uneducated person and a wealthy member of the govern- ment should be judged and punished in the same way if they commit the same crime. Contrasting with this modern belief, the laws of ancient Babylon gave kings and nobles more power and protection than workers or slaves. Killing a slave was a minor crime, but killing a noble was a terrible one; stealing from a worker was punished only slightly, but stealing from the king resulted in swift death. The ancient Babylonians would have laughed at the idea that “all men are created equal.”

Universal Law in Ancient Israel

Hammurabi’s Code

The first known code of law lives on today.

In some ways, the principles given in the Hebrew Bible (the Christian OldTestament) is similar to the ideas set forth by Hammurabi. For exam- ple, both Babylonians and ancient Israelites followed the principle “An

eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” when one person injured another. This was the principle of retaliation, the idea that a punishment should equal the injury. However, the Hebrew Bible advanced further the notion that law depends on unchanging principles. The Ten Commandments, which are given in the books of Exodus and Deu- teronomy, differ from the Code of Hammurabi in that they claim to be more than just national laws; instead, they state what is right or wrong for all humanity (You shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal, and so on), without giving specific instructions for convicting and punishing those who break these laws. The HebrewBible thus provided another important step in the development

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the prison System

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