Friday 18 November 2011

The Code of Hamurabi - and the law

Some people claim that the 10 Commandments should be the basis of the whole of the law.  I have touched on this before (here and here) and I dispute that claim because only three of the commandments seem to be present in the laws of most 'Christian' countries.

Some people also claim that the amazing thing about the biblical Israelites was that they thought completely differently from the tribes living in the surrounding regions at the time, and that this remarkable 'fact' shows how God had revealed himself to them exclusively.

Other people who take notice of the evidence from archaeology (particularly c. 1780 BCE) might have observed the wisdom contained in the Code of Hamurabi, which seems to be a significant historical step in the development of laws and justice.

Of its 282 laws, one of them seems particularly modern - and indeed particularly relevant.  It appears to impose obligations on an official; this provision establishes that a judge who reaches an incorrect decision is to be fined and removed from the bench permanently.

Good.  Let's adopt this in UK law!  Let's implement it too!  (Did I ever mention this before?)

It might be worth mentioning that this ancient statement of the law was literally written in stone; stones which have actually been found.  It also pre-dates the Old Testament by centuries.

It might also be worth mentioning that these laws, including the concept of 'an eye for and eye' were the work of a race of people who the mortal enemy of the writers of the Old Testament.  It seems hardly surprising that they didn't credit the previous authors in the bible.

The Babylonians got a bad press in the bible!  Why don't we ever hear the truth about them?  (I secretly suspect that the BBC must be involved in some way, and the UK government must have an aversion to Babylonians.)

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fossils with tissue which couldn't be possible after millions of years
http://www.icr.org/fresh-fossils/

Anonymous said...

A man in Australia making opals in weeks (not millions of years)
http://www.icr.org/article/6242/

Anonymous said...

Here is the "fossil hat"
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/cm/v17/n3/fossil-hat

Derby Sceptic said...

Anonymous - I cannot tell whether you are all the same person, but if you feel you have something valid to write, why not identify yourself with it?

Derby Sceptic said...

@Anonymous - The Opals in hours article refers to Coal and Oil being formed in hours.

If this were possible then we would not have any concerns over the energy future of the planet.

Where is the independent and peer reviewed research that supports this?

Likewise, where is the research to support Opals in weeks?

Plasma Engineer said...

The fossil hat is not a fossil at all. That is a petrified hat. It is a totally different process. You can see it happening in real life if you visit the petrifying wells in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, UK.

Plasma Engineer said...

As for 'fresh fossils'. I assume you know that you don't 'have' to believe just anything that you read on the web? Where are the peer-reviewed papers that back up this claim?

Plasma Engineer said...

And the page about the opals had me laughing out loud. They call those publications 'references'?? Ha ha ha ha ha .....

However, I'm sure this particular 'Anonymous' is long gone and she won't be back to offer any real evidence, any more than she will offer more risible pages like the above!

Unknown said...

Remember that it was Shamash, the Assyrian sun god, who gave hamurabi the LAW STONE.

And that the jews claimed that the Asyrians captuted, and completely assimilated, 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel around the 8-9th century BCE, causing them to allegedly fall of the face of the earth.

This matters because it is simultaneously around that period that judaism begins to appear as well as the copper mines, once possessed by th Hyksos, who had invaded Egypt around the 17-18 century BCE and were finaly chased out around the 16th century BCE, and abandonned around the 12th century BCE, begins to be exploited again.

The only remaining allegedly tribes were levy's and judas', in other words the enforcers of this emerging religion (the king and his priests), and their subjects fighting their wars and working in the copper mines.

It is this mine that made the first kings of Judaism wealthy and was obviously in
dispute. And this is part of the why and how judaism rose in the first place, enslaving the ppl to the kings mine and military.

To achieve this they had to use current beliefs, mythologies and histories. As such everything was reformed putting these ppl as favored by this new god and any nation that had similar beliefs, in other words everyone else, lost and impure and worthy of being slaughtered, raped and/or enslave.

To this day the Assyrians, Egyptian, etc.
.., are considered as the nazis of those days because of this and yet archeology tend to state that it was the other way
around.

The jews were reffered to by all civilization, all the way to the romans, as a misantropic ppl because they declared as evil the customs, gods and beliefs, of every one but themslves.

In this context it is not really logical for them to mention from whom they took their laws and histories or that David's great temple was actually Hathor's temple built by the Hyksos centuries earlier.

But then again the Messoppotamians had that by 3000 BCE and so did the Egyptians and Ethipoians within the following millenia.

In india they had that and fully erected
Civilization with vast cities and sculpted temple by 4000 BCE