Very little more need be said than that the Jews, with their wonderful adaptability to the customs of the land of their adoption which has always rendered them the best of citizens, readily assimilated all that was good in Babylonia while preserving also the best things in their own ancient law and jealously guarding whatever was sacred by its religious value. Such a course was not only sane and sensible; it affords a proof of the great hold which Hammurabi’s Code still had in Babylonia at the time of the Exile and much later; it sets the seal of approval on its regulations as the judgement of some of the most penetrating intellects the world has seen, and furnishes a brilliant example of a learned but not pedantic attitude which we may do well to imitate. We shall have reason to refer presently to some of the later Jewish traditions and to appreciate their value. It is the case that among Christians also the laws of Moses have been studied with deep interest and increasingly careful scholarship. Possibly too little attention has been paid by the modern Christian scholar to ancient tradition. At any rate, the chief part of the difficulties which we are likely to find in comparing the two legislations arise from the results of the studies pursued by orthodox modern Christian, or at any rate non-Jewish, scholars which have been carried out for the most part without reference to Jewish susceptibilities or Rabbinic interpretations. Modern scholarship has succeeded in fixing and separating out of the Books of Moses a number of different sources or documents. In the case of the laws these may be regarded as different codes promulgated at very different dates, or in some cases mere pious wishes for future observance, ultimately worked up into a loosely combined book written in the interest of a party of religious zealots whose prominence later led to the system of thought known to us as Judaism. We must accept these results, so far as we can get a distinct notion of them, and refer to the separate codes rather than to a single body of laws known as those of Moses. No one can venture to dispute these decisions on pain of being reckoned reactionary and obscurantist. These scholars hold the seat of authority, and it would be rash presumption to question their ruling. Nor have I any wish to do this. Yet it may be hoped that they will pardon a sigh of regret on our part that we are now unable to compare the Mosaic law as a whole with the Code of Hammurabi. It would be so much easier for the lecturer, and the indebtedness of Moses to Hammurabi so much more convincing to you. Sadly as many have lamented the tearing of the great law-book of Moses into pieces as rendering it a mere thing of shreds and patches, they may take comfort that its present condition renders it much harder to recognize the characteristic texture of the Babylonish garment.