A difficult question has arisen concerning the date of this legislation since the discovery of the Code of Hammurabi. Hammurabi was a Babylonian king who lived somewhere about 2,250 B.C., and who has been identified by some with the Amraphael of Gen. xiv. His code reveals a fairly advanced stage of civilisation and morality existing in Babylon at that time, but its chief interest for us is found in the fact that many of the laws concerning common life, marriage, etc., are not only like the laws of the Bible, but in some cases are verbally similar. This phenomenon demands some theory of contact between the two codes, but no theory has yet been found that explains all the facts. The idea of direct borrowing on either side can hardly be taken seriously, and the correspondence between the two codes hardly requires that; so that the question is narrowed to one of influence. This influence would seem to be most natural in the time of the Exile, were it not that the strictly exclusive spirit then developed by the Jews makes it unthinkable. There remains either the explanation of a common basis for the two codes, traceable to their Semitic origin, or what has received the greater support from scholars, the idea that the influence of Hammurabi's laws on Israel's legislation is to be traced through the former inhabitants of Canaan. To understand how this is possible, we must remember that it is now known that Babylon had predominating influence over Western Palestine before the conquest of Canaan by the Hebrews; that the inhabitants of the land were much more civilised than their conquerors; and that the invaders did not exterminate the inhabitants, but quietly effected a settlement among them and adopted many of their customs.
While on the subject of the influence of Babylon it will be convenient to notice here that this influence is not confined to legal matters, but can be traced in certain legendary elements in the Old Testament. The ideal of the Priests' Code would not tolerate heathen mythology that could be detected as such, to appear in its work, and yet there are definite traces of such mythology to be found in "P"s account of the creation in Gen. i. The discovery of the libraries of Assurbanipal has brought to light records of a mythological cosmogony which, while utterly different in conception and spirit from Genesis, is sufficiently similar to suggest some degree of connection. This Babylonian Epic of creation deals not so much with the remarkably scientific idea of a gradual creation of our earth out of chaotic materials, but with a conflict of gods and monsters which is supposed to have taken place before the creation. In the opening verses of the Bible there is a reference to the partition of the deep, which is here called by the non-Hebrew name _Tehom_, into two parts: the waters above and the waters under the firmament. Now in the Babylonian story the actual creation of the earth is preceded by a mighty struggle between _Marduk_, the sun-god (the Merodach of the Bible) and a great dragon symbolical of the primeval waters, which bears the name _Tiamat_, the Babylonian form of _Tehom_. The influence of this myth is the more certainly to be traced in Genesis, because it appears elsewhere in the Old Testament under the form of a legend of a conflict between Jehovah and Rahab, a mighty dragon; and this legend is generally in some way connected with creation (Job ix. 13; xxvi. 12; Isa. li. 9; Ps. lxxxix. 10). There is also a Babylonian story of the flood which keeps even closer to the Bible narrative, and it may be seen from the Babylonian version that this is more probably another form of the dragon myth than a common memory of a tremendous deluge. A Babylonian seal cylinder in the British Museum bears the picture of a man and woman standing one on each side of a sacred tree, from which they are picking fruit, while a serpent coils around the tree; but no written explanation of this very suggestive picture has been discovered. These mythical stories have come down from primitive Semitic times, but we cannot fail to notice that while their ancestry is undoubtedly common, there is a tremendous difference between the stage reached under the inspiration of the Hebrew genius and the crude Polytheism of the Babylonian stories. Their connection in some way is unmistakable, but still more certain is their different ethical and religious level. The fact of the borrowing does not deny the inspiration; it rather reveals how powerful that inspiration was.