It seems then to be a reasonable working hypothesis that the Israelites did at first succeed in impressing a primitive type of law on the land, especially in those matters which were not entirely unsuited to both peoples. This seems to be supported by the character of what is regarded as the earliest law code in Israel. We at any rate may say that they themselves regarded such as their laws. It would require strong proof before we could admit that the surviving conquered people obeyed them too. As the Israelites became a settled people they may have invented fresh laws. It does require proof, however, that these were invented, and not already the laws of the conquered race. Provided that they were not too repugnant to the Hebrew genius it would be a step towards unification to adopt existing laws. Proof must be overwhelming that they were not adopted before we can think otherwise. The selective power to adopt or reject, to modify and concede, completely guards independence. On the other hand, unless we can prove that there was no adoption at all, we admit influence. Here the controversialists seem to have confounded the issue. They either deny all influence in order to maintain independence, or they destroy all independence by hardening influence into origination. On either assumption Moses does not get credit for much initiative. Hitherto we have not considered the question whether the settled Canaanites were governed by the Code of Hammurabi before the Israelites came. Some have tried to make the whole controversy turn on this point. It is difficult to see how an answer can be given to that question, except by the discovery of a copy of the Code itself in a pre-Israelitish city. If, on the other hand, we admit that the civilization of Canaan was essentially Babylonian before the conquest, we may suppose that it was governed by Babylonian laws, at any rate, to a large extent. It is to be expected that there would be local variations. Can we test such an hypothesis? We do now know what Babylonian law was in the time of Hammurabi some five hundred years before the conquest of Canaan. We do know that in Babylonia that law remained practically unchanged for a thousand years longer. We must then admit that if Babylonian law had sway in Canaan at all, it must have been that of the Code to all intents and purposes. We thus have a linked chain of hypotheses. If Canaanite civilization was once an offshoot of Babylonian, and gradually asserted its influence over Hebrew legislation, then we ought to find more and more likeness to the Code of Hammurabi in Israelite law as time goes on. For that purpose we may concede as much as the critics wish to claim for their arrangement of successive codes in the Books of Moses before the Code was discovered. The later the law is, according to them, the more likely will it be on our hypothesis to resemble the Code. We assume that the Canaanite element in the nation held on to their old law, while submitting to the