šum-ma a-wi-lum
DUMU•SAL a-wi-lim
im-ta-ḥaṣ
ša li-ib-bi-ša
uš-ta-di-ši
10 GIN KU•BABBAR
a-na ša li-ib-bi-ša
i-ša-qal
šum-ma SAL ši-i
im-tu-ut
DUMU•SAL-su
i-du-uk-ku
If a man
should strike
another man’s daughter
such that her foetus
is aborted:
10 sheqels of silver
he shall pay
for the foetus.
If that woman
should die:
they should kill
his daughter
And they say that Leviticus gets a bit rough: welcome to the Babylonian law of vicarious punishment. There is some debate, of course, as to whether or not Hammurapi’s edicts were ever put into practise, but it is always nice to look at something like this whenever you think your own society is losing its sense of morality.
Any comments to the theory (expressed in The Living Torah’s footnotes) that Hammurabi was Amraphel (who, some say, was Nimrod)?
I’m not familiar with that theory. Whose is it? My personal opinion is that this is just another of those theories that attempts to view the entire world within the Torah. If we find evidence of somebody from the same supposed period, then surely they must have been mentioned in the Bible as well.
Mind you, I’m saying this without having read anything about this particular theory. Maybe some scholars feel that it has something going for it?